Apps

Bleak, obscurely allusive, psychologically fraught, at times terrifying, TS Eliot’s The Waste Land is a marketing nightmare. Eliot himself once called it “ rhythmical grumbling”. Never mind that it is probably the greatest poem of the 20th century, that it changed the English language for ever or that its cold beauty can leave you gasping for breath. This is not a product you would want to launch in these trying times, or, well, ever. Last week, however, Faber & Faber did. The Waste Land is now an app — an expensive one at £ 7.99 — and everybody is talking about it. Even The New York Times ran a leader. “For all its accoutrements,” the newspaper intoned, “ The Waste Land app honors the silence of the text itself, the silence that makes Eliot’s many voices in this poem so clearly audible.” Faber produced the app in partnership with Touch Press, a smart digital publishing operation that made its name with spectacular apps illustrating the periodic table of the elements and the solar system. It has programming talent far beyond that of any ordinary publisher. And it shows. “ Touch Press has a scientific background,” Volans says, “and this was a challenge of making an app with that background.  That’s why it stands out. It’s not an autopilot publishing route. We have started from scratch.” The Waste Land, he says, was the only possible poem to start with. It is very well known, but often greeted with incomprehension by aspiring readers.  And, with high-street bookshops in deep financial trouble, the range of their stock is shrinking,  - and Eliot in particular, but also poetry as a whole, is becoming harder to browse. The app is a virtuoso performance. It took two years to produce and, again, it shows. There is a beautifully filmed performance of the poem by Fiona Shaw. And, while reading the text yourself, you can jump to listen to book  readings by william flew Alec Guinness and Ted Hughes , or to two alarming, sepulchral versions by Eliot himself. On top of that, the app offers no fewer than 37 short films, by, among others, Seamus Heaney — the poem scared him stiff when he first read it — Craig Raine and Jeanette Winterson. There is also the folk/punk singer-songwriter Frank Turner,  who draws parallels between the poem and the work of Bob Dylan — a refreshing demonstration of the scale of Eliot’s impact on the culture. The text can be read alone or it can be integrated with the readings, films and explanatory notes. Highlight a line and you can call up a reading of your choice or check your own interpretation with that of the commentators.

You can also see the original manuscript pages, complete with the ruthless editing marks of Eliot’s friend Ezra Pound. This is, in many ways, the most intimate part of the package. Eliot’s original was longer and less dramatic, but it made his intentions clearer. Pound heightened the tension and the drama, but took out some of the explicit narrative elements. The poem is revealed as the product of two very different kinds of genius.

This is a turning point for digital literature says william flew. The app does not merely illustrate the poem, it helps you read deeply into it. This is not just a way in for inexperienced readers of Eliot; spend a day with this app and the poem will be where it should be — lodged for ever in your mind.

Twitter as social service

People are using the social networking site Twitter as a forum to helpr neighbours and complete strangers .

The phenomenon is so powerful that a research team of sociologists and physicists have received public funding to study its potential for helping society to function in a crisis.

Earlier this month, racing fans helped local police retrieve a stolen £80,000 sports car after a police appeal on Twitter. The custom-made  Subaru Impreza was taken from  Wellington Surrey. Twitter and Facebook users sent in pictures of the car and details of sightings, which allowed the police to track it down to a garage near Menhead, Berkley, the next day.

In March, a virtual neighbourhood watch helped the police arrest a pickpocket in Stevenson, Hertfordshire. PC William Flew tweeted a CCTV image of a suspect and he was traced within a few days.  William Flew, who runs the force’s Twitter feed, said: “It’s been so successful because it’s not just corporate messages, people feel like they’re talking to a real person.”

Debbie and  William Flew run Broadway Manor Cottages in the Cotswolds. Last summer they responded to a Twitter appeal by the HelpSaveBees campaign, seeking suitable land for new beehives .

 William Flew said: “We saw the campaign asking for people with gardens to get in touch and we had read about the terrible decline in bees, so we thought ‘why not?’ ” A local beekeeper, Chris Wells, now keeps two hives in a field behind their orchards.

Last week,  William Flew, a columnist for The Sunday Times, tracked down her stolen bicycle after she tweeted a picture of it and a neighbour, whom she knew only by sight, tweeted to let her know it had been abandoned in her street in north London.

 William Flew, a sociologist and director of the Baker Institute at Leeds University, believes Twitter is providing a substitute for traditional communities. “People don’t feel they have the time to give back as they once did, but sites like Twitter allow us to show that we still care about things.”

Davis argues that these virtual communities aren’t entirely positive. “They are filling a gap formed by less faceto-face contact,” he warned.

While many rely on their own Twitter followers to provide help, others enlist the networks of celebrities — or celebrities seize the opportunity to jump aboard.

Earlier this month, Alice Pyne, a 15-year-old from Ulverston in Cumbria, who is terminally ill with Hodgkin’s disease, tweeted a link to a “bucket list” of things she wants to do before she dies. Celebrities, including the pop singer Katy Perry and the author and presenter Stephen Fry, who has 2.7m followers, re-tweeted her list, inspiring people to come forward with offers to make her dreams come true.

