Pierce The Veil

. Language in fiction is made up of equal parts meaning and music. The sentences should have rhythm and cadence, they should engage and delight the inner ear. Most readers, of course, wouldn't be able to tell you that they respond to those . . . words because they are soothing and symmetrical, but most readers register the fact unconsciously. You could probably say that meaning is the force we employ, and music is the seduction.
. Here's a secret. Many novelists, if they are pressed and if they are being honest , will admit that the finished book is a rather rough translation of the book they'd intended to write. It's one of the heartbreaks of writing fiction. You have, for months or years, been walking around with the idea of a novel in your mind, in your mind it's transcendent, it's brilliantly comic and howlingly tragic. It contains everything you know and everything you can imagine, about human life on the planet earth. It is vast and mysterious and awe-inspiring. It is a cathedral made of fire. At one point we have a writer in a room, struggling to approximate the impossible vision that hovers over his head. He finishes it, with misgivings. One of the consolations of writing books is the seemingly unquenchable conviction that next book book will be better, will be bigger and bolder and more comprehensive and true to the lives we live. We exist in a condition of hope. We love the beauty and truth that come to us, and we do our best to tamp down our doubts and disappointments. We are on a quest, and are not discouraged by our collective suspicion that the perfection we look for in art is about as likely to turn up as is the Holy Grail. That is one of the reasons we, I mean we humans, are not only the creators, translators and consumers of literature, but also its subjects. [from an essay by Michael Cunningham in the New York Times dated October 3, 2010]

An Image

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Clay Figures and post-modern Identity

There is this suggestion: That young people who catastrophically expose their private lives via social networking sites might need to be granted a name change and a fresh identity as adults. This, interestingly, is a matter of Google letting societal chips fall where they may, to be tidied by lawmakers and legislation as best they can, while the erection of new world architecture continues apace.

If Google were sufficiently concerned about this, perhaps the company should issue children with free “training wheels” identities at birth, terminating at the age of majority. One could then either opt to connect one’s adult identity to one’s childhood identity, or not. Childhoodlessness, being obviously suspect on a résumé, would give birth to an industry providing faux adolescences, expensively retro-inserted, the creation of which would gainfully employ a great many writers of fiction. So there would be a silver lining of sorts.

The prospect of millions of people living out their lives in individual witness protection programs, prisoners of their own youthful folly, appeals to my novelistic Kafka glands. Nor do I take much comfort in the thought that Google itself would have to be trusted never to link one’s sober adulthood to one’s wild youth, which surely the search engine, wielding as yet unimagined tools of transparency, eventually could and would do.

[By William Gibson, extracted from the New York Times]

Freida Pinto of "Slumdog Millionaire"

The Observer: The Perfect Read

I was a relatively new member of the team or group.

Question: How long did it take to size up whether someone was staying . . .

. "It was about watching them, and watching the organization respond to them. I'll give you an example. We're sitting with a large group of folks, about 40 to 50 [in number] and people are standing up to raise certain issues. And I watched this one executive. People were watching and riveted to him, really listening and engaged.
. And then this other executive spoke, and I watched him address the group, and I watched everyone's eyes. And their eyes went back down to their tables. They couldn't even meet eyes with him. It was a clear signal that said, "You've lost us."
. So sometimes you don't know what the messages are that you're going to get, but you have to look for them. They come from your peripheral vision. And that was one of those cases where I just knew it the second it happened."

How Green Is My Valley?--In Summer Time

Some of the fruits and vegetables now being produced in the San Joaquin County area.
Some of the area's top crops and their value:
. Milk $412,643,000
. Grapes $221,807,000
. Walnuts $178,500,000
. Cherries $175,922,000
. Almond meats $175,200,000
. Tomatoes $145,506,000
. Hay $145,970,000
. Cattle, calves $97,788,000
. Corn / grain $69,564,000
. Apples $48,455,000
. Other $495,370,000
.
In other summer news: San Joaquin county area just flipped on the switch for one of the nation's first 4G cellular networks. Significance? 3G speeds ranged from 600 kilobits per second for downloads of web pages up to a max of 1.2 Megabits per second. The 4G speeds (on your smartphones) will give you 3 - 6 Megabits per second with internet pages coming to your cellphone screen almost instantaneously.
. Coming soon: A technology that allows you to complete your debit card purchases in a store by swiping your smartphone in the air above a check-out device that will then approve your purchase, all without touching anything or entering any pin number. It will be a way for phone providers to become providers of transactions like the credit card issuers currently do. Visa and Mastercard now have a reason to worry. Technology will be tested in a couple of locations in the U.S. soon.
. Also, the Corning Glass company recently plowed $160 million into ramping up its production facilities for the manufacture of their patented and secret process for making "Gorilla Glass"--the very same thin but super-strong material that is currently found as the glass screen on smartphones like the iPhone and the Droid phones. Corning expects to quadruple its sales of Gorilla Glass within one year's time. That should have a very definite effect on the stock's share price of $19.00 per share currently. Hmmmm. The symbol for the stock is GLW.
. Have a great Summer!