The Reading List Update

Bellwether by Connie Willis -  I mentioned before that Connie Willis was totally unknown to me just a few years ago.  This despite her 6 Nebula awards, 5 Hugo awards and winning the John W. Campbell award.  She's quite simply someone that science fiction fans should know and read.
   This is interesting because it feels more like fiction about science than science fiction.  Not that that's a bad thing.  The story is about research scientists caught in the bizarre world of corporate research.  They are tormented by managers who don't understand science, fellow scientists who have sold their professional souls to play the game and uncooperative support staff.  Along the way you explore chaos theory, the origins of fads and perhaps slightly bizarrely, sheep.  The book is fun and quite funny.  The "mystery person" who can offer an enormous independent funding source is pretty easy to pick out but that's a tiny thing in the story.  It's a well written story that will give science fans a nice break from the same old, same old sci-fi

Rating - ****

Portrait of a Spy - Daniel Silva - Book #11 in the Gabriel Allon series.  If you like the stories of the Israeli spy turned fine art restorer then you'll like this one.  Silva has cranked out another solid tale that gives you the action you expect with the deft education on the world of fine art, especially painting.
   Allon is desperately trying to move on to a life after his work for Ari Shamron.  It was to begin with a new home in Cornwall Wales and his wife Chiara.  When Allon walks into a terrorist bombing in London however he gets drawn back into the secret war being waged with radical terrorists.
   Silva has his primary character down pat and lays out a plot that is perfectly believable while remaining fascinating and new.  Through it all is the tempting hope (dream?) that perhaps at the end he'll let Allon find peace in retirement.  But if he did what would his fans do?
Rating -*** (Good Read)

Clarence Darrow - Attorney for the Damned - John A. Farrell - Darrow has always been a compelling figure to me.  If I'm honest however most of that image comes from the fictionalized Darrow of the play "Inherit the Wind".  While it is a great movie it takes some liberties with the facts.  Farrell has created an in depth look at one of the great names of the legal world in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.
   The Darrow that emerges is still a great figure but one with huge glaring flaws.  While he fought for the working man most of his career if the money was good he was just as comfortable working for corporate interests as well.  And he was utterly unapologetic about it.  His dedication to the plight of the working man is surely the largest part of his legacy.  At the same time it is clear that he does it from a kind of arrogant noblesse oblige.  Darrow thought very little of the human race in general.  His philosophy said that life was an unrelenting burden of evil and unhappiness to be endured and that the wise man took whatever enjoyment he could find.  This led him to treat women (with only rare exceptions) as vehicles for his own pleasure.  The resulting image of Darrow is infinitely more complex and challenging than what I had before.  The hero may indeed have feet of clay but he was a hero none the less.

Rating **** Recommended Read

Charlie is Winning, The Final Encyclopedia, Doonesbury Rant

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com

Program scripts from week of March 19, 2012

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

Charlie Is Winning!

So tell me.  Have you noticed?  Have you noticed whose smirking face has recently started showing up in commercials on TV?  Have you noticed that Charlie Sheen is back?

The Sheen story should be well known enough that it requires only a very brief re-cap.  Charlie Sheen has a long and varied career in movies and TV.  It was just a year ago that Sheen’s life finally seemed to come completely off the rails.  A long standing battle with alcohol and drugs combined with what can most generously described as a tempestuous love life finally exploded in March of 2011.  The highest paid star in series TV was canned from his program by the network.  Sheen would then go off a truly weird journey of tweets and public appearances that left everyone scratching their heads over just what we were watching.  A collapse of epic proportion or an equally epic publicity stunt.  I’m not sure to this day what the answer is.  It’s probably a bit of both.

