The Crock Plot

Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda

2010-01-06T14:23:00.000-08:00

Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda
By Gretchen Peters, Thomas Dunne Books, May 2009 ISBN: 978-0312379278 Hardcover, 320 pages, $25.95

(A shorter version of this review by Lewis Perdue appeared in Barron's Weekly.)

Exit, Allah. Enter, the almighty dollar.

According to Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda, by Gretchen Peters, most of the Taliban's religious fanatics have been replaced by organized gangs of big-time drug thugs whose primary goal is to protect their cut of the multi-billion-dollar Afghan heroin trade. Peters estimates that the Taliban get at least 70 percent of its funding from the heroin trade and that both Hezbollah and Al Qaeda also benefit from global dope.

While Western media pundits wring their hands about the Afghanistan troop surge turning into another Iraq, Peters, who covered Pakistan and Afghanistan for Associated Press and ABC writes that:

"The parallels are actually closer to Colombia. The Taliban and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known by their Spanish acronym FARC, both got their start like modern-day Robin Hoods, protecting rural peasants from the excesses of a corrupt government. Strapped for cash and needing the support of local farmers, both groups began levying a tax on drug crops."

Then, Peters explains, both FARC and the Taliban started providing protection for the drug lords, gradually taking control of the drug refineries and strong-arming farmers to meet drug production quotas. Severe punishment or death awaited those who failed or refused. Finally, FARC and the Taliban established themselves as alternate systems of a dictatorial government ruling by fear and violence.

And like the FARC, which tried to maintain a virtuous, “people’s army” facade, the narcoterror leadership of today's Taliban uses jihad as a convenient public relations stunt to gloss over its greed and lust for power. Peters tell us that Helmand province – one of the key battle areas for the current U.S. military surge – produces more than half a billion dollars a year in opium. “If it were a separate country, it would be the world’s leading opium producer ….It’s also where links between the Taliban and opium trade are the strongest.” Small wonder then that fighting is fiercest there today. But all across Afghanistan, where there are drugs, the Taliban is there with protection: attacking NATO checkpoints so opium shipments can get through, planting mines around opium fields and rigging IEDs to take out soldiers who dare trespass on the poppies.

But, Seeds of Terror makes it ironically clear that the Taliban could not have achieved its preeminent position in the illegal global drug trade without the blundering of every U.S. President beginning with President Jimmy Carter.

Peters tells us that Jimmy Carter, in 1979, signed off on secret aid to Afghan guerillas fighting against the Soviets despite warnings that the groups were moving dope. President Reagan continued the policy of looking the other way.

After the Russians left Afghanistan, President George H. W. Bush terminated most aid – hundreds of millions of dollars worth – to the guerillas and government. “Overnight, that left 135,000 armed Afghans and their families no way to support themselves,” Peters quotes a former CIA officer.

When President Clinton took office in 1993, his administration eliminated what little financial support was still trickling toward Kabul.

And while money began to flow with the second Bush administration’s invasion of Afghanistan, not only had the damage done turned the Taliban into a potent, well-financed adversary, but military errors to come also complicated military strategy that continue even as you turn on the evening news tonight.

The military, Peters tells us “doesn’t do drugs.” That is, despite the fact that the Taliban insurgency runs on the lifeblood of opium, the military refused to support anti-drug operations. “One Green Beret complained that he had been ordered to disregard opium and heroin stashes when he came across them on patrol.”

The consequences of all these bone-headed decisions become more significant in the light of a Stanford University study cited by Peters that found, “Out of 128 conflicts studied, the 17 which relied on ‘contraband finances’ lasted five times longer than the rest.”

Seeds of Terror offers layer after layer of fascinating information about the deadly consequences of decades of disastrous public policy decisions. This is a well-written, well-documented and exemplary work of journalism.

Lewis Perdue is a former Washington correspondent, journalism professor and the author of 20 published books. He is currently editor of WineIndustryInsight.Com.

Ascent of a Tech Powerhouse How Israel became a world leader in innovation.

2010-01-06T12:18:00.001-08:00

IF YOUR COMPUTER HAS "INTEL INSIDE," then the Intel inside has "Israel inside." So does eBay. And thousands upon thousands of other highly innovative companies and technologies.

This book, subtitled The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle, shows how venomously anti-Israel neighbors, terrorism and almost constant war drove a tiny, poor, fledgling country to create a first-world economy with "the greatest concentration of innovation and entrepreneurship in the world."

The numbers are staggering. "In addition to boasting the highest density of start-ups in the world (a total of 3,850, one for every 1,844 Israelis), more Israeli companies are listed on the Nasdaq exchange than all companies from the entire European continent," write Dan Senor and Saul Singer.

At times, they point out, Israeli entrepreneurs have come to the rescue of the world's best-known companies.

Take the episode that could have been titled, "How Israel saved Intel." Around the year 2000, computers -- especially laptops -- were hitting a performance wall limited by power consumption and the heat generated within the machines. Intel's team in Jerusalem suggested a way to operate a microprocessor at lower clock speeds, thus consuming less power and generating less heat, allowing laptops to run longer on a battery charge. Along the way, they built in a method that would let software run even faster.

Intel headquarters in Silicon Valley tried to kill the project because executives were operating in an obsolete mindset where only faster (and hotter) processor speeds created better performance. But the Israelis persisted, leading in 2003 to the famed Centrino chip. The Israelis followed that with the Core Duo processor -- two microprocessors on one chip.

Start-Up Nation vividly illustrates how Israel has developed a culture where authority not only can be challenged, but must be. Bluntly. No waffling. Instead of showing corporate deference or blind obedience to a superior, the average Israeli challenges questionable decisions and pushes alternative suggestions with real tenacity.

Start-Up Nation
By Dan Senor and Saul Singer
Twelve (Hatchette Book Group)
320 pages
$26.99

That cultural trait comes, in large part, from the near-universal military service that throws the wealthy in with the poor, corporate executives in with assembly-line workers. In the IDF -- the Israel Defense Forces -- a CEO might very well report to one of his or her corporate underlings. Regardless of rank in the military or civilian world, it is the best idea that matters, not the status of the proponent.

Another force behind Israeli success is Jewish immigrants. The authors quote Israeli venture capitalist Erel Margalit on their importance: "If you're an immigrant in a new place, and you're poor, or you were once rich and your family was stripped of its wealth -- then you have drive. You don't see what you've got to lose; you see what you could win."

With immigrants from 70 countries speaking no common language, sharing little common culture other than the Torah and a tradition of persecution, military service, the authors argue, is at the forefront of both immigrant assimilation and overall technological success. Service in the Israel Defense Forces begins at age 18 and lasts for a minimum of two years. Business people often serve in the reserves well into their 40s, 50s and 60s.

"So for combat soldiers, connections made in the army are constantly renewed through decades of reserve duty," says Start-up Nation. "...Not surprisingly, many business connections are made during the long hours of operations, guard duty and training."

Although the authors do not draw the analogy, this is very much like Switzerland, where the business elite are connected by years of reserve military service. But Switzerland isn't known for innovation. It also is not a nation of immigrants, tolerates failure poorly, behaves with a reserve that is the antithesis of chutzpah, and lacks the "advantage" of being surrounded by rapacious enemies ready to incinerate them at a moment's notice.

In all, Start-Up Nation is a compelling and satisfying work, filled with eye-opening revelations and shot through with rich examples, explanations and analysis.

COMCAST SCORES "OWN GOAL" -- CLUELESS ANTI-SPAM EFFORT KILLS CUSTOMER EMAILS

2008-11-14T16:20:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: This was originally posted on August 22. It bears repeating because Comcast has never fixed the issue.

COMCAST FAILING TO DELIVER THE EMAIL

Emails sent by Comcast broadband customers are failing to reach their properly addressed recipients because the company has changed the settings on its outgoing mail servers without informing its users or most of its own customer support agents.

Some Comcast customers have noticed a complete failure of all outgoing emails while others have found that some, but not all emails have gotten "lost in cyberspace."

Figuring out how to adapt to Comcast's covert email reconfiguration may leave millions of average users stuck in a technical quandary. They're unlikely to find help with Comcast because four of the five support people I spoke with over a two-hour period last night had no clue about the issue.

In brief: email uses two completely separate server systems to handle messages. One system (most often called a "POP" server) handles incoming mail. Outgoing mail is handled by another server called an SMTP server. This is why customers may find no problems receiving email, but later learn that important emails they have sent never arrive.

Only the fifth Comcast person -- a tech support supervisor I demanded to speak with during my marathon phone session -- knew that the company had changed the outgoing mail from SMTP port 25 to port 587. He said this was designed as an anti-spam action.

The support person wisely (for his own job) said nothing about why Comcast had not notified its customers about the change.

Fixing the problem will require all Comcast users to reconfigure their email client software to use the correct port. The procedures will be different depending on whether they use Outlook, Thunderbird or other software. But the change is not as simple as changing the port once that is located. The software must be configured to provide the same password and user name that is used for incoming email.

Businesses and individuals who have their own Internet domains (such as www.mybusinesssite.com) and receive their emails at that address (jane@ybusinesssite.com) will find the road even rockier. Many of those people have never set up the password and user name required to use Comcast's outgoing, SMTP server.

Comcast customer service will be unlikely to help these people either. Four of the five agents I spoke with had no clue.

Rather than deal with congenially clueless Comcast support people, the fastest and easiest way to solve the issue is to get a Gmail account from Google that provides an SMTP server.

In their email software settings under SMTP server, users can enter: "smtp.gmail.com" and then enter their Gmail password and user names in the appropriate fields.
In addition to the broadband hassles, my two-hour conversation raised significant issues with Comcast's ability to provide telephone service. My call was dropped twice. Plus the connection to the last tech was so scratchy and faint he had to repeat himself frequently.

Over the past week, emails my wife and I have send from both our home and business broadband accounts have not been received. In addition, numerous emails sent to us by Comcast customes have not reached us. Many of these have been important and significant communications and their loss has had a significant effect.

I am fortunate to have been the Chief Technology Officer of an Internet company and have many years of technical experience. This gives me a knowledge base and many tools with which to diagnose this problem. The average user who has been deluded into thinking Comcast is a reliable service provider will simply be baffled and assume that one more mysterious cybermonster has eaten their mail. This does, however, show that Comcast has done the impossible: made the U.S. Postal Service look really good.

This irrational, irresponsible, financially punitive and completely avoidable disruption to the business and personal lives of Comcast customers shows that the company cannot and should not be trusted.

posted by Lewis Perdue at 8/22/2008 07:55:00 AM | 0 comments links to this post

Book Publishing Posts Here, Rest at Dvorak.Org

2008-11-01T11:47:00.000-07:00

This blog will be for writing, publishing and similar topics.

For the weird and absurd, please visit Dvorak Uncensored where my old friend and technical publishing maven John Dvorak has been foolish enough to put editing powers in my quirky hands.

John's blogging asylum includes many other quirky, opinionated and highly intelligent people who look closely at reality so you won't need to.

The NYTimes is a Freakin' Idiot!

2008-09-23T16:13:00.001-07:00

Hundreds and hundreds of peer-reviewed studies published in the world's top scientific and medical publications find that there is very, very little difference between wine, beer and spirits when consumed:

in moderation
with food.

IT'S THE ALCOHOL, STUPID!

Wine's biggest advantage is the way it is consumed.

There are probably some small, additional benefits to wine from its various organic compounds. But this NYTimes piece is simply a product of scientific ignorance ... and a lot of PR people from Welch's Grape Juice and your local NeoProhibitionist.

You can find out the scientific facts here:The French Paradox And Beyond.

September 23, 2008

Really?

The Claim: Grape Juice Has the Same Benefits as Red Wine

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR

THE FACTS

By now the cardiovascular benefits of a daily glass of wine are well known. But many teetotalers wonder whether they can reap the same rewards from wine’s unfermented sibling, or are they simply left out altogether.

Grape juice may not provide much buzz, but you can still toast to good health when it comes to its ability to avert heart disease. Alcohol in moderation can relax blood vessels and increase levels of HDL, the “good” cholesterol. But the substances believed to provide much of red wine’s heart benefits — resveratrol and flavonoids — are also found in grape juice, especially the variety made from red and dark purple Concord grapes.

Independent studies have found that like alcohol, grape juice can reduce the risk of blood clots and prevent LDL (“bad” cholesterol) from sticking to coronary arteries, among other cardiac benefits. One, conducted by scientists at the University of Wisconsin and published in the journal Circulation, looked at the effects of two servings of Concord grape juice a day in 15 people with coronary artery disease. After two weeks, the subjects had improved blood flow and reduced oxidation of LDL. Oxidized LDL can damage arteries.

Other studies in humans and animals, including one last year in the journal Atherosclerosis, have shown that daily consumption may lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels. But beware: some varieties of juice have sugar and artificial ingredients.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Studies suggest that some kinds of grape juice may provide the cardiac benefits of red wine.

scitimes@nytimes.com

Going veggie shrinks the brain

2008-09-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

Article from:

September 12, 2008 07:45pm

SCIENTISTS have discovered that going veggie could be bad for your brain - with those on a meat-free diet six times more likely to suffer brain shrinkage.

Vegans and vegetarians — such as Heather Mills — are the most likely to be deficient because the best sources of the vitamin are meat, particularly liver, milk and fish.

Vitamin B12 deficiency can also cause anaemia and inflammation of the nervous system.

Yeast extracts are one of the few vegetarian foods which provide good levels of the vitamin.

The link was discovered by Oxford University scientists who used memory tests, physical checks and brain scans to examine 107 people between the ages of 61 and 87.

When the volunteers were retested five years later the medics found those with the lowest levels of vitamin B12 were also the most likely to have brain shrinkage. It confirms earlier research showing a link between brain atrophy and low levels of B12.

GO EASY ON THE BOOZE

Brain scans of more than 1,800 people found that people who downed 14 drinks or more a week had 1.6 per cent more brain shrinkage than teetotallers.

Women in their seventies were the most at risk.

Beer does less damage than wine according to a study in Alcohol and Alcoholism.

Researchers found that the hippocampus - the part of the brain that stores memories — was 10 per cent smaller in beer drinkers than those who stuck to wine.

And don’t inhale, cannabis has been shown to have the same brain-rotting effect.

EAT LESS

Being overweight or obese is linked to brain loss, Swedish researchers discovered.

Scans of around 300 women found that those with brain shrink had an average body mass index of 27

And for every one point increase in their BMI the loss rose by 13 to 16 per cent.

A BMI 25 to 30 is classed as overweight, above 30 is clinically obese. Calculate your BMI

Dr Deborah Gustafson of University Hospital in Göteborg says obesity increases the risk of high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, which are both thought to contribute to brain drain.

She adds: “Obesity may also increase the secretion of cortisol, which could lead to atrophy.”

GET FISHY

The omega-3 oils found in fish reduce the risk of dementia and other mental disorders says Fernando Gómez-Pinilla of the University of California, Los Angeles.

He says they increase flexibility in synapses in the brain - the bits that transmit information - and boost memory and learning.

UK Publisher Buys Novel That Terrified Gutless Random House

2008-09-05T19:25:00.000-07:00

Random House's craven unwillingness to defend free expression is an immoral abomination, a mercenary flight from courage, a gutless lack of respect for authors, writing, and the free exchange of ideas.

But one British publisher, on the other hand, has a backbone, ethics and a commitment for writing. Read on:

From the Guardian: Controversial 'child bride of Muhammad' novel finds UK publisher

British independent publisher Gibson Square has bought Sherry Jones's controversial novel about the child bride of Muhammad, which was dropped by Random House US following warnings that it could incite acts of violence from radical Muslims. Jones's The Jewel of Medina was also pulled from bookshops in Serbia last month after pressure from an Islamic group.