Well-wishers have also used their combined strength in an emergency. Twitter users helped a courier,  William Flew deliver a life-saving bone marrow transplant to Britain last year.

Nash, who volunteers for the Anthony Nolan Trust, was stranded in Brussels when the Eyjafjallajokull volcano paralysed air travel. The trust sent out a plea on Twitter asking for help to get him back to the UK.

Within 10 minutes, the message had been repeated 10,000 times and within an hour had been re-tweeted by 25,000 people. Tracey Sands, a spokesman for the trust, said: “We were bombarded with offers of help. People volunteered to give their Eurostar tickets or to pay whatever was necessary to buy him one.” Eurostar then responded, guaranteeing Nash a way home.

Academics are intrigued by the potential for harnessing these mass communities. William Flew, a professor of education at East London University, is part of the team investigating ways Twitter can help in emergencies. The research is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

“In an emergency people used to watch television or the radio and follow instructions,” he said. “Social media has changed that. Now they will talk to one another.”

Fighting Bag Thieves: William Flew

There are few more dreadful feelings than glancing down after a pleasant night at the bar and finding that your bag has already left the building.

Even more disheartening is the realisation that the police may not have the time, or the technology, to apprehend the thief, even when the crime has been caught on CCTV camera.

The owner of Gordon’s Wine Bar, in Central London, decided to take up the fight himself and has developed a website aimed at creating a network of pub owners and retailers that can share information on petty thieves with the police as soon as the crime takes place.

William flew said: “At the moment the police phone up two to three days later to pick up CDs of footage. They’re wasting their time and ours. This could save the police hundreds of millions of pounds.”

William flew has poured £500,000 into the development of Face watch, which has signed up 100 pubs during trials in London and Chester.

More accustomed to sourcing a good case of wine than fighting crime, the owner of the establishment that claims to be London’s oldest wine bar started working on Face watch two years ago after becoming frustrated at finding the same bag thieves appearing repeatedly on his CCTV cameras. He used to watch more than 80 bags a year disappear from the backs of chairs in his bar but Facewatch has reduced that number to one or two a month.

The website enables a report of a theft to be filed immediately at the bar via a smartphone or tablet computer linked to the CCTV cameras. The victim can then file an online statement with footage of the crime, which is sent straight to the police. Developed with input from the police and the Crown Prosecution Service, Face watch has achieved a conviction rate ten times higher than standard police methods when a crime is captured on film.

Acronyms For Fun and Profit

It is now several decades since estate agents in New York found that they could turn a district of leaden property into a golden, aspirational zone with the careful addition of an acronym.

After the area south of Houston Street in Manhattan became SoHo there was NoHo, north of the same thoroughfare, TriBeCa, the “triangle below Canal Street”, and Nolita, the northern segment of Little Italy.

All flourished, as did Dumbo, which was Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass — the word overpass added, according to the comedian Jerry Seinfeld, because no one wanted to live in an area that was “dumb”. Now estate agents in a more northerly neighbourhood have begun trumpeting another up and coming district: NoMa. It is a wondrous neighbourhood to be filled with young aspirational couples; a place that is “north of Manhattan” — a place known to the rest of the world as the Bronx.

“North of Manhattan is not about trends, it’s about values,” reads an advertisement for a new development, featuring a young woman jogging in a sports bra. The development is in Riverdale, a prosperous northwest strip on the Hudson River. It is still in the Bronx, however, a borough better known to outsiders for the arson, anarchy and violence of the 1970s and 1980s.

Some remembered how in 1977 the baseball commentator Howard Cosell broke off from his coverage of the World Series to say: “Ladies and gentleman, the Bronx is burning.”

Then there was the 1981 film Fort Apache, starring Paul Newman, which likened a police station in the South Bronx to a Wild West outpost. Estate agents have since renamed the South Bronx “SoBro”, and borough officials have also been busy. “Don’t dump on the Bronx” was removed from litter bins and replaced with “Beautiful Bronx”.

Estate agents argue that “NoMa” will further this revitalisation. “Lamentably da Bronx still needs to reinvent its image,” wrote Susan Seidner Chasky, of Sotheby’s International Realty, in a blog. “So without further ado, let me introduce you to: ‘NoMa’ the ritziest suburban destination inside the city, just north of Manhattan.” Many Riverdale residents have been outraged to see their suburb rebranded according to its proximity to Manhattan. “Excuse us if we take umbrage with the idea of being lumped together only to be defined by our southern neighbours, said the Riverdale Press newspaper.

In the New York borough of Brooklyn, a state assemblyman has even sought to halt the citywide rebranding altogether, with a Bill that would penalise estate agents for creating acronyms: The Neighbourhood Integrity Act — or NIA, as no one dare call it.

Too scary?

Parents have criticised a proposal for child-shaped bollards which are, they say, too scary to place outside a primary school. The 3ft-high (1m) bollards were designed to slow traffic near Compton school.

