Category Archives: Literary

Bitacle=poison for bloggers

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Respect Mah Authoritah! 

It normally takes a helluva lot to jolt me out of my “information wants to be shared” communal anarchist complacency (and, if communal anarchists haven’t achieved complacency, who can be said to have done so?) but this may just be enough.

TimeThief normally objects to blogs that republish the entire posts of other blogs, but I think in this case she’ll give me a bye.

Silly me, live and learn.

We’ll just work it out in a creamed corn wrestling smackdown live onstage at Limerick Junction for charity. In any case, here’s her post on the subject.

And here is an anti-Bitacle blog that’s got pretty comprehensive coverage of the issue, from pro and anti sides.

Essentially, Bitacle is a for-profit business that steals the contents of blogs from all around the world and publishes it on its own website, on which it sells advertising. In addition, it republishes this information under a “Creative Commons” license, which essentially gives the readerthe right to republish it at will under certain conditions, including the condition they not be making any money from it. Unlike Bitacle. Now, CC licenses are great things allrighty, but Bitacle doesn’t have your permission to relicense them in the first place, so absolutely none of the CC licenses they offer on material they publish are binding.

In other words, all rights belong to the bloggers and Bitacle is breaking the law. As well, its CC claim is encouraging other people to break the law, by pretending to them that it’s legal. It’s not.

If you’ve got a blog, check your RSS feed stats or your IPs and look for Bitacle. They can be IP banned; they may well change their IP (their ISP has been notified, as has Google, whose ads they are running) but until they do, it’s a good idea to starve them.

Pass the word around; since WordPress has put in some “measures” against them, they’ll be all over Blogger, Blogspot, etc.

best. comments. ever.

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Bar none. You don’t even have to know who Peter Hitchens is to enjoy this thread. It truly gives one faith for the British school system; they must be doing something right if the amusing and condescending wordplay can continue for 277, that’s 277 comments, most of them golden (including mine, but then I was educated by Boho preppy draft dodgers).

We are all Peter Hitchens now.

We are all Peter Hitchens now

One of the most amusing (and irritating) comment makers on this blog uses the name Peter Hitchens, he writes from a sometimes witty, sometimes demented hard right-wing position. As does the comment maker. The real other Peter Hitchens has been in touch to complain.* So can the impersonator change his user name, so we can avoid getting into a “no, I am Spartacus“ bun fight. In fact Guido would like to invite the impersonator to publicly announce his name change in a post where he can also outline his world-view. Email to sort this out.

UPDATE : Hitchens has a blog! Not a very busy blog, maybe “Peter Hitchens” should go and comment over there….

UPDATE II : Have had second thoughts about getting “Peter Hitchens” to change his user name, can he just put his name in ironic quotation marks at least?

UPDATE III : Peter Hitchens has just emailed from the Mail on Sunday to confirm he really is himself. He thought it all very funny until people began thinking it really was him. Is that clear?

*Presumably from the original Peter Hitchens “Would the person who is abusing my name on this blog please cease doing so? It seems to me to be unoriginal, dishonest and rather cowardly to hide your own opinions behind the name of somebody else. I have written this message because I am beginning to receive messages from people asking if I am connected with the person who calls himself ‘Peter Hitchens‘ on this blog.”

Now, I’m already confused. See, is it Peter Hitchens, “Peter Hitchens,” or ‘Peter Hitchens?’ You’ll note three different possibilities, even leaving Spartacus out for now.

Which the comments have not done. Don’t just sit there, read them! This thread is a thing of beauty and a joy forever; already noted at Fortean Times, fyi, but that’s not going to stop me from posting it here, too, particularly as I’ve been up for 36 hours straight and am far too lazy and woozulated to come up with something of my own at this hour.

Kaavya 2.0?

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There she is, Miss HarvardSeriously, what’s the ETA of the scandalous revelations on this one?

According to the Observer there’s an 11-year-old girl in China called Nancy Yi Fan who’s gotten herself published by one of the big guns. The story goes that she just up and emailed her manuscript to Jane Friedman, the CEO of HarperCollins, and Friedman (that incredible talent scout and kind, tweedy publisher at heart as well as hardened businesswoman) was so bowled over by the sheer literary merits of the ms that she could not rest until she had somehow and against all odds managed to persuade her peons to pick it up.

Astonishing. *wipes tear from eye*

A fantasy novel about tribes of warring birds, written by a gifted 11-year-old girl who lives in the southern-most province of China, is to be published worldwide in English.

The young author, Nancy Yi Fan, won the extraordinary opportunity by simply emailing her manuscript to the chief executive of HarperCollins, Jane Friedman, at the publisher’s New York office.

Fan has since been hailed as a prodigy by her editors who will use her book in a new attempt to establish the firm in China . Her story, Swordbird, is an epic allegory about the struggle for peace and will be printed in this country in the new year. Those who have seen it talk about it as the product of a mind as imaginative as some of the greatest names in children’s writing.

