Posted by Teresa at 06:10 PM * 322 comments
Mike Ford’s bar joke:
Werner Heisenberg, Kurt Gödel, and Noam Chomsky walk into a bar. Heisenberg says, “It’s very odd and improbable that we three are in this bar together. It suggests to me that we’re in a joke, but I can’t be certain.”(With thanks to Jo and Emmet.)Gödel says, “Well, if we were outside the joke we would know, but since we’re inside it, there’s no way we can make that determination.”
And Chomsky says, “Of course this is a joke, but you’re telling it wrong!”
Posted by Abi Sutherland at 11:12 AM * 144 comments
Tired of the wrangling over health care reform and gay marriage, the defense of torture, the Tea and Coffee parties, the endlessly binary view of politics? Well, I have a solution for you. We’re in an election cycle here in the Netherlands, after the government fell (and fell hard) in February, and it’s like nothing you’ve seen in the English-speaking world.
We have a controversial figure who tries to make the entire conversation about himself. We have two major-party resignations on the same day, both to spend more time with their families. We have parties moving left and still picking up right-wing polling numbers, witness parties both religious and animal-rights, socialists, greens and populists.
And best of all, we have someone explaining it all in clear and accessible English.
Peter-Paul Koch, known in the usability community for his browser compatibility work, has recently collected his intermittent articles on Dutch politics (which I’ve been reading since I moved here) into a separate blog. His original plan to create a comprehensive view of the subject by 2011 has been rushed by recent events, and he’s risen wonderfully to the occasion.
The best place to start is probably with his brief introduction to the history and structure of the current system. He’s planning to do a series of posts delving into the deep history of the political culture (his first one is intricate and fascinating; I await the rest with real interest). Proceduralists should check out his explanation of the rules of the game; numbers geeks and chartists might want to spend some time in the parliament composition graphs and tables of political alignments of governments. And his recently-added poll review has a neat coalition-forming game that calculates the stability of the various possible governments.
But the main politics blog is where the action is. There is an ongoing sequence of profiles of the alphabet soup of Dutch political parties, complete with a brave but doomed attempt to map them to US parties. He’s been tracking and commenting on polls and debates as they happen, watching the impact of recent local elections and party political reshuffles on the big picture, and summarizing political news in his intermittent “small fry” posts.
This is addictive, compulsive reading, even if you’re not in the Netherlands (I call PNH as a witness here; he’s begun starting IM conversations not with “Good morning” but with “Bos retired from politics? WTF?”). It’s a topic as fascinating and complex as only politics could be, explained clearly and amusingly by someone whose training as both a historian and a user experience expert pays off. In fact, the only thing I really disagree with Peter-Paul on is this statement of his mission:
he follows Dutch politics for the benefit of those twelve foreigners that are interested in such matters, as well as his Dutch readers.
Anyway, go look. Iz neat stuff.
Edited to add:
If you want to figure out where you would stand in this political spectrum, try this profiler from last year’s European elections (the Dutch politics page has an English-language option). Further interesting profilers may also be found at Kieskompas, a site I’ve discussed before on Making Light.
Posted by Patrick at 07:03 AM * 47 comments
The good news is that Making Light was moved to a new and more studly server last night. The bad news is that we were down from just before 10PM (EST) until just after midnight, and when we came back to life, we’d lost a number of comments posted just before the plug was pulled. If any of those comments were yours, we’re really sorry—we didn’t delete anything on purpose.
UPDATE: Okay, now we seem to have the missing comments, but the stuff posted since is gone. Investigating now. For the moment, it’s probably best to either refrain from posting anything, or keep a copy for yourself if it’s important. We’ll sound the giant civil-alert All Clear klaxon as soon as the fabric of reality stops shaking.
UPDATE, Thursday, March 11: Honk honk ah-OO-gah, etc. It does look like we’re stable. Sorry I haven’t extracted and reposted the missing comments yet; it’s been a busy two days. Will do so soon.
Posted by Patrick at 04:23 PM * 355 comments
At McSweeney’s, some years back, Mollie Wilson O’Reilly posted a list of Rejected Titles for Hymns.
The Making Light commentariat is invited to, as a festive exercise*, compose one or more verses fleshing out any of the titles Wilson lists.
