Month: March 2011

Barry Eisler explains why he's passing up a $500,000 book contract to self-publish:

[I]f I'm right about all this, and I'm pretty sure I am, I should be able to beat the contract about halfway through the fourth year. 

… To develop some data to go with the theory, in February I self-published a short story, The Lost Coast, featuring one of my series characters, a very nasty piece of work named Larison. I priced it at $2.99, which is a premium price for a short story, just to see how my writing would do in the new environment and even with the handicap of a relatively high price. It's been selling steadily and is currently at #1,088 on the Kindle list (and #13 and #17 on Amazon's short stories bestseller lists, which is good because the top twenty come up in the first page view). It definitely got a boost from the online discussion that followed my announcement, but even before all that it was on track to earn me about $30,000 in a year through Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords—not bad at all for a short story.

Here's hoping more follow his lead. It's time to break the corrupt, inept, woefully inefficient book publishing industry. Eisler's personal blog is here.

A final ode to winter:

SNOWMOTION from Guillaume Blanchet on Vimeo.

(Hat tip: LikeCool)

GiveWell argues that Japan may have no "room for more funding," a term they use "to refer to whether additional donations would result in more of a given activity": 

We think it’s important to note that aid from larger donors is still at very low levels: about $28 million from U.S. agencies (of which over $20 million is through the military) and $13 million from other governments. For contrast, on 1/25/10 (12 days after the Haiti earthquake hit), OCHA reported $740 million in funding with an additional $1.1 billion in pledges … My feeling is that these major funders would be sending more to Japan than they had to Haiti if they felt Japan had serious room for more funding. This is particularly true of the U.S. government since Japan is a U.S. ally.

Babak Dehghanpisheh visits it:

[Khalifa and Ali] account of how they came to the Benghazi prison camp offers a glimpse of the inner workings of Gaddafi’s military. Both men say they were members of a guard unit that’s normally stationed hundreds of miles away near the Tunisian border. About a week ago, they were called up to join the fight against the rebels in the east. They were first taken to Sert, Gaddafi’s hometown, where their military unit was joined up with hundreds of plainclothes militiamen from Libya and Chad. The militiamen were being armed up with new AK-47s at the base. “They told us we are going to fight Al Qaeda and mercenaries, who came to take over the country,” says Ali, a skinny young man with black hair who winces in pain as he talks.

A reader writes:

Since Sarah prides herself on being a frontier woman and the daughter of a biology teacher, you would think that she knows that only female mosquitoes bite.

Update: Another reader amends:

I just threw up in my mouth a little, but Palin has it right when she said, "[Maher] can’t do any harm, but buzzes around annoyingly until it’s time to give him the proverbial slap." As the other commenter pointed out, only the females sting. But only the males buzz, making what she said 100 percent correct.

A round-up of all the incoherent blathering from the pseudo-intellectual of the right. The common theme? He's always obviously right; Obama is always insanely wrong. And the nastier the attack the  better.

Scott Mogan analyzes the news:

This year we'll see dispensaries opening in Arizona, Rhode Island, Maine, New Jersey, and quite possibly even the Nation's Capital. Projections show the market doubling within five years, which should be sufficient to insulate it from significant political attacks in the future.

(Photo: Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

A reader writes:

Just a heads up, in case you haven't heard: The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that Marquette University (can't get much more Catholic than that) will be providing domestic partner benefits.

Dave Roberts draws meaning from the story of Hideaki Akaiwa, a Japanese man who reportedly "threw on scuba gear, jumped into a TSUNAMI, dodged debris, found his house & his wife, & saved her":

[I]t's often been said in relation to climate change that it's difficult for people to recognize danger, at a visceral level, when the "foe" is a slow-moving global phenomenon. We're not good at recognizing and acting on those risks. But it's also worth noting the flip side: It's difficult for people to recognize virtue, too, when it looks like one more little incremental thing, one turn of the handle in the "strong and slow boring of hard boards" that is political and social progress. We are excited by, and reward, the dramatic individual act of courage. We too rarely recognize or celebrate the steady, painstaking work of organizing public institutions to produce more humane outcomes.

A blog devoted to photographing hot guys on the London Underground. I really need to get back to the gym. There was a time, of course, when every bloke on the London tube had arms like spaghetti.