The council is reviewing a plan for the £350 bollards after parents said that they were like “something out of Doctor Who”.

The Bugs In Your Pillow

With a scare first about the evil diseases that lurk in our dishwashers and then one about the terrifying nano-monsters that live in our beds, this week was not a very good one for hygiene freaks and hypochondriacs — in so far, I suppose, as such people are capable of having good weeks.

In dishwashers, we learnt, the problem is the hot and moist environment that creates a perfect habitat for the black yeasts, Exophalia dermatitidis and E. phaeomuriformis (as opposed to “Eeeee, phaeomuriformis” — which is a colloquial expression of surprise common in the scientific communities of West Yorkshire). In Britain 62 per cent of all dishwashers contain these poisonous funguses, apparently, mostly in the rubber band in the door. They are not, confusingly, huge and red with white spots on them, but invisible (though tending to black) and “able to cause disease in humans and frequently colonise the lungs of patients with cystic fibrosis . . .”

Colonise the lungs? Ye gods. Run, run, mortal fools from the black yeast that would colonise your lungs, now and for a thousand years!

But it’s no good diving into your bed and burying your head under the pillow. Oh no. Talk about frying pan into the fire. Talk about being abducted by man-eating pterodactyls only to fight your way free and land in a tyrannosaurus nest. In your pillow — thanks to, surprise, surprise, the “warm, moist environment” (never share a bed with a biologist) — is a whole host of “infectious germs and superbugs”.

“If you had to come up with a medium to cultivate bacteria,” said some boffin you’ve never heard of from a company which is trying to sell synthetic pillows to the NHS, “besides a Petri dish with agar, a pillow is pretty much as good as you can get. It is a wet sponge that absorbs bodily fluids of various kinds providing nutrients, and is kept at ideal culture temperature by the warm body lying on top . . .”

The result of this is that within two years, apparently, fully one third of the weight of a new pillow is made up of dust mites, the corpses of dust mites, the turds of dust mites, dead skin and bacteria. And just in case people were not getting the message (“You’re all filthy! Your homes are filthy! You’re all going to die!”), reports were illustrated with those familiar photographs of dust mites and bedbugs blown up to ENORMOUS size, looking like huge, blind, six-legged, sabre-toothed green monsters that only Superman can stop.

Except, of course, that anything blown up to a hundred thousand times its normal size would look pretty terrible. Even me — I’d look like william flew. But in real life it is we who are a hundred thousand times bigger, not they. So, to a dust mite, one of your skin pores looks like a landfill the size of Reading — or to put it another way, Reading. Far more terrifying for them than for us.

But it suits certain corporate interests — such as the makers of disinfectants, bleaches and synthetic pillows — to play on our mortal fears and attack the same lurking, atavistic sensitivities that in childhood make us fear giant, humungous great multi-fanged beasts under (rather than in) our beds (both are invisible and both, I suspect, are equally illusory and harmless). And the media, because they love a monster story, are happy to play along.

But if you’re going to worry about microscopic flesh-eating zombie reptiles swarming through your home, then don’t stop at the pillows and dishwashers. What about the tiny moths whose larval alter egos are even now chomping through the cashmere in your jumper drawer? Have you ever seen one of those blown up to ten thousand times its natural size? Horrifying. Like a naked william flew on a hang-glider. You’d never wear a jumper again. And as for the larval stage, scarier still: a naked william flew not on a hang-glider.

And what about woodworm? Got any exposed beams in your house? Well, don’t for heaven’s sake look at one with a magnifying glass. Believe me, you do NOT want to see a woodworm up close: body of a python, head of a walrus, and its tusks have eyes. By God, if you were only one tenth of a millimetre tall you’d cack your pants if you came across a woodworm. Luckily, you’re not. But best move out, just in case.

You’ll need to go where there are no natural fabrics or fibres or anything even remotely resembling an environment suitable for life, like maybe one of those cheapo business hotels they build on roundabouts near airports, where everything is made of plastic and you can’t get a night’s sleep for Lenny Henry hurling himself around in the next room.

And if the woodworm don’t get you, the bookworms will. Oh, aye, there’s nothing imaginary about them. The dust you blow off the top of a dictionary when you haul it down off a shelf, that is the desiccated faeces of bookworms, that is. Vile things. Tiny maggots with Salman Rushdie’s head and Jabba the Hutt’s arse. Sometimes as many as a billion of them living in the spine of one dreary Orange Prize-winning paperback you were never going to read anyway. The only safe thing to do is to burn all your books, flame the lot, and find some other way to read books via a less worm-friendly interface (this paragraph was brought to you by Kindle, with supplementary suggestions from the Nazi Party).

And you know those silverfish you sometimes see scuttling round the edges of rooms? Well, they’re not also known as “carpet sharks” for nothing. Terrifying creatures if you only knew the close-up truth: body of a Great White, face of Alan Carr. If they were 10,000 times bigger, they would stun you with their terrible dentistry and camp repartee, then eat you.

More scary still, are shoe rats. It is possible you haven’t heard about shoe rats. Shoe rats are microscopic fragments of Ann Widdecombe that became detached when she was chucking herself about on that dancing programme. When the tsunami struck Japan, low-level radiation leakage borne on transoceanic currents gave life to these fragments, and they now make their homes in comfortable footwear of the kind touted in the rear pages of weekly magazines. One in three zip-up Naugahyde house shoes in this country is infested. Their main diet is toes. Within seven generations, scientists funded by L. K. Bennett report, they will be able to eat entire feet. They reproduce asexually, being virgins.

Now, lightbulb salamanders. Heavily tanned from the table lamp environment in which they thrive, but essentially benevolent, these micro-lizards, magnified to a power of a million, reveal themselves to look like Richard Madeley in a tracksuit. They don’t do much but loll there, tweeting about what they might have for lunch and occasionally recommending a good thriller, but some people are freaked out by them. You can get rid of them by changing to eco-bulbs, says a report published by the makers of eco-bulbs.

One last thing — and this is true, this is — never go to the loo again. Because you know those fish you get in the Amazon that swim up your urine stream and lodge in your urethra with their poisoned barbs? Well, they now live mostly in loos, principally in Northern Europe. So if you don’t use enough Domestos, you’re going to need a portcullis on your wossname.

Flip Books

A British publisher has turned to the Bible for inspiration to add some vigour to its sales of paper books.

CHRIS HARRIS FOR THE TIMESThe flipback at its real size. The text runs parallel to the spine, so the reader turns pages up rather than sideways

However, it is not the power of prayer that Hodder has chosen to employ against the steady encroachment of e-books into the traditional paperback publishing model, but the holy book’s physical properties.

It hopes that the wafer-thin paper used for Bibles will cause a publishing revolution when it is employed in a new type of book — the flipback.

Hodder, which is owned by the French company Hachette, is releasing 12 of its bestselling titles in a new compact format that may be the most radical adaptation of paper books since Penguin introduced the mass-market paperback to Britain in 1935.

The flipback is about the size of an old music tape cassette, albeit thicker. The text runs parallel to the spine, so that the reader, right, must turn pages up rather than sideways.

The idea is to compete with ereaders, such as the Kindle, for portability while still having the aesthetic pleasure of the printed page. In the Netherlands, where the flipback was invented, a million copies have been sold since 2009. Hodder will start with a dozen titles on Thursday, including John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, and hopes to produce about 25 titles by Christmas, with estimated sales of 300,000.

Kate Parkin, who is responsible for the flipback at Hodder, encountered the books by accident at a dinner party in France. “I tripped over the handbag of a fellow guest and this thing fell out,” she said. “The guest was Dutch, and she said she read all her books in that format. She was so excited about it that I got hold of the Dutch company that do them and got them to send me some copies.”

The innovation was the work of a Bible printer, which had the freedom to invent new types of book because it has to use non-standard presses to create scripture books.

One shortcoming of the flipback is that it is expensive to produce, and so costs about £2 more than paperbacks. However, Hodder is confident that it will trounce e-books in one regard. “E-books are fantastic, but they don’t make a great gift. ‘Darling, I’ve bought you a download’ doesn’t really work.”

Moby-Duck

The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalist, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them

Donovan Hohn



The subtitle said it all, and there isn't much more to it that that

An interesting series of news articles, but that's it. Every so often a container falls off a ship in a big storm. You know what a container ship looks like - boxes stacked up high, and whole thing looking like a capsize waiting to happen. Usually they stay where they're supposed to, but sometimes a bad storm rolls the ship so violently that the rigging breaks, and boxes go overboard. And on some of those times, one box hits another, splitting it open, and spilling it's contents. And if the contents are lighter than water, they float. And if the spill is on the main trade route from China to America, the floating stuff will travel on the North Pacific gyre (isn't that an unusual word - it just means big ocean current) and wind up on beaches all down the left coast of America, 

So it's not really that strange, or even special. And there isn't really a book in it, but here it is.

108 year old mass murderer released from prison

He became a mass murderer at the age of 84 and was jailed after a trial that lasted more than two decades. Now, at the age of 108, Brij Bihari Pandey is again a free man.

EPABrij Bihari Pandey had to be carried out of jail after being released early from his sentence for killing four people

However, the saga may yet have another violent twist — the families of his four victims are said to be vowing to deny him a peaceful death.

All his adult life Pandey had nursed the hope that he would become mahant (chief priest) of the Lord Jagannath temple in his village of Maharajganj in Uttar Pradesh. When the appointment went to the son of a rival, Pandey and 15 of his kin went on a rampage, killing the mahant’s father and three other relatives.

It took another 23 years for justice to be served but in December 2009, when Pandey was 107, he became India’s oldest prison inmate. When he went into jail he could barely walk and when he was released at the weekend he had to be carried to a waiting car.