Fan wrote the novel in response to learning of the war on terror, and it is described as ‘an action-packed tale of birds at war’, set in the once-peaceful Stone-Run Forest. It tells how local woodbird tribes, the Cardinals and the Blue Jays, find themselves pitted against each other in a search for precious food supplies – some of which have mysteriously gone missing. Fighting breaks out and an evil hawk, Turnatt, turns the tribes against each other as part of a plan to take over the forest. He enslaves captives from surrounding tribes and is forced to build an impregnable fortress in which to confine all the woodbirds.

Born in Beijing in 1993, Fan lived in New York with her parents from the age of seven, graduating ‘with excellence’ from an elementary school there in 2004. When she was in sixth grade, at the age of 11, she was taught about terrorism and the events of 9/11. That night, she explains, she had a startling dream all about birds at war and the next day she started writing Swordbird in her bedroom as a way of trying to convey her worries about violence in the world. She now lives back in China, on the beautiful Hainan Island with her parents and their three pet birds. The girl, now 13, is a compulsive writer and reader who spends most of her time in the library, but she also loves bird-watching and martial arts.

The hero of Swordbird is an escaped ‘slavebird’, Miltin, who leads the woodbirds once they learn of Turnatt‘s strategy. The title refers to a legendarily heroic bird of peace. The Swordbird is the only one who can save the forest, so young birds Aska and Miltin fly off on a dangerous mission to find the Leasone gem. This stone, paired with an ancient song from the ‘Old Scripture’, will conjure Swordbird‘s help. The story has been chosen to launch the publishing house’s new push into China.

Quel suprise. New push into China? Why, what an amazing coincidence. As is the fact that the names in the book aren’t Chinese, nor even easy for Chinese to pronounce, nor are cardinals and blue jays native to China (nor Manhatten, come to that; they need woods). Nor does anyone graduate from an American elementary school, with excellence or Did JT write it? Not if it doesn't have hookers and raccoon penis boneswithout, in four years. Seriously, people, is there a seedy, unheated warehouse in Fulan or Maine stuffed with Old Oxbridgers, furiously churning out what the People’s Republic hopes will be the next Harry Potter?

coolest movie trailer ever: 300

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Stumbled across this on Daily Kos, a site that I go to maybe once a year; at least I picked the right day to go. Check out this incredible trailer from the new film based on the Frank Miller graphic novel. Rimjob, the blogger who did this writeup, knows his military history as well as his Star Trek; the Spartan/Klingon parallels were in Gene Roddenberry‘s mind when he was writing the original, and have only grown stronger since then.

No points for guessing who the Romulans were based on.

I must say, there’s just something amusing about writing “That Rimjob really knows his Spartans.” And vice versa, no doubt. By all means, go read the whole entry.

I’ve always been fascinated by historic last stands against insurmountable odds. The defense of Wake Island in World War II is an amazing history to read about. I’ve always seen events like this as living proof that a small band of people can, by force of will & a little luck, stand up to anyone or anything.

The trailer for the film version of Frank Miller‘s “300” has just been released. The movie & graphic novel deal with the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, where a few thousand greeks (led by King Leonidas & his 300 Spartans) fought an army of invading Persians that numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The trailer looks good, although they have the Spartan King Leonidas talking about “a new age of freedom”. Spartan society is probably the closest Humans have come to being like Klingons…

Well, he’s put his finger on it there. Persians are what they were called before they were called Iranians, and there’s no question the marketing people will be peeing themselves in spasmodic glee at how well the current international situation reflects the slant in this film.

Perhaps you’ll recall Michael Medved‘s attempt to claim that the Lord of the Rings films were about the terrorist threat against America, and perhaps you will recall as well the new asshole that Viggo Mortensen (cum laude B.A. in Government, St.Lawrence University) ripped him for that. Tolkien himself nearly rose from the grave at that apostasy.

In any case, it will be interesting to see how the Iranians/Persians are demonized, how the Spartans are Americanized (dare I cross my fingers for NOT?), and how the images are used as cheap emotional triggers by all the many squirming sides to this debate.

Until the users start using, we can simply enjoy the trailer itself. One last thing. I note with admiration that it contains the single most definitive ingredient to an awesome YouTube: a soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails.

Rock on.

from the vault: my firstest-ever blog entry

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Terminal CityAnd I stand by it to this day!

Terminal City is a home for my observations from and about the Downtown EastSide of Vancouver. It is not affiliated with that zine [now deceased] or the snobby club downtown.All rights reserved, in fact, all rights revert to me including the right to own property. I’d like some, please. You can email it if you have a broadband connection, right?

You are welcome to read and to forward from the blog as long as you properly list me as the source. Forwarding or appropriating content from this blog without properly crediting the source indicates your acceptance of the fact that I will remove both your right AND left legs, slowly.

Have a happy!

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