Here.
Transport Blog is up again, but not being added to again. I miss transport blogging.
More about the bloke whose Twitter feed I found this bit of video at here.
Category: Books
Books and a telegram
I just posted something at Samizdata about a talk I’ll be doing for Christian Michel this coming Sunday, i.e. January 6th. A rerun of this, basically, but with my thinking somewhat further advanced.
In the course of my homework for this posting, and for the talk itself, I came across these two rather fine images, which nicely illustrate the two history dates loom large in my story, the invention of the printing press …:
… and the invention of the electric telegraph:
I found these images here, and here.
Note how all the books are German. A major impact of printing being nationalism.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
The Boxing Day posting
And here, as promised yesterday, are the other dozen of the Christmassy (Google reckons it’s double ss at the end there rather than the single s I used to name the photos) photos that I was gathering together yesterday. They, like the previous lot, are shown in chronological order, the first one being from 2015 to now, the most recent from earlier this month:
I used half a dozen of these two dozen photos to concoct a Merry Christmas photo-posting at Samizdata, in the small hours of this morning, what with there having been nothing there yesterday, until I did that. And then faked the timing. Just like I often do here.
Which means that, for the last week, I have not only done something for here, every day, but have done something there, every day. More on the thinking behind this sudden burst of Samzdating here, some time soon, maybe, I promise nothing.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Roz is now being quoted
This is not an advert for a book. Well, it is, but that’s not my purpose in showing it here. My angle is my niece, the crime fiction writer Roz Watkins, who is quoted here, enthusing about the book:
The point being that, with what seems to me like remarkable speed, Roz has turned herself into someone whose opinion about other people’s writing is considered worth quoting.
I found the above graphic at her Twitter feed, along with her thanks for having been described as “the great Roz Watkins” by a grateful publisher. Everything about Roz’s public and social media presence says to me, and I am sure to everyone else who is following her, that she is very serious about her writing career. Deadly serious, you might say.
This matters, because readers of crime fiction need to know that, if they invest their time and curiosity and shelf space, to say nothing of their cash, in a leading character, this investment will pay off. The energetic and upbeat way that Roz presents herself says that there will be plenty more books about her lead detective. There is already a second Meg Dalton tale coming out next April, and if several more Meg Daltons do not follow, at a speed no faster than (but no slower than) is consistent with the maintenance of quality, I for one will be very surprised.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Sign of our time
Seen recently on Facebook:
I like all the reflections in the background. And what happens to the guy’s head. Real Photographers tend to avoid all that stuff. I seek it out.
Is this a reference to Brexit, Trump etc., or am I reading too much into this?
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Thoughts on concentra …
I was reading this piece by Will Self about the baleful effect upon literature of the internet, screen reading instead of proper reading from paper bound into books, etc. But then I got interrupted by the thought of writing this, which is about how a big difference between reading from a screen, as I just was, and reading from a printed book, is that if you are reading a book, it is more cumbersome, and sometimes not possible, to switch to attending to something else, like consulting the county cricket scores (Surrey are just now being bollocked by Essex), seeing what the latest is on Instapundit, or tuning into the latest pronouncements of Friends on Facebook or enemies on Twitter, or whatever is your equivalent list of interruptions.
This effect works when I am reading a book in the lavatory, even though, in my lavatory, there are several hundred other books present. The mere fact of reading a book seems to focus my mind. Perhaps this is only a habit of mine, just as not concentrating is only a habit when I am looking at a screen, but these onlys are still a big deal.
The effect is greatly enhanced when I go walkabout, and take a book with me. Then – when being publicly transported or when pausing for coffee or rest or whatever – I cannot switch. I can only concentrate on the one book, or not.
It’s the same in the theatre or the opera house, which friends occasionally entice me into. Recently I witnessed Lohengrin at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The production was the usual abomination, but the orchestra and chorus were sublime, as were occasional bits of the solo singing. And I now know Lohengrin a lot better. Why? Because, when I was stuck inside the ROH, there was nothing else to do except pay attention. I could shut my eyes, which I often did. But, I couldn’t wave a mouse or a stick at it and change it to The Mikado or Carry on Cleo, even though there were longish stretches when, if I could have, I would have. It was Lohengrin or nothing.
I surmise that quite a few people these days deliberately subject themselves to this sort of forced concentration, knowing that it may be a bit of a struggle, but that it will a struggle they will be glad to have struggled with. I don’t think it’s just me.
This explains, among other things, why I still resist portable screens. Getting out and about is a chance to concentrate.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
The man from Glint
Earlier this evening, I attended a fascinating Libertarian Home talk given by Jason Cozens, one of the founders and bosses of Glint. (Scroll down there a bit, and I think you will see why I think I smell yet another two-man team.) Glint enables those who think that currency ought to be gold-backed to get there hands on just such a currency, thereby personally reversing, as it were, the decision by President Nixon, in 1971, to take the US dollar off the gold standard.
This talk was excellent, and was clearly saturated in Austrianism. In the highly unlikely event that Jason Cozens has not met up with a conversed with Detlev Schlichter, he should.