I’ll start:
O saints who died in gruesome ways
Thy martyrdom we see—
Beheaded, broiled, stretched on the rack
Or nailed to a tree
O saints who died in gruesome ways
We lovingly depict
Your instruments of martyrdom—
Swords, braziers, and icepicks
O saints who died in gruesome ways
Impaled or drowned in bogs,
Cut up, or skinned, or shot from guns
Or set upon by dogs
O saints who died in gruesome ways
We picture you on charms
And venerate the garishness
With which you bought the farm
O saints who died in gruesome ways
Without you there would be
Far fewer students in the field
Of hagiography
Abi Sutherland wishes me to note that, historically, it has frequently happened that multiple (very) different hymns would share the same title. So multiple versions of any of these can co-exist as well.
* In connection with whatever feast or festival you prefer. Tomorrow, March 8, is the feast day of St. Philemon of Antinoe, bound hand and foot and then drowned, c. 305 AD.
Posted by Teresa at 12:19 PM * 84 comments
Item: VINTAGE ITALIAN DUCK WALL FOUNTAIN
Note sent via eBay:
No blame at all on the vendor. They pick this stuff up at estate sales. She’s not in the same league as the one I saw who’d listed a folkloric old scapular as a pincushion meant to hang round your neck while you’re sewing.Hi there —I could be wrong about this, but what that looks like to me is a holy water font. If so, the water dispenser above it is a dove, not a duck.
I freely admit that it looks more like a duck, but you just don’t see a lot of ducks used as holy water dispensers.
Cheers —
Addenda: Immediately after posting this, I clicked through on the link to make sure it worked, and found the vendor had already retitled the auction VINTAGE ITALIAN DUCK WALL FOUNTAIN holy water font. I’m impressed. That’s faster than Cory Doctorow.
More: The vendor further replies:
Ghu! She’s right. I’d thought those brass bits were mounting hardware, but after peering hard at the large versions of the photos, I’m forced to agree that they’re webbed feet.You may be right on the holy … but them webbed feet scream duck … thanks
It’s a holy water font. With a duck.
Further addendum: Debra Doyle says it’s a lavabo, originally an ecclesiastical handwashing device.
So: it’s a lavabo. With a duck.
Posted by Teresa at 06:53 PM * 392 comments
A few weeks back, Ron Hogan did a conference-call interview with me and John Scalzi about online community. His transcribed and edited version of the conversation has now gone up on the ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) & The Center for Association Leadership’s website.
Some previous occasions on which I or my esteemed co-bloggers have talked about this stuff:
January 27, 2005: Virtual panel participation.
October 1, 2006: The Science of Sheep.
April 17, 2007: Moderation isn’t rocket science.
May 05, 2007: CBS surrenders to racist commenters.
May 22, 2007, by Jim Macdonald: Fanfiction, Monetized.
May 23, 2007: FanLib wholly exploded.
July 20, 2007: Flamer Bingo.
November 18, 2007, by Jim Macdonald: The MySpace Suicide.
November 19, 2007: “It’s the apocalypse.” “Again?”
February 21, 2008, by Abi Sutherland: Curating Conversations.
July 25, 2008, by Jim Macdonald: Time Notices Comments.
November 29, 2009: Latin obscenities meet comment-order preferences.
I’ll add more to the list as I think of them.
Posted by Teresa at 06:45 PM * 189 comments
Two law professors, Tom Baker of the University of Pennsylvania and Peter Siegelman of the University of Connecticut, have proposed a way to encourage adults between the ages of 19 and 29 to buy health insurance: bring back the tontine.
Someone should tell them that tontines are a plot device masquerading as a financial instrument.
This otherwise goofy proposal makes slightly more sense once you realize it was published under the auspices of the Cato Home for Strayed Objectivists Institute. Those guys are so kinky for “market solutions” that they’re still pushing for the privatization of Social Security, even after the financial crisis made it clear that their preferred solution would have been a catastrophe.
The Invisible Hand of the Marketplace: guaranteed to give you hair on your palms.
Addendum:
I just realized there’s something I forgot to explain the first time around:
Some auto insurance plans have a provision that’s similar to this tontine scheme: if you’re a very safe driver, as measured over a set amount of time, you’ll eventually get back some of the money you’ve paid for your insurance. However, safe driving is to some extent under the control of the individual who’s insured. Health problems aren’t perceived that way.
