Claude Forthomme's Blog, page 40
September 19, 2013
The Challenge of Being a Woman in the 21st Century
Yesterday in my email box, I got the announcement that Debora Spar, the President of Barnard College (Columbia U., my Alma Mater) has written a new book about the challenge of being a woman in our times, Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection. Released on September 17, it is available on Amazon and all major bookstores.
This is a deeply personal story and Debora Spar examines how women’s lives have, and have not, changed over the past forty years. Her message: women should stop trying to "have it all" - wise advice! I know I certainly did several times in my life. I put family priorities ahead of my career and you know what? I never regretted it! My life remained full thanks to my husband and children.
As Kira Goldenberg puts it in her review of the book, "the way out of this perfection trap is that women lucky enough to have options need to admit that something's gotta give, and that doing so is a positive choice rather than a betrayal of feminism's legacy." (to read the whole article, click here)
In other words, there's a limit to "leaning in", Sheryl Sandberg's call to women to break through the "glass ceiling" (she is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook).
Barnard vs. Facebook? Interesting...
There has already been a great deal of media attention surrounding the book, and there will be much more ahead in the coming months.
President Spar will be visiting several cities this fall to discuss the book, including:
WASHINGTON DC @ Politics and Prose Bookstore
September 25, 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (opens to the public at 7:00 PM)
SEATTLE @ Town Hall Seattle
October 7, 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM
Please note this is a ticketed event
SAN FRANCISCO @ The Bay School (hosted by Book Passage)
October 9, 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (opens to the public at 7:30 PM)
CHICAGO @ University of Chicago
October 21, 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM (public signing), 7:00 PM to 8:00 PM for Barnard alumnae and parents
Please note this is a ticketed event
BOSTON @ Harvard Bookstore
October 22, 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM (opens to the public at 7:00 PM)
NEW YORK @ Barnes and Noble Union Square
October 28 at 6:30 PM
Here's the book trailer(cool):
To visit her website, click here.
And here's an excerpt from the book: click here.
I can't wait to read it - this is the first time, I'm sorry I live in Italy, I can't attend any of her events...
Related articles
Video: Should women try to have it all?(cbsnews.com)
When 'having it all' misses the point(cjr.org)
Lean in? Here's why the glass ceiling still exists(salon.com)
Why No Woman Can Ever Have It All(businessinsider.com)
Q&A: The Woman Who Wants You to Lean Into Less(nymag.com)
September 18, 2013
Germany's Achilles Heel: The Energy Revolution Launched by Merkel!
New wind farm off Borkum Island, Northern Germany.
Oddly enough, Angela Merkel's energy policy - the energiewende - has not been part of the election debate in Germany, yet it surely threatens the Germany's economy with mounting costs, an estimated €550 billion for now but it could easily balloon. And this is just the start, costs could rapidly become unbearable. For example, the Borkum Island wind farm project will be delayed by one year and cost another €20 million as the sea floor must be swept clean of World War II ordnance before a cable bringing the power to shore can be laid down.
Also, this energiewende is much, much more than any funds required from Germany to bail out its southern neighbors hit by the Euro crisis, starting with poor little Greece that is so often berated by the Germans for irresponsible and irrational economic behavior.
For the time being, the conversion to renewable "green" energy, started two years ago in the wake of the Fukushima disaster , is an unmitigated fiasco. It has put into misery over 130,000 German families unable to pay their electricity bills as costs soared by 30 percent, a surcharge resulting from a series of subsidies the German government is paying to:
(1) help newly created operators of renewable power and
(2) shield some 700 companies from increased energy costs and protect their competitive position in the global economy (!) - anyone who believes in free trade is warned.
But the problems don't stop there. It has caused an increase in pollution as traditional oil and coal-burning power plants have had to be fired up to make up for the vagaries of wind and solar energy. Indeed, as Germany is the prey of whimsical winds and a sun that loves to hide behind clouds, the energy produced is variable and often not enough. And no one has yet come up with an energy storage system that really works.
So how responsible is this energy policy? The plan is to shut down all nuclear power plants by 2022 and shift German energy consumption to 80 percent from renewable resources by 2050 - this is something that has never been tried by any country anywhere on such a large scale. How rational or feasible is this?