Gibson Square, which has previously published provocative works including Alexander Litvinenko's Blowing up Russia and House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, paid what it described as a "compelling" advance to acquire The Jewel of Medina. It will publish it in October in Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

"In an open society there has to be open access to literary works, regardless of fear," said Gibson Square publisher Martin Rynja. "As an independent publishing company, we feel strongly that we should not be afraid of the consequences of debate. If a novel of quality and skill that casts light on a beautiful subject we know too little of in the West, but have a genuine interest in, cannot be published here, it would truly mean that the clock has been turned back to the dark ages. The Jewel of Medina has become an important barometer of our time."

Random House was told by security experts and academics that the novel, for which it paid a $100,000 advance, was potentially more incendiary than both Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses and the Danish newspaper cartoons of Muhammad. Random House said at the time that it decided not to publish the title "for the safety of the author, employees of Random House Inc, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the book". The publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988 saw attempts made on the lives of Rushdie's Italian and Norwegian publishers, while the Japanese translator of the book was killed.

Rynja said that as a small publisher, Gibson Square would be more capable of handling any controversy. "With a book that is controversial – and we've done a number – it is incredibly important that it is looked at from all sides. That is very difficult for a large publisher to do as they are looking at 200 titles a month so a controversial one is just one in the mix."

He said that he hoped that once people read the novel in its entirety there would be a "healthy discussion" about its content. "[Jones has] done very careful and detailed research for the novel – she's writing about this love story which even after 1,400 years we don't know much about."

Rynja struck the deal with Jones's agent Natasha Kern, who has also sold the novel to Editora Record in Brazil and is in discussions with small Danish publisher Trykkefrihedsselskabets Library (Free Speech Library).

Kern said that she and Jones decided on Gibson Square because they wanted a publisher who would commit to the novel and Jones's career, "as well as an editor and publisher who are passionate about bringing The Jewel of Medina to widest possible group of readers. We wanted to publish this book as quickly as possible so that all those who are interested can read the book and discover what a wonderful and inspiring love story Sherry has written."

Gibson Square also publishes John McCain, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Naomi Klein, Richard Dawkins and AN Wilson.

COMCAST REALLY F**KING UP!

2008-08-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

Turns out that, even with the SMTP port changes I mentioned, the Comcast SMTP server is STILL not delivering email.

Tech support says they have no clue and have issued a "trouble ticket" to see if Comcast's field people can hook up the jumper cables to their server.

Good luck .....

UPDATE - on Comcast Scores Own Goal

2008-08-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

Shortly after writing this, I found a list of Comcast exec emails here: http://consumerist.com/consumer/executive-customer-service/email-addresses-for-comcast-executives-320438.php

I emailed the very short list at the bottom of the posting ...

Within 15 minutes, the entire Comcast connection at home went dead. I'm posting this from my business connection.

These are the people I wrote to. I wonder which one decided to kill my entire connection as retribution?

david_cohen@comcast.com, ralph_roberts@comcast.com, marlene_dooner@comcast.com, payne_brown@comcast.com, kerry_knott@comcast.com, esl_corp@cable.comcast.com, john_schanz@cable.comcast.com, john_ridall@cable.comcast.com, brian_roberts@comcast.com, joe_waz@comcast.com, audit_committee_chairman@comcast.com, darcy_rudnay@comcast.com, corporate_communications@comcast.com, steve_burke@cable.comcast.com

COMCAST SCORES "OWN GOAL" -- CLUELESS ANTI-SPAM EFFORT KILLS CUSTOMER EMAILS

2008-08-22T07:55:00.000-07:00

Emails sent by Comcast broadband customers are failing to reach their properly addressed recipients because the company has changed the settings on its outgoing mail servers without informing its users or most of its own customer support agents.

Some Comcast customers have noticed a complete failure of all outgoing emails while others have found that some, but not all emails have gotten "lost in cyberspace."

Figuring out how to adapt to Comcast's covert email reconfiguration may leave millions of average users stuck in a technical quandary. They're unlikely to find help with Comcast because four of the five support people I spoke with over a two-hour period last night had no clue about the issue.

In brief: email uses two completely separate server systems to handle messages. One system (most often called a "POP" server) handles incoming mail. Outgoing mail is handled by another server called an SMTP server. This is why customers may find no problems receiving email, but later learn that important emails they have sent never arrive.

Only the fifth Comcast person -- a tech support supervisor I demanded to speak with during my marathon phone session -- knew that the company had changed the outgoing mail from SMTP port 25 to port 587. He said this was designed as an anti-spam action.

The support person wisely (for his own job) said nothing about why Comcast had not notified its customers about the change.

Fixing the problem will require all Comcast users to reconfigure their email client software to use the correct port. The procedures will be different depending on whether they use Outlook, Thunderbird or other software. But the change is not as simple as changing the port once that is located. The software must be configured to provide the same password and user name that is used for incoming email.

Businesses and individuals who have their own Internet domains (such as www.mybusinesssite.com) and receive their emails at that address (jane@ybusinesssite.com) will find the road even rockier. Many of those people have never set up the password and user name required to use Comcast's outgoing, SMTP server.

Comcast customer service will be unlikely to help these people either. Four of the five agents I spoke with had no clue.

Rather than deal with congenially clueless Comcast support people, the fastest and easiest way to solve the issue is to get a Gmail account from Google that provides an SMTP server.

In their email software settings under SMTP server, users can enter: "smtp.gmail.com" and then enter their Gmail password and user names in the appropriate fields.
In addition to the broadband hassles, my two-hour conversation raised significant issues with Comcast's ability to provide telephone service. My call was dropped twice. Plus the connection to the last tech was so scratchy and faint he had to repeat himself frequently.

Over the past week, emails my wife and I have send from both our home and business broadband accounts have not been received. In addition, numerous emails sent to us by Comcast customes have not reached us. Many of these have been important and significant communications and their loss has had a significant effect.

I am fortunate to have been the Chief Technology Officer of an Internet company and have many years of technical experience. This gives me a knowledge base and many tools with which to diagnose this problem. The average user who has been deluded into thinking Comcast is a reliable service provider will simply be baffled and assume that one more mysterious cybermonster has eaten their mail. This does, however, show that Comcast has done the impossible: made the U.S. Postal Service look really good.

This irrational, irresponsible, financially punitive and completely avoidable disruption to the business and personal lives of Comcast customers shows that the company cannot and should not be trusted.

Gutless Random House Caves In To HINT of Muslim Threats

2008-08-07T08:43:00.000-07:00

First Amendment not worth the hassle to world's largest publishing corporation.

From publishing industry newsletter, Publisher's Lunch:

Obama = Pepsi? McCain = Budweiser?

2008-08-02T15:05:00.000-07:00

Maybe?

Maybe not.

RIP: Patry Copyright Blog

2008-08-02T13:52:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite, daily, MUST-READ blogs, The Patry Copyright Blog, is dead.

This literate, calm, well-reasoned blog did more for actually understanding copyright than anything else on the web.

Patry started the blog when he was in private practice with a firm where my former patent lawyer worked.

But when Patry left private practice to join Google, many readers were incapable of accepting that this was HIS pesonal opinion rather than Google's. That was a hassle.

His other reason for ceasing the blog is the depressing state of copyright, having been distorted and perverted into an anti-competitive tool for corporate dinosaurs. Here's what he has to say about that.

The Current State of Copyright Law is too depressing

This leads me to my final reason for closing the blog which is independent of the first reason: my fear that the blog was becoming too negative in tone. I regard myself as a centrist. I believe very much that in proper doses copyright is essential for certain classes of works, especially commercial movies, commercial sound recordings, and commercial books, the core copyright industries.

I accept that the level of proper doses will vary from person to person and that my recommended dose may be lower (or higher) than others. But in my view, and that of my cherished brother Sir Hugh Laddie, we are well past the healthy dose stage and into the serious illness stage.

Much like the U.S. economy, things are getting worse, not better.

Copyright law has abandoned its reason for being: to encourage learning and the creation of new works. Instead, its principal functions now are to preserve existing failed business models, to suppress new business models and technologies, and to obtain, if possible, enormous windfall profits from activity that not only causes no harm, but which is beneficial to copyright owners. Like Humpty-Dumpty, the copyright law we used to know can never be put back together again: multilateral and trade agreements have ensured that, and quite deliberately.

If you give a damn about copyright, you should read the whole post. And mourn not only the passing of Patry's blog, but his reasons for putting it to sleep.

The Big Sort: A Paradigm for Our Polarized Times?

2008-07-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

I read a book recently which seems to describe what Animal Liberation Front bombers have in common with the man who killed two people at a Unitarian Church in Tennessee.

They're domestic terrorists rooted in the same phenomena that have destroyed political discourse and consensus in American politics. Those roots would be:

The refusal of individuals to compromise their personal concepts of right and wrong in order to further the common good.

Insular, intellectually segregated groups of people who create and self-confirm extreme beliefs and their entitlement to act on them regardless of the impact on others.

Like many people, I have puzzled over the vicious, polemical extremes that dominate politics today. Discourse about differing opinions has been replaced by demonizing those who disagree. Both Left and Right, Democrats and Republicans resort to rants rather than persuasion.

The lack of moderation, and the permission granted by political leaders for their followers to engage in scorched earth tactics, inevitably incites the mentally unstable to acts of violence.

A newly published book, The Big Sort, sheds some light on why all this is happening now.

According to the book, "In the 95th Congress (1977-1979), 40 percent of the 435 members were moderates," Bishop writes. "By the 108th Congress (2003-2005) this moderate bloc had be whittled down to 10 percent."

Further, the book states that, "In 1976, less than a quarter of Americans lived in places where the presidential election was a landslide." The authors define "landslide" as winning by 20 percent or greater. "By 2004, nearly half of all voters lived in landslide counties."

Nothing illustrates this schism better than the county-by-county maps of presidential voting from 1976 to 2004.

Along with this, the book documents how, over the past three decades, Americans have chosen to segregate themselves in ways that avoid contact with people who might disagree with them politically.

Now, the match that ignites all this gasoline: <The Big Sort presents numerous studies proving that people isolated from differing opinions become more extreme, especially with regard to political issues. In effect, people in homogeneous groups trend toward political extremes as they try to prove they have drunk the common Kool-Aid. They do not tolerate dissent or discussion. Moderates then must decide whether to comply with the group or allow themselves to be driven away.

A study published in 2006 by Penn political scientist Diana Mutz found that only 23 percent of Americans have regular discussions with people they disagree with politically. And the more education a person has, the worse this gets.

Moderates willing to work together for a common goal despite their differences have been replaced by tinhorn demagogues trying to stir up hatred and intolerance for anyone they disagree with.

The self-sorting polarization of the electorate is why both political parties have abandoned any attempt at trying to sway moderates -- there are damn few left. Instead, campaigns focus on inflaming their supporters' passions, encouraging them, to intimidate the opposition and make sure they go to the polls.

This is how both the Nazis and Communists came to power. It invigorates the ideological psychos on the fringes and gives them permission to burn, bomb and kill.

The political "leadership" of America is responsible for extremism that leads to death and violence.

Buy this book. Read it. Study it. It has no answers of its own, but knowledge is power and acknowledging a problem is the first step to solving it.

Is Ronald McDonald a Poofter?

2008-07-03T18:40:00.000-07:00

Is the Big Mac a metaphor for sodomy? Is "supersize it" a code for something other than potatoes? Is a "Happy Meal" a sin? Something to be consumed only in the privacy of your own home?

The conservative American Family Association thinks there may be hidden meaning in the old Christmas carol urging you to "don ye now our gay apparel."

Make up your own mind. Surf here, if you dare. http://boycottmcdonalds.com/

Amazon.Com's melting down

2008-06-20T07:04:00.000-07:00

1. On around 10 a.m. on June 18, 2008, I placed an order (#104-7260042-2096242) with Amazon for a Motorola MOTOROKR 505 Bluetooth hands-free device to use with my mobile phone. This was a one-click order for two-day delivery on my Amazon Prime account.

2. At 11:27 a.m. on June 18, 2008, Amazon sent me an email confirming my purchase.

3. At 4:49 p.m. on on June 19, 2008 -- almost a day and a half after confirmation -- Amazon sent an email stating that my item was "displayed at an incorrect price" and that they had unliterally CANCELLED my order.

4. Ironically, I had ordered this same product (104-2001654-4645020) on June 4, tested it, found it suitable and thus bought another one. Or so I thought. The device is needed because a new California law which takes place June 1 requires that all phone usage while driving be hands free.

5. All of the responses from the online customer service are 'bot form messages. The phone numbers are as useless as Amazon's customer "service"!

After 45+ minutes on the phone with three different very nice but totally clueless and powerless customer "service" reps, they tell me that they can't or won't do anything at all.

These same reps tell me that there was nothing wrong with the price. It's that the product is out of stock?

WTF? Amazon can tell me when there is one or two copies of a book left and they take my order and a day and a half later cancel it?

So which story do I believe?

6. Offering a product and failing to follow through is a breach of contract and a violation of federal and state consumer laws.

7. I am one of Amazon's first Prime customers and spend upwards of $10,000 per year with them. THAT's going to change today.

8. This mess-up is legally a violation. In the middle of a recession, it's a slap in the face to a good consumer. Morally and ethically, it is simply wrong.

9. All this is a sign that Amazon is melting down. Their servers are crashing and their database can't track inventory. Plus, in the middle of a recession, they choose to screw one of their best customers? That's bad business. It costs Amazon FAR more money to acquire a new customer with my spending habits than it would have simply to do the right thing.

This company is headed downhill. I sold my Amazon stock this morning.

Guys, you can survive 'Sex and the City'

2008-06-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

The TV show has WAY more information about aging sluts than guys ever wanted to know.

From the LA Times: "Man should not live by bread alone. Every once in a while, he should turn off The Game, ditch the remote, put on some clean clothes and embrace his feminine side."

Embracing my feminine side is too much like masturbation. I'd rather embrace my wife.

The rest of the story here.

Rupiah's From Heaven?

2008-06-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

I'm fortunate enough to have a couple of books that have been bestsellers in Indonesia, but the following illustrates that some folks will do anything for promotion. Hope it works for him.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - If you're short of cash and don't mind running in tropical humidity and smog for a few bucks, read on.

An Indonesian businessman plans to throw 100 million rupiah (US $10,600) out of an airplane over the capital this Sunday as a publicity stunt to promote his new book.

"I want to create a rain of money in Jakarta," author and motivational speaker Tung Desem Waringin said. "It's a little bit crazy, but it's marketing."

Police spokesman Col. I Ketut Untung said authorities may not allow the plan to go forward because it could draw huge crowds and cause chaos.

Tens of millions of Indonesians live on less than US $1 a day and food and aid giveaways always draw large numbers.

The 42-year-old Tung said instead of opting for regular advertising for his book, he came up with an idea that "will make people happy."

Airline Fossils Need to Die, NOW

2008-05-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

Article, San Francisco Chronicle today, predicts that at least two of the following might be in bankruptcy by the end of this year: United, Continental, American, Northwest, US Airways and Delta.

I say don't wait. Like former racehorses with four broken legs, they all need to be administered the coup de grace to put them out of OUR misery. They're arrogant, sloppy, fat, nasty, stupid, obsolete creatures unfit for the current environment. This is where Darwin needs to work. Fast.

Good riddance, and the sooner the better. Good bye to surly ticket counter drones, frowning flight attendants, supremely dumb incompetent marionettes in the executive suites who think that treating passengers like downer cattle is the way to make a profit. I say take the forklift to them all and dump them into the rendering pot.

Article, San Francisco Chronicle today, "Virgin America stymied in its attempts to obtain additional routes."

Yeah, the bureaucrat trolls at the U.S. Department of Transportation are sandbagging Virgin America's attempts to grow, awarding routes and airport gates to the likes of the aformentioned dinosaurs above.

So there you have it, good airlines like Virgin America, Jet Blue and Southwest get screwed while keeping alive those who deserve to die.