The only scenario in which healthy young adults are going to foresee themselves needing expensive medical care is if they’re randomly unlucky. If that happens, they’ll need insurance, but they won’t get back their extra bit of money. If they don’t get unlucky, they’ll get back that bit of money—a tiny payoff, in the relatively far future—but they’ll be out the much greater cost of their insurance, and they’ll have to start paying for it right now. Since both of those outcomes are outside their control, the rebate isn’t an incentive.
In the meantime, young adults who genuinely believe they aren’t going to need expensive medical care are not going to be moved by an offer to repay them some small fraction of their premiums a couple of years on down the road. If they don’t think they need medical insurance, they’ll save a lot more money by not buying it at all.
Posted by Teresa at 10:10 AM * 229 comments
Or, some reflections on a power outage.
If you can’t find your emergency lighting gear in the dark, you might as well not own it.
It’s okay to know the approximate location of everything else, but you have to know the exact location of the matches and at least one candle. Alternately, stash a glowstick in the same container where you keep your candles.
Carrying the same emergency book of matches in your purse for several years can rub off the striking strip.
In general, do maintenance on your lighting supplies before the lights go out, because otherwise you’ll just feel stupid.
Adorably dim little tea light holders are designed to look pretty, not provide functional home lighting. Standard tapers and candlesticks are much more effective. Glass-sided lanterns are okay, but make sure they’ll accommodate whatever candles you have on hand.
Store the lamp oil near the oil lamp, and vice versa.
(During the Great Blackout of 2003, I patronized a linoleum Chinese restaurant in Park Slope that stayed open by lighting the place with improvised oil lamps: tuna or cat food cans filled with oil from the fryer, with big freestanding wicks made of twisted paper. They flickered wildly, gave off a lot of smoke, and can’t have been safe, but they worked.) (I still wouldn’t recommend using them.)
Your room will not be set up for a candle or lantern. Take the time to identify and clear off a suitable space. Consider putting a shallow dish or pan under it. Watch out for rising heat. In general, regard open-flame lighting as an unstable technology that requires constant monitoring and maintenance, and always manifests its bugs in the worst possible ways.
Candles and oil lamps are dim. No wonder our ancestors gave up and went to bed.
Once you’ve got your first candle lit and stabilized, you can fiddle around with the rest. My choice of first thing is a big devotional candle, the kind that comes in a tall cylindrical glass container, and is rated to burn continuously for seven or eight or fourteen days. I pick mine up at the grocery. Try to avoid the really colorful containers, as less light escapes them. Candles made out of white wax are less likely to be scented.
If you can’t stand the smoke from soft paraffin, they’re called sanctuary candles, and they cost more.
(Keep an empty devotional candle holder around to hold your scrap wax. If the blackout continues, you can melt down your scrap wax, insert a wick, and have a whole new devotional candle. Assuming you have a wick. Note: cosmetic cotton balls are made of short-staple cotton, and don’t spin well.)
A comparative survey: devotional candles are a bit dim until they’ve got a good pool of melted wax to work from, but they’re dependable and long-lasting. Tel Aviv brand utility and sabbath candles burn down quickly, but they’re bright. Three or four of them grouped together are bright enough to let you read big type or cook simple food.
Pure beeswax is awesome! It’s bright, clear, stable, long-lasting, and nearly smokeless and dripless. One beeswax taper in a wall sconce will light an area as well as a half-dozen devotional candles, and five or six inches of it will last all evening.
The chief virtue of IKEA tea lights (go ahead, get the bag of 100) is that they come in little lightweight metal cups. Once the tea light has burned halfway down, blow it out, then stick a sabbath candle in the melted wax and hold it upright until the wax cools and hardens. Stick this “base” into a tea light holder and light the sabbath candle instead.
The best way to get a patch of candle wax out of clothing is to pour boiling water through it.
Posted by Patrick at 07:38 PM * 92 comments
On our little block of Brooklyn. Presumably as an effect of the endless slushy snowfall. The Con Ed website registers the outage and estimates that it’ll be fixed tomorrow morning. Oh joy.
Our phones still have some battery power, but we’re likely to be off the net pretty soon. I understand that reverting to a state of pre-civilization savagery is next.
UPDATE, 11:30 the next morning: Our neighbors remain uneaten, but the power’s still out. Con Ed, whose outage map first estimated it would be restored at 7 AM, later changed it to 11 AM, and now they say 3 PM. I suspect the map increments these estimates foward in four-hour chunks.
