Matter Notes: A lawyer's private notes on a legal matter; considered inviolate and non-disclosable.
By metaphor and game, my occasional blog posts on the war on the humanities and other cultural atrocities;
with frequent diversions into creative matters.
In both cases, a form of work product. Scribere est agere.
I haven’t posted here in a few weeks, but I did write a guest post on my Enemy Glory series for the speculative fiction website Risingshadow.net. Risingshadow has a facebook page. It also has tens of thousands of books in its database, and the folks who maintain it are truly passionate about sharing information with […]
I don’t write poetry. Well, not really, but a poem did show up around last Easter and another one showed up now, referencing the myth of Leda and the swan. It’s the damnedest thing. About Leda Leda went ‘round the world at large In her cottage by the sea And heard three Fates with a […]
Despite being the only remaining national chain physical bookstore in the USA, and having a near-monopoly on shelf space, Barnes & Noble can’t make money selling bad coffee, embarrassing trinkets, and an occasional book so it’s closing more stores. CEO William Lynch has resigned and, according to USA Today, Barnes & Noble is not planning […]
Some jackbag bint from Carcaliu, Romania told authorities that she stuffed seven original paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Gauguin, Lucian Freud and Meyer de Haan into her wood-burning stove and lit a match, rendering those particular visions of those master painters into ashes. The paintings were taken from the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam in October […]
Ewan Morrison thinks so. In a piece in The Guardian called “Are books dead, and can authors survive?” Morrison predicts that ebooks will kill paper books within 25 years. He provides numbers: Barnes & Noble now sells three times more digital books than physical books. Amazon sells 242 ebooks for every 100 hardbacks. Also, baby […]
“And potter is angry with potter, and craftsman with craftsman, and beggar is jealous of beggar, and minstrel of minstrel.” – Hesiod, Works and Days, ll. 25-26 Hesiod thought this jealousy between peers was “wholesome for men.” It encouraged “even the shiftless to toil” in hopes of gaining wealth. Jealousy, rightly understood, was a positive […]