More than 15 years ago, I got fed up with the sleazy bastards at American and United. I cut up my frequent-flyer cards and cancelled my airport club cards and left them on the check-in counter. I have not flown either airline since then.

I was the CEO of a company back then. I amended the company travel handbook to forbid reimbursement for traveling on those carriers.

If American or United are the only way to get somewhere, I don't go there. The sooner they die, the faster the American public can escape the U.S. equivalent of Aeroflot and gain access to decent transportation.

Sure, soaring fuel prices squeeze everybody. But when I fly Virgin America, Jet Blue and Southwest, I fly with people I can empathize with. Real people who treat passengers like other people and who offer a good experience and value for the price of the ticket.

I wonder if Jack Kevorkian is available for freelance work?

Oil, tobacco ... a lie is a lie is a lie.

2008-05-22T06:57:00.000-07:00

1994-Tobacco company executives testify before Congress that nicotine is NOT addictive.

2008-Oil company executives testify before Congress that they're NOT responsible for the high price of gasoline.

Uh-huh.

American Apartheid - No Negroes Allowed in Bookstores?

2008-05-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

This disturbing article appeared in the Guardian (U.K.) yesterday. I can find no words suitable for comment.

Why I'm not allowed my book title

It's called The Book of Negroes in Canada - but Americans won't buy that term

May 20, 2008 7:00 AM

Are we on the same page? ... Novelist Lawrence Hill

It isn't unusual for British or Canadian books to change titles when entering the American market. It happened to JK Rowling - Harry Potter has no "philosopher's" stone in the USA; and to Alice Munro, whose fabulous collection of short stories went from Who Do You Think You Are? in Canada to The Beggar Maid in the USA.

But I didn't think it would happen to me. When my novel, The Book of Negroes, came out last year with HarperCollins Canada, I was assured by my American publisher that the original title would be fine by them. However, several months later, I got a nervous email from my editor in New York.

She mentioned that the book cover would soon be going to the printer and that the title had to change. "Negroes" would not fly, or be allowed to fly, in American bookstore. At first, I was irritated, but gradually I've come to make my peace with the new title, Someone Knows My Name.

Perhaps the best way to examine the issue is to examine the evolution of the word "Negro" in America. I descend (on my father's side) from African-Americans. My own father, who was born in 1923, fled the United States with my white mother the day after they married in 1953. As my mother is fond of saying, at the time even federal government cafeterias were segregated. It was no place for an interracial couple to live.

My parents, who became pioneers of the human rights movement in Canada, used the word Negro as a term of respect and pride. My American relatives all used it to describe themselves. I found it in the literature I began to consume as a teenager: one of the most famous poems by Langston Hughes, for example, is The Negro Speaks of Rivers. When my own father was appointed head of the Ontario Human Rights Commission in 1973, the Toronto Globe and Mail's headline noted that a "Negro" had been appointed.

The term was in vogue right into the 1970s. For a time, the word "Negro" took a back seat in popular language culture to newer terms, such as "Afro-American", "African-Canadian", "people of colour" (a term I have always disliked, for its pomposity) or just plain "black."

In the last 20 or so years in urban America, we have witnessed more changes in racial terminology. For one thing, and regrettably in my view, many hip-hop artists have re-appropriated the word "nigger", tried to tame it, and use it so vocally and frequently as to strip it of its hateful origins. We are all products of our generation.

Given that I was born in 1957 and taught to ball my fists against anybody using that N-word, I can't quite get my head around using it these days in any kind of peaceful or respectful manner. Just as the very word "nigger" has risen in popular usage over the last decade or two, however, the word "Negro" has become viscerally rude. In urban America, to call someone a Negro is to ask to for trouble. It suggests that the designated person has no authenticity, no backbone, no individuality, and is nothing more than an Uncle Tom to the white man.

I used The Book of Negroes as the title for my novel, in Canada, because it derives from a historical document of the same name kept by British naval officers at the tail end of the American Revolutionary War. It documents the 3,000 blacks who had served the King in the war and were fleeing Manhattan for Canada in 1783. Unless you were in The Book of Negroes, you couldn't escape to Canada. My character, an African woman named Aminata Diallo whose story is based on this history, has to get into the book before she gets out.

In my country, few people have complained to me about the title, and nobody continues to do so after I explain its historical origins. I think it's partly because the word "Negro" resonates differently in Canada. If you use it in Toronto or Montreal, you are probably just indicating publicly that you are out of touch with how people speak these days. But if you use it in Brooklyn or Boston, you are asking to have your nose broken. When I began touring with the novel in some of the major US cities, literary African-Americans kept approaching me and telling me it was a good thing indeed that the title had changed, because they would never have touched the book with its Canadian title.

I'd rather have the novel read under a different title than not read at all, so perhaps my editor in New York made the right call. After all, she lives in the country, and I don't. I just have one question. Now that the novel has won the Commonwealth writers' prize, if it finds a British publisher, what will the title be in the UK?

Book Launch Reality

2008-05-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

By way of author/journalist Seth Mnookin's blog, herewith the reality check for authors.

It falls into the "sad but true" category and offers the best insight into the dysfunctional world of authors and book publishing.

Dumb Calif Bureaucrats Criminalize Home Winemakers

2008-05-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know that "dumb bureaucrat" is redundant. But, just in the nick of time the California state government has arrived and they're here to save us from ourselves. Again.

By declaring that competitions among home winemakers are illegal.

This story from The Santa Rosa Press-Democrat (the only real newspaper in Sonoma County) says it all.

Read it.

Weep.

Then let's ALL have a tasting of homemade wines at our homes. We need to set a date and then notify the bureaucrats. Let them come after ALL of us. Would make for some great YouTube Vids.

Home wine ruling a shock
Organizers and others stunned that state ABC would say events like Harvest Fair are against the law

By KEVIN MCCALLUM
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Home winemaking competitions abound in California.

From the Sonoma County Harvest Fair in the heart of Wine Country to the massive California Exposition & State Fair in Sacramento, fairs around the state recognize the skills of thousands of amateur vintners.

Numerous private winemaking clubs also hold regular contests so their members can see how their vintages stack up.

But they all have one thing in common: They're all illegal.

That's what state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control officials have told an Illinois man who wants to hold a home winemaking competition in Santa Rosa this summer.

"We told them it's illegal," said Matthew Seck, chief of the trade enforcement division of the ABC.

State law creates an exemption from California's alcohol licensing laws for home winemakers who produce up to 200 gallons a year -- but only if they are making it for their own consumption.

The exemption was essentially California's way, after regulation of alcohol fell to the states following the repeal of Prohibition, of continuing the federal exemption for home winemaking.

The problem is that the exemption is a very narrow one that does not allow people to share the wine they produce with others or remove it from the place where it was produced, Seck said.

Word of the state's position spread quickly though the ranks of the passionate home winemaking community, particularly in California, where hobbyists have access to some of the best grapes in the world and craft wines in garages, basements and barns.

"It doesn't make sense to most people, but that's what the law is," Seck said.

Seck declined to say what type of enforcement the agency might take against an amateur wine judging event. He said he was unaware such events take place at county and state fairs, and had never received a complaint against one.

But when the ABC receives a complaint or becomes aware that laws are being broken, it has an obligation to act, he said.

Threat of prosecution

In an e-mail to the Santa Rosa event's organizer, Joel Sommer, ABC investigator David Wright was clear there could be consequences.

"If you decide to hold your event please be advised that it will be without Department consent or authorization and could result in criminal prosecution," Wright wrote.

That got Sommer's attention.

The resident of St. Libory, Ill., and a self-described "Web entrepreneur" operates a winemaking Web site called WinePress. He was shocked by the response and baffled given the proliferation of other such events across the state, including the state's own fair.

"I was just trying to do everything legally," he said.

Sommer has held home winemaking competitions in Denver, Baltimore and St. Louis in recent years, and was looking forward to holding his first event in California. But the legal opinion threw his whole plan into question.

Many visitors to Sommer's Web site rallied to his defense, digging up legal research and offering support and strategic suggestions. Many suggested the ABC official was off base or overstepping his authority.

"This guy is drunk on power," wrote one poster.

The ABC's stance flies in the face of reality and years of history and tradition, said Nancy Vineyard, co-owner of The Beverage People, a home brewing and winemaking supply company in Santa Rosa.

"If that's the case, then just about every county fair and club across the state is breaking the law," she said.

"I've never heard anything like it," said Bob Bennett, an avid home winemaker from Healdsburg and head of the Garage Enologists of North County. "I can't think of why he's any different than the other (competitions)."

Such competitions are crucial for home winemakers to get feedback on their wines from experts in the field, said Fred Millar, president of the Sacramento Home Winemakers. He noted that many of the best professional winemakers started out as hobbyists.

"I'm really concerned. I think this could have a chilling effect on the whole industry," he said.

Others suggested Sommer just ignore the ABC and hold his event as planned.

"It's silly and it's a technicality and nobody really cares," said Andy Coradeschi, former president of Cellarmasters Home Wine Club of Los Angeles, which has held a competition for 34 years and last year judged about 220 wines.

Help from legislators

Seck declined to say whether county fairs or the upcoming California Exposition & State Fair's Home Wine competition would violate the law. He said he was unaware they held home winemaking events.

But legislators are moving quickly to make sure the flap doesn't interfere with the summer fair season. After receiving calls from home winemakers across California, state Sen. Pat Wiggins, D-Santa Rosa, is proposing urgency legislation to fix the problem.

"I think there is a concern that some of these events may have to cease without this kind of bill," Wiggins spokesman David Miller said.

Next week, Wiggins will introduce a bill, SB 607, that would add home winemakers to a section of the law giving greater latitude to home brewers. Current law for beer allows "personal or family use" and lets home brewers remove their brews "from the premises where manufactured for use in competition at organized affairs, exhibitions or competitions."

Adding wine to this section should resolve the issue, Miller said.

As "urgency" legislation, the bill requires a two-thirds majority to pass, but would take effect immediately upon the governor's signature.

Despite the warnings from the ABC earlier this year, Sommer remained undeterred and continues planning his event. The fact that he has already paid deposits to the Flamingo Conference Resort & Spa has motivated him, too.

He continues to "move full speed ahead" for the event, called WineFest, and hopes to get 150 people to attend.

The threat of prosecution initially made some posters on Sommer's site question whether attending was worth the risk. But most saw the threat as hollow and the risk minimal, he said.

"If they make an example out of me, fine, but at least we get the law changed," he said.

Move over wunderkinds, there are 2X more boomers entrepreneurs!

2008-05-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

A new study confirms what all of us older entrepreneurs knew already: there are a lot more of us than 20-something wunderkinds. The following comes from the Kauffman Foundation:

Challenging the perception of American technology entrepreneurs as 20-something wunderkinds launching businesses from college dorm rooms, a new study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and researchers at Duke and Harvard universities reveals most U.S.-born technology and engineering company founders are middle-aged, well-educated and hold degrees from a wide assortment of universities.

In fact, twice as many U.S.-born tech entrepreneurs start ventures in their 50s as do those in their early 20s. Further, elite, highly ranked schools are over-represented in the ranks of these founders, and Ivy-League graduates achieve the greatest business success; however, 92 percent of U.S.-born founders graduate from other universities, according to the study, Education and Tech Entrepreneurship. The study analyzed U.S. engineering and tech companies founded from 1995-2005, representing the most current decade of data.

"Because entrepreneurship is an indicator of economic vitality in regions and across the country, this study raises important policy questions about how to foster greater tech entrepreneurship to boost economic growth," said Robert Litan, vice president of Research and Policy at the Kauffman Foundation. "Probably the most compelling fact in the study is that advanced education is critical to the success of tech startups."

U.S.-born engineering and tech company founders are overwhelmingly well-educated. While there are significant differences in the types of degrees these entrepreneurs obtain and the time they take to start a company after they graduate, the study reveals a direct correlation between a founder’s education and company performance.

In 2005, the average sales revenue of all startups in the sample was around $5.7 million, employing an average of 42 workers. Startups established by founders with advanced Ivy-League degrees had higher average sales and employment – $6.7 million and 55 workers, respectively. The success of these groups contrasted sharply with startups established by founders with high school degrees with average revenues and employees at $2.2 million and 18 workers, respectively.

Among other findings:

The average and median age of U.S.-born founders was 39 when they started their companies. Only about 1 percent of U.S.-born founders of tech companies were teenagers.
The vast majority (92 percent) of U.S.-born tech founders held bachelor’s degrees, 31 percent held master’s degrees, and 10 percent had completed PhDs. Nearly half of these degrees were in science-, technology-, engineering- and mathematics-related disciplines. One third was in business, accounting and finance.
U.S.-born tech founders holding MBA degrees established companies more quickly (13 years) than others. Those with PhDs typically waited 21 years to become tech entrepreneurs.
The top 10 universities from which U.S.-born tech founders received their highest degrees are Harvard, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, MIT, University of Texas, University of California-Berkeley, University of Missouri, Pennsylvania State University, University of Southern California and University of Virginia.
Nearly half (45 percent) of the tech startups were established in the same state where U.S.-born tech founders received their education. Of the U.S.-born tech founders receiving degrees from California, 69 percent later created a startup in the state; Michigan, 58 percent; Texas, 53 percent; and Ohio, 52 percent. In contrast, Maryland retained only 15 percent; Indiana, 18 percent; and New York, 21 percent.

"While education clearly is an advantage for tech founders in the United States, experience also is a key factor," said Vivek Wadhwa, the study’s lead researcher and a Wertheim fellow with the Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University. "That a large number of U.S.-born tech founders have worked in business for many years also is important in understanding the supply of tech entrepreneurs."

Other researchers include Richard Freeman, Herbert Asherman chair in economics, Harvard University and director, Labor Studies Program, National Bureau of Economic Research; and Ben Rissing, Wertheim Fellow, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School and research scholar, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University.

Meetings!

2008-05-01T07:17:00.000-07:00

No comment needed.

This is from Seth Godin's often amusing, usually helpful and always interesting, blog

Dr. Frankenstein's legacy looms larger

2008-04-30T07:32:00.000-07:00

There's a famous (and very old -- 1959) book by C.P. Snow called "The Two Cultures" which laments the divide between scientists and everyone else. The problems are deeper now and the essence of the scientific issues have changed greatly.

But despite the hand-wringing of every scientific generation, the problem gets worse.

The problem gets worse because scientists have tried to solve it by themselves. They have successfully created an environment where ordinary people view them as a caste apart, a priesthood of the anointed who have the theological rights to intercede between the masses and the God of science. The publishing industry has bought into this and manages to make the problem worse.

My little thread of current agonizing about this begins with a Wired Online article, "Why is There so Little Science in the Sci/Tech Section of Google News?".

That contains links to two good nanotechnology blog posts: "Five lessons in nano outreach" and,

"'Science has a serious marketing problem,' says Google founder at 2007 AAAS keynote". (AAAS = American Association for the Advancement of Science.)

What's bad about these links is that they seem to advocate spin-doctoring as a solution rather than translating the science into a form that can be understood by the whole congregation rather than just the high priests.

Now, let me tell you a little story.

Back in the middle to late 1980s, I was a consultant to technology companies. At one point, I had more than half of the divisions of Hewlett-Packard as clients. Back then, HP was a totally engineering driven company, famous for bomb-proof test equipment, engineering workstations, semiconductor simulators and so forth. They made their billions selling engineering to engineers.

Then they got a consumer bent. Maybe you think that was the HP LaserJet which broke open the entire laser printer market. Nope.

The first product they wanted to sell into the consumer/business market was the HP plotter they felt people would want to have, especially to create color charts and graphs from that new PC program, Lotus 1-2-3. This was before inkjets. State of the art for PC printing was the dot-matrix, impact printer.