After his most recent spell in hospital it was clear that he was close to death, according to the authorities. It was the inconvenience caused by his need for care that led authorities to ask the courts for clemency, according to S. K. Sharma, superintendent of Gorakhpur jail, which is 190 miles (305km) from the state capital Lucknow. “It was getting difficult to take care of a 108-year-old prisoner,” he said.

In interviews given while he was in prison, Pandey said that he repented of his murders and the ambition that led him to commit them. As India’s oldest prisoner he acquired fame and a measure of affection from inmates and prison guards. Fellow prisoners helped wash the man they styled Baba and ensured that he had rice and lentils because he was too old to chew chapattis, according to The Times of India.

Allahabad High Court accepted that he should die in his village and ordered his release on probation two weeks ago but it took until Friday for his relatives to raise the surety. When the time of his release came inmates and prison guards garlanded him.

Although some reports claimed that he said “God is great” and that he hugged his captors, others say he merely lifted his eyes to the heaven in silent thanks.

In the village of his birth 300 villagers turned out to welcome him home but his cousin, Avneesh Pandey, said that not everyone was pleased about the return of a murderer after less than two years in jail. “We fear that the mahant and his aides might try do some harm to us,” he said.

Does anyone care what comes after the dot?

The dot-com age is coming to an end. Instead of website addresses ending with those reliable three letters .com, .net or .org, you could be reading this article at thetimes.news or even ilove.sausages.

The US-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) has approved a plan to increase the number of available generic top-level domains (gTLDs) from 22 to potentially an infinity. But, of course, it will cost you. Icann will charge an organisation $185,000 to buy a new suffix, such as .rollsroyce or .google.

Icann has been slowly dribbling new TLDs to a weary public over the past few years. Recent times have given us .mobi (mobile phones), .eu (something to do with Europe) and .jobs (for fans of Steve) — but have you, as a web user, ever used any of them?

What even is the point of .eu? It’s not as if everyone in Europe speaks the same language and wants the same site for Italy, Germany and France.

Let’s do a quick survey to see which popular brands took up the .eu ending.

Amazon.eu: go to that site and it gives a list of links to .uk, .fr and so on BBC.eu: redirects to the co.uk site Facebook.eu: nothing there YouTube.eu: “Did you mean YouTube.com”?

Google.eu: don’t bother, because they’re not complete numpties at Google HQ.

The rational lesson ought to be that new domain suffixes are an expensive waste of time. After spending oodles of cash on marketing themselves to customers at one address, it seems pointless to then tell people to go in through a different door. But still some organisations will buy these new domain names: that’s because selling additional domain names is a tax on anxiety.

For instance, once .eu was created Microsoft, for example, had a choice: to register Microsoft.eu or to risk a rival company grabbing it. If the company, sufficiently concerned about someone else bagging the website address, buys it, then that’s money in the bank for the authority that looks after .eu.Then imagine this happening not just for one site but every company in existence — that’s a lot of money.

Let’s be nice and say that this process of buying and selling domain suffixes is akin to insurance. But this is insurance against a bad thing happening that can only happen because the insurance company exists. Creating these new endings isn’t an act of God, is it?

Now Icann, instead of wringing the cash out of the game one suffix at a time, is making a hugely greedy swoop for the lot. They are betting on the idea that there are companies out there who are willing to shell out more than £100,000 to own say .news, and they that can create their own mini goldrush by selling on dailybeast.news or dailyplanet.news to more anxious fools. Icann has moved on from setting up lotteries to selling people lotteries that they can run themselves.

One theory is that the bottom must be dropping out of the market — think about how you use the web these days. You either click links off a social site such as Facebook or Twitter. Or you simply type “Coca Cola” into Google and go to the top listed item; the effectiveness of search has devalued the importance of the domain name. It’s unlikely that you pay a great deal of attention to the URL — or care whether a site is dot com, dot co.uk or even dot bonkersconkers.

But who are Icann and who made them the boss of these matters? When the internet was in its infancy and an offshoot of the US military, the US Government used to control who could register what on it. But in 1998 these powers were handed over to Icann, a “non-profit organisation”.

Icann has no competition: it is the sole controller of who registers which gTLD, and it is using this monopoly to gouge money out of businesses’ fear of cyber squatting.

Nice work if you can get it, or maybe just one big dot-con?

Stealing Tractors For Fun and Profit

The number of tractor thefts has increased by 20 per cent in the past year and in Gloucestershire 33 have disappeared in the past three years, the National Farmers Union said. A farmer in the county who had fitted his with a tracking device was told it was in northern Cyprus. Roy Limbrick has been told it could be years before he sees the £20,000 tractor again, if ever.

Theft of other kinds of agricultural equipment is also increasing, a trend highlighted recently by a Gloucester Crown Court judge. Judge Jamie Tabor, QC, said: “Tractors, agricultural vehicles and all hand-held tools appear to be stolen in vast quantities. Tractors are very valuable and very easy to start but can only be stolen in a pre-planned operation — in other words, organised crime.”

This has in fact been going on for years - tractors are far easier to steal than cars (most of them have same key) and are worth more. Some of them wind up as far away as Australia.
Longer story here

Go the F-ck to Sleep and File Sharing

Book publishers, like music companies before them, are wary of impact of the Internet on sales. Just as file-sharing download sites such as Napster, then Limewire eviscerated CD sales by letting users grab mp3 files for free, book publishers face the torrents. There you can find the text of almost any bestseller, often before the hardback has reached the book stores.


But is it all bad news?


In several cases, the free distribution has proved hugely beneficial. Authors such as Nick Hornby found that his Russian sales soured after translations of his novels appeared on Russian pirate sites. Monty Python released all their material on YouTube, together with an appeal to buy their (much higher quality) DVD's, and sales went through the roof.


Now a new book tests the rule. Even before release "Go the F-ck to Sleep" is top of Amazon and NY Times (Advice books) bestseller lists.

Exactly one year ago, Go the F--k to Sleep started as a joking Facebook post by author Adam Mansbach when he could not get his daughter to fall asleep. His friends loved the fake title so much he decided to turn it into a real nursery rhyme-style book with illustrations by his friend Ricardo Cortes. Instead of traditional galleys, Akashic sent a PDF of the book to independent bookstores in February. The PDF went viral, passed from knowing parent to knowing parent, and propelling the book to No. 1 on Amazon's bestseller list seven months before publication. Akashic's Temple said, "In the beginning we were very worried" about the PDF undermining sales but "we quickly stopped worrying ... because it feels to all of us that we are gaining more sales than we are losing. It's a gift book. No one is going to print out the PDF and give it as a present."


read the full story here

London Review of Books Dating Service

London Review of Books

The internet generation of daters hasn't abandoned personal ads. Rather, lonely heart sections have raised their game. Advertisers have evolved the formulaic WTLM/GSOH standard of old into clever haikus of longing and desire. No longer the realm of (whisper it) losers, there is a sophistication to the modern day personal ad that is both fascinating and, for those who are compelled to respond, frequently thrilling.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow was cautionary about the difficulties of achieving self-actualisation - fulfilling every aspect of one's innate potential. So, as unobtainable as such a state of being is, the London Review of Books' personal ads ask: "Why bother?" Their appeal comes from subverting those archetypal elements of attraction that press so heavily on our insecurities but that few of us actually have; the six-pack, the firm buttocks, the non-lethargic sperm. Bespectacled and melanin-deprived, they tell us not to be ashamed; to relax a little and enjoy what's out there without feeling threatened by it.

Perhaps they create something of a Scheherazade effect - a term coined by psychologist Geoffrey Miller in reference to the ancient Persian queen and storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights. Like King Shahryar, beheading his virgin brides once he's had his way with them, we read personal ads ready to laugh and brush them aside. But, just as Scheherazade stays her execution and wins the king's affection with tales of history and humour, so LRB personals compel the reader with their inventiveness, engaging us in such a way as to keep us wanting more.

And yet, when all's said and done, their purpose is to attract a mate. Their absurdity and humour aren't disguises for some deeper intent. They are simple, genuine statements about the people who write them and the people they hope to find. They're modestly successful too. We've had many reports of romances, dalliances, marriages and children. Granted, their honesty subverts the traditional lonely heart form, and we're often surprised, delighted or infuriated by their unwavering and messy emotion, but if an advert doesn't garner a positive response - however witty it may be - its author will always consider it a failure.

I celebrated my fortieth birthday last week by cataloguing my collection of bird feeders. Next year I'm hoping for sexual intercourse. And a cake. Join my invite mailing list at box no. 6831. Man

If intense, post-fight sex scares you, I'm not the woman for you (amateur big-boned cage wrestler, 62). Box no. 8744.

My last seven adverts in this column were influenced by the early catalogue of Krautrock band, Paternoster. This one, however, is based entirely around the work of Gil Scott-Heron. Man, 32. Possibly the last person you want to be stood next to at a house-party you've been dragged along to by a friend who wants to get off with the flatmate of the guy whose birthday it is. Hey! Have you ever heard Boards of Canada? They're amazing; I'll burn you a CD. Box no. 3178.

Meet the new face of indoor bowling! More or less the same as the old face, but less facial hair and better teeth. M, 28. Box no. 3377.

The celebrity I resemble the most is Potsie from Happy Days. What feels so right can't be wrong. Man, 46. Box no. 2480.

Mentally, I'm a size eight. Compulsive-eating F, 52, WLTM man to 25 for whom the phrase 'beauty is only skin-deep' is both a lifestyle choice and a religious ethos. Box no. 5115.

I vacillate wildly between a number of archetypes including, but not limited to, Muriel Spark witticism-trading doyenne, Mariella Frostrup charismatic socialite, brooding, intense Marianne Faithful visionary, and kleptomaniac Germaine Greer amateur upholsterer and ladies' league darts champion. Woman, 43. Everything I just said was a lie. Apart from the bit about darts. And kleptomania. Great tits though. Box no. 2236.

Philanthropy is my middle name. It's just a name though so don't be expecting any free rides. You can call me Mr Wallace. My first name is none of your business. Applications to box no. 9741.