Given what a slow-moving mess this storm is becoming, for all I know our lights won’t go back on for days. If we have to do another evening of stumbling around by candlelight, though, I may run mad.
UPDATED UPDATE, 3:30 PM. We have power, hooray.
Posted by Jim Macdonald at 03:53 PM * 128 comments
For all mail room folks at Random House who are about to get a bunch of printed and bound books from PublishAmerica, and for the editorial assistants who are going to be asked “What the foo do you want us to do with these?” and are wondering what this is all about … here’s the skinny.
Our good friends at PublishAmerica (a vanity press located in Frederick, Maryland) have hit on a way to increase their sales! Observe this letter sent to all their authors yesterday morning (emphasis theirs):
Your Book Published By Random House?“Not affiliated with Random House” is pretty much the understatement of the year.
From: PublishAmerica Author Support Team (noreply@publishamerica.com)
Sent: Tue 2/23/10 11:35 AM
To: [Redacted]
Dear Author:PublishAmerica will submit your book to Random House!
Random House, the publishing company? Yes. We’re submitting your book to the world’s most famous publisher so they get a chance to read it and see if they want your book.
Every writer dreams about becoming a published author. Once they have reached that goal, as you have, many dream of the next step up: to become a Random House author. Random House is one of the most prestigious publishing names. Their extensive operation a few miles from our own headquarters makes them virtual neighbors.
We will submit not one, but up to five copies of your book to Random House’s acquisition editors, so that they can also pass the book around their imprints if they want. They may do anything they choose with the books. We will alert you immediately if Random House shows interest, and in that case we will do everything we can to ensure a smooth transition. Since PublishAmerica is not affiliated with Random House or its owner Bertelsmann, we would totally share in your pride.
Here’s how we do it:
If you want to have books on hand, order now, and we will donate up to five copies to Random House. And you receive a 50 pct discount!
Go to www.publishamerica.net, find your book, click on it, then add to cart, indicate quantity, and use this coupon: Random50. Then click Recalculate and finish the transaction. Minimum volume is 10 copies.
By using the coupon you are authorizing us to donate the books to Random House. You may also request that we ship five FREE books to you instead.
Full-color and hardcovers excluded. Offer expires this weekend on Sunday night.
Thank you,
PublishAmerica Author Support Team
All I can think is, “Wow.” PublishAmerica is going to be your agent now? What about those PA authors who already have agents?” (Yeah, yeah, I know, those agents would be either gormless, hopeless, greener than grass, or out-and-out scammers in order to have submitted a book to PA, but still….)
This does represent a change for PublishAmerica—up to now their party line has been that the major commercial publishers are trembling in their highly-polished wingtips at the thought that this upstart publisher has opened up publishing to folks who aren’t celebrities or already best-selling.
From another letter sent to their authors in 2005:
…We are the David who has opened the gates of what used to be elite territory. We are championing the underdogs. You, our authors, are putting an end to what used to be literary Apartheid. You did not pay a penny to walk through the gates, and now you are published authors, the peers of entrenched power. Of course Goliath fights back. They don’t want you to be their peers. They won’t tell you that, though — they will say that they don’t want your publisher. But it is you that they are after, and you — that is whom we are fighting for.Everyone knows the final outcome. The Goliath elite will be beaten, not by our slingshot but because we are darfing them.
Yeah, they really said “darfing.”
What this is, of course, is a naked inducement to get their authors to buy multiple copies of their own books at inflated prices (and that’s before figuring in postage and handling, which are insanely inflated themselves). A PublishAmerica book at a fifty-percent discount still costs more than most books of the same length at full retail. Like any other vanity press, PublishAmerica’s market is their own authors.
So, stand by, Random House. Soon you’re going to get a ton of unedited, poorly typeset, previously published books. As the letter says, what you do with them is up to you.
[UPDATE 02MAR10]
This just in: PublishAmerica sent this letter to their authors this morning:
Dear Author:
PublishAmerica will submit your book to the New York Times Book Review!
Home of the famous NYT Bestsellers list? Yes. We’re submitting your book to the nation’s most notorious reviewers so they get a chance to read and recommend it.
Every author dreams about writing a bestseller. And, honestly, is your book really inferior to most celebrity books that make it to the NYT Bestsellers list? Many would say it’s not. Let’s present your book to the New York Times Book Review. We will submit not one, but up to five copies of your book to the NYT reviewers, so that they can pass copies around if they want. Here’s how we do it:If you want to have books on hand, order now, and receive a 50 pct discount!
We will ship your books to you, and we will donate an EXTRA up to five copies to the New York Times Book Review, at no cost to you or the New York Times.
Go to www.publishamerica.net, find your book, click on it, then add to cart, indicate quantity, and use this coupon: NYT50. Then click Recalculate and finish the transaction. Minimum volume is 12 copies.
By using the coupon you are authorizing us to donate up to five books to the New York Times Book Review for their reviewers’ consideration at their discretion, at their 8th Ave office in New York, NY. You may also request that we ship five FREE books to you instead.
Full-color and hardcovers excluded. Offer expires this weekend on Sunday night.
Thank you,
PublishAmerica Author Support Team
Hardcover books excluded? Presumably because, as is well known, the NYT never reviews hardcovers. And at no cost to the New York Times, too! Wow! Presumably because other publishers make reviewers buy the books.
In other news, PublishAmerica is suing Lightning Source, and Lightning Source is countersuing.
Man could I use a slice of Schadenfreude Pie about now.
Posted by Abi Sutherland at 03:19 PM * 940 comments
Caption competition*
(Photo credit: Avram Grumer)
* Part of the competition is how long we can resist the obvious.
Posted by Teresa at 10:22 PM * 597 comments
In the news today:
J. K. Rowling dismisses plagiarism claim“Absurd” and “unfounded” looks right to me.‘Harry Potter’ author J.K. Rowling, who has been dragged into a 500 million pound legal battle over claims of plagiarism, has dismissed the allegations calling them “absurd” and “unfounded”.
The multi-millionaire author has been named in the lawsuit originally filed last year against publisher Bloomsbury for alleged copyright infringement, Daily Mail online reported.This is going to be another case like Nancy Stouffer’s ignominiously unsuccessful attempt to sue on account of some purely nominal similarities between the Harry Potter series and an obscure children’s book Rowling never saw.
What these lawsuits teach us:
1. The plaintiffs haven’t paid much attention to other works in the genre.
2. Non-writers think it’s the ideas, rather than the execution, that make a book. They’ve got that backward.
3. People who aren’t accustomed to having a lot of ideas of their own have a very poor grasp of the odds that others might independently come up with the same ideas.
The estate of writer Adrian Jacobs maintains Rowling stole ideas from one of his books The Adventures of Willy the Wizard for her work, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But Rowling has issued a statement dismissing the claim as “absurd,” and is applying to have the case thrown out.Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the fourth book in a consistent and tightly sequential series of seven books. It would be bizarre to assume that J. K. Rowling committed plagiarism in the fourth book but not in the three books before or the three after it.
What’s really happening here is that Adrian Jacobs’ book imagines that a society that’s full of wizards would still have railroads, newspapers, schools, students, hospitals, government bureaus, candy, contests, sporting events, prisons, maps, and beer, only they’d all be the wizardly versions of those things.
Surprise, surprise: J. K. Rowling’s books do that too—as do thousands of other works of genre fiction. It’s basic worldbuilding. (This is the part where the plaintiffs not paying enough attention to other books comes in.) The reason the plaintiffs are suing over Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is that it’s built around a magical competition, so its insignificant resemblance to Willy the Wizard is infinitesimally greater than that of the other books in the series.
“I am saddened that yet another claim has been made that I have taken material from another source to write Harry. The fact is I had never heard of the author or the book before the first accusation by those connected to the author’s estate in 2004,” Rowling said.I’m inclined to believe her. One of the many reasons for this is that it looks to me like Willy the Wizard may have been self-published. The following account of the book’s history is from the website Adrian Jacobs’ heirs have put up, on the page titled Background to Publication in 1987 of The Adventures of Willy the Wizard by Adrian Jacobs with illustrations by Nick Tidnam ©1987:
No. While the publishers may have found kind things to say about it, they rejected it.Adrian Jacobs’ work “The Adventures of Willy The Wizard” was well received when it was sent around in manuscript form by his literary agent to potential publishers in 1987.