The HP's plotter division in Rancho Bernardo (east of San Diego California) was my client. When I first got there, the engineers proudly showed me the heft and strength of their plotters and the torture chamber in which HP's plotters would work perfectly in subzero temperatures and those in which you could literally fry an egg if you left the frying pan in long enough. They spent hours talking about obscure engineering protocols and how those (and the torture chamber photos) were what the felt were their competitive advantages over Calcomp -- their main competitor whose plotters were significantly less expensive.

Those worked when you sold to engineers, I told them, but failed to answer the consumer "who give a shit?" test.

They listened to me because I had once been a programmer and worked as an engineer. We began to create a program which translated the technology into something that passed the "who gives a shit?" test.

They became the market leader in business and consumer products. It's also no accident that, before the 1980s were over, the LaserJet had made the transition from a massive-steel-framed behemoth that could shelter you from a nuclear attack, to a light, streamlined, consumer-friendly product.

I'd say that science in general remains mired in the same trap. The public doesn't give a shit about something that they've been led to believe they won't understand anyway. The few that press on to understand get turned off when they buy a book by a Ph.D. which is either too complicated, too flimsy and in both cases fails to address the "who gives a shit?" issue.

Phrased in less scatological terms, for the vast majority of the rapidly shrinking universe of book buyers, none of the books offers a good answer to: "Why should I care? How will knowing this make my life better or help me understand my place in the universe?"

Just as engineers are not sympatico with consumers, pure scientists will never be able to answer those questions adequately enough to bridge the divide. The alternative will be greater reliance on superstition by the general public and deepening suspicion of science and scientists. Is there any doubt here why novels and movies usually portray scientists as Faustian madmen?

Dr. Frankenstein's legacy looms larger

Science Illiteracy

2008-04-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

People are getting dumber and dumber about science even as it assumes a greater and greater role in society.

Publishers of "popular" type science books bear much of the blame. Almost everything they publish is:
(a) Devoid of any real science content and condescendingly tries to explain things with the equivalent of hand puppets or
(b) Written way above the heads of intelligent people.

It's not just a book segment destroying itself, it is culturally destructive.

Religion and science both started as ways for people to try and understand the world around them. Science now shows us many things we once attributed to the supernatural. That means that intelligent people seeking the meaning of things try to grasp the science.

But the scientific establishment has developed into a priesthood of fancy mathematics that is impenetrable -- not only to the layperson, but to many, many scientists as well.

That is why, despite all the shelves full of "popular" books on science by PhDs like Brian Greene and Michio Kaku, scientific illiteracy grows and grows. This BusinessWeek blurb (above) illustrates what I am saying.

The vacuum between all of the establishment-PhD-written books and religious texts is now being filled with new-age, truly flaky interpretations of quantum physics as spirituality. And people are buying into this. But the "science" is all twisted and wrong.

Those pseudo-scientific spirituality books are finding an audience created by the scientific illiteracy created by the establishment PhDs.

This is not encouraging.

Comic Wars: Book Review

2008-04-28T08:35:00.000-07:00

This review appeared in Barron's on June 3, 2002.

If anyone decided to pattern a cartoon villain after Dan Raviv's depictions of Ronald Perelman and Carl Icahn in Comic Wars, the concept would be laughed out of the marketplace.

After all, riveting cartoon villains usually have at least one redeeming feature.

But in Comic Wars, CBS News correspondent Raviv spins an irresistible morality play: Allied against the forces of darkness -- duplicitous bankers, profane lawyers, spineless yes-men, and Perelman and Icahn -- Israeli immigrant and Six-Day War veteran Isaac (Ike) Perlmutter arrives in America with $250 to his name. Thirty years later, he's worth $500 million.

Raviv portrays Perlmutter's triumph as a victory of the will to do the right thing. The ultimate entrepreneur, who could make brains and sweat work where others needed money, Perlmutter first built a fortune buying and selling surplus goods. This success allowed him to take on larger operations -- including whole firms -- like shaver company Remington Products.

The comic-wars part of the saga begins in 1989 -- when Ron Perelman acquires Marvel Entertainment Group for $82.5 million, hyping the company as a "mini-Disney," and floating more than $900 million worth of junk bonds. Then, he train-wrecks it, in a DotCom-like meltdown: Based on unrealistic hype about revenue growth, Marvel's stock soars from its $2 IPO price in 1991 to more than $34 in 1993 -- in part fueled by bankers who didn't look too carefully at their deals so long as they made their ample underwriting fees.

Perelman grossly overpays for a series of disastrous acquisitions. And his cost-cutting disembowels the staff of artists and writers. As quality plummets, so do sales, helped by a boycott of Marvel by disillusioned fans -- and a decision to create a distribution monopoly that drove many of its best retailers out of business.

Meanwhile, Perlmutter, who had bought a crippled toy firm in 1990 and renamed it ToyBiz, teams up with Ron Perelman in 1993 -- in a deal giving ToyBiz the right to sell action figures based on Marvel Comics' characters (Spiderman, X-Men). The no-royalty deal cost Perlmutter 46 percent of his company -- and bound his fate to Marvel. When Perelman took over Marvel, it had had a 70% market share. But by 1996, it was 25%. And the share price had plunged toward $1 by the time the company filed for Chapter 11 on Dec. 27, 1996. "The great Ron Perelman," Raviv writes, "the man who ... conquered Revlon, was now a schmuck who could not run a comic-book company."

Corporate raider Carl Icahn launches his hostile takeover attempt for Marvel in November 1996. All he'd ultimately accomplish was an exchange of toxic insults with Perelman. But with the moguls distracted, Perlmutter executes a courageous maneuver: On July 31, 1998, he takes control of Marvel, scoring one of the most impressive victories since David slew Goliath. The story of how he pulled off this acquisition is a nail-biting thriller -- filled with more backstabbing, lies, broken promises and unexpected twists than a stack of action comic books.

Noble Rot: A Bordeaux Wine Revolution: Book Review

2008-04-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

An edited version of this appeared in Barron's on March 1, 2004

A stench wafts among the pricey vineyards of Bordeaux. According to Noble Rot by William Echikson, the stink comes from a cultural gangrene eating away at an arrogant and outmoded aristocracy so far into denial that it can’t see the mortal danger that corrodes it from within.

In the wine world, the term "noble rot" refers to a specific type of desirable mold that allows grapes to produce some of the world's most desirable and expensive sweet wines with Bordeaux's Château d'Yquem at the pinnacle. But Echikson uses the term as a metaphor for a syndrome of cultural and enological afflictions that have turned this august wine region on its Gallic nose. The fact that Château d'Yquem plays a key role makes the metaphor doubly relevant.

The obscure and irrelevant Classification of 1855 stars as the lead pathogen in Noble Rot. As Echikson points out, the old guard in Bordeaux still clutch at the 1855 classification in a last-ditch effort to sell inferior wine at very high prices to gullible snobs who crave tony labels. Indeed, this 1855 list was never about quality from the beginning, but about price and prestige. Not coincidentally for this book, Château d'Yquem came out on the very top of that listing.

Leading the revolution against the established order are les garagistes, a feisty band of winemakers, mostly from St.-Emilion and environs who, zut alors!, think that Bordeaux's over-priced, thin, musty swill should give way to quality wine produced through proper vineyard management and winemaking techniques. While there are some larger, well-financed operations in this movement, most have been labeled garagistes after a number of prominent winemakers who literally began in their garages and produced wines that sell at hundreds of dollars a bottle at retail.

The fact that many unclassified garagiste wines are now selling at far greater prices than those with a noble, classified château on the label has outraged the establishment which, in Marie Antoinette fashion, scream, "Let them drink plonk!"

Echikson gives the reader a very readable, enjoyable sand factually grounded account of how the upstart garagistes first tried to change the ossified classifications which stood like the Maginot Line between them, formal recognition and the establishment's pricing and sales system. When that failed, they simply swept around the flanks, establishing alternate pricing, sales and distribution channels that cut the old guard off like la guillotine.

Noble Rot could easily have been like most wine books: morphine for the soul, filled with geek-speak, pedantically self-important and impenetrable prose suitable only for treating people with a sleep disorder. Yet Echikson avoids this and has produced an accessible, thoughtful book so filled with interesting material about the business, the winemaking and the culture that it begs to be sipped and contemplated rather than quaffed.

What makes the book so engaging is the way that Echikson spins his story by following some of the key people on both sides of the movement, leading us through the conflicts, offering context and illuminating quotes that promote understanding.

We have the challengers: true garagistes such as Michel Gracia and well-heeled newcomers like Florence Cathiard of Château Smith-Haut-Lafite who are bound by a passion for great wine regardless of classification. On their side are avant garde merchants like Jeffrey Davies, modern wine consultants like Michel Rolland and Denis Dubourdieu and well-known wine critic Robert Parker.

The old guard sees evil in the fact that Davies and Parker are American as are many of the new vineyard and winemaking practices is evidence, according to the old guard, that this was "part of a grand conspiracy to destroy France."

Echikson aptly shows that the French don't seem to need any outside help to destroy their country since government regulations, a refusal to modernize, a pervasive rear-view mirror on progress and a general xenophobia are doing a great job without American intervention.

Noble Rot uses this attitude as one of the major manifestations of denial that keeps the decadent aristocracy from addressing the real issues, which is why American wine regularly out-scores French wine in France and that top global honors for that icon of French culture, the baguette, has gone to one of my local Sonoma bakeries on more than one occasion.

Commanding the defense of the old order is Château d'Yquem's Alexandre Lur-Saluces. Noble Rot details his decades of subterfuge, double-dealing, and attempts to cheat family members out of their rightful ownership and control of Château d'Yquem all the while running the place into the ground. The tale, told through a combination of interviews and extracts from court cases paints a gothic image that would never have been believable even on Falconcrest.

The old guard cast would not be complete without the context that most of Bordeaux's old guard were Vichy supporters and Nazi collaborators who received many a fascist pat on the back for shipping Jews off to the gas chambers, something that grand cru lovers might want to keep in mind.

Noble Rot begins with many threads which Echikson skillfully weaves together in the last part of the book to form a unified, disturbing and yet optimistic tapestry. As the author of wine books, I have visited Bordeaux on a number of occasions and met many of the people Echikson writes about. I found that after reading Noble Rot, I had a far more coherent framework on which to hang my episodic visits and knowledge.

California Vintners Still Delusional

2008-04-23T07:06:00.000-07:00

When my book, The Wrath of Grapes hit bookstores in 1999, I predicted a massive glut of wine would sweep through California and hammer wine prices starting in 2000/2001.

The wine industry responded like like stoners who've been smoking their shorts. "Glut? Ain't gonna be no stinkin' glut!"

Jay Palmer at Barron's wrote a detailed, well-documented article on this and came to the same conclusion. The wine industry mounted a massive PR blitz aimed at neutralizing Palmer, me and anyone else who dared look at the statistics. Brokerage analysts played their puppet roles well, mouthing corporate press releases and failing to look at the facts.

They were all treading water or floundering when the predicted glut hit in 2001. Right on schedule.

And every year, year after year, they pronounce the end of the glut. Only, no one ever uses the "G" word.

This year is no different.

Premier Pacific Vineyards, a Napa-based vineyard investment firm issued a rose-tinted report this week taking about the decline in "non-bearing" vineyard plantings and implying that, somehow, this was yet another harbinger of good times ahead and even hinting at shortages.

Bull feathers!

It's true that non-bearing acreage can help foretell future prospects. It takes a newly planted vineyard three to five years to begin production. But if you're savvy and take your own look at the stats, you'll see that the numbers reported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture don't show the flood of California wine ending anytime soon. It just shows that the insane rush to plant new vineyards has decreased from delusional to merely out of touch with reality.

The USDA's 2007 Grape Acreage Report indicates that non-bearing acres decreased from 47,000 acres to 43,000 acres. WhoopieDOOO! Sure, you can talk about a, 8.5 percent decline. But the REAL story lies in the acres still producing enough wine to keep the Two Buck Chuck tsunami flowing.

The last time that California wine production came close to a balance with demand was 1995-96 when the state had about 300,000 acres of bearing wine grapes. Feloniously optimistic projections about demand from pump-and-dump artists and those standing to profit from the expansion of vineyards created a planting spree.

The 2007 Grape Acreage Report shows California with 480,000 acres, the same as 2006. This comes despite vineyards being ripped out and grapes rotting on the vines, even in premium areas of Napa and Sonoma Valley.

The reality remains that California has, probably, two-thirds-MORE acres of wine vineyards than it needs, a good portent for regular wine consumers needing something to ease the pain of oil and real-estate prices.

More factors aggravate the situation for vineyard owners, the most important being a worldwide glut of wine which has helped boost the market share of imports from about 12 to 15% in the mid-1990s to about double that today.

Significantly, California crushed about 3.7 million tons of wine grapes in 2007, according to the USDA. At the current levels of consumption and imports, that's probably 750,000 tons higher than supply and demand would merit.

Wines wizards of unreality will respond that those overall numbers don't really apply to the haute-appellation wines of Napa and Sonoma. More bullfeathers!

This wine, Castello Da Vinci, is a negociant bottle, filled with a Bordeaux blend from Napa Valley's trendiest appellations. The highly, highly respected winery that made the wine sold it for more than $100 per bottle. But they had 30,000 gallons of it they couldn't sell. So it was shopped on the bulk market for about. Some of it ended up in the Castello Da Vinci bottle and sold for $25. About $5 of that went for wine. Another $3 for the label, bottle and all other costs.

Napa is not immune no matter how must they protest.

DISCLOSURE: Castello Da Vinci is my own wine, created by for a character in my current novel, Perfect Killer. Sourcing the wine on the bulk market confirmed everything I had known anecdotally about prices and the availability of very fine wines.

The Planets -- Book Review

2008-04-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

This is my original draft. The edited review was published in Barron's on Nov. 7, 2005.

The Planets, By Dava Sobel, $24.95, 288 Pages, Viking Adult, New York, ISBN: 0670034460

More imagination has been lavished on Mars than any other planet in our solar system -- from "War of the Worlds" to mass fascination with canals, and fantasies of little green men (and women, one must presume). I admit being caught up in that during the summer of 1967 which I spent as a budding rocket scientist at the Westinghouse plant in Horseheads, NY, hand-building solar flux measurement instrument tubes for the Mariner 6 and 7 Mars flyby satellites. It's a miracle the tubes worked, because my attention kept wandering off by a billion miles or so as I imagined what these pieces I had laid hands on would find when the Martian Canals came into view.

Dava Sobel's Planets resurrected all those archival memories in a daringly experimental mix of writing styles seeking to capture the feel of the planets rather than create one more scientific icecap of data lists and telemetry.

Sobel's first-person narrative of Mars, writing from the viewpoint of "Allan Hills 84001," a Martian meteorite found in Antarctica in 1984, works very well in leading the lay reader on an effortlessly educational jaunt that could easily have become a thicket of scientific jargon in the hands of a lesser writer.

"The collision that launched my journey dug a hole in Mars several miles wide," Sobel's narrative explains. "Astronomers think they have identified that particular crater on satellite images of mars near a small valley in the southern highlands .... As a Martian from a heavily cratered region, I was acquainted with meteorite strikes and in fact, already bore a fracture scar from having been crushed and reheated in a previous impact."

From such easily approachable prose as this, we learn about the meteoroid, which arrived 16 million years ago complete with a payload of biological fossils and a chemical composition that mirrored the Martian surface.

Scientifically trained readers will find no new trove of facts, but Sobel's unique series of presentations offer the ability to understand and appreciate the solar system in an aesthetic and creative way. In addition, she creates for the reader a significant sense of context by weaving a James Burke-esque fabric of historical, political, mythological, and literary references.

Not everything in The Planets is a planet. The book begins with the Sun (a star) and ends with Pluto (an overgrown asteroid or perhaps a planetesimal). In between we have all the usual suspects along with a smattering of moons, rings and a wonderful detour through the age-old connection among geometry, astronomy and music.