It looks like Merkel will win the elections and the energy question is likely to be at the top of her agenda.
If nothing is done, Germany is in for a rude awakening. Is she the right person to solve a problem of her own creation?
What do you think?
For more on this, see Melissa Eddy and Stanley Reed's article in the International Herald Tribune, to read full text, click here.
(Source for picture: http://www.renewable-technology.com/p...)
Related articles
(reuters.com)
Merkel 'is EU's big weakness'(banklesstimes.com)
Romantic Germany risks economic decline as green dream spoils(telegraph.co.uk)
September 17, 2013
Turning People Into Paintings: Alexa Meade's Canvas is the Human Body!
Alexa Meade today is a recognized artist, yet not long ago she was a political science student dreaming of working for the government in Washington, sitting at a desk...Whatever you may think of her work, she is an unusual artist and nowadays that's becoming exceedingly rare.
With her, we are far away from the people who turn themselves into statues at street corners. And far away from body art performances. The way Alexa Meade treats her subjects reminds me of the way Lucien Freud handles brush strokes:
Or see this one:
For comparison, here's a typical Lucien Freud, of the more recent period:
Of course, Lucien Freud is...Lucien Freud, one of the greatest painter of the 20th century, no question about that. And he works in a conventional mean, oil painting, obtaining a 3-D effect on a 2-D medium (the canvas). Whereas Alexa Meade does the reverse: 3-D back down to 2-D when she snaps a photo of her work. Presumably, she sells her photos...
And here's the delightful TED talk she gave, watch it, you're in for a few surprises:
Her website: http://www.alexameade.com/
Is this Art with a capital A? It certainly would fall in the category of art photography, the kind where the scene to be photographed is pre-set and all the details are controlled by the photographer.
Is it a spoof on art? Maybe. But it certainly takes a special kind of talent to paint people that way. And a lot of patience on the part of the models who have to bear paint everywhere on themselves including inside their ears!
What do you think?
(Source of photograph of Lucien Freud's self portrait: the detail is on www.medeaonline.net)
With her, we are far away from the people who turn themselves into statues at street corners. And far away from body art performances. The way Alexa Meade treats her subjects reminds me of the way Lucien Freud handles brush strokes:
Or see this one:
For comparison, here's a typical Lucien Freud, of the more recent period:
Of course, Lucien Freud is...Lucien Freud, one of the greatest painter of the 20th century, no question about that. And he works in a conventional mean, oil painting, obtaining a 3-D effect on a 2-D medium (the canvas). Whereas Alexa Meade does the reverse: 3-D back down to 2-D when she snaps a photo of her work. Presumably, she sells her photos...
And here's the delightful TED talk she gave, watch it, you're in for a few surprises:
Her website: http://www.alexameade.com/
Is this Art with a capital A? It certainly would fall in the category of art photography, the kind where the scene to be photographed is pre-set and all the details are controlled by the photographer.
Is it a spoof on art? Maybe. But it certainly takes a special kind of talent to paint people that way. And a lot of patience on the part of the models who have to bear paint everywhere on themselves including inside their ears!
What do you think?
(Source of photograph of Lucien Freud's self portrait: the detail is on www.medeaonline.net)
September 16, 2013
When Will Your Car Do the Driving For You? Now!
It sounds like science-fiction but it isn't. Mercedes Benz has just come out with a model that really drives by itself, the S500 Intelligent Drive. It was unveiled this week at the Frankfurt Fair.
Here it is:
And here's a fascinating video of the first road demonstration, 100 km through town and country under all sorts of road conditions:
Neat! Serial production for most self-driving models is expected soon, for 2020. Yet Mercedes' latest version of the S-Class is practically a self-driving car. It is able to accelerate and brake by itself, even in stop-and-go traffic, and can steer itself on a lightly curved road. It will go on sale in the US next month, for a little more than $92,000. Very costly of course. But if you think about it, it's way under the
price of super cars like a Ferrari or a Lamborghini and it is (almost) a normal price for a
luxury, top-of-the-line car.