But it’s only been a year literally.  Yet there on my TV the other day were not one but TWO brand new commercials that feature Charlie Sheen.  DirectTV has been running a series of very clever spots that connect staying with cable TV to people’s lives coming apart.  In this new one not cutting your cable results with you in a Turkish bath re-enacting scenes from Platoon with Charlie Sheen.  The other spot comes from the folks at Chrysler as they push their new partnership with Italian automaker Fiat.  The “bad boy” version of the Fiat 500 known as the Abarth is seen careening around inside a beautiful mansion filled with beautiful female models.  In the end we discover that this is supposedly how Charlie spent his time while under “house arrest”.  For the record he was never under house arrest but why quibble over details.
So where does this leave us?  Charlie Sheen’s life over the last decade at least has been a train wreck.  Just ask his dad Martin Sheen who lived through a similar train wreck early in his career.  Is this a sign of the ability of the American people to forgive?  Is this just another example of our acceptance of bad behavior excused by celebrity?  Is it just the latest chapter in Charlie Sheen’s masterful manipulation of us all?

As with so many things about the troubled star it’s just not clear.  But can’t you just see that bad boy smile spreading across Charlie’s face as he gives us wink and leans into our ear to whisper  “Winning!”.

The Final Encyclopedia

Wow, it’s the end of an era, an epoch.  It’s hard to even imagine what the future is going to be like.  You knew it had to happen eventually but the reality of it is still hard to grasp.  The folks at Encyclopedia Brittanica have announced that they are no longer going to print the massive compendium of knowledge.

A world that will never see another new edition of what many of us considered the ultimate encyclopedia is kind of hard to wrap your head around.  Well hard for those of us who grew up with encyclopedias as a vital and common resource for learning about the world.  If Encyclopedia Brittanica can’t make as a printed version then the age of the printed encyclopedia has come to an end.

That’s not really surprising of course.  When I need to look up research material for this program or my work I go on line.  I can’t even remember the last time I opened a volume of an encyclopedia.   If you’re the tiniest bit careful you can find anything that you might have found in an encyclopedia and then some online.  The sum total of human knowledge, or at least a goodly portion of it, can be carried around in a tablet computer or a smartphone.  So a couple dozen huge, heavy books are really old school just about any way you cut it.

But I must admit that part of me will mourn the passing of this great institution.  Once upon a time an encyclopedia was a new and cutting edge method of spreading knowledge.

In the Phillippi household we couldn’t afford the Encyclopedia Brittanica.  Ours was an early ‘60’s edition of the Colliers Encyclopedia.  And yes yours truly would take a rainy afternoon or cold winter weekend and grab a volume at random and just begin to read.  I think as much as anything those volumes jump started my lifelong love of learning.  It was fascinating to know that someone had figured all these things out, that someone had looked at some strange object and given it a name.  The heavy binding and the thick, glossy pages covered in words and pictures took me places far from the Pittsburgh suburbs where I grew up.  It was a intellectual and sensory experience that stays with me to this very day.

With all the information at our digital fingertips I’m not sure we’ve re-created that wonderful adventure of learning that you got from flipping open a volume of an encyclopedia.

And I think the world will be a lesser place for that.

Doonesbury Rant

I’m going to warn you right up front that this is a bit of a rant.  

This past week a fair number of newspapers around the country chose to not run the Doonesbury cartoon strip.  The story arc for these strips involved a controversial move in some states to mandate an physically intrusive medical procedure on women.  This is NOT a political commentary program so I have no intention of getting involved in that discussion.  In support of transparency I should note that Doonesbury is one of my all time favorite comics.

Having said that we need to note this about Gary Trudeau’s work.  It IS political.  Always has been.  Hanging in my office is the February 9, 1976 cover of Time magazine.  It features Mike and Mark and BD and Zonker among others.  The headline reads “Politics in the Funny Papers”.  In other words this is no big surprise.  Yes there are stories of the lives of these characters.  We’ve seen Mike’s child grow up and seen Zonker’s refusal to do likewise.  But in the end this comic is about politics.

So why so newspapers inevitably react like a maiden lady in the presence of a mouse when comics like this do what they do?  They act like they are going to faint dead away if they actually have to print them.

Now of course the papers will say they do this because WE the readers are the ones getting our knickers in a twist.  We might be offended.  Newspapers print stories about war and murder and rape and dysfunctional public institutions.  Somehow we survive the exposure to this but a four panel comic strip is going to send us over the edge.  The reality is that newspaper is placing itself in the role of parental censor deciding what is best for us.  And it makes me ill.  If the strip is controversial (and this series certainly was) then move it to the editorial page.  Or do what some papers have done and permanently move it there.  Or just don’t carry it at all.  But stop this pretense that this is somehow responsible behavior.  They run the comic because people like it.  Shouldn’t the assumption be that we know after 42 years of the comic that it comes with an edge sometimes?

And before I’m done let me add that the readers who quite likely ARE going to have a conniption over points of view that disagree with theirs don’t impress me much either.  Skip the comic or use your Constitutionally protected right to express your dissenting point of view.  But stop trying to insure that  difficult issues are either not discussed or that only your point of view is heard.

Neither groups behavior is in the highest traditions of our nation. 

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

Review - All He Saw Was the Girl

There is a wonderful feeling when you discover a writer who excites you.  It's even better when you discover that the author has more than one book for you to explore.  Peter Leonard's Voices of the Dead absolutely blew me away so when I was offered the chance to read another from him I jumped at the chance.

All He Saw Was the Girl (The Story Plant)is actually the book Leonard wrote before Voices of the Dead (his 4th novel so this one was his third).  The story follows two American students studying in Rome.  Chip is the arrogant entitled son of a U.S. Senator.  McCabe is a scholarship student trying to stay on the good side of the University.  Their adventures begin by hijacking a taxi.  When the local newspaper prints a picture with their names reversed McCabe suddenly becomes the target of kidnappers.  Throw in a beautiful woman and you've got all the complications you need for some really top flight fun.  Leonard keeps his foot to floor as the story rockets along and the dialogue (Oh, that Leonard family dialogue gene!) crackles.  McCabe is a young man determined to live his life the way he wants and he's willing to take on the local Mafia along the way.

As much as I enjoyed the book I wasn't surprised when I learned it was an earlier effort.  The writing didn't strike me as being quite as polished at the one that follows but then that's to be expected.  Clearly Peter Leonard was finding his way with steady, sure steps.

The folks at The Story Plant will be bringing out the first American edition of this book in June.  It's worth making a note to remember to grab a copy when it comes out.

Rating: *** - Good Read

View From the Phlipside - Not So Fast, Broadway Flops and No Old Girls Allowed

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com

Program scripts from week of March 12, 2012

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

Not So Fast

Thinking back to the first couple computers I owned, hand me downs from my father and father-in-law, I remember that it took a bit of time for them to get fired up and ready to go.  I don’t remember thinking that it was such a terrible hardship.  It took a minute or two for the system to boot up, run through it’s checks and then I was off an running.  Or so I thought.  None of those programs worked real fast.  By today’s standards they were positively glacial in fact.

In fact we are expecting things to move faster and faster.  Some folks have noted that our attention span seems to be decreasing right along with the increase in speed.  Others scoff at that we watch lots of long form programming all the time.

Well maybe it’s time to sit back and think again.  Certainly the folks at Google have been re-considering the idea of how fast fast really is.  Online experts have noted that web surfers are growing ever more impatient.  If a web page takes too long to come up to running speed we’re just as likely to go elsewhere.

Here’s the fun part.  Care to know just how fast we now expect our web pages to function?  Let’s put it this way - the literal blink of an eye is about 400 milliseconds.  Literally, a blink of an eye.  The current yardstick for how fast that page should function based on Google’s latest studies of consumer use?  250 milliseconds.  About a half of an eye blink.

Seriously?  I’ll admit that I get frustrated when pages take forever to load.  Forever in my computer lexicon is anything over 2 seconds.  Literally.  If the page loads in one thousand one, one thousand two or less I probably don’t think twice about it.  Our instant gratification society is rapidly arriving at the point of ridiculousness.  The reality of the situation is that most of us are in fact NOT doing anything particularly important online, even at work.  If it takes an eye blink and a half that is more than sufficient to keep the world moving along quite nicely.