Here is a photo I took of Mr Cozens waving an ancient gold coin from Roman era Britain, which he had come by in some way that he did describe but which I immediately forgot:
And here is that coin, and him holding it, somewhat closer up:
Glint, however, does not deploy actual gold coins. Any gold it arranges for you to own stays in a vault in Switzerland. You get yourself a Glint account, with whatever combination of gold or other popular currencies in it that you want, and you can buy stuff with your card, which looks and works like any other credit/debit card.
Glint would appear to be well worth investigating.
I also found the evening very advantageous on a more personal level. I was able to solidify no less than two future Brian’s Last Fridays talks, and was able to woo two other potential future speakers of great interestingness. Others present seemed equally busy making connections of their own. Which is a lot of the point of such meetings, and which is all part of why I believe in organising a steady stream of them.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
Driverless vehicles with faces and driverless vehicles to sleep on
Driverless cars will happen, eventually. But when they do, who knows what they will be like, or look like, what they will do or not do, what other changes they will precipitate? When this finally happens, it will surely be the railways, or the internet, in the sense that it will be big, and that nobody now knows how big or what the details will consist of.
Two driverless vehicle articles came to my attention today, both of which illustrate how very different driverless vehicles could end up being to the vehicles we are now familiar with.
This Dezeen report reports on a scheme by Land Rover to put eyes on the front of driverless vehicles, to communicate with pedestrians, the way pedestrians now look at the faces of drivers to negotiate who goes where, when. Makes sense. With no driver, and the vehicle driving itself, it could use a face, or else how will the vehicle be able to participate in after-you-no-after-you-no-after-you-no-I-insist-so-do-I sessions?
So, does a robot with a working face (in due course robot faces will be a lot better than that one) count as: “Other creatures”? I say: yes (see below).
Will the Thomas the Tank Engine books prove to be a prophetic glimpse into the future of transport? Eat your hearts out, SF movies. Didn’t see that coming, did you?
And here is a posting about how people might choose to sleep in driverless vehicles on long journeys, instead of going by air. The problem with going by air being that you have to go by airport, and that sleeping in the typical airplane is for many impossibly uncomfortable. But, if we do sleep on long distance driverless vehicles, what will we do about going to the toilet? Stop at a toilet sounds like an answer. But what will the toilet be like? Might it also be a vehicle?
The point is: nobody knows how driverless vehicles will play out. Except to say that if they look like cars and vans and lorries look now, that would be an insanely improbable coincidence.
LATER: More about those eyes here.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
The paperback cover will be much more legible
The Devil’s Dice is a debut work of crime fiction, written by my niece (which I mention to make clear that I am biased in her favour) Roz Watkins, and published earlier this year. I enjoyed it a lot when I read it, but I did complain about the cover design:
Memo to self: If I ever design a book cover, make the title on the front either in dark lettering with a light background, or with light lettering on a dark background.
This earlier posting reinforced that point with a photo of a big display of books in Waterstone’s Piccadilly, from which you can only tell that The Devil’s Dice is The Devil’s Dice when you crop out that one title from that bigger picture and blow it up, thus:
This illegibility effect is also all too evident in this photo, taken by Roz’s brother.
All of which means that this (this being the relevant Amazon link) is good news:
That’s the cover of the paperback version of The Devil’s Dice, which which will be available in January of next year. Okay, it’s not a huge change, but putting the same orange lettering on a black background instead of a near white background is much more likely to get the attention of the fading-eyesight community, of which I am a member, and which is surely a quite large chunk of the public for crime fiction. This is also the kind of thing that just might sway a decision about whether to put a book in a bookshop window display.
I bet I wasn’t the only one grumbling about that earlier hardback cover, and it would appear that the grumbling has had exactly the desired effect.
I know little about book publishing, but I’m guessing that paperbacks are where the volume sales are, driven by those early glowing reviews (The Devil’s Dice got lots of glowing reviews) penned by the readers of the hardback version. And from that volume comes the magic of a serious word-of-mouth wave. Most readers are probably willing to wait a little in order not to have to devote scarce bookshelf space to great big chunks of cardboard, and for the sake of having something a bit easier to carry around.
And, if you really insist of your books being ultra portable, or if your eyesight is even worse than mine and you need seriously to enlarge the text, The Devil’s Dice is also now available in Kindle format, for just £1.99. I am biased (see above), but for what it’s worth I agree with all those glowing reviewers, and recommend The Devil’s Dice in all formats, even the hardback with its dodgy cover.
Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog
The notes for my talk
The talk in question being this. I show this photo of my notes here more to remind me to keep thinking about this stuff, than to tell you what I was talking about. For that, maybe better wait for the video.
I spent most of my spare time today working on that, even though it may not look like it. In the end I had far too much I wanted to say, but I did manage to blurt out a decent proportion of it. The thing to remember in such circumstances is that they don’t know what you forgot to say. They only know what you did say. If that was okay, then it was okay.
There is one big misprint, towards the end. Where it says “Era 2 effects”, twice over, the second “Era 2” should be “Era 1”. This did not throw me. I only just noticed it.