Why am I excited? Because this is a real breakthrough. We all know about Google's driverless car. It's been around for a while using a modified Toyota Prius but so far it had been alone in its class, almost viewed with suspicion, as a geeky thing unlikely to be practical.
Now it's no longer alone. All the major car makers have joined the geeks and are testing autonomous car technologies, but Mercedes is the first one that has actually built a self-driving model that works - now! And it is teaming up with Nokia to improve the detailed maps needed for this type of driving.
Mercedes is hot and up there with Google.
According to the Herald Tribune's Jack Ewing (see here), auto-makers worry that the new generations are not interested in cars and spend all their money on tech stuff from smart phones to tablets rather than taking a driving license. They figure a self-driving car will fire their imagination.
Maybe. I don't belong to the new XYZ generation (or whatever you call it), but I can tell you that as a baby boomer, my imagination is fired. And I'm convinced this kind of car is going to be indispensable for senior citizens - not the ultra rich who can afford a human chauffeur, but the majority who can't and yet need one as they grow older and can't drive (or drive safely) anymore...That's a big market, the baby boomer market, and Mercedes will be hitting it at just the right time, in 2020, when the youngest boomer will have just turned 56 and the oldest 74... Good timing!
As for me, more modestly and certainly less expensively, this means I will have to adjust the final editing of my Forever Young science fiction novel to make sure self-driving cars are in the future I envision, 200 years from now. They will surely be run-of-the-mill, perhaps not for everyone, but certainly for the well-to-do...But I've added yet another twist to them: they're "hover crafts", riding on maglev suspension, high above ground where the rest of humanity grovels and gets stuck in traffic jams...Hey, my science fiction is really fiction!
Related articles
Nokia, Mercedes-Benz to create maps for self-driving cars(news.cnet.com)
Self-driving cars a Reality now(souptub.wordpress.com)
Nokia is working on self-driving cars with Mercedes(gigaom.com)
Self-driving Mercedes is your chauffeur | Reviewed.com(cars.reviewed.com)
Mercedes shows off fully autonomous S-Class, promises production version by 2020(digitaltrends.com)
Here it is:
And here's a fascinating video of the first road demonstration, 100 km through town and country under all sorts of road conditions:
Neat! Serial production for most self-driving models is expected soon, for 2020. Yet Mercedes' latest version of the S-Class is practically a self-driving car. It is able to accelerate and brake by itself, even in stop-and-go traffic, and can steer itself on a lightly curved road. It will go on sale in the US next month, for a little more than $92,000. Very costly of course. But if you think about it, it's way under the
price of super cars like a Ferrari or a Lamborghini and it is (almost) a normal price for a
luxury, top-of-the-line car.
Why am I excited? Because this is a real breakthrough. We all know about Google's driverless car. It's been around for a while using a modified Toyota Prius but so far it had been alone in its class, almost viewed with suspicion, as a geeky thing unlikely to be practical.
Now it's no longer alone. All the major car makers have joined the geeks and are testing autonomous car technologies, but Mercedes is the first one that has actually built a self-driving model that works - now! And it is teaming up with Nokia to improve the detailed maps needed for this type of driving.
Mercedes is hot and up there with Google.
According to the Herald Tribune's Jack Ewing (see here), auto-makers worry that the new generations are not interested in cars and spend all their money on tech stuff from smart phones to tablets rather than taking a driving license. They figure a self-driving car will fire their imagination.
Maybe. I don't belong to the new XYZ generation (or whatever you call it), but I can tell you that as a baby boomer, my imagination is fired. And I'm convinced this kind of car is going to be indispensable for senior citizens - not the ultra rich who can afford a human chauffeur, but the majority who can't and yet need one as they grow older and can't drive (or drive safely) anymore...That's a big market, the baby boomer market, and Mercedes will be hitting it at just the right time, in 2020, when the youngest boomer will have just turned 56 and the oldest 74... Good timing!
As for me, more modestly and certainly less expensively, this means I will have to adjust the final editing of my Forever Young science fiction novel to make sure self-driving cars are in the future I envision, 200 years from now. They will surely be run-of-the-mill, perhaps not for everyone, but certainly for the well-to-do...But I've added yet another twist to them: they're "hover crafts", riding on maglev suspension, high above ground where the rest of humanity grovels and gets stuck in traffic jams...Hey, my science fiction is really fiction!