Demanding more than that is a level of narcissism and self- centeredness that really ought to give us pause.  In fact a pause now and then would probably do us all a great deal of good.

Broadway Flops

I’ve talked before about the apparent inability of many old line media to come to grips with some of the new media.  To my eye it simply appears that the old timers are so locked into the mind set of “what we’ve always done” that they can’t think outside the box.  Plus there’s real resistance to letting a new generation come in and try some new ideas.  The result has been severe diminishment of some media (hello newspapers and magazines) and certainly some massive monetary losses.

So imagine this - in an age when video has become a huge media with a massive and growing audience a largely visual art form simply can’t figure out how to get on board.  Someone pointed me in this direction this past week and I spent some time nosing around.  Theoretically this art form is perfect to link into the YouTube generation.  It’s got spectacle, story telling, incredibly talented performers and huge name recognition.  And yet the videos I found were dull and uninspiring.

The culprit this time is Broadway.  Think about it.  The holy grail of the video world is great content.  Broadway has content out the ears.  Think of all the lame-o videos you’ve watched with second rate stories and third rate performers.  Broadway’s promotional videos ought to blow them into the weeds.

But my quick and dirty search revealed exactly the opposite.  Rather pedestrian videos that really felt like TV commercials and not especially compelling ones at that.  They tried to go for the spectacle aspects but completely abandoned any sense of story telling.  Clearly they assume you already know what the show is about and don’t have to sell it to you.

And that I think is a terrible mistake.  Exactly how well Broadway is doing is a matter of conjecture.  It’s always a high cost, high risk situation.  So I would think that they’d take advantage of any opportunity to reach out to new audiences and their money.

Instead what I see is another  old line media that is certain they’re just fine where they are, that everybody knows who they are and the “we’ve always done it” is just fine.  That kind of complacency hasn’t worked out very well elsewhere in the media world.

No Old Girls Allowed

There’s a well known “secret” in the media world that doesn’t get nearly the discussion it should.  A recent story out of New York City helps drag it back into the spotlight whether the powers that be like it or not.

Sue Simmons, long time news anchor at WNBC, is getting cut loose by the station.  Now news anchors get dropped periodically, even ones with track records almost 3 decades long.  Sue Simmons has been working next to Chuck Scarborough for years.  Simmons is a native of The City and is recognized by fans and critics as honest and a true original.

And that’s where the trouble begins.  Why she is not being renewed by the station isn’t clear.  Ratings for the 11 PM newscast which she does with Scarborough are a healthy #1.  Both of the veteran news anchors are getting a little long in the tooth, they’re both 68.  But Scarborough got a 3 year contract extension and Simmons is being shown the door.

In the end there’s only one reasonable explanation.  She’s a woman “of a certain age”.  Any woman on TV or in the movies can tell you that after a certain age the industry turns its back on you.  Sooner for movie actresses than news anchors but it’s there never the less.  If 68 is too old for Simmons why isn’t it for Scarborough?  Easy.  He’s a guy.  Guys get distinguished as they get older.  Women just get older.

It would be easy to just point the finger at the corporate types and sit back feeling smug.  The problem is that we the media consumers buy into it.  Our culture has a completely unhealthy fascination with youth.  Both men and women can feel the impact of that foolishness but in the media the women pay a decidedly higher price.  And it’s wrong.  An intelligent, experienced authoritative voice  should be valued and respected whether that voice is male or female.  A skilled actor is a skilled actor at 30 or 70.  Gender shouldn’t enter into it.

It’s time for us to demand the end of the media’s discrimination against older women.  We can do that by closing all branches of the “No Girls Allowed” club in every aspect of our lives.



Call that the View From the Phlipside.

View From the Phlipside - Intellectual Failure, Reality TV, TV Commercials

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com

Program scripts from week of March 5, 2012

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

Intellectual Failure

I need to be a little careful with this comment.  There are all kinds of mines in this field that I’m not interested in taking on as I try to reach my goal.

