WHAT: An alarm clock that wakes you up with the smell and sizzle of cooking bacon…

HOW: A frozen strip of bacon is placed in Wake n’ Bacon the night before. Because there is a 10 minute cooking time, the clock is set to go off 10 minutes before the desired waking time. Once the alarm goes off, the clock it sends a signal to a small speaker to generate the alarm sound. We hacked the clock so that the signal is re-routed by a microchip that in responds by sending a signal to a relay that throws the switch to power two halogen lamps that slow-cook the bacon in about 10 minutes.

Not quite the same for, what, Quorn rashers presumably?

Share:

Share:

Let’s get rid of the fashion magazine stuff—this is not a bonkbuster.

And very true, it isn’t. It was only a couple of lines of dialogue that was highlighted, but it did make me smile. These comments become quite entertaining after a while. Did I mention you can’t bring your ego to the table at this stage?

Share:

Share:

When we look at a book, its cover tells us what to expect. A pink paperback featuring a smiling young woman is most likely a female-centric summer read, whereas a gun on a black background is probably a murder story. A few simple aesthetic rules narrow our options, make life easier and ensure none of us has to wander Waterstone’s for hours, wailing in confusion. And yet the rules seem to be changing. Having cottoned on to the fact that chick lit books sell like cupcakes, publishers are now adding chick lit-style covers to any book written by a woman whether it fits the genre definition or not… books aimed at women are becoming increasingly homogenised, girly and bland-looking.

The first comment on the post sums it up for me: “It’s very simple, really. If women refused to buy books with patronising covers, the publishers would soon change their tune.”

True. Publishers respond to what sells, and try to capture the sales of popular books by making theirs look similar. And why wouldn’t you? You’re a business, after all. If customers don’t buy them, they won’t do it again. Otherwise, is it such a bad thing for an author if more people read their books because the cover is a particular pastel shade which doesn’t sit well with you?

Share:

Source: IPCC, Working group I, Summary for Policy Makers (SPM), Third Assessment Report (TAR), page 3.

Guess I should read up.

Share:

they talk down through
the centuries to us,
and this we need more and more,
the statues and paintings
in midnight age
as we go along
holding dead hands.

and we would say
rather than delude the knowing:
a damn good show,
but hardly enough for a horse to eat,
and out on the sunshine street where
eyes are dabbled in metazoan faces
i decide again
that in theses centuries
they have done very well
considering the nature of their
brothers:
it’s more than good
that some of them,
(closer really to the field-mouse than
falcon)
have been bold enough to try.

Share:

Share:

Where did this bias against work created for a popular audience come from?

In all fairness, it came from the fact that the vast preponderance of art created for a mass audience is crap. It’s impossible to ignore that. But the vast preponderance of work written as literary art is high-toned crap. The proportion may settle down in the neighborhood of 90/10 — Sturgeon’s Law said that 90% of everything is crud.

Via Bookninja

Share:

Share: