Google has begun scanning microfilm from some newspapers’ historic archives to make them searchable online, first through Google News and eventually on the papers’ own Web sites…
From Print is Dead:
Google will then serve up scans of newspapers either via Google, or on the site of the originating newspapers, which provides income for Google (in the first example) and/or traffic and visitors (and potentially income from advertising) for the original newspapers (in the second example).
It is true that the arts keep us sane, but a larger bias for this perception is surely the fact that the arts keep us civilised. Once a poem is written, it belongs to the world, and its greatest destiny is its usefulness to the tribe.
I would like to think the purpose of poetry is to teach.
From The Press Association:
Heavy metal fans are gentle, indie music listeners lack self-esteem and lovers of pop music are uncreative, according to research.
The study on the links between personality and music taste has been conducted by a psychology professor over the last three years.
He found that country and western fans are hard-working, rap fans outgoing and jazz and classical music supporters are innovative and bursting with self-confidence.
Contrary to the stereotype, heavy metal fans are gentle and at ease with themselves but they tend not to be hardworking.
Those who listen to heavy metal and classical music share character traits, according to the research, of being creative, at ease and introverted.
But classical music fans have high self-esteem while heavy rock fans lack self-belief.
Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.
Eleanor Roosevelt (via hrrrthrrr)
From Poetry Hut Blog:
One of the editors of Cider Press — Robert Wynne — has responded to (what appears to be) unethical behavior regarding their Cider Press Review Book Award. And Stacey Lynn Brown’s rebuttal. (I’ve read that Pavement Saw Press’ contest has been problematic. And did you know that there was no winner chosen this year for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize?)
“[Billy] Collins, the former U.S. poet laureate, is the keynote speaker for the Decatur Book Festival Friday night at Agnes Scott College. Word from the festival organizers is that all of the free tickets have been given out…” Link
Poets & Writers magazine explains why in the recent issue:
“What makes Billy Collins one of America’s best-known (and best-selling) poets? Perhaps it’s his attention to what matters most — his audience.”
From 43 Folders:
Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself from two things you’d rather not be doing by doing them simultaneously.
43 Folders
From The Writer’s Almanac:
It’s the birthday of the poet Li-Young Lee… born in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1957. His parents were Chinese. His mother was the granddaughter of China’s first president; his father was the son of a gangster. His father worked as the personal physician to Mao Zedong, but the Lees were extremely Christian, and so after the Peoples’ Republic of China was established in 1949, Lee’s parents fled to Jakarta, which is where Li-Young was born. But the authorities were suspicious of his father’s Western interests —he was a professor and he taught Shakespeare, opera, and Kierkegaard—so he was imprisoned. The family fled again, this time to Japan, Macao, and Singapore before ending up in Hong Kong, where Li-Young Lee’s father became a successful evangelical preacher. The family eventually moved to the United States, where Lee’s father was a Presbyterian minister. As a child, Lee learned to recite ancient Chinese poems and the psalms from the Bible. He has published four books of poetry, including The City in Which I Love You (1991) and Behind My Eyes (2008), and a memoir, The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (1995).
Coffeehouse Junkie 