Related articles
Nokia, Mercedes-Benz to create maps for self-driving cars(news.cnet.com)
Self-driving cars a Reality now(souptub.wordpress.com)
Nokia is working on self-driving cars with Mercedes(gigaom.com)
Self-driving Mercedes is your chauffeur | Reviewed.com(cars.reviewed.com)
Mercedes shows off fully autonomous S-Class, promises production version by 2020(digitaltrends.com)
September 13, 2013
Outer Space is Ours!
Everyone calls it The Little Old Spacecraft That Could. Voyager 1 launched in 1977 has left the solar system! It's in outer space, between stars, traveling where there's interstellar gas, plasma, dark matter, all sorts of unknown stuff. It's flying where the solar wind can no longer reach it. It won't come across another star for some 40,000 years...
I love this!
The New York Times is lyrical about it, see here and especially Brooks Barnes' article here.
It's over 11 billion miles from earth or nearly 19 billion kilometers! It left our stellar system a year ago but it's only official now. Cool: this is as important news as the first walk on the Moon. The distance is astonishing, like traveling to the Moon and back 25,000 times!
Our understanding of the universe is about to take a quantum leap, and we can expect to get useful information from Voyager 1 at least until 2025...and you know why? Thanks to a retired NASA engineer, Dr. Stone, who was able to expand the capacity of the antiquated computer system the probe is carrying, an no wonder, it's technology dates back three decades, younger engineers didn't know what to do with it...
This is a video done a year ago that is the best I could find, it really explains what this is all about:
I'm so excited! You can see why I love to write science fiction. We live through amazing times...
(Photo source: Voyager 1, Wikipedia)
Related articles
It's Official! Voyager 1 Spacecraft Has Left Solar System(space.com)
September 12, 2013
How to Discover New Books When There are Millions Out There!
Now I wanted to share with you what I discovered on my email coming home from vacation. All about BookGorilla , Ebook Bargains UK and the latest kid on the block, The Fussy Librarian . All three are one step behind Bookbub, but perhaps not for long!
In case you don't know about Bookbub , this is a website that made a remarkable breakthrough in book discovery last year when it started out. According to Publishing Perspectives (read article here), Bookbub has now some 1.5 million subscribers and the point is this: Bookbub knows exactly what genre of books their subscribers like to read. This makes it a unique and indispensable marketing tool for authors. In the words of Josh Schanker, Bookbub's founder and president, “BookBub is a service that highlights limited time deep discounts on
acclaimed ebooks .” (highlights added)
The rub: advertising with them is very costly and they are quick to reject you without telling you the reason why. According to their blurb, your book needs to be "acclaimed", whatever that means. Though Mr. Schanker does clarify this a little bit in the Publishing Perspectives article: "When independent authors submit work, we ask: who is this? Does he have a
body of work? Has it met with critical acclaim or reader acclaim? Who
was the editor? We look for these sorts of things. It’s essential to
maintain the trust of our subscribers."
No doubt essential to maintain subscribers' trust but unfortunately somewhat opaque.
Result: there are now new sites springing up in the wake of Bookbub's success and rushing in to fill the gaps.
One of the most successful upstarts in this area is BookGorilla, that just started five months ago in March 2013 (address here: http://www.bookgorilla.com)
So what's different about it?In an email I got yesterday, BookGorilla recalled how they had managed to build more than 100,000 subscribers in the short time since they launched their site. What's driving this growth is one particular feature that makes Book Gorilla "dramatically different for readers". They claim that along "top-tier established authors", readers find valid, interesting "emerging authors"...which means that authors who use them need to go through their quality control barriers. And that's important. The aim is to reassure readers that they will not be spammed with low-grade, unprofessional books.
Then there's Ebook Bargains UK, just started before the summer (their address: http://ebookbargainsuk.com) Here the quality controls are not highlighted, but presumably they exists and the site appears to be effective.