Pythagoras, Sobel writes, was the first to connect "'geometry in the humming of the strings' and 'music in the spacing of the spheres'." She leads us through Plato's "music of the spheres" through the Copernican "ballet of the planets," and right into the work of legendary astronomer Johannes Kepler who, in 1599, "derived a C major chord by equating the relative velocities of the planets with the intervals on a stringer instrument."

She finishes off this thread with Gustav Holst's popular symphony, "The Planets" which presaged World War I when he wrote the first suite, "Mars, the Bringer of War," in July 1914.

This web of connections illustrates the remarkable breadth and depth of Sobel's writing and is sure to offer both the hardest scientist and the rankest amateur new and creative ways of looking at the night sky.

But not everything in Sobel's experimental writing quiver works. Or perhaps, more correctly, not everything will work all the time for every reader. Her literary references – Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Blake, C,S, Lewis, Oliver Wendell Holmes and many others – frequently set the tone of the surrounding prose, as if Sobel felt bound to emulate their style and pacing. What seems poignant or significant in the short quotes can grow tediously anachronistic if continued for page after page. "Night Air," the chapter on Neptune and Uranus, was the toughest for me to read, but should be a hit among fans of Jane Austen.

This is by way of saying that, there will be readers who will like "Night Air" the best and my favorites the worst. Each of the chapters is well written, but likeability will be a matter of taste.

In a day of scrapple-sausage writing, ground down to the lowest common denominator and written to fill a financially budgeted number of pages, Sobel deserves credit for having the courage to experiment and her publisher for making that experimentation available to readers.

As a former scientist decades ago turned to writing, I particularly appreciated Planets because it hollows out some daydreaming space among the facts and fosters a sense of imagination and wonder -- a right-brained oasis that could have been lost under the avalanche of data and left-brained logic. Sobel shows the reader why the imagination to dream is at least as important as the ability to reach out and touch the stars.

A New Kind of Science - Book Review

2008-04-22T07:17:00.000-07:00

This review appeared in Barrons on September 2, 2002

The conventional wisdom in science is that complex systems and organisms can only be explained by equally complex rules and mathematics.

But regardless of whether one speaks of the behavior of stock markets and financial systems, sub-atomic particles, humans, apes or the very cosmos, scientists have developed enormously complicated mathematical models that fall short of anything other than "pretty good" most of the time -- and "pretty awful" whenever it comes to divining the inner workings of complexity.

Chaos theory, fractals, complexity theory and other promising paths have all managed to hit their own walls because, according to Stephen Wolfram in A New Kind of Science, simplicity is the prime mover of complex behavior -- and traditional math is the enemy of understanding this.

So instead of the conventional math and calculus of the past 300 years, Wolfram makes an excruciatingly thorough case that real portraits of complexity can be drawn only if one uses powerful computers to make billions and billions and billions of calculations -- in order to repeat very simple cellular automation rules.

To understand cellular automata, imagine a grid, like graph paper. Color in one square. Then to figure out which other squares to color in, apply this simple rule: a cell should be black whenever one or the other -- but not both -- of its neighbors on the same line were black on the step before.

After rule 90 (of 256) is carried out 50 or so times, an intricate, symmetrical pattern is produced. But after a few thousand iterations, the patterns appear to go completely random, producing pictographs with uncanny resemblances to leaf-vein structure, or crystal fractures, or animal ornamentation -- all phenomena which have been assumed to be results of very complicated processes.

The author proposes that the rules of cellular automata offer worthy answers to how we should approach the nature of the universe, the enigma of human consciousness and other lesser topics, like quantum physics and, finally, the ultimate fabric of reality: "All the wonders of our universe can in effect be captured by simple rules, yet this shows that there can be no way to know all the consequences of these rules, except in effect just to watch and see how they unfold."

In other words, things are a lot simpler than we thought -- but they can still be awfully unpredictable.

While some of the ideas expressed might be dismissed as the deranged babblings of a kook, or perhaps a genius with a frontal-lobe tumor, Wolfram comes with the pedigree of a visionary: He got his Ph.D. from Caltech at the age of 20, has a widely acknowledged career in particle physics and cosmology, found favor with such giants in physics as Richard Feynman and, as the writer of the much-admired Mathematica -- a program that aids scientists and mathematicians in making all manners of computations -- is a wildly successful software entrepreneur.

In the end, Wolfram's 1,197-page opus offers not a new kind of science but a new way of looking at science. True, many of the connections he makes are superficial or incoherent, but still intriguing. And this is a thought-provoking book with the heft of a cinder block -- making it the ultimate in heavy reading. It might even make for great vacation reading for some ... if you plan to take it along on all your vacations until 2005.

House of Mondavi: Book Review

2008-04-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

My original draft appears below. The edited review appeared in Barrons on Sept. 3, 2007.

NOT LONG AFTER the Robert Mondavi Winery went public in 1993, I found myself at a winery luncheon seated next to Bob and a few seats away from his wife, Margrit Biever. Salted among his usual ebulent pronouncements about food and wine were doubts about the wisdom of having gone public.

In my capacity then as founder and publisher of Wine Business Publications, the largest circulation wine trade magazine in North America, I had numerous occasions over the next four years to meet, talk and dine with Bob, his wife, his sons Michael and Tim as well as daughter Marcia, the Baroness Philippina de Rothschild and most of the winery's executives, board members and advisors.

During that time, Bob's upbeat personality darkened whenever matters touched on the wisdom of going public. In his 1998 biography, Harvests of Joy, he bemoaned the corporation's plummeting stock price and wrote: "We had taken an enormous gamble, one of the biggest of my life, and now it appeared to have blown up in my face. And worse was yet to come."

Just how much worse is described in excruciatingly immaculate but highly readable detail by Julia Flynn Siler in The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty, (Hardcover, $28, 452 pages, June 2007, Gotham Books, New York, ISBN: 978-1-592-40259-5).

This is not light summer reading by any means. Based on exhaustive research and interviews, each page is packed with facts and footnotes which, by dint of superb writing, manages to engage the reader and avoid the data brain-lock which would have plagued a less-talented journalist.

To wine country insiders, House of Mondavi offers no new shocking surprises: family feuding, jealousies, infidelities, eccentricities, extravagancies and excess have long been known and acknowledged along with the brilliance, drive and perseverance that made the Robert Mondavi Winery an icon to wine lovers and the broad shoulders on which Napa Valley wine stood.

What Siler has provided is well-documented structure, context and detail behind the gossip and the harsh family cruelties which eventually ran the winery aground and its quality into the ground.

After the obligatory recitation of ancestry, immigration from Italy and the too-oft-related fisticuffs between Robert and his brother, Siler digs into the multifacted perfect storm that wrested control from the family and into the hands of Constellation Brands, the world's largest wine company.

Siler makes it clear that some of the Mondavi's problems were not entirely of their own making, most notably the Phylloxera grape-vine epidemic of the 1990s as and the current wine glut. Phylloxera is a long-known pest which destroys grapevine roots and nearly wiped out wine production in America and France around the turn of the century. Various resistent rootstocks have since been developed, one of which -- AxR1 -- was heavily promoted to the industry by scientists at the University of California, Davis.

Despite the fact that significant evidence existed about AxR1's vulnerabilities, it was planted in nearly every vineyard in California. Then, beginning in the 1980s, the pest feasted on AxR1 presenting California vintners, including Mondavi, with the a multi-billion-dollar for the massive meal.

Vines had to be ripped out and replanted, creating shortages of wine in the early to mid 1990s. Urged on by easy financing, rosy projections for wine consumption growth and brokerage analysts eager to maintain a suitable environment for public winery offerings, vineyards were planted, over-planted and over-planted again.

By mid-1995, Wine Business Monthly presented data that showed a glut beginning around 2000 and that wine prices -- and winery margins -- would suffer from the oversupply. Barron's expanded upon this with major news reporting in 1998.

House of Mondavi makes it clear that even as winery CEOs like Beringer's Walt Klenz and analysts for Goldman Sachs, Hambrecht & Quist and Nationsbank were touting "what glut?" the industry's shrewd operators who had no vested interest in maintaining public winery stock prices, were making their plans. Key among these was Fred Franzia, bulk-wine magnate, industry bad-boy and superbly innovative marketer.

Best known for his wines in a box, Franzia saw the glut building and as early as 2001 was buying glutted inventory from Beringer, Mondavi and others. One of Franzia's best known glut-baby successes was the now reknowned. "Two Buck Chuck."

But most other California wineries survived the same bad advice from analysts, financiers, IPO hustlers and other experts who knew better. Siler offers chapter after chapter describing what made the stormy seas fatal to the Mondavis.

To the delight of Napa Valley's eternally jealous schadenfreude addicts, House of Mondavi makes it clear that the men of Mondavi destroyed the empire with their devil's brew of arrogance, indulgence but primarily their pathological inability to put aside personal differences for the greater good of the enterprise.

Those interested in the intimate details of the Mondavi men's flaws will find them all here: Robert's driven perfectionism and infidelity; Michael's temper and arrogance, Tim's infidelities and the failure of professional managers, exceutives, psychologists to help any of the men recognize a greater good outside themselves.

I say, "men" here because Robert's daughter Marcia plays only bit roles in the book, reflecting her real-life involvement with an empire started and dominated by men playing out the masculine roles of traditionally Italian men.

In the end, House of Mondavi describes a man brought down by his own generosity. While the winery's 1993 public offering was seen as a way to pass the company on to the next generation and allow Robert to take some of his wealth from the company he had founded, it only accentuated the tensions among the founder and his sons and amplified their interpersonal flaws.

Siler offers a blow-by-blow account of how Robert and his sons were gradually eased out of the company, albeit with tens of millions of dollars in personal wealth. That might have been the whole picture but for Robert's generosity. Among his many charitable efforts, Robert had pledged more than $35 million to the University of California, Davis and another $10 million to Copia, a Napa wine and food center. All of the pledges were backed by his stock. Siler notes that when Mondavi stock dropped below $20 a share in 2003, Robert was essentially insolvent.

True to his generosity, Robert was unwilling to renege on his charitable obligations and thus ignited the final days of a Mondavi at the Robert Mondavi Winery. When Constellation Brands came knocking, Robert and his child eventually converted all of their Series B stock (which had been their anti-take-over protection) and sold it to Constellation.

According to Siler, Marcia received $107 million; Michael about $100 million; Tim, a little less than $59 million and Robert, about $70 million.

Worse had certainly come to worst for Robert. Siler describes the post-sale Robert as having suddenly aged, going from vigorous and far younger than his years to a shaky, wheel-chair-ridden man with hearing and memory problems more typical of people in their early nineties.

The final stories are yet to be written for Michael, Tim and Marcia, all of whom have started wine enterprises of their own. Only the coming years will tell whether they have enough of the right stuff they inherited from their father.

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army: Book Review

2008-04-15T10:16:00.000-07:00

I review books for Barron's on a regular basis. Sometimes they assign me a book, sometimes I suggest one. While I am a registered Democrat and political moderate, they have never censored a review. Most of the time, however, I write too long and the reviews are edited to fit the space. Fortunately, their editors are very, very good and have never changed the meaning.

My honest reviews, however, have upset quite a few other people along the way -- mostly those on the extreme Right or, as in the case of this one, the extreme left.

What follows is my full-length review. The edited version appeared in Barron's on April 2, 2007.

Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army by Jeremy Scahill, (Nation Books, New York, March 2006, hardcover, $26.95, 452 pages ISBN:1-56025-979-5) aspires to be the definitive investigation into the growth of one of the largest private military firms in the world and an exhaustive catalog of its sins, especially as a tool for Bush Administration policy.

But as a cobbled-together amalgam of the author's previously published articles, rehashed pieces by other "progressive" journalists all embedded in a slurry of unattributed sources and one-sided quotation of politicos with an axe to grind, the book fails miserably as anything other than a moveon.org playbook for the 2008 presidential campaigns.

Instead of a steady march of organized facts from multiple credible sources which makes for solid investigative reporting, Blackwater offers layers of innuendo cast in obviously biased language which offer glimpses of Blackwater: in Iraq, New Orleans, Azerbaijan and elsewhere. No smoking guns here or even warm barrels, just 452 pages of poorly documented, mind-numbing minutiae wandering about in search of significance and lacking in overall coherence.

Early on, the author attempts to indict Blackwater for incompetence, or worse, by reconstructing the final days of the four Blackwater employees who were ambushed, burned and hung from a bridge in Fallujah. The indictment fails. Even worsh, Scahill's cartoonish descriptions of the men makes them into bumbling bafoons rather than offering the reader a moving, "Blackhawk Down" sense of tragedy and men betrayed.

Scahill's trite, political-hot-button phraseology pervades the book. To Scahill, Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince is, "a radical right-wing Christian mega-millionaire who has served as a major bankroller of President Bush's campaigns but of the broader Christian-right agenda." Some facts would have been helpful: religious affiliation, personal net worth, dollar amount of contributions. Perhaps Mr. Prince is all of these, perhaps not. But having the facts would allow a reader to reach their own decision, and having done that, could either agree or disagree.

Scahill's lack of attribution and the inherent weakness of his facts also destroy the book's credibility. He first writes that, Blackwater has more than $500 million in government contracts....:as one U.S. Congressmember observed, in strictly military terms, Blackwater could overthrow many of the world's governments."

This is a typical Scahill statement with no attribution. Which member of Congress? Observed to whom? When? All those pesky little details that a beginning journalism course requires for a C grade are notoriously absent in this book. With no attribute, one might conclude this was made up to fit the point.

Context is also lacking in that passage. Scores of other military firms like Sandline, Executive Outcomes and others have been overthrowing various world governments for the past 40 years according to Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry, by P.W. Singer, (2003, Cornell University Press). Unlike Blackwater, Corporate Warriors is a very well-written, even-handed, fact-packed and extensively documented work.

Whether this level of military power in private hands is a good situation or not is handled with Scahill's tritely predictable judgement that it is all evil. He conveniently neglects to balance the record by pointing out that, according to a number of sources including Corporate Warriors, the Bosnia intervention could not have succeeded without private military contractors.

And Scahill's $500 million figure? He never tells us over what period of time those contracts were granted. And while it's certainly substantial compared with the average family outcome (even for Greenwich or Bergen County), it's a rounding error in the $80+ billion annual budget for the current war.

The sort of facts that would have made Scahill's book credible and worth reading are the very sort found abundantly in Corporate Warriors which tells us that even before the start of the current Iraq war, "from 1994 to 2002, The U.S. Defense Department entered into more than 3,000 contracts with U.S.-based firms estimated at a contract value of more than $300 billion. And unlike too much of Scahill's book, that last figure from Corporate Warriors has a footnote with a the source.

The lack of sourcing and context plague every part of every page of this book. To call out each of them would require more words that it took to fill the pages of Blackwater. There is simply no way to determine what should be believed or not. For that reason, this book is a waste of time and money for the seeker of truth. For them, Corporate Warriors and a number of other books offer far more credible and documented writing which is not plagued by biased prose and overtly politically intents.

Scahill's political tunnel-vision also makes it seem as if the rise of PMFs began in 1997 with Blackwater. Contractors have been doing business with the U.S. government for decades, but it really began big-time with the hollowing out of American armed forces that started under President Bush's father and accelerated during the Clinton administration. There is plenty of blame for that to spread around both parties, but in his own partisan way, Scahill cuts Bill Clinton a big piece of slack, failing to note his policies which helped expand the use of privatized military. Those wishing to have hard facts about this are referred to Corporate Warriors.

In the end, Scahill utterly fails to make his case that Blackwater is the world's most powerful mercenary army as his subtitle claims.

Bogus Lawsuit Against Apple & Starbucks

2008-02-25T06:47:00.000-08:00

According to Apple Insider, "A Utah couple acting as their own attorneys have filed a lawsuit against Apple and Starbucks over the retailers' recent "Song of the Day" promotion, which offers Starbucks customers a iTunes gift card for a complimentary, pre-selected song download."

