Deciphering the plays of William Shakespeare in a school essay was apparently not enough for two students, who wrote a book with phrases that sum up Twitter and satirical works of literature.
The “Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books Retold Through Twitter”, which will be released by Penguin in November in the United Kingdom is a collection of 20 irreverent comments, profane and sometimes on bright ideas and themes for each of 60 selected classics of literature.

“It’s funny if you have read the books,” said Rensin, who read all the novels described until the age of 19. Rensin is studying English and Philosophy at the University of Chicago, and another author of the book, Aciman, has a degree in Literature.

American students had announced the launch of the book as early as June. The “tweets” from Emmett Rensin and Alexander Aciman combine English language with the abbreviations of text messaging by adolescents.

The authors make it clear that the book is not intended to help students understand the “Paradise Lost” of Milton, or “The Metamorphosis” by Kafka, but to provoke laughter. Take for example the “Inferno” of Dante, – which the authors summarized in entries on Twitter up to 140 characters: “I’m having a crisis of middle age. Lost in the woods. I should have brought my iPhone.”
The goal was to make people laugh, not offend the defenders of great literature, the authors say.

Via: Folha.

Google Editions, service of digital books sale of the company, will inaugurate in June of 2010. The information was given by Amanda Edmonds, director of strategic partnerships of Google, in the TOC conference, in Frankfurt.

According to her, one of the strong points of the program is that, once bought, the e-book is going to a “cloud library”, that can be accessed by any equipment – laptops, smartphones or e-readers – with access to the web. “All of the books will be at a same library, it doesn’t matter where you have bought it or where he/she wants to read it”, affirmed Amanda. And once the book has been accessed in an apparel, it will be possible to read it offline.

For the director, a very complex range of options “exists for the consumer today. Our concept is that that should be free: the consumer should not be forced to choose one apparel, one software or one store.”

Google Editions foresees three models of businesses: the consumer can buy an e-book he saw in Google Books or in a online store partner or directly in the site of the publisher. The payment will be divided among the publisher, Google and the store (if that’s the case).

According to the director, Google “definitively” is interested in doing partnerships with the electronic readers’ manufacturers, the e-readers, but increased that she “doubts” that Kindle wants to join Google in that one.

Via: Memoclick.

Neil Gaiman, known author of graphic novels, it inaugurated on this Tuesday an initiative to create a collective Twitter history, that will be compiled and published in audiobook according to BBC.

The project, partnership of Gaiman with BBC, has as objective leaves of a first sentence, created by Gaiman and published in his Twitter, to motivate the creation of at least more thousand tweets than they give sequence to the history. About of a thousand messages will be condensed in a single history, tells the site of San Francisco Chronicle.

“The final audiobook will be available for free download in our website and also in the iTunes, besides other resellers”, affirms the blog of BBC Audiobooks América.

The idea is similar to the eccentric corpse model from the surrealist literary movement, in which a group of people creates poems, histories or images in an united way, and each individual is responsible for some part of the whole, which is a condensed of all of the participations.

According to CNET News, Gaiman has more than one million followers, what means that should not take too long for they be reached the a thousand tweets.

The interested parties in helping to build a history with Gaiman can tweet their contributions using the tag #bbcawdio. The initial sentence, written by Gaiman can be found in the link bit.ly/NeilGaiman.

Via: CNET.

Facebook may be the most popular of all social networking sites, especially with a psychologist recently claiming that it can actually help increase users IQ, but the founding of the website was rife with troubled mishaps. The site was created by then Harvard students Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin and Dustin Moskowitz.

Ben Mezrich was the author who revealed it all in his book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, A Tale Of Sex, Money, Genius, And Betrayal in July of this year. Already a bestseller, it has now been revealed that the book was to film producers before it was even written. If you’re expecting to sit down and learn how a couple of brilliant minds created the most popular social networking site, then this wouldn’t be the book or movie for you. Mezrich is known to, umm, exaggerate when it comes to reporting the facts and it appears that much of what you read in the book never happened in reality (like the story of Zuckerberg, or was it Saverin, making out with a Victoria’s Secret model).

The movie titled The Social Network would be directed by Aaron Sorkin with the screenplay being written by David Fincher. Scriptshadow says the cast has been selected and the more nerdy the actor the better he would be able to portray the founders of the site. There are rumours that Zuckerberg would be played by Jesse Eisberg, Saverin by Andrew Garfield and Napster founder Sean Parker by Justin Timberlake. Yeah, now go cry yourself a river for all the disappointment.

Via: Gawker

The woman has found herself constantly and consistently on Forbes lists of the most powerful. She says power means many things. In her magazine and website, she offers her own definition of power, as well as declares the most powerful women in her opinion.

We are aware by now that whatever Oprah believes in strongly, Oprah endorses publicly. This time, she is promoting the 3 things the world can do to empower women via endorsing the new book authored by husband-and-wife Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, entitled Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide (Knopf).

Along with the book authors, Oprah believes that ‘the key to economic progress in the world lies in unleashing women’s potential.’ This is nothing short of the very message of Gender and Development (GAD) which strongly enjoins people to make women a co-equal driver of economy.

The 3 powerful suggestions are: make girls smarter through iodine and iodized salt, support a woman’s business through microfinancing, and keep a girl in school to get her educated first and foremost on her rights and security.