And if you think that being limited to the UK is a drawback, well, you'd be wrong to think that. Many of my fellow writers swear by them and Ebook Bargains UK is expanding fast. They already cover the US, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain and they're about to launch their newsletter in France and Scandinavia. Busy guys!
The newest site, as I said, is The Fussy Librarian . Still in the beta stage, it's calling in readers but not yet taking on authors - I love the name! The home page (my screen shot) looks cool and here is the address: http://www.thefussylibrarian.com
Like all the others, they're on Facebook and Twitter and as one of their tweet says: Your personal librarian. 27 genres. 10 content options. Sign up now. We're giving away an iPad Mini!
Clever!
Yes, all these sites are marketing-savvy. And, in the case of the Fussy Librarian, the "content options" mean that you can exclude violence or steamy sex if that's not the sort of stuff you go for. Interesting variant!
Congrats to all these new book discovery sites - a much needed service for both readers and writers.
If you're an author or reader, my advice: sign up with them. I have!
Just one word of caution: this will work as long as these sites remember to apply quality control on their authors. In fact, in my opinion, book discoverability would be further helped if those sites also asked more pointed questions from their subscribers.
For example, why not ask readers to list their all time favorite books, or the most recent book they've read and enjoyed? Wouldn't that help zero in on the kind of book one wants to read?
There may be other ways to do this. Any suggestions?
Related articles showing you the variety of offers on hand, with few focused on trying to help you with what YOU like to read...
Netflix for books? Oyster launches with over 100,000 in-print titles(digitaltrends.com)
The Future of the Traditional Bookstore in a Digital World(goodereader.com)
New Book Search Engine Knows How to Market a Book(prweb.com)
September 11, 2013
The One Percent is NO JOKE! The Plutocrats are Here
The One Percent is more powerful than you think, it's in fact only 0.1 percent and it has displaced the middle class. We are living in the age of the "global plutocracy", of "surging income inequality at the top". Those are Chrystia Freeland's words, a top financial editor, listen to her on TED (5 September 2013):
Well worth listening to her, isn't it? Yes, this is the age of "crony capitalism". According to Warren Buffet, the wealth of the 400 Americans at the top has quintupled in the past 20 years...
Can we get rid of crony capitalism? Very, very difficult says Ms. Freeland but not impossible. And she's leaving journalism for politics, running for Parliament in Canada. And she's also written a book about it, available on Amazon: Plutocrats, the Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else
Plutocrats, according to her, are "alpha geeks": as income increases, social mobility decreases. And it's not just true of the US, it's true of the rich everywhere, emerging economies included (Russians, Brazilians, Chinese etc).
They are "hollowing the middle class" and "devouring middle class jobs". The "trickle down" economic model whereby wealth would spread to the whole of society is a thing of the past. The hyper-wealthy are not trickling down anything to anyone, they have only their own interests in mind.
The thing to understand is that the new economy is not creating that many new jobs for the middle class. There is a decoupling between productivity and job creation.
What is needed now she says, is a "new New Deal".
That's why she's into politics.
And that's why I'm writing FOREVER YOUNG: it's not just a fantasy science fiction novel. It reflects what I think is happening to our society and the way it will look like 200 years from now if we do nothing.
And we need to do something. That's my job as a fiction writer. How about you?
Related articles
Rise of the New Global Super-Rich(ritholtz.com)
Chrystia Freeland: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich(milkandcookies.com)
How to keep the plutocracy from becoming an aristocracy: A Q&A with Chrystia Freeland(ted.com)
Why is Chrystia Freeland leaving journalism to run for office?(washingtonpost.com)
September 10, 2013
Climate Change: How will the Dutch Cope with Rising Sea Levels?
Will the Netherlands disappear with Climate Change? It is well known that an intricate system of dams, dykes and canals built over centuries has saved thousands of square miles of land that was below sea level. How will the Dutch manage when Climate Warming will have raised sea
levels one meter or, God forbid, seven meters as in the worst case
scenario?
The answer is simple: Climate Change will take lots of TIME (see article below) so we can all adjust, and so can the Dutch.