Why did the publishers comment on his ideas? Most likely because it spared them having to say anything about Adrian Jacobs’ prose, storytelling, pacing, and ear for language.Publishers were enthusiastic about his ideas, including …(List of ideas, carefully selected and phrased to maximize the resemblance to Rowling’s work.)
Sorry. It’s far from being the worst book I’ve ever seen, but it’s not up to snuff.
True, as far as it goes, though it’s awfully generic advice. I’d like to know who this agent was who thought the manuscript needed serious work, but sent it round to publishers anyway. Maybe they were a real agent. If not, Adrian Jacobs will have been paying them. Note: placing Jacobs’ book with a vanity press (if it was a vanity press) is not the sort of thing real agents do.However his literary agent advised him that the work needed some re-writing and was densely packed with themes and ideas that needed expansion and development.
And since we’re comparing Adrian Jacobs and J. K. Rowling: when Rowling first submitted her work to agents and publishers, she got turned down too. The difference is that instead of self-publishing it, she buckled down and worked on her writing. A few years later, her first book sold to Bloomsbury.
That’s not as in Bachman Turner Overdrive. Cecil Turner and his wife Marta Bachman ran Bachman & Turner in the 1970s and 1980s. Neither of them appear to have had any background in publishing before starting the company. If you read between the lines of this perhaps over-laudatory obituary of Cecil Turner (it’s written by one of the authors he published), it looks like Turner wasn’t wealthy before marrying Marta Bachman and starting a publishing company, but adopted a patrician lifestyle thereafter. That would be unusual for a couple running a legitimate small press, especially given the not overwhelmingly commercial books Bachman & Turner published. I don’t know. Maybe Marta Bachman had money.Adrian Jacobs was impatient to publish and not wishing to re-write, Adrian commissioned an illustrator- Nick Tidnam RBA and retained him to illustrate the manuscript. Cecil Turner of Bachman Turner published the book in October 1987.
I’m not seeing any mention of book sales or bookstore distribution.Some 5000 copies were printed. Adrian sent a large number of copies of the highly colourful finished book to his literary agent. Adrian Jacobs visited several schools and read extracts from AWTW. The book was reviewed in papers including the Daily Express.
The only publishing detail the relatives seem to know is exactly how many copies were printed. Most or all of the copies wound up in the hands of the author. He sent many of them to his agent, which is an odd thing to do if you already have a legitimate publisher. Maybe I’m wrong, but to me this sounds like vanity publishing.
I can tell you one thing that definitely didn’t happen: the book didn’t get edited, copy edited, or proofread, which is sad considering that it’s only 36 pages long. Check out the prose. (If you’re feeling brave, here’s the complete list of excerpts.) The punctuation is full of errors, and never rises above “haphazard.” Obvious words are left out, and essential connections and descriptions are missing. Some passages make no sense at all. The text contains errors no editor would let stand, like “bathroom-come-study,” “carpenterised” for “remodeled” or “subdivided,” and “fawcett” for “faucet.” Some interesting passages:
In my personal opinion, not intending any untoward imputations about anyone involved, that’s not the kind of text you tend to see when the publisher is footing the bills.Willy sat in Ali Baba’s chair and was frequenctized into vision acute, now receiving clarity waves from the Ruby Tower.
—-
Kentucky set the scene for the polo feast. A green green carpet appeared like a field in the sky, and the audience was enthralled as the mini polo ponies careered back and forth with their Jockies at breakneck velocity around the entire carpet lawn. … Duke plied them with the local coconut juice which spiced and blended with Bay pineapple juice, caressed their lovely day.
—-
In Willy’s laboratory, Wizard Cricket demonstrated how a mixture’ of grounded nicket paste and paleberry juice applied gently on the eyebrows of an Aussie guinea pig would bring a marked change of appearance. Willy suffered the mixture and clumsily knocked the contents of the texture into the berry juice paste and ! The guinea pig became a winking wongo - a wonderful little chap, a cousin to the Dutch Tree Squirrels.