This past week saw two major events on the media playing field.  The first was the death at 43 of conservative blogger Andrew Brietbart.  The other was Rush Limbaugh’s calling of a Georgetown graduate student a “slut” and a “prostitute” following her attempt to testify before Congress on the subject of her university health insurance covering birth control.

Let’s be upfront about two things.  My politics don’t agree with either of these two guys.  That’s number one.  Number two is that this isn’t about politics.  It’s about journalism and commentary.

Andrew Brietbart maintained he was a journalist.  The poor quality of his work on the Shirley Sherrod story a couple years ago shows that he really wasn’t.  Journalism is a hard taskmaster.  It’s attempting to get the facts right up front.  It’s trying to get as close to the truth as possible.  Brietbart was an advocate and there’s nothing wrong with that.  But when your style is the kind of slash and burn approach to the facts you’re not a journalist.

As for Rush somewhere along the line the idea of an intelligent commentary on the issues seems to have been buried by a kind of intellectual bully boy-ism.  A reasoned critique is rejected for personal attacks and vilification.

Neither of these guys are stupid.  Yet they insisted on following an approach that not only made them look bad (just ask Rush what happens when you finally step over the line) but brings their point of view into disrepute as well.  In both these cases I wonder if intelligence didn’t get drowned out by the ego boost of celebrity.

I want to note one last point.  This is not a “conservative disease”.  There are progressives who can be just as idiotic.  At the moment none of them have achieved the media pinnacle to which Brietbart and Limbaugh have risen.

If there is good to come out of all this let’s hope that we can begin the process of walking away from the personal vitriol and back towards something radical, like issues.

Reality TV

I have a guilty TV pleasure.  It’s reality TV.  Not the most intellectual or artistic of television I will grant you but I watch it.  I even watch a lot of it.

I’m trying to think of what got me started.  Thinking back the first one I watched was “Cops” on Fox.  Then the early seasons of “The Real World” on MTV.  But in the last decade it seems like they are everywhere.  Ice Road Truckers, The Osbornes, Deadliest Catch, Dog the Bounty Hunter.  Most recently I’ve really gotten into Storage Wars and Swamp People.  I’m trying to resist watching Axmen or Parking Wars but I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to resist.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit how many of these I actually watch.  It doesn’t even include the ones I only sort of graze by like Pawn Stars or American Pickers.  But recently I’ve come across one that just bewilders me.

In sitting down to write this commentary I had to do some self analysis about the ones I like.  I’m much more a fan of ones showing people using skills usually related to their work.   American Pickers and Storage Wars have a large slice of luck involved and that just doesn’t seem to grab me as deeply.

Then we have “Full Metal Jousting” on the History Channel of all places.  I’ve watched a couple episodes and just don’t see the charm.  The show is just what it sounds like if you haven’t experience this gem yet.  It is jousting.  Armor, lances, horses the whole nine yards.  The idea is to knock the other guy off his horse with a big long stick.  This was state of the art entertainment back in the 1600s.  I’m just not sure what the allure is today.  You can’t see the contestants because they are covered head to toe in armor plate.  The collisions are generally visually uninteresting until someone goes flying.  At which point the medical staff has to unbolt them from their personal canning so we can see how much blood may be flowing.  There’s no connection to life in this millennium, it’s a blood sport where you can’t even see the blood most of the time.

I truly don’t understand why this would be considered entertainment.  If you’ve got nothing better to do than watch this show than you really need to take a look at your life.  Of course the same can be said for just about any of these programs.  Storage Wars?  Really?

TV Commercials

 They are uniquely American even though we’ve shipped them all around the world.  And it’s one of the few things that almost everyone agrees on.  They are TV commercials and in general everyone hates them.  But our question for today is what would you be willing to do to get rid of most if not all of them?

There’s an interesting story that’s just come out that newly elected Russian President Vladimir Putin is one of us.  He HATES TV commercials.  Now one of the advantages of being a semi-legally elected leader of a major nation state is that you could actually DO something about them if you wanted.  Putin claims that some state owned stations in Russia are so focused on their commercials that they aren’t giving enough time to important stories like murder, burglary and rape.  I’m not making that up that’s what the Russian President said.