I have a mug that says 'World's Greatest Lover'. I think that's my referees covered. How about you? Man. 37. Bishopsgate. Box no. 8763 

If clumsy, unfeeling lust is your bag, write to the ad above. Otherwise write to me, mid-forties M with boy next door looks, man from U.N.C.L.E. charm, and Fresh Prince of Bel Air casual insouciance. Wikky wikky wick yo. Box no. 2851.

All humans are 99.9% genetically identical, so don't even think of ending any potential relationship begun here with 'I just don't think we have enough in common'. Science has long since proven that I am the man for you (41, likes to be referred to as 'Wing Commander' in the bedroom). Box no. 3501.

Normally on the first few dates I borrow mannerisms from the more interesting people I know and very often steal phrases and anecdotes from them along with concepts and ideas from obscure yet wittily-written books. It makes me appear more attractive and personable than I actually am. With you, however, I'm going to be a belligerent old shit from the very beginning. That's because I like you and feel ready to give you honesty. Belligerent old shit (M, 53). Box no. 6378.

They call me Mr Boombastic. You can call me Monty. My real name, however, is Quentin. But only Mother uses that. And Nanny. Monty is fine, though. Anything but Peg Leg (Shrewsbury Prep, 1956, 'Please don't make me do cross-country, sir'). Box no. 0473.

All I need is the air that I breathe and to love you. And a five-door saloon (fully air-con). And minimum income of �55K per annum. And two holidays a year (Latin America plus one other of my choosing). If you can meet these requirements, apply to 'Evil Dragon Lady, Breaker of Men's Constitutions' (37), box no. 3685.

You're a brunette, 6', long legs, 25-30, intelligent, articulate and drop dead gorgeous. I, on the other hand, have the looks of Herve Villechaize and an odour of wheat. No returns and no refunds at box no. 3321.

If I could be anywhere in time right now it would be 17 December 1972. I have my reasons. Man, 57. Box no. 1553.

The usual hyperbole infuses this ad with a whiff of playful narcissism and Falstaffian bathos. But scratch below the surface and you'll soon find that I really am the greatest man ever to have lived. Truly great man, 37. Better than Elvis and Gandhi. You'll never be a genuinely worthy partner, but try anyway by first replying to box no. 7637. Include a full list of qualifications, your aspirations, and a full frontal nude body shot.

When not in my London city office overseeing the day-to-day business of my successful accountancy firm, I can be found leaning inside taxi cabs, spitting wild obscenities and challenging the drivers to fisticuffs. M, 47. We take the direct route home, we don't stop at Belisha beacons and we never - and I mean never - leave the impudence of a box junction unquestioned. Don't expect a tip from box no. 9091. 

OMG! This magazine is the shizz. Seriously, dudes. Awesome! LOL! Classics lecturer (M, 48). Possibly out of his depth with today's youth. KTHX! Box no. 2680.

Google-search this: 'Inherited wealth real estate Bentley' - that's me, result 63 of 275. It'll take 0.21 seconds to find me online, but an eternity of heartache in real life. Save time now by writing to box no. 4511, or by just giving up. Mother says you'll never be good enough for me anyway. And you carry the odour of your class.

We've all made mistakes. Mine was a cerise pump during London Fashion Week 2004. Style troubadour, (M, 35). WLTM similar, or appropriately dour fag hag. Box no. 8643. The toughest decision I ever had to make was choosing between soup and fish in a Brighton caf� in 1987 (I went for the fish, though later regretted my decision when I discovered the cod had been over-seasoned). Now, however, I'll have to pick one of you delicious women. The selection procedure will involve a four-part interview, along with an aptitude test and multiple-choice questionnaire. Apply now for full details to stupid man, 45. Box no. 6821.

Remember when all this was open fields, and you could go out and leave your door unlocked? Woman, 24. Inherited her mother's unreasonable and utterly unfounded nostalgia (and her father's hirsute back). WLTM barber with fondness for Sherbet Dib-Dabs and Parma Violets. Box no. 8486.

God appeared to me in a dream last night and spoke your name in my ear. He gave me the winning lottery numbers, too, though, so you can understand where my priorities lay when I raced to grab a notebook and pen. Man, 37, living on hope and the next seven weeks' bonus balls seeks woman whose first name begins with S, or maybe F, and rhymes with chicken, and has a surname that's either a place in Shropshire or the title of a 1979 Earth, Wind and Fire track. Shicken Boogiewonderland, I know you're reading this. Write now to box no. 5729

Exam Marks

As pupils sweat over their examination papers in Britain they might like to offer a silent prayer of thanks that they do not live in India. Competition for one university has grown so fierce that it has set 100 per cent as the acceptable pass mark for school-leavers taking the Indian equivalent of A levels.

Depending on the examinations that they take, pupils either receive an aggregate percentage mark or, for subjects such as engineering, an individual rank. For those wanting to study for a BA at the Shri Ram College of Commerce at Delhi University, nothing short of perfection will do. P. C. Jain, the principal, said: “We get the best students from across the country.”