—-
It was specially intimate between them and had provoked some envy as its sweet success for silent discourse. Sitting in the cove, Willy sniffed deeply and drew into his mind Breathair Oxy-Zone. He had been taught the trick by Master Wizard Onlywheness who had been blessed by Guardian Saint Lovely Lucinda. Onlywheness had shown Willy how to breathe and on outward breath to sound silent messages. It was a question of nose muscle control and delicate lacquering of the air with thought pellets. Willy concentrated hard. He was rusty for he hadn’t drawn on this secret power for decades but his patience was prized…
Back to the website:
According to the Daily Mail, Adrian Jacobs lost all his money in a stock market crash in 1991.Adrian wrote a sequel- Holiday Antics, which was passed as a manuscript to his literary agent but never published.
Back to the news story:
Jacobs’s 36-page book, also about a child discovering he has magical powers, —If you threw us into prison and only fed us on days when we could supply the title of a published work that fits that description, we could stay alive for a very long time. Many of the works we’d name antedate Willy the Wizard. Perhaps their authors should sue the Adrian Jacobs estate.
— was published in 1987, ten years before the first Harry Potter book and three years before Rowling said she came up with her idea. Jacob’s estate said many ‘concepts and themes’ were copied from ‘Willy The Wizard’ in Rowling’s ‘The Goblet of Fire’, the fourth book in the series, published in 2000.Printing isn’t publishing. The existence somewhere of copies of a book doesn’t mean a given person saw or read one of them. Being exposed to a text, if such a thing could be shown to have happened, isn’t proof that a writer made improper use of it. I mean, these guys are citing the use of flight and transfiguration as evidence of plagiarism, as though those motifs haven’t been turning up in folk tales and fairy tales since time immemorial.
In both books, the main character competes in a magic contest and each features wizard trains and prisons.No kidding? What a coincidence! The society I live in also has contests, mass transit, and law enforcement. Where do you suppose we got those concepts?
Jacobs died penniless in a London hospice in 1997, before the Harry Potter phenomenon took the world by storm.Max Markson isn’t an agent, and this case is outside his area of professional competence. He’s a publicist. He runs a publicity, celebrity management, and events organization firm, Markson Sparks. He calls himself Mr. Fame, and says on his website that “Max Markson can give anyone fame … and fortune.” I don’t think that’s true. I also don’t think it’s a claim a legit publicist ought to be making.Australian-based agent Max Markson, who represents Paul Allen, the trustee of Jacobs’s estate, said, “I estimate it’s a billion-dollar case.”
The estate also claims that Jacobs had sent the book to literary agent Christopher Little, attributed as the man who years later discovered Rowling.The estate’s been pushing this supposed connection, saying that Jacobs “sought the services” of the agent who later took on J. K. Rowling as a client, but Victoria Strauss says she’s found no evidence that Christopher Little ever agreed to represent Jacobs. Lots of writers apply to agents and get turned down. In many cases, the agent rejects them without ever laying eyes on their book.
“Adrian Jacobs did not live long enough to see the massive success of the Harry Potter books and films. If he had, he would have sought the proper recognition of his contribution to this success story,” Allen said.Right. It’s all about recognition. The money has nothing to do with it. I await the news that the Jacobs estate has filed suit for copyright infringement against all the other books and stories published after 1987 that contain the same motifs.
Addendum: A pertinent quote from Max Markson:
People have ideas all the time. I’ve had millions of them. The hard part isn’t having the idea, it’s making it work.It’s nice to have the Adrian Jacobs estate’s own mouthpiece confirm that.
Posted by Patrick at 12:53 PM * 21 comments
From Korea’s Changbi Publishers, my two YA-oriented reprint anthologies, New Magics and New Skies, originally published by Tor in 2005 and 2004 respectively. Love the Edward Hopper diptych on the covers. I have no idea what the books’ titles are in these editions—perhaps the fluorosphere can illuminate me!
Posted by Abi Sutherland at 08:12 AM * 39 comments
We hope you’re…delighted.
Martin saved the day. Because he’s like that.
Posted by Abi Sutherland at 05:30 AM * 24 comments
Something went wrong with the database last night. We’ve gone from one error message to another for comment posting, but at the moment, we’re waiting for people to wake up from their various versions of the sleep of the just and give things a poke.
Until such time as we get things happy again, you are free to contemplate the jewel-like perfection of Making Light as it stands. However, if you prefer conversation, I’ve started a thread over at my place.
Updates will be posted here, there, and on the Twitter feed as they become available. The final update here will use the word murnival.
I would counsel you all to the practice of patience; many of the people who run this thing have pretty busy real lives at the moment.
Update the last: Five things make a post, but four make a murnival.