Now Russian TV averages slight FEWER minutes of commercials per hour than here in the U.S.  The question is how to keep the money flowing that actually produces the TV shows we want to watch?  We have commercial TV and the public TV model, there are hybrid models to consider.  In England each TV owner pays an annual license fee for each TV set they own.  End result - no commercials on the networks owned by the British government.  Any of these models really appealing to you?  Didn’t think so.  In fact any Ron Paul type libertarians out there probably just had heart attacks.  My apologies.  

How about this one? In France, now everybody simmer down, French President Nicholas Sarkozy  announced that he intended to eliminate ALL TV commercials by next year.  Parliament said “Non” and limited them to just 5% of airtime, that’s about 3 minutes per hour.

The reality is that you have to pay for your TV one way or the other.  Back in the days when we all got our TV “broadcast” it felt like “free” TV but it never was.  Whether it’s membership fees or taxes or commercials in the end you pay the piper.  

So the question is which is more fun?  Reaching into your pocket to pay for TV one more time or watching the latest from Farmers Insurance?  Bum da bum bum, bumbumbum?


Call that the View From the Phlipside.

View From the Phlipside - Media Amusement, Amazon and e-books and Biggest Loser

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com

Program scripts from week of February 27, 2012

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside.

Media Amusement

If you enjoy watching the media there has never been a better time to live than today.  There’s more kinds of media and the old ideas that each media worked its own side of the street have gone completely out the window.  I’m not sure I’ve ever had more fun that following a couple of stories that are just getting underway right now.

Google began as a search engine online.  Over the the last 16 years Google has grown and grown.  Now most of that growth was concentrated on the Internet.  Web browser, e-mail, cloud computing, social networking Google’s reach has been extending into more areas.  They’ve been working on growing into cellular phones and television too with varied levels of success.  But now it appears they may be moving into older media.  It appears that they will move into cable TV in the midwest in 2013.

That’s an interesting move in and of itself.  Then add it that the folks at Dish Network, the satellite TV folks, have announced that they are looking at move into the cellular phone business.  Dish has already been expanding.  They bought the Blockbuster video business and launched the online Blockbuster streaming service.  But like their primary competitors, curiously cable operators, Dish would like to free themselves from the stranglehold of a single delivery and profit stream.  Cable has done it by packaging cable along with phone and internet.  Now Dish wants to follow suit.

So cable networks are in the phone business and the internet, a satellite company is in the internet video and cell phone business and an internet company is into, well, seemingly everything.
The real question becomes if there’s any advantage to the consumer in all this.  Often when corporations spread themselves to thinly outside of their area of expertise you end up with second rate services.  It remains to be seen how any of these new ventures will work out.

But then if it were obvious it wouldn’t be as much fun to watch.

Amazon and e-books

There are times when you need to step back and think twice about some things.  What seems like a good idea up front may not be such a good idea in the long run.  The problem is that our society has become so focused on short term advantage that we can back ourselves into long term problems.

The current instance of that has to do with the folks at Amazon.  Amazon has become the leader in the fields of both traditional books and e-books.  At the same time the money folks on Wall Street have been pressuring Amazon to make the bottom line fatter.  Given that Amazon has been an advocate for lowering prices as much as possible they have to put the squeeze on the publishers.  So when the distribution contract with the Independent Publisher’s Group came up Amazon told them that prices had to go down drastically.  IPG has refused and Amazon has now pulled all of IPG’s ebook versions for the Kindle.  That’s a huge potential loss for the publishers and by extension the authors.

The problem as I see it is that in the long run it’s going to be a problem for Amazon too.  Amazon maintains that the only people needed are readers and authors.  Um, do they realize they just left themselves out of that equation?  Sure I’d like prices to stay low on books and e-books.  But I also know that the profit margin for the publishing industry has always been razor thin.  Amazon is creating a situation that can potentially damage the industry profoundly.  