Yeah. Uh-huh. Problem is that I designed and implemented this system beginning in 1999. It became the basis of a number of products that grew into PocketPass and Tibanna.

The diagrams in the lawsuit look exactly like my system.

Can you say, "prior art?" Suuuuuure you can!

Independent Bookstores Politics and Taste

2008-02-22T12:54:00.000-08:00

Cody's Books, 0ne of the Bay Area's long-time and well-known bookstores, has had a hard time lately. Independents as a whole have had a hard time.

Most independents blame Amazon and chains like Borders and Barnes & Noble for all their ills. Their screeching fits of outrage against them is surpassed only by their raging at George Bush, but just barely.

They're in denial.

Independents are having trouble because -- with few exceptions (such as Powell's in Portland) -- independent book stores prefer to promote and sell books they think people ought to read. Rather than sell books people want to read.

People at independent book stores have set themselves up as arbiters of taste and politics.

The politics are always Left-canted. They can't understand why people don't want to by all 793 Anti-Bush screeds. Yeah, he's a dumb fucker, but he's also a lame duck. There's an election this year. somebody tell the anti-George folks. Get over it!

Their taste in books runs to highly, ultra-literary, thin little works written in an unheated garret. They turn their noses up at thrillers, romances and other "commercial" fiction. When they do talk about such undesirable books, their faces wrinkle into a look like a person who's just stepped in dog feces, or just caught a whiff of conversation from someone to the right of Fidel Castro.

If they want to be arbiters of literary taste and hold forth on intertextuality, they should get a position torturing undergraduates with obscure literature.

If they want to succeed as booksellers, then they need to realize they are merchants. They must market. They must sell products their customers want to buy.

Or they can remain in denial and prepare to go out of business.

e-Book Royalties - Publishers Screw Authors Again.

2008-02-19T07:15:00.000-08:00

It's all digital and costs fractions of a cent to deliver. So why do publishers want to be pigs and take most of the money from ebooks?

BECAUSE THEY CAN!

Then, of course, they'll lock it down with DRM and a proprietary e-book reader to make sure no one buys it! This is an intellectually twisted business.

"LITTLE, BROWN CHIEF Executive Ursula Mackenzie wrote to literary agencies last week, setting out its digital stall and echoing Random House CEO Gail Rebuck's proposal of a 15% royalty on e-books. It is a call that has already been rejected by Curtis Brown, whose Contracts Manager, Anna Davis, told PN: “We want to support publishers in what they are doing in this area and we accept its importance, but we do not want to agree to a royalty that we do not believe is fair. Yes, publishers have big set-up costs with digital, but once they are set up, the unit cost of producing an e-book is much lower.”

Rest of the article here.

Publishers, eBooks,and DRM

2008-02-19T06:21:00.000-08:00

Digital Rights Management sucks. DRM-- the long, trying-to-be-respectable name for encrypting a content file to cripple a consumers rights to their legally provided rights to Fair Use -- is the biggest single barrier to widespread e-book acceptance.

Specialized reader hardware is the second.

The user experience with an ebook needs to more closely replicate that of the dead-tree edition. This includes the ability to read on any preferred device from iPods to Blackberries The reader also needs the ability to highlight, print a certain amount of text etc., loan the book and " to resell it as used -- thus preserving copyright's well-established fair-use capabilities.

I realize I am at odds with most publishers, but the paranoia about piracy kills more revenue than it protects. But then, as you an see I have no strong or well-defined opinion about this.

Publishers must realize that whatever encryption they load onto a book WILL be broken. So why drive away 90% of your market to protect a book from the 2% who will steal it? It's called publisher logic.

Holmes on Homes: Good Man; Web Site Rips-Off Consumers

2008-02-17T19:43:00.000-08:00

I've enjoyed the Canadian home improvement show, "Holmes on Homes" in which contractor Mike Holmes fixes the screw-ups left by screw-up construction weenies.

So, I visited the web site to see if I could buy DVDs of previous seasons. Yes!

But when I checked out, I find abusively expensive shipping ripoffs! $21.46 shipping (UPS Standard) for a season DVD set that costs $30.99! A one-pound package!! (Canadian and American dollars are within a penny of being equal these days).

Needless to say, I canceled my order and feel I wasted my time registering an account.

I regularly order merchandise from Canada and the UK and NEVER have encountered such a disgraceful overcharging.

I've been a great fans Mike Holmes and his wonderful work and have considered him a person of great integrity. But for his site to rip off customers like this has certainly caused me to re-evaluate my opinion.

UPDATE:

I ordered the DVDs from Amazon just now. It cost me $4 LESS than the Holmes site. Plus, with my Prime account, I get two-day shipping FREE! So, the whole thing cost me $26.99 ... rather than getting ripped off for $52.45 -- almost twice as much!

My advice: watch the show. Avoid the web site. One day, if Holmes is as honest a bloke as he seems, he'll take his pneumatic framing nailer to whoever is responsible for ripping off customers at his web site. And if he doesn't stop this egregious cheating of consumers, then perhaps he's just putting on a good act.

Orwell, Berserkley and the Marines

2008-02-08T08:26:00.000-08:00

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." -- George Orwell

One only hopes that when the invasion starts, the enemy comes ashore at the Berkeley Marina.

Only those truly immersed in Orwellian hypocrisy could call the city government's actions a defense of free speech.

The City Council passed a resolution calling the Marine Corps recruiting office "an unwelcome intruder" and then gave Code Pink a reserved parking space in front and a permit to blather on all day through loud speakers.

This has illegally obstructed access to the office, yet the police are not enforcing the law.

One only hopes that when Berserkley needs the help of "rough men" that those men are not available, having gone to places where people honor their duty and sacrifice.

The Ayatollah of Canterbury Babbles On

2008-02-08T08:06:00.000-08:00

Uproar as archbishop says sharia law inevitable in UK

Well, it does sort of go along with his stand on gays which has certainly helped split the Episcopal church in America.

Plus, shariah varies according to the interpretation of the Quran.

In some places, there are those who interpret (and act on) it as requiring death for homosexuals, adulters, and infidels.

The latter would certainly include the Archbishop himself … thus offering what one might consider a logical conclusion to the step he is advocating.

OpenID = Open Season for Thieves and Gov't Snoops

2008-02-08T07:25:00.000-08:00

Tech heavyweights join OpenID Foundation board

Putting all my ID eggs in one basket is reason enough to shun OpenID.

Putting all my ID eggs in a basket shared by YahooSoft (MicroHoo?) is worse.

But, far worse is the presence of VeriSign. FOIA documents obtained by the Electronic Freedom Foundation show that Verisign is a major contractor to the FBI and its pervasive wiretapping and eavesdropping system.

Whether you're prone to paranoia attacks or not, putting everything in one place makes for a goldmine for ID thieves and for government snoops.

The "open" in OpenID means it's open season on your information. If it can be cracked, it will be. No reason to think OpenID is immune.

Look at it in an ecosystem way: diverse genetic populations resist pathogens better because only a small percentage will be susceptible at any one time. Conversely, every member of a monoculture ecosystem can be wiped out at once with the correct virus/pest.

I'll stick with a diversity of username / password combinations and rely on PGP encryption (using a 1,024-bit algorithm) and a lengthy pass-sentence of my own choosing to keep my data safe on my computer. I am free to change my encryption method any time I want. I want, not a bunch of Dilbert-run corporations whose record on security and lack of respect for users is well documented.

Ron Paul: The GOP's Ralph Nader of the 2008 Presidential Race?

2008-02-08T07:10:00.000-08:00

The Swift-Boating of McCain Begins:

Ron Paul: McCain friends with Feingold, Kennedy

With this, Ron Paul has beat MoveOn.Org to the punch of trying to smear McCain.

What always amazes me is how Republicans usually shoot themselves in both feet by knuckling under to the extreme right-wing to nominate UNelectable candidates.

SOOOOOOOOOOOO... big question is: will the GOP's right-wing doctrinaire fanatics make Ron Paul the Ralph Nader of this election? Can you say Ross Perot? Suuuuuuuuuuure you can!

Sick of TWITCHING Web Pages

2008-02-07T06:39:00.000-08:00

I'm sick of TWITCHING web pages. Flash torture, eyeball waterboarding. Crap. I click away to another site or block with a Post-It. Clueless advertisers; clueless sites.

In trying to attract attention, they make visitors run away. Like those asshole commercials on television that turn the sound way up. I mute those, switch channels, head for the bathroom.

The Web's already got enough bad crap without imitating television. here are some examples of good sites gone bad with Macromedia abuse.

You get the picture.

Style Duck: Improve your writing

2008-01-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

I found boring writing among the most frustrating aspects of teaching at both UCLA and Cornell. Overly long, wandering sentences that might contain information often buried the student's meaning under an impenetrable sea of verbiage.

The cause of this lies most often in the overuse of "to be" verbs and prepositional phrases.

I used a "cut to the chase" method in my classes which showed students to increase the impact of their writing, improve clarity and communicate better.

My son, William and I have created the Style Duck to bring the "cut to the chase" method to anyone who wants to use it.

The beta version just launched. Give Style Duck a try. Let me know what you think.

A Tip for Beating Writer's Block

2007-12-23T09:11:00.000-08:00

Use email.

I ran across this piece on a site called LifeClever ... an obvious tribute to yet another very helpful site called lifehacker.

LifeClever tells us that using email is more convenient than your word processing software, involves less pressure and more.

I recommend reading the LifeClever piece.

I may try this.

Not Faithless, Just STOOOPID!

2007-12-18T08:47:00.000-08:00

From Publisher's Lunch today:

Borders' UK Atheist Tag: Bad Faith?
There's been a backlash in the UK to a holiday card given out by Borders with copies of Richard Dawkins' THE GOD DELUSION that reads "O come all ye faithless." Borders responded to criticism with an apology and statement saying they "did not intend it as anti-Christian or a swipe at the Christian faith."

Author who sued Dan Brown dies

2007-12-03T08:35:00.000-08:00

Well, even though Random House's well-documented distortions and misrepresentations have smeared me, and turned me into publishing's bête noir, that's clearly better than this:

Friday November 30, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

Richard Leigh, a writer of alternative history who unsuccessfully sued for plagiarism over themes in Dan Brown's blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code, has died, his agent said today. He was 64.

US-born Leigh, who had lived in Britain for three decades, died in London on November 21 from causes related to a heart condition, the Jonathan Clowes Agency said.

More at: http://books.guardian.co.uk/danbrown/story/0,,2219843,00.html

Science in Fiction: Deadly for Sales?

2007-11-06T07:46:00.000-08:00

No, not science fiction, but science in fiction.

I've been told science in a fiction book will kill sales unless it is dumbed down to a fifth-grade level. I have figured that most of my readers were smarter than a fifth grader, but I suppose I could be wrong.

With science surrounding our lives -- from the quantum physics in cell phones to the physical underpinnings of consciousness itself -- have readers fled from science, preferring instead to marvel at the mystery and look upon scientists as the mysterious high priests of that which is incomprehensible?

If the latter is true, then what becomes of attempts of people to make sense of life and reality?

If the path to understanding leads along a path of science, and if people refuse to walk that way, they doom themselves to the selfsame mumbo-jumbo of the ancient past when spirits inhabited rocks and the Earth was the center of the universe.

Scientifically Illiterate Journalists, Polonium-210 and the Un-Asked Question

2006-12-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

News today that Interpol and officials in Hamburg, Germany investigating links to the Polonium-210 poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko, have found more people contaminated by the isotope.

One obvious question that has NOT been asked by the scientifically-challenged press is WHY Polonium-210 is turning up all over the place.

The answer can easily be found on pp. 579-580 of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, the prize-winning history by Richard Rhodes.

Rhodes' book explains that, "...another nasty characteristic of polonium caused shipping problems: for reasons never satisfactorily explained by experiment, the metal migrates from place to place and can quickly contaminate large areas. 'This isotope has been known to migrate upstream against a current of air,' notes a postwar British report on polonium, 'and to translocate under conditions where it would be doing so under its own accord.' Chemists at Los Alamos learned to look for it embedded in the walls of shipping containers...."

Few -- disgracefully few in the media -- have even a basic grasp of science which is why issues from global warming to stem cells and radiation assassinations are so poorly reported. With science and technology governing so much of human lives, those involved with the education of journalists must make sure that all journalists -- not just those aiming toward science and technology -- are competent to ask the right questions.

Truly, those who have no clue about history are doomed to misreport it.

Poland and Promotion

2006-10-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

There’s promotion and then there’s PROMOTION …

I just got back yesterday from a promo trip to Europe.

Poland was an amazing experience.

My publisher there is a small one (Philip Wilson), but not only did the publisher’s promo people do the best job I have ever experienced, but also the owners, editors and their friends and spouses all went to bat for me personally, calling every friend and acquaintance they had at television, radio and print outlets, at book stores (The largest being Empik) and government.

It was apparent to me that everyone _believed_ in my books … not just believed in a marketing sense, but at a very gut level, in their hearts.

I’m truly amazed and honored. No publisher can do that for every book, but when you experience something like this it is a lifetime memory.

There are some photos below:

Book sales get a lift from Google scan plan -- but some pubs still clueless

2006-10-06T06:25:00.000-07:00

"FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Publishers are starting to report an uptick in sales from Google Inc.'s online program that lets readers peek inside books, two years after the launch of its controversial plan to digitally scan everything in print.

"Google has been enlisting publishers to voluntarily submit their books so that Web searchers can more easily find titles related to their interests, but some fear the project could lead to piracy or exploitation of their copyrighted content.

"Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers," said Colleen Scollans, the director of online sales for Oxford University Press. She declined to provide specific figures, but said that sales growth has been "significant." Scollans estimated that 1 million customers have viewed 12,000 Oxford titles using the Google program.

The rest of the story is here.

Most telling, however, are those clueless publishers who are spending heavily to buoild their own online repositories. Can you say, "doomed?" SUUUURE you can!

People are NOT going to stumble around a collection of individual publisher sites. This is yet more money down the drain ... publishers and technology don't play well together.

Daughter of God - Indonesian Bestseller

2006-09-28T06:49:00.000-07:00

My publisher in Jakarta, Dastan Books, reports that the translation of Daughter of God was the #1 bestseller in Indonesia for the month of August and seems on track to repeat that for September.

First Space Tourist is Iranian Born Anousheh Ansari

2006-09-21T06:55:00.000-07:00

New Scientist magazine reports that, "The world's first female space tourist launched her multi-million dollar adventure on Monday, blasting off with two professional astronauts from the Baikonur Cosmodrome bound for the International Space Station (ISS).

"Ansari, a 40-year-old engineer who made her millions in the US telecommunications sector after emigrating from Iran at the age of 16, is planning to take pictures, shoot film and write an Internet travel blog in space. She will also carry out medical and biological experiments for the European Space Agency."

Is there ANY doubt that had Ansari remained in Iran, she would have been kept barefoot, pregnant and covered from head to toe?

Muslims want further apology from pope

2006-09-19T06:56:00.000-07:00

The headline of this post comes from an AP story that begins:

"Muslims in Turkey,ake a clear apology for his remarks on Islam, instead of saying only that he was 'deeply sorry' that Muslims had taken offense."

Well, as my thriller, Daughter of God, makes clear, I'm not a big defender of the Vatican, but I'd say that the Muslim death and violence over the Pope's words pretty well validates what he said.

I say the Pope's apology should wait until all the imams behind the violence apologize for 9/11 and the other terrorism committed in the name of Islam.

There is a great discussion on this over on my friend John Dvorak's Blog.

Sloppy, Sloppy, New York Times

2006-09-18T07:41:00.000-07:00

Back when I taught journalism at UCLA, I used to point to the NYTimes as an example of a well-edited newspaper.