There are basically two solutions, see here: floating houses and houses on stilts. But the Dutch are an inventive sort, they've already come up with a climate proofing model for one of their major cities, Rotterdam, already under sea level. And the British are showing that they are worried too and are not that far behind:
Clever, and all this by 2025: expect the future to be with us sooner than you think! Is anything done in your part of the world? I'd love to know - this is all part of the research I'm doing for my upcoming science fiction novel Forever Young, set 200 years from now...
Related articles
Warmist: Sea-level rise inevitable, but it may take 2,000 years(junkscience.com)
Sea level rise 'locking in' quickly, cities threatened.(climatecentral.org)
Rising Sea Levels Ranked as Greatest Climate Change Threat: Guy Carpenter(insurancejournal.com)
levels one meter or, God forbid, seven meters as in the worst case
scenario?
The answer is simple: Climate Change will take lots of TIME (see article below) so we can all adjust, and so can the Dutch.
There are basically two solutions, see here: floating houses and houses on stilts. But the Dutch are an inventive sort, they've already come up with a climate proofing model for one of their major cities, Rotterdam, already under sea level. And the British are showing that they are worried too and are not that far behind:
Clever, and all this by 2025: expect the future to be with us sooner than you think! Is anything done in your part of the world? I'd love to know - this is all part of the research I'm doing for my upcoming science fiction novel Forever Young, set 200 years from now...
Related articles
Warmist: Sea-level rise inevitable, but it may take 2,000 years(junkscience.com)
Sea level rise 'locking in' quickly, cities threatened.(climatecentral.org)
Rising Sea Levels Ranked as Greatest Climate Change Threat: Guy Carpenter(insurancejournal.com)
September 9, 2013
A Cool Picture: Should We Worry About it?
Back from my vacation, back to work on my book about our future, Forever Young, set 200 years from now...My research on climate change brought me to this beautiful picture (source: Ian Joughin, University of Washington):
Cool...You can read more about it here on Deutsche Welle.
As explained there, 20 years of satellite monitoring end the confusion - yes, it's certain now, climate warming is with us and Greenland is melting fastest...Climate reporting claiming otherwise is simply shoddy reporting (see the UK Guardian article by Dana Nuccitelli, click here).
Wondering where I disappeared to? Amsterdam! I took lots of pictures, here's my favorite:
The Venice of the North...If sea level rises by seven meters (as in the worst-case scenario) I wonder how our Dutch friends will manage...
Related articles:
Arctic sea ice delusions strike the Mail on Sunday and Telegraph | Dana Nuccitelli(theguardian.com)
When would global warming destroy life on Earth? Study hazards a guess.(csmonitor.com)
Photos: Greenland Coping With Climate Change(photos.mercurynews.com)
Cool...You can read more about it here on Deutsche Welle.
As explained there, 20 years of satellite monitoring end the confusion - yes, it's certain now, climate warming is with us and Greenland is melting fastest...Climate reporting claiming otherwise is simply shoddy reporting (see the UK Guardian article by Dana Nuccitelli, click here).
Wondering where I disappeared to? Amsterdam! I took lots of pictures, here's my favorite:
The Venice of the North...If sea level rises by seven meters (as in the worst-case scenario) I wonder how our Dutch friends will manage...
Related articles:
Arctic sea ice delusions strike the Mail on Sunday and Telegraph | Dana Nuccitelli(theguardian.com)
When would global warming destroy life on Earth? Study hazards a guess.(csmonitor.com)
Photos: Greenland Coping With Climate Change(photos.mercurynews.com)
August 30, 2013
Taking a Break with a Classic Negroni!
Dear readers, I'm off for a week, I need a break - see you on September 9!
In the meantime, have a summer drink, the one I like best: Negroni done the classic way, following the Florentine recipe invented in the Café Casoni in 1919 at the behest of a client, Count Camillo Negroni. It simply involves adding gin to an Americano instead of the selz water. Then there's the more sophisticated Milan version which calls for an additional dash of angostura bitters.
Here's the basic recipe:
- one part gin
- one part red Vermouth (semi-sweet)
- one part bitter Campari
Serve in a tumbler with lots of ice, stir and decorate with a slice of orange (to distinguish it from the Americano traditionally done with lemon)
Enjoy, let me know how you like it!