Then think about this, there’s truth to the idea that you get what you pay for.  If we convince the consumer that ebooks aren’t worth paying anything more than a buck or two for where’s the financial impetus to create the product?  In the long run Amazon’s bottom line would improve if the price of books rose by a buck or two, they can maintain friendly relations with their suppliers and keep the financial situation profitable for the folks who create the content.

But Amazon will probably continue to think short term.  And that is almost always long term trouble. 

Biggest Loser

 I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of NBC’s reality weight loss show “The Biggest Loser”.  I’ve reached that age where my doctor is after me to lose some weight so the show serves as an inspiration.  If they can lose as much weight as they need to it doesn’t feel like I have any excuse to drop the 30 or 40 pounds I need to lose.

And it’s an interesting time right now on the show.  The good news is that the latest weekly ratings have jumped a little bit.  Of course at the Peacock network any show that brings in good ratings is something of a surprise.  Just a week ago the weekly standings had NBC slipping behind Univision for at least one night of the week.

Meanwhile things may not be going quite so well on the show itself.  The Biggest Loser presents a different kind of challenge to the contestants because they have to commit to something close to six months away from home.  And the stress is apparently showing.  Reports say that this past week saw all the contestants either threaten to walk off the show or actually do it.  The producers had announced that once again they would give contestant already eliminated the chance to win their way back into the competition.  The network has refused comment but the reports seem to indicate that the walkout was an attempt to leverage the situation.  Unfortunately it appears that the network won and two contestants have been ejected from the show.

In the end that result was inevitable.  The network couldn’t let any group of contestants feel like they could put the arm on the show over the rules.  The contracts are pretty clear about what is allowed and what isn’t.  Shows like this are huge profit makers and the network isn’t going to let anyone mess with the golden goose.  In the end the network and the producers set the rules and the participants have little choice but to go along.

And for contestants on The Biggest Loser maybe they need to keep the focus on winning back their lives and health.  Inevitably the trouble begins when they forget that and start thinking about winning what is really just a silly TV show.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

Book time - Car Guys, Jason Bourne and more

Been cruising along with my reading.

Car Guys vs. Bean Counters - The Battle for the Soul of American Business by Bob Lutz - I grew up in a car family (My dad's first job out of college was in the Design Department at Ford, before I could drive his cars I had to be able to change a tire, change the oil, describe how an internal combustion engine worked and identify the major operating systems on a car.)  And my father's highest praise for someone was "He's a car guy".  A car guy is someone who loves cars.  Loves the design, the engineering, the performance of them. 
   Bob Lutz is a car guy.  Having held high positions with all of America's Big Three automakers and having always placed the product, the car, ahead of everything else he is in someways the very definition of a car guy.  So this book is a fascinating read.
Now Lutz also has a well deserved and self acknowledged reputation for shooting off his mouth and not playing well with others.  You get that in this book as well.  Think of it this way - the book reads like a long evening over several beverages of your choice with a fascinating, opinionated friend who has a limitless supply of great stories.  Sit back, relax and enjoy.
    At the center of the book is the story of General Motors.  In my lifetime GM has gone from the worldwide leader in automobile design and manufacture to bankruptcy.  Lutz takes a look at just how that happened.  He would like to blame (in relatively equal parts) union membership, government interference (in the form of fuel efficiency requirements), the media and the corporate culture of GM.  By the end of the book it is crystal clear that the blame lies almost entirely on that final group.  The stories are just appalling.  My favorite one is when the automaker introduced a new engine that broke camshafts (an important internal portion of the engine) every 15,000 miles or so.  Camshafts should with reasonable care survive the life of the engine which is at least 100,000 miles or more.  Did GM's management want to fix the problem?  No.  Why?  Because it was fluffing up the profit margin for the Parts division.  And that's only one of a long list of appalling decisions made over the course of 50 years or so.
    If you love cars, read this book.  If you want to see what's wrong with so much of American Big Business, read this book.  If you just love a great story teller, read this book.  It's guaranteed to have at least one item that will make you want to tear your hair out but the stories are worth Lutz being Lutz.
Rating - **** Recommended Read.

Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Betrayal - Eric van Lustbader - Robert Ludlum wroter thriller novels.  And he wrote them very, very well.  His books sales fall somewhere in the 300-500 million volumes.  When he died in 2001 fans of his most popular character Jason Bourne were left with just the original three novels.  Starting in 2004 Eric Van Lustbader took over the franchise.  I've read all of the originals and this is the first of the sequels I've grabbed.  It's the second one in the Van Lustbader series.  And as Jason Bourne thriller novels go it's just fine.  There are certain conventions you simply have to accept like the fact that hero seems capable of surviving virtually any catastrophe.  You either roll with them or find something else to read.  Van Lustbader does a nice job overall dealing with the canon requirements of Bourne.  If I had to quibble with anything it's the premise that the number two man in our largest intelligence service can be taken hostage by a terrorist group for weeks and months but be cleared to return to work after a 24 hour debrief.  It leads to exactly the kinds of problems the rest of the book outlines. 
   Like any thriller it's great if rather silly fun.
Rating - *** Good Read

eFiction (indie fiction magazine) November 2011 - Got a chance to try something brand new when someone sent a copy of eFiction across my Nook Color.  Wish I could remember who did it because it was a great find.  Here's how they describe themselves :

This isn't a literary journal. This is a brand new, indie fiction magazine. Some of the best indie authors collaborate each and every month to produce eFiction for your reading pleasure.

The magazine publishes short fiction with a still-beating heart, fresh from the minds of their authors. While the ink is still drying, stories are pitted against each other in gladiatorial combat for the chance to reach your adoring eyeballs. Only the best stories make it into the issue.

The magazine is edited via a collaborative, inclusive process which means that the stories are chosen by readers like you. The editors at eFiction know that readers know their own preferences better than they ever could.

This involves some first rate writing.  "The Hypnotist" by Michael Burns is a wonderful "Twilight Zone" kind of story with a delightful is slightly predictable ending.  "Outsourced" by Saul Tanpepper is a brilliant melding of today's news headlines with today's pop culture.  I'll let you discover it yourself.  Every story here offers a great idea that is nicely realized.  Kudos to Stasey Norstrom, Helen Hanson, Keven Fraleigh, Erica Linquist & Aron Christensen and Aaron M. Wilson who wrote the rest.  There are even book reviews at the end.  On the whole a great addition to my reading.
Rating - **** Recommended Read

From the Ashes by Jeremy Burns - I started with a thriller that was nicely done and I'll end with one that simply isn't.  This book was one of the Free Friday ebook selections.  Given the high number of romance novels chosen for this slot I was happy to see a thriller. (The reality is that B&N can only offer those books that they are given permission to give away.  So you take what you can get)  By the time I was half way through the book I wasn't so sure.  The basic concept is fine.  Burns takes history at the time of the rise of the Nazi Party and gives it a twist.  What if, as the Weimar Republic in Germany was tottering towards collapse, the U.S. Secretary of State and American billionaire John D. Rockefeller Jr worked together to insure that communism didn't take control in Germany?  What if they pumped large amounts of dollars to support the only other possible party at the time?  Then as time progressed they realized the horrible error they'd made and tried to cover it up?  It's a great concept for a thriller.  Unfortunately Burns just doesn't have the chops to pull it off.  His writing is awkward and immature with incredibly clunky and self conscious phrasing.  In true thriller fashion there's a secretive government agency charged with keeping the secret.  Their rather strange approach is to kill literally ANYONE who even mentions the secret.  This includes an 8 year boy chatting with his school friend.  I'm serious.  They send a professional ASSASSIN to take out an elementary school student.  It goes downhill from there.  What's really rather frightening is in the Author notes at the end we find out Burns has actually taught Creative Writing.  Not someone I'd send an aspiring writer to study under.
   The concept is good, the characters aren't bad, even the storytelling manages to go along pretty well despite the awkward writing and strange story choices.  Overall, meh.
Rating - ** Not Impressed