Well, as Jayson Blair and many other instances have shown, the NYTimes today is as guilty of journalism crap as any other rag. The articles have factual holes and reek of political and other bias, faulty information gathering, failures of attribution etc.

Journalist and author Seth Mnookin points out a more recent editorial lapse in his blog, Feeding the Monster.

If you're a Red Sox fan or just want to read sports writing that would bring tears of joy to the eyes of the venerable Red Smith, you need Seth's book.

Heading for Warsaw

2006-09-18T07:30:00.000-07:00

No, no ...NOT Wausau ...

I've been amazed over the past months at the popularity of my books in the rest of the world. Turns out that foreign publishers actually realize that they have to (gasp!) promote a book . Imagine that!

Anyway, my books have been hugely popular, especially in Europe. The recent royalty check from Germany was stunning and Polish translations have done so well that my publisher there is paying for my wife and I to fly to Warsaw for a promotional tour.

When Vanity Fair flew me to Rome this spring for a photo shoot, I stopped over in Amsterdam where I met with my Dutch publisher who -- ever the professional -- showed me their upcoming promo campaign.I can only imagine how refreshing it would be to have an American publisher who showed such enthusiasm and had an appreciation for promotion.

Self-Righteous Blather From Random House

2006-06-06T15:38:00.000-07:00

From Publisher's Weekly:

"Doubleday expectedly had no comment on the story. A statement from spokesperson Suzanne Herz said: 'The verdicts in favor of Dan Brown, in two United States Federal Courts and the British High Court of Justice, speak for themselves. We have heard from one of the most prestigious copyright districts in the U.S. courts with the appeals court ratifying their decision. Those opinions carry a lot more weight than those of Mr. Mnookin and Mr. Perdue. We have no further comment about the Vanity Fair story'."

As documented on this blog and elsewhere, to accomplish what they have in court so far, Random House had to game the legal system and file a raft of briefs so filled with distortions, falsehoods and misrepresentations that they'd be nailed for perjury IF the briefs had been submitted as sworn testimony.

But RH did not file those as sworn statements for obvious reasons.

As pointed out previously, the only statements sworn under oath and under penalty of perjury are my two affidavits and those of two expert witnesses whose testimony would not be considerered by the judge.

So the things that "speak for themselves" are the Random House legal shenanigans and their successful exploitation of loopholes that have subverted any measure of justice.

This was a lawsuit that never needed to happen and never would have happened if Random House had not filed the lawsuit . Their litigation is frivolous, vindictive and an abuse of the process.

Perhaps the law has been fulfilled, but no justice has been done.

There is a lot more to the truth yet to come out.

The Vanity Fair piece could only begin to scratch the surface, but it shows what can happen when a reporter does some independent research rather than being spoon-fed by the Random House PR machine.

Bookreporter Review: "PERFECT KILLER = Perfect Thriller"

2006-03-06T13:27:00.000-08:00

Online book review destination, Bookreporter.com had some wonderfully kind things to say about Perfect Killer. I bolded a few of the passages which made my day.

"PERFECT KILLER, the latest in an exemplary series of thrillers by Lewis Perdue, is one of those rare novels that succeeds on so many levels that it is difficult to list all of them.

It certainly has the requisite number of explosions --- more so, actually --- and fisticuffs, cliffhanging situations, and a grand concept that such a book needs to make it stand head and shoulders on the shelf with its fellows. But when the dust settles and the smoke clears, Perdue's book has more than that going for it.

It is a historical treatise, in its way, wherein redemption is attainable in the present for the sins of the past; there is some (chaste, almost courtly) romance; and, perhaps most interestingly, there are extended discussions dealing with the very essence of who and what we are, individually and collectively....

While the basic good guy/bad guy lines are pretty starkly delineated in PERFECT KILLER, Perdue, through [hero, Brad]Stone, examines some fairly weighty concepts, including those related to God, free will, and the influence that quantum physics may or may not have over human behavior. The discussion goes deep enough to be interesting without diverting from the main storyline. Perdue, in fact, makes these discussions a shadowy but nonetheless visible part of the story, giving the reader plenty to think about in the midst of the action, which is practically non-stop.

The result is a work that causes the mind, as well as the heart, to race; or, to put it in the form of an equation, PERFECT KILLER = Perfect Thriller. This is a work, and an author, not to be missed.

Please click on over to Bookreporter and read the whole review

The Next Book

2006-02-22T09:22:00.000-08:00

Blog posts have not been frequent here because I'm in the midst of finishing off the outline/synopsis/plot/characters etc. -- a.k.a, "The Bible" for another book.

I'm already at about 100 double-spaced pages (close to 20,000 words) ... and probably 50 of that consists of condensations and summaries of all the various non-fiction, factual elements that will go into the book.

Another 25 pages are character biographies and resumes. I figure when I finish (this week or next, I hope) that the final "Bible" for the book will run about 25,000 words (120 pages or so).

By comparison,

Wisdom and Understanding

2006-02-16T08:47:00.000-08:00

Most people don't realize that much of the biblical of Proverbs is mostly told through a female voice, that of Wisdom -- which, in Greek, is Sophia.

This is one of the symbolic underpinnings of my books, Daughter of God (1999) (and its predecessor, Linz Testament , 1985) and The Da Vinci Legacy (1983). Certain believers in Gnosticism see Sophia as the Great Goddess.

Mary Magdalene is also seen as Sophia and the embodiment of the Great Goddess by Gnostics and a number of more contemporary worshippers of The Magdalen/Sophia/Great Goddess. This is also the same symbolism used in The Da Vinci Code where the heroine (and offspring of Jesus and Mary), is called Sophie -- the diminuative of Sophia.

Following is one of my favorite passages:

"Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. Exalt her, and she shall promote thee: she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her."
-- Proverbs 4:7-8 (King James Version)

The Jewish Publication Society has a slightly different translation of the same verses:

"The beginning of wisdom is: Get wisdom; yea, with all thy getting get understanding. Extol her, and she will exalt thee; she will bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her. "

For more enlightenment and context, head to The Internet Sacred Text Archive.

The same principles (but without the divine female involvement) can be found by searching the Holy Qur'an

Perhaps even more significantly, a search for "wisdom" in the Qur'an, reveals the following:

3. The Family Of Ìmrán (Al-Ìmrán)
003.048 And He will teach him the Scripture and wisdom, and the Torah and the Gospel,

5. The Table Spread (Al-Máída)
005.110 When Allah saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Remember My favour unto thee and unto thy mother; how I strengthened thee with the holy Spirit, so that thou spakest unto mankind in the cradle as in maturity; and how I taught thee the Scripture and wisdom and the Torah and the Gospel; and how thou didst shape of clay as it were the likeness of a bird by My permission, and didst blow upon it and it was a bird by My permission, and thou didst heal him who was born blind and the leper by My permission; and how thou didst raise the dead by My permission; and how I restrained the Children of Israel from (harming) thee when thou camest unto them with clear proofs, and those of them who disbelieved exclaimed: This is naught else than mere magic;

Reverse Boycott of Denmark

2006-02-15T07:49:00.000-08:00

Great ideas have many fathers and mothers.

See this link for a list of products to buy.

I will be working on finding more.

Reverse Boycott of Denmark?

2006-02-14T08:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I got an email from a friend who is one of the top people at a major American financial institution. His is an idea worth considering.

Lew,

It seems that how the Danes are being harmed the most is through an Islamic boycott of their goods.

The number I am hearing that they are losing in global sales is a million dollars a day. Which is a lot in absolute terms, for you and me, however their economy is chugging along at 400 million dollars a day, so less than a percent in relative terms.

However there will likely be a few bankruptcies that would not otherwise have occurred that do occur.

So maybe a way to help the Danes is to see what products are being boycotted the most and get the word out to buy these goods. Sort of like a Berlin airlift in reverse.

Perhaps the product to buy would be Lego's or something.

We Are All Danes

2006-02-12T09:14:00.000-08:00

This is a real conflict.

I have some very close personal friends here in the United States who are Muslims. Like Christians and Jews, my Muslim friends find insensitivity upsetting, but they do not riot, kill and burn when upset.

I am also a believer in freedom of speech and religion. I agree with my friend Clark Braxton that freedom of speech and religion protects hateful, insensitive speech and completely looney religions beliefs as long as they don't hurt others. In other words, regardless of whether you are a member of the communist party or the Ku Klux Klan, you have a right to express your views.

I am also very upset with the media as a whole, the ACLU and other "progressive" organizations which feel free to allow, protect and fight for hateful speech and disrespectful behavior when it comes to Jews and Christians, but who are silent now.

Newspapers seem content to allow their "arts" sections to publish articles and pictures ridiculing Christianity and Judaism. The treatment of The Passion of the Christ is a fine example. While I thought that was so bloody and violent that it was religious porn, (an opinion may disagree with) I support the right of Mel Gibson to make it and the right of his detractors to disrespect it.

But when fear and political correctness come into the picture, those who scream most boldly about freedom of speech -- The ACLU and the media -- run for cover.

The word for that is "hypocrite." Coward comes to mind as well.

Google is a particular hypocrite for censoring posts about this.

And if you cannot fight for the rights of all expression, then you stand for no freedom at all.

My posting of the Danish flag is my way of saying that freedom of expression and religion applies to everyone, not just those you agree with or are afraid of.

Please copy this flag, post it on your site. It does not imply support of insensitivity, but it shows solidarity with freedom of expression and condemnation of those who would suppress it -- whether by violence or silence.

UPDATE -- By popular demand, click here to get HTML code you can cut and paste into your site or blog.

(Clark Braxton said he is happy to serve the image off his site).

Let everyone know. The more flags that go up, the bigger the blow against tyranny, hypocrisy and cowardice.

GO SEE MORE POSTS ON THIS.

Google Censorship of Americans Continues

2006-02-11T08:13:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite cartoonists, Darrin Bell, (Candorville) is having the same censorship problems with the Google-owned Blogspot, as General Braxton (see my last post on this).

When he tries to have the cartoons visible on his blog, he finds that the Google/Blogspot system reduces them to a postage-stamp-sized image that makes them too small to see.

Bell had to post the cartoons on a separate server (his own) in order to have them appear the correct size.

Go here to see what I mean: The Candorville Courier: About those Mohammed Cartoons...

This is a disgraceful situation and shows just how fragile the so-called freedom of expression is in the blogosphere.

Google Gets Evil

2006-02-07T10:54:00.000-08:00

Forget about Google's censorship in China, they're doing it at home too!

Check out General Clark Braxton's tale about how Google, which owns blogspot, deleted a post he made about the Muhammad cartoon issue.

He's also got a link to the original post that Google and its Blogspot subsidiary could not handle.

Could Terrorists Hijack Your Brain?

2006-02-01T06:41:00.000-08:00

This article from MIT's Technology Review offers a scenario which I first described in 1993 when I used it as the factual foundation for Slatewiper.

The concept was deemed so "far fetched" that it took almost 10 years to get published. It's one of four thrillers I haver written that have come true.

Your Killers for Nothing and Your Books for Free

2006-01-30T11:24:00.000-08:00

The first installment of my FREE podcast of the entire text of Perfect Killer is available here: lperdue.libsyn.com/.

I am reading the book myself and have a PHENOMENAL new respect for those who read audio books. I found that I have gotten better and better as I go along, but the task is far harder than I ever imagined.

Random House: The Rich Little of Publishing?

2006-01-25T07:04:00.000-08:00

There are few today who can skewer with humor better than Don Asmussen at the San Francisco Chronicle who has penned a hilarious stab at Literary Hoaxes including Random House.

Scroll down this 'toon and see his conclusions that Jesus actually WAS Mary Magdalene, that Winona Ryder was part Christ's inner circle and...

... that what Socrates REALLY said was, "An unexaggerated life is not worth not having actually lived."

And concluding that, "Sure, whole religions and moral codes may have been based on little more than a 'literary Rich Little.' But do we care?"

Of course, publishers have long skated along some questionable lines in their attempts to boost sales and marketing, but the Random House ploys are truly world class.

How could RH take things to such a whole new level? Perhaps the answer can be found in the release of a new scientific study, "Small brain means bigger sex appeal" which found an inverse relationship between balls and brains. Hmmmm, so this means that when you "sex up" a campaign, you get a smaller ... ?

Guess size DOES count!

Author Pseudonyms

2006-01-12T06:37:00.000-08:00

The following is in response to reader Laura LaHaye's inquiry about the use of pseudonyms.

I've just read (and blurbed) a mystery manuscript by a highly talented and accomplished author of many books -- and whose name every DLer would know.

This author has used a pseudonym because his/her publisher feels that, despite good midlist sales, the author will never have a "break-through" book under his/her own name. The choice is to try and become a "new" writer waiting to be "discovered" or no contract and go find another publisher.

Call it short-sighted, stupid or whatever you might, this pervasive "lottery mentality" shows the swamp into which most of the publishing industry has sunk, mainly because it cannot figure out how to market and promote books.

As for the author I blurbed? I hope he/she makes it. He/she deserves it. I hope the blurb helps out.

For a great discussion of other reasons that authors use pseudonyms, check out BookThink

Drink the Wine; Read the Book; Vote for the Villain

2006-01-10T12:19:00.000-08:00

This is a first-ever for both books and wine.

Drink the Wine: http://www.castellodavinci.com/ (see this site for the unified promotional campaign)

Read the Book: http://www.perfectkiller .com

Vote for the Villain: http://www.braxton2008.org

Dan Noreen, Proprietor, Sonoma Wine Exchange stands next to the book and wine display.

Click here for a close-up of the display, including the wording on the "Killer Wine" poster

NYT: Rejected by the Publishers

2006-01-04T08:23:00.000-08:00

This sort of thing happens periodically and illustrates the insanity and foibles of publishing. And makes a far more exquisite comment thany any words I could muster. Read it and weep!

From Today's New York Times

By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

Published: January 4, 2006

Submitted to 20 publishers and agents, the typed manuscripts of the opening chapters of two books were assumed to be the work of aspiring novelists. Of 21 replies, all but one were rejections. Sent by The Sunday Times of London, the manuscripts were the opening chapters of novels that won Booker Prizes in the 1970's. One was "Holiday," by Stanley Middleton; the other was "In a Free State," by Sir V. S. Naipaul, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature. Mr. Middleton said he wasn't surprised. "People don't seem to know what a good novel is nowadays," he said. Mr. Naipaul said: "To see something is well written and appetizingly written takes a lot of talent, and there is not a great deal of that around. With all the other forms of entertainment today, there are very few people around who would understand what a good paragraph is."

Read the rest of the article.

Redefining the Meaning of a "Killer Wine"

2005-12-20T06:48:00.000-08:00

This post is about a real wine from a Napa Valley estate which may or may not exist and whose proprietor may or may not be chairman of Defense Therapeutics but who is definitely running for president in 2008 (see video of announcement).

The $25 a bottle of Xantaeus – a small-production Napa Valley wine -- is a classic Bordeaux blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and petit verdot grapes from prized vineyards in the trendy Rutherford and Stags Leap appellations.

You can buy the small-production wine online (castellodavinci.com), or at a fortunate few and very elite wine stores and restaurants in California's wine country.

But Castello Da Vinci, may or may not be the lavish estate atop a volcanic knoll along the Silverado trail whose owner may or may not be former Army General Clark Braxton who announced his candidacy for President Wednesday night at a gathering in Sonoma Valley.

The 150-plus people gathered at Cline Cellars sipped the first release of Xantaeus 2003, noshed on a lavish spread of wine country food and. listened to Braxton as he stood Patton-style in front of a giant American flag. He told the attentive crowd that Democrats and Republicans had failed the nation and that his independent presidency was vital if the country were to have "a future worth living."

That may or may not be true.

War Hero Braxton may or may not have sustained a head wound in Vietnam, but that did not matter to the people who lined up after the speech to grab one of his campaign buttons and to purchase case-lots of the rare Xantaeus wine they had tasted with the hors d'ouvres.

