Physicist, inventor, bestselling author, and futurist David Brin talks about how problems are solved in today’s society, how we should approach things that frustrate us, and why and when we should speak up. How do we combat the cynicism that prevents us from acting to solve our problems? And how do we handle the anger that comes with them?
Published June 20, 2014
The Danger of Being Neighborly Without a Permit
All over America, people have put small “give one, take one” book exchanges in front of their homes. Then they were told to tear them down.
by Conor Friedersdorf
Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/02/little-free-library-crackdown/385531/
Local Little Library box.
Three years ago, The Los Angeles Times published a feel-good story on the Little Free Library movement. The idea is simple: A book lover puts a box or shelf or crate of books in their front yard. Neighbors browse, take one, and return later with a replacement. A 76-year-old in Sherman Oaks, California, felt that his little library, roughly the size of a dollhouse, “turned strangers into friends and a sometimes-impersonal neighborhood into a community,” the reporter observed. The man knew he was onto something “when a 9-year-old boy knocked on his door one morning to say how much he liked the little library.” He went on to explain, “I met more neighbors in the first three weeks than in the previous 30 years.”
Since 2009, when a Wisconsin man built a little, free library to honor his late mother, who loved books, copycats inspired by his example have put thousands of Little Free Libraries all over the U.S. and beyond. Many are displayed on this online map. In Venice, where I live, I know of at least three Little Free Libraries, and have witnessed chance encounters where folks in the neighborhood chat about a book.
I wish that I was writing merely to extol this trend. Alas, a subset of Americans are determined to regulate every last aspect of community life. Due to selection bias, they are overrepresented among local politicians and bureaucrats. And so they have power, despite their small-mindedness, inflexibility, and lack of common sense so extreme that they’ve taken to cracking down on Little Free Libraries, of all things.
Last summer in Kansas, a 9-year-old was loving his Little Free Library until at least two residents proved that some people will complain about anything no matter how harmless and city officials pushed the boundaries of literal-mindedness:
The Leawood City Council said it had received a couple of complaints about Spencer Collins’ Little Free Library. They dubbed it an “illegal detached structure” and told the Collins’ they would face a fine if they did not remove the Little Free Library from their yard by June 19.
Rest of the article: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/02/little-free-library-crackdown/385531/
25 maps that explain the English language
Source: http://www.vox.com/2015/3/3/8053521/25-maps-that-explain-english
English is the language of Shakespeare and the language of Chaucer. It’s spoken in dozens of countries around the world, from the United States to a tiny island named Tristan da Cunha. It reflects the influences of centuries of international exchange, including conquest and colonization, from the Vikings through the 21st century. Here are 25 maps and charts that explain how English got started and evolved into the differently accented languages spoken today.
1. Where English comes from
English, like more than 400 other languages, is part of the Indo-European language family, sharing common roots not just with German and French but with Russian, Hindi, Punjabi, and Persian. This beautiful chart by Minna Sundberg, a Finnish-Swedish comic artist, shows some of English’s closest cousins, like French and German, but also its more distant relationships with languages originally spoken far from the British Isles such as Farsi and Greek.
2. Where Indo-European languages are spoken in Europe today
Saying that English is Indo-European, though, doesn’t really narrow it down much. This map shows where Indo-European languages are spoken in Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia today, and makes it easier to see what languages don’t share a common root with English: Finnish and Hungarian among them.
3. The Anglo-Saxon migration
Here’s how the English language got started: After Roman troops withdrew from Britain in the early 5th century, three Germanic peoples — the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes — moved in and established kingdoms. They brought with them the Anglo-Saxon language, which combined with some Celtic and Latin words to create Old English. Old English was first spoken in the 5th century, and it looks incomprehensible to today’s English-speakers. To give you an idea of just how different it was, the language the Angles brought with them had three genders (masculine, feminine, and neutral). Still, though the gender of nouns has fallen away in English, 4,500 Anglo-Saxon words survive today. They make up only about 1 percent of the comprehensive Oxford English Dictionary, but nearly all of the most commonly used words that are the backbone of English. They include nouns like “day” and “year,” body parts such as “chest,” arm,” and “heart,” and some of the most basic verbs: “eat,” “kiss,” “love,” “think,” “become.” FDR’s sentence “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” uses only words of Anglo-Saxon origin.
Rest of the article and illustrations: http://www.vox.com/2015/3/3/8053521/25-maps-that-explain-english
The spring has sprung
Savings Time has fell
and here comes idiocy
cold as hell.
Daylight Savings Time
by David E. Booker
Time to lose an hour
What else can I say?
It’s coming March 8th,
Early A-M that day.
Clocks will spring forward
Even though I may not.
An hour will disappear
But in my body, not forgot.
Charge ahead we must
Into this time-warped fray.
It is a stupid thing
to give an hour away.
‘Tis a great shenanigan
A political cluster duck
That has led us to this day
With which we now are stuck.
So when you go to vote
Remember who took away
This hour of sleep or fun,
And all without any pay.