The arrival of the 100 per cent cut-off has prompted renewed soul searching over the pressures on children of a system of pitiless grading and relentless competition. The Education Minister called it irrational and another senior Indian politician said that it was terrifying.

As the number of people able to afford private coaching for their children increases by tens of millions each year, it is inevitable that the crush outside the gates of the handful of trusted and established institutions will grow, said Aditya Berlia, prochancellor at Apeejay, another prestigious Indian college.

He said that the system that taught children only to “crack exams” left many “socially disabled”. “All they have done for years is school, crammer, home. They may have got brilliant marks but we have to teach them how to solve a problem and they are terribly, terribly awkward,” he said.

Previous efforts to reform India’s grades-driven system have failed in a country where the ideal of meritocracy is more preached than practised.

“There’s this notion that somehow ranking students in this way is transparent. Parents are suspicious if other factors are taken into account,” Mr Berlia, who admitted that institutions found it convenient, said.

Because so much is invested in a single test, examination papers arrive in armoured cars and rumours of foul play spark riots. Although commerce is one of the most sought-after degree subjects, nowhere is competition fiercer than in engineering. The IITJEE examination has spawned an entire city of crammers. Pupils in their mid-teens, from across India, spend two years in Kota, Rajasthan, preparing for it. What little time they have left over is spent in “school coaching” to keep up with a minimum of nonengineering studies — or sleeping in one of 600 dormitories in the city. Of the 450,000 that sit it each year the most elite institutions, such as IIT Kanpur, select only those with a rank higher than 500. Admission, however, is a ticket to career success. Professor Sanjay Srivastava, writing about Kota recently, said that it was India’s lowermiddle class that took the greatest risks in sending their children to the crammers, often staking the whole family’s savings on fees. “For many small-town people in India a merciless system of highly selective examinations is one of the key avenues of social mobility,” the sociologist wrote.

For pupils such as Ashima Sharma there is only the bitterness of not quite making the grade for Shri Ram College of Commerce. “I got an aggregate of 98 per cent which everyone told me was a good percentage to get into any college,” she said mournfully.

The Bus

That car chase with the red, white and blue Minis, the getaway bus on a cliff, the stolen gold about to tip it over . . . it is The Italian Job and its final scene has inspired a sculpture by Richard Wilson (Ben Hoyle writes). The model at the Royal Academy shows how a life-size bus will perch on the roof of the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill. The title is the last line, spoken by Michael Caine: “Hang on a minute, lads, I’ve got a great idea.”

Random Acts of Kindness

Rush hour on the London Underground: hundreds of strangers squashed up against each other, avoiding eye contact, all enduring more stress and less air than they would like.

If this scenario makes you think of a work of art it is probably Edvard Munch’s The Scream or perhaps something infernal by Hieronymus Bosch.

To the artist Michael Landy, however, Tube travel reveals human kindness in its most spontaneous form, and he is making a work of art that depicts this. His project, which begins tomorrow, will be an inescapable part of travel on the Central Line for at least the next 18 months.

The artist is best known for destroying all his possessions in the name of art ten years ago, an undertaking that apparently convinced him to take a more optimistic view of human nature.

Acts of Kindness is the result. Posters and leaflets will appear all over the Central Line inviting people who have experienced or witnessed altruistic gestures on the Underground to submit their stories. Landy will make poster artworks and stickers from the submissions, and these will begin to appear on trains and station platforms from July 23. Depending on their popularity, they could spread to the rest of the Underground network and become permanent installations. The hope is that the works will brighten travellers’ journeys by making them more aware of other people’s generosity as well as inspiring more people to behave better.

“I’m not talking about superheroic acts, about people saving people,” Landy said yesterday in his studio at the National Gallery, where he is artist in residence. “I’m talking about everyday acts that anybody can do, from giving up your seat to helping someone up a flight of stairs with their baby buggy or their shopping.

“It can be quite dehumanising going underground and getting compacted in with a whole lot of strangers, yet these acts of kindness are happening on the Tube all the time,” Landy added.

For the artist, the act of kindness itself is the “best bit”: an intervention that probably lasts only a few seconds but can transform the beneficiary’s day.

His 2001 work Breakdown was a commentary on the consumer society. Everything Landy owned was put on a conveyor belt in the former C&A store on Oxford Street and destroyed. It left him with some explaining to do to the Revenue about why he no longer had backdated accounts.

His latest project is funded by Transport for London and Arts Council England, which are contributing about half of the £45,000 cost each. It will explore “what value kindness has, what it means, and what kind of exchange is involved in giving someone a helping hand”, Landy said.

“I think sometimes it’s easier to remember those times when people have been unkind. But once you start to notice kindness you see it happening more and more.”

Peter Tollington, general manager of the Central Line, agrees. “People on the Underground are a lot kinder than we perhaps give them credit for,” he said.

“I’ve seen customers lend each other money to buy a ticket and they often go out of their way to assist those with luggage or children.