And to buy signed copies of my "investigative thriller," Perfect Killer which features General Braxton who may or may not exist and his estate which may or may not exist and his Xantaeus 2003 red wine which certainly does exist in a very tasty space of reality.

Independent Denial

2005-12-12T08:12:00.000-08:00

I was in one of my favorite independent book stores yesterday and overheard the following conversation:

INDIEBOOKSELLER: "There are so many books published these days, thank goodness there are stores like ours to sort through what is good to read."
PET CUSTOMER: "Uhm, absolutely."

INDIEBOOKSELLER: "After all, chains are just big warehouses with too many titles to choose from. How could a customer know what's good to read. Readers really need us to make those sorts of decisions for them."
PET CUSTOMER: "Er ... Right."

INDIEBOOKSELLER: "It makes no sense to go to a big chain when people can come here and get a selection we've worked hard to produce after sorting through all the chaff."
PET CUSTOMER: "Totally." Then leaves without purchasing anything.

I really like the store owners and want them to succeed. But this rationalization does not bode well.

So what can they do with limited shelf space and limited funds to add titles?

1. Greet every person as they walk into the store. It's a small store and that's not hard.

2. Get rid of the clique. Make every person feel welcome, not just pet customers.

3. Be enthusiastic about every reading taste. Fake it if you think romances, mysteries and thrillers are beneath you. Your bottom line is beneath you too if you foster that 'tude.

4. Embrace online. Have a "Book Sleuth" terminal (or several) like Borders. Encourage people to use it for special orders of stock you don't have. It may take a bit longer for the b0ok to arrive than it would with Amazon, but you can offer free shipping and a friendly email to them upon arrival. That email is also a great and acceptable (non-spam) opportunity to say something positive about new arrivals, events, signings etc.

The Charge: Pandering. The Verdict: Guilty!

2005-12-11T10:06:00.000-08:00

I received an email which charged me with pandering to the politically correct.

"I noticed that when you blogged about book stores, you began with the pandering plea (and I quote): ' first choice is ALWAYS a well-stocked independent bookstore with knowledgeable and friendly staff"."

"Really? Sometimes isn't it a pleasure to wander into a B&N or Borders and just wander around and marvel at all the stock? All the titles? Who cares if the person behind the counter is channeling Thomas Jefferson? Why do you think you need to apologize for liking the experience at a chain? Didn't you write that as a way to pander to the chain bashers?"

That was the indictment.

I plead guilty.

Amazon Bashing

2005-12-08T07:22:00.000-08:00

Lovers of the mystery genre are a lucky lot to have The DorothyL web site, an astoundingly active discussion forum named for legendary writer Dorothy L. Sayers.

This moderated forum is lively, informative and always interesting. But I'm continually amazed at a steady drumbeat of Amazon bashing there and elsewhere.

Amazon has its flaws. And given my preferences, I'd rather wander and browse the shelves in a well-stocked book store, especially a friendly independent with good inventory and staffed by knowledgeable people.

But I can't keyword search the physical shelves and often I am looking for books too obscure or slow-selling to be stocked in a physcal store. Amazon allows that.

Amazon offers a backlist of books that no physical book store could afford and thus allows continual residual sales of books that would otherwise be OUT of print. And if it is out of print, there are links to secondhand booksellers who can usually fill the need.

Of course, there are online alternatives to Amazon, among them Barnes and Noble and Booksense. Borders online has been coopted by Amazon. Powell's has a great site as does Alibris and Abe.

I've been pulling for Booksense for years, hoping this site for independent book stores would succeed. But independent booksellers are ... well, independent and not always in tune with the buying public. The Booksense site is awkward to use and fails to offer many of the search, shipping and account management capabilities as Amazon does.

So, give your local independent a first try (if you feel welcome there) and develop your own online sources. But despite Amazon's flaws, it deserves some respect for offering valuable services found nowhere else.

Don't Change, Sue.

2005-12-05T07:16:00.000-08:00

Marketing expert and blogger Seth Godin has some pithy and relevant comments in his post "Don't Change, Sue."

While his piece uses the cigarette and auto industries as examples, his comments are every bit as relevant to music and book publishing when he says,:

"In the face of change, reactionary stuck companies don't look to marketing or innovation. They sue."

And if you ever thought correct punctuation wasn't relevant, just think of how the headline's meaning would change without the comma.

(Yes, technically it probably should be a semi-colon or perhaps a period, but with no punctuation mark at all, we have a vgery different meaning.)

Will Random House Learn from the Sony/BMG Fiasco?

2005-12-01T07:20:00.000-08:00

Over at The Da Vinci Crock, Kodewulf posted the following comment:: "I know this is a bit off-topic, but if you see what Sony did with the new DRM fiasco, then it's very easy to understand all the underhandedness that Random House are displaying. It seems that Bertelsmann got a finger in the pie with everything that's shady."

In fact, Kodewulf pre-empted a blog post I was going to talk about here because the Random House/Bertelsmann connection with Sony/BMG's covertly installed hacker rootkit came to mind when I read about Random House's own digital "pay per page" project.

Significantly, nothing that Random House has announced mentions any sort of digital rights management controls or system. Will purchasers of material be allowed the same sort of fair use as one who purchases a dead-tree version? Will purchasers be allow to print out the pages? Cut and paste? Will they have to buy special viewer software (can you say "Peanut Reader?").

All of those restrictions are among top reasons that ebooks of any sort have not caught on with consumers ... that plus reader devices that suck. However, I was initially excited about ebooks for my Palm PDA ... until I bought Peanut Reader and fiund that -- I could not print, underline, cut and paste etc ... what a load of ...

One might hope that they'd learn from the Sony/BMG fiasco and blizzard of lawsuits ... but then, you'd think that publisher's would have learned from the experience of the music industry in general --- something that has not happened.

More on GooglePhobia

2005-11-29T13:22:00.000-08:00

New York Magazine columnist John Heilemann has written a scathing/funny/pathetic tale about GooglePhobia which reflects life and reality a lot more than the Authors Guild and American Association of Publishers would prefer:

Scathing: "And then there’s the book business. Now, it’s fair (albeit unkind) to say that publishers have earned a reputation as the most stubbornly analog of media concerns: If music and movie companies are dinosaurs in the Darwinian scheme of electronic evolution, publishers are moss-draped invertebrates still sloshing around in the primordial soup. Compared with book people, even newspaper people are a more Web-savvy species."

Funny: "In France, Jacques Chirac has ordered his minions to gin up a French and German search engine—on the grounds that Google is (wait for it) a tool of U.S. cultural imperialism."

Pathetic: What the publishing industry is showing, actually, is that its own stance is about more than books as well. It’s about posturing and pride, ego and vanity, about the defensiveness of an industry that’s been called “flat-earthers” one too many times for its liking."

Read this article. Every word of it. The future is here regardless of whether the writing/publishing world wants to acknowledge it. But then you knew I felt that way if you read Publisaurus Rex, my previous post on this

THE Times (of London) Weighs in on Google

2005-11-28T07:32:00.000-08:00

In a great article, Is Google Books going to kill publishing? The Times offers a series of rational comments from writers, readers and others on the debate as well as an opportunity to add your own thoughts.

Remarkably free of the polemical demonization that dominates the debate in the U.S., Times readers offer an ability to discuss the matter in a way that seems calculated to point toward a solution, rather than to polarize.

Two of the many perspectives in the article include:

"As a small academic publisher I think people are missing the point. I am required by Law to give six libraries in England copies of every single book I publish. This requirement does not give these libraries permission to reproduce the text in any way. If libraries such as the BL or the Bodleian then allow Google to scan the text of my publications and reproduce the contents whether in total or by index they are allowing my copyright to be infringed." Steven Halliwell, High Wycombe, Bucks

"William Rees-Mogg does Google a disservice, in my opinion. The new book search service is a amazing facility to search for new books and to be able to read a representative sample of pages. Not all of these pages are available, as to meet the copyright rules a certain number of pages are restricted. As a researcher into the history of molecular biology in this country, I have found Google book search invaluable. It will surely promote the sales of new books by providing would-be purchasers with the means of sampling them online before buying them." Martin Packer, Birmingham, West Midlands

You, Blog Reader, Are Invited to the Launch of a New Wine

2005-11-28T07:05:00.001-08:00

You are cordially invited to attend the unveiling of General Clark Braxton’s release of Castello Da Vinci’s Xantaeus.

This first ever Xantaeus, Cabernet Sauvignon (produced to his demanding palate by Cline Cellars) will be released to the general public on the evening of Wednesday, December 14th, 2005.

It's not unusual for to have a character sipping one of the novelist's favorite vintages. But what's never been done (before Xantaeus) is for the wine to start in the book and end up in a bottle.

What's more, General Braxton (Chairman of Defense Therapeutics) is featured as a major character in my new thriller, Perfect Killer.

The event will be held from 1700-1930 in the Barrel Room at Cline Cellars, 24737 HWY 121, Sonoma.

RSVP by December 2, 2005; 707.940.4082.

Light hors d’oeuvres and Castello Da Vinci Xantaeus 2003 will be served.

Please download and print out the official invitation and present it at the door.

A map of the event location may be found here.

How the Castello Da Vinci Brand Came To Be

My newest investigative thriller, Perfect Killer, is as much fact as it is fiction.

Perhaps more fact than fiction as evidenced by

- the Freedom of Information Act documents,
- the bibliography,
- Col. Gabriel's Afterword,
- the Virtual Tour and
- especially by the real people in the book. I interviewed many people including General Clark Braxton (U.S. Army, Retired)

One afternoon, following one of the many sessions with Gen. Braxton at Castello Da Vinci, he took me on a tour of his remarkable wine cellar carved out of his estate's the volcanic knoll overlooking the Napa Valley. We tasted one of the rare bottles of his own privately vinted wine.

General Braxton mentioned that he had many demands for his wine, many more than he could possibly fulfill. Besides, he stressed, the government regulations, permits and bureaucratic torture associated with selling wine to the general public was more than he wanted to deal with. "I will not be held hostage by some power-hungry bureaucrat," were his exact words.

Over the next several months, we talked about this and I suggested that perhaps we could find a fine vintner willing to make a limited amount of specially made wine for retail sales.

That led me to Cline Cellars. I've known Fred and Nancy Cline for years. Their children go to school with mine. And significantly -- my wife and I have probably consumed more Cline Cellars wine than any other single winery in the world.

The current release of Xantaeus Red 2003 is the joint venture that resulted. While most wineries and wine brands start with a fantasy of some sort, the Castello Da Vinci, Xantaeus 2003 is the first to make the transition from fiction to fact.

Cline Cellars, General Braxton and I are all partners in this new venture which we hope will bring you great pleasure, sipped thoughtfully as you read your copy of Perfect Killer.

Search Engine Spamming

2005-11-28T07:05:00.000-08:00

Author and writing maven M.J. Rose has a recent blog entry about authors being slimed by search engine spamming. Not a new phenomenon, but one catching up to the writing craft.

The first perpetrators of this sleazy practice tended to be porn sites who'd load up their html with benign words, names and terms that ranked high on the most-frequently searched words lists

It was later picked up by penny-stock promoters who'd send out a news release containing the stock symbols of far better-known companies knowing that the search engines would pick them up in searches.

Spews (Review Spam): One Path to Honesty in Amazon Reviews

2005-11-27T09:11:00.000-08:00

Review spam happens.

They're easily spotted and happen to most published authors.

They're easily spotted: all flame and trash-talk concentrating on blasting the author as much as the book, often more. They frequently go on for paragraph after paragraph, fixated on a typo or similar mistake. They often come in waves, reviews with similar words and syntax indicating their identical origins: an anonymous someone with a grudge and enough time and motive to register a lot of fake accounts.

A couple of years ago, when huge numbers of similarities were spotted between Da Vinci Code and my previous books, Da Vinci Legacy and Daughter of God, there was a blizzard of Amazon reviews trashing my books. It was determined that most of these came from a handful of people who were logging in with numerous fake accounts.

Amazon,to their credit, investigated and removed all of the reviews where they could determine that the reviewers were fake. Some suspect reviews remained, but they could not be conclusively determined to be fake. It was the best Amazon could do then, but they have better tools now.

This sort of situation (not just mine) is one of the key reasons that Amazon started the "Real Name" system.

With this existing system, Amazon could eliminate or curtail fake review flames by:

(a) Restricting reviews only to those with Real Name badges, or
(b) Allowing reviews by all, but only allowing ratings by Real Name reviewers to count toward the star ratings.

Obviously this is no guarantee against bad reviews, but it does help assure that the reviewers are real people and not robo-trashes and people with a grudge and no life.

Finally, is there a good word for spam reviews? I could think about "Spamazon" but that's too restrictive because the same spam reviews often get cut and pasted on blogs and forums.

We have "splog" for spam blog posts and "spim" for spam on AIM ... How about "spew" for "SPam reviEW?" It also has an appropriate connotation?

Publisaurus Rex Versus Google

2005-11-26T08:39:00.000-08:00

I suppose if you don't have any useful or innovative ideas of your own, a company like Google can be pretty frightening. So, if you don't have any original ideas, then you need to sue to kill those who DO have them.

As you're probably read by now, Google is being by the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers (AAP) for copyright infringement.

From all the misleading sturm, drang und hype coming from the plaintiffs, you'd think that Google was planning to out-pirate Johnny Depp by stealing every published word on the planet and posting it on a Kazaa or BitTorrent file-sharing service.

But ... no.

Google is being sued for having the good sense to scan books in order to make them searchable online much as Amazon has done. The books would then be available for purchase with appropriate payments to copyright holders.

Think back a little. When Amazon made books searchable, the industry freaked out, afraid of a new idea that had dropped from the sky like a Coke bottle in the African bush. I thought it was a good idea then and a better one now. My books are searchable on Amazon and, if anything, it has helped sales. I've used the Amazon searches for research and ended up buying books I would never have considered otherwise.

Google is just trying to do the same thing on a bigger basis. So why are the Authors Guild and the AAP really suing?

Well, fellow blogger, author and publisher John Battelle says it best:

"I have been both a publisher and an author, and I have to tell you, these guys sue for one reason and one reason alone, from what I can tell: Their legacy business model is imperiled, and they fear change. Of course, if they can get out of their own way, they'll end up making more money. But that never stopped these guys - the MPAA, the RIAA, and now, the AAP."

I have also been a publisher of books and periodicals and what I see here is a "dog in the manger" insecurity at work. The industry knows it's working with ideas that are SO last century, but persists in living in a state of denial rooted in literary arrogance.

In a Wall Street Journal OpEd piece, Cameron Stracher -- a writer and publisher of the New York Law School Law Review -- drew a solid conclusion when he wrote:

"[S]canning itself creates no revenue for Google and doesn't deprive copyright holders of income. It is only when a reader purchases a book that Google derives revenue.... Thus, its scanning ought to be protected by the "fair use" doctrine.

"Publishers....sound just like the music industry, which abdicated one of the greatest opportunities in tech history to the Napsters. Lawsuits can't stop innovation by bottling it up in court.... When corporate interests get in the way, the only people who are hurt are the public and the creators of that content. Authors may think they're protecting their rights; but they're protecting the rights of publishers to make another dime off their backs. Authors might even welcome such exploitation if publishers really had plans to make a dime (and pay them their 12% royalty). But history teaches us that you can't teach an old dinosaur new tricks."

With the exception of one or two publishing companies, I have a lot more faith in Google to advance my writing career that than I do in Publisaurus Rex.

Too Many Blogs

2005-11-26T08:38:00.000-08:00

I've had people tell me that I have way too many blogs.

They're right.

Other than keeping the Da Vinci Code, Random House/Sony litigation mess separate at The Da Vinci Crock and the Dan Brown information at Writopia, this blog will take the place of all the others: Perfect Killer included.