Filed under 2015, Photo Finish Friday, poetry by author, Writing Prompt
Snow melts: drip, drip, drip. /
Ice rattles down the gutter. /
Slowly spring creeps in.
Filed under 2015, Haiku to You Thursday, poetry by author
Writers Can Learn A Lot From Writing Tips Offered By Stephen King
Source: http://www.learnu.org/writers-can-learn-a-lot-from-writing-tips-offered-by-stephen-king/
Author offers advice.
There are a ton of invaluable tips and tid bits of advice for writers and it was nearly impossible to pick just a select few to cover today. After much consideration we were able to narrow down what we found to be incredibly useful information for our writer readers.
In his book, King said “I can’t lie and say there are no bad writers. Sorry, but there are lots of bad writers.” Well, he has a point…a blunt point, but a point all the same. So, with that in mind, here are some of our favorite tips from the “King of Horror”:
1. Put down the remote and pick up a book.
King calls television the “poison to creativity” and he’s pretty much spot on. TV is known to suck out the imagination and dull the senses, which are two very important things to writers. He suggests doing away with the TV and picking up a book instead.Reading allows you to constantly learn and challenge your brain.
2. Don’t shy away from editing.
Cutting out bits and pieces of your writing is a rather hard part of the job, but an unavoidable one. King tells writers to, “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” You heard him, folks! Don’t be afraid of the delete and backspace keys.
3. Cut yourself off from external distractions when writing.
“Write with the door closed; rewrite with the door open,” King says. That sounds about right to us, too. Nothing can jam a writers creative flow quite like a heap of distractions. Writing is an internal activity that often requires the writer to sink into a zone that needs to be maintained.The best way to stay in the zone is to tuck yourself away in a corner without your phone, access to any social media sites and a note on your door asking for privacy.
4. Adverbs and long paragraphs should be avoided like the plague.
And, by the way, so should cliches.
5. Perfect the art of description, but don’t give away too much.
Read more: http://www.learnu.org/writers-can-learn-a-lot-from-writing-tips-offered-by-stephen-king/
Filed under 2015, Writers on writing, writing tip, Writing Tip Wednesday
And there were the unfinished stories, too.
Filed under 2015, cartoon by author, CarToonsday
Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Chaucer.
Chaucer who?
Chaucer, that’s my baby, naw sir, don’t mean maybe…
Filed under 2015, Monday morning writing joke
Booker, McGinley win Writers’ Guild awards
By Gayle Page – Staff Writer
David E. Booker — lost in the cosmos, as always.
Booker, a Jefferson City native, won a first place for the second chapter of a science fiction/fantasy thriller that he calls a “work in progress.” This was not Booker’s first Writers’ Guild win. He won last year for a short story in the mystery genre.
Booker has written and published several short stories, and he has been a contributor to a few area newspapers, including the Morristown Citizen Tribune.
He earns his living as a writer, currently doing technical writing for Y-12. Earlier, he did technical and promotional consumer writing for Phillips Electronics (formerly Magnavox), and has done some promotional writing for Log Home magazines, as well. For the past three years Booker has served as editor of his neighborhood newsletter, and he continues working on his novel.
About writing Booker says: “It’s what I enjoy doing, even though sometimes I sit frustrated in front of a blank screen.” He is a long-time member of the Knoxville Writers’ Guild, and invites other interested writers to join and enjoy the support of an active, dedicated and diverse writing community.
Mark McGinley, another former resident of Jefferson City who is now Assistant Professor of Theater and Technical Director of Stage Design at Lincoln Memorial University, is also a winner of the Knoxville Writers’ Guild 2014 contest.
McGinley’s writing primarily focuses on his work as a playwright. His winning entry “Still Waters,” is a one-act play set in the Tennessee hills in the 1930’s, with a ragtag cast of characters and a moonshine theme. It hasn’t been performed on stage yet, but whenever that happens, the 32-page script will take actors about 30 minutes to execute.
He has had one play entitled “Sold” performed by a theater workshop group (now disbanded), but McGinley still has plenty of other ideas and plays he hopes to produce. It’s possible that one of his plays will be performed at the Tiger Lily Theater in Knoxville, in April.
McGinley earned his undergraduate degree at Carson-Newman University, and while he lived nearby he worked for the Comedy Barn in Pigeon Forge and doubled as a massage therapist. Today he stays so busy he only has time to concentrate on his primary vocation, which is theater. He received his graduate degree, a masters in theater design and stage combat, from Louisiana Tech.
About writing McGinley says: “It’s hard work until you come up with an idea that burns inside of you until you put it on a page. Then it’s more work, work, work.”
Of course, he would never want to do anything else.
Finishing first earned Booker and McGinley $100 each in prize money. Aspiring writers who might be interested in joining the Knoxville Writers Guild are invited to go online to http://www.knoxvillewritersguild.org and see what they have to offer, or write to them for an informational brochure, at Knoxville Writers’ Guild, P.O. Box 10326, Knoxville TN 37939-032.
Filed under 2015, Self-promotion
Booker's Blog 