These are operational strategies to help women become active participants in the day-to-day upliftment of the world. More than half of all people in the world are females. So, it is but logical and wise to make them equal and active doers and contributors of progress. That is definitely what sustainable development means.

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Via O, The Oprah Magazine

“Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.” And let’s, first and foremost, give the credit to Guy Debord for saying so about plagiarism before the famous Marxist starts shifting in his grave. Actually I am reminded of the dreaded ‘P’ word once again after ‘Twilight’ author Stephenie Meyer got accused (for the second time) of lifting passages from an ignored book ‘The Nocturne’ written by someone who likes to call herself Jordon Scott. And I don’t want to make anyone feel inferior if that’s the impression one gets!

All this makes me wonder why is it that only a famous creative work has to face the flak of being unoriginal? Frankly, we never came across stuff that was bad and then got accused of being stolen. Now that’s a thought we should really ponder upon. Many would say that it’s the simple human tendency to ride the coattails of anything successful. One can’t deny that everyone from Shakespeare to T.S. Eliot to Dan Brown have been targeted for not using their ‘own’ ideas in their books that we know to be such tremendous successes. In fact, one critic once put, “If this is plagiarism, perhaps we need more of it”, on Shakespearean works.

By the way, did you know that as much plagiarism might be an academic crime, if accused you can’t be taken to law unless you infringe a copyrighted material. And the latter means actually taking ‘word to word’ from somebody else’s work. If you sit back and think, you will realise that all that was original probably happened in the times of Adam because even the lives that we lead today might just be an imitation of somebody else in the world. Please do not think that I am trying to promote stealing of creativity. All I am saying is that inspiration happens and one cannot and should not deny that. Let me quote William Ralph Inge here, “Originality is undetected plagiarism.”

And since plagiarism is such a fickle issue, maybe that is why we do not have any strict laws to tackle this ‘creativity doubt’. There have been plenty of occasions when writers about to gain fame have fallen out of favour when accused of plagiarism like Kaavya Vishwanathan of ‘How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life’ fame and the subsequent plagiarism mess.

The whole issue is open-ended because didn’t our teacher tell us when we were kids that cheating is bad; but then, what if you too wanted to write the story of an orphan who one day comes to know that he has magical powers! Now that might just be illegal because of the huge success that Harry Potter is. My point exactly!

Also read reuters

An upcoming book entitled ‘Rock Roadie’ is claimed to be an insider information from one of the former production assistants of legendary rock singer Jimi Hendrix. According to James ‘Tappy’ Wright, one of Hendrix’s roadies, Hendrix’s manager Michael Jeffery, ‘made a drunken confession a year after the star’s death in September 1970’ that he killed the rock star. The motive: an insurance scam. Manager allegedly told assistant that ‘he had taken out a life insurance policy on Hendrix worth $2million (£1.2million) with Jeffery as beneficiary.’

Wright reveals in the book that Jeffery said, “I had to do it, Tappy. You understand, don’t you? I had to do it. You know damn well what I’m talking about.’ 

It will be recalled that Hendrix died when he was 27 by choking to death on his own vomit. The circumstances surrounding Hendrix’s death has been a mystery all this time, though. Wright offers an explanation when tying up Jeffery to the death scene when he writes that ‘Jeffery said he went to the hotel room and stuffed Hendrix full of pills and wine.’ 

Officially, Jimi Hendrix died of ‘barbiturate intoxication and inhalation of vomit,’ according to the coroner.

It is understandable that a big star such as Hendrix will send shock waves to his staff should he decide to fire them, and this is probably what happened to his manager Jeffery who was ‘worried that Hendrix was preparing to find a new manager when their deal was due to end in December 1970.’ 

Wright quotes Jeffery: ‘I was in London the night of Jimi’s death and together with some old friends …we went round to Monika’s hotel room, got a handful of pills and stuffed them into his mouth …then poured a few bottles of red wine deep into his windpipe. I had to do it. Jimi was worth much more to me dead than alive. That son of a bitch was going to leave me. If I lost him, I’d lose everything.’

Very little alcohol was found in Hendrix’s bloodstream.

Via Mail Online

Human beings have the moral obligation to make their species better, and make their lives and the lives of other people easier and longer. Up until the species can do something more than save lives, it is not enhancing its evolution. There is also the human ‘right to postpone death by stemming the flow of diseases that carry us to the grave.’ This is the crux of the book  Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People, written by John Harris, the Sir David Alliance Professor of Bioethics at Manchester University. He is a scientist so his arguments on moral duty deserve a serious look.

Another compelling thought from Harris: if we merely want to leave it to Mother Nature to decide our fate, then why are we always resisting her? Medicines are anti-nature because illness and death are part of nature’s course. Medicine is there to prevent harm, prolong life, and postpone death. To run against nature’s course, therefore, is to improve upon our evolution as a species.

Enhancements to life should be basically available to everyone, outside of the realm of survival of the fittest. While competitive advantage may be good for some, and painfully impossible for the availment of everyone, it is also a way not to enhance the entirety of the species. It is ethical and moral, therefore, for the members of the human species to try to lift up the conditions of the other members, thereby enhancing evolution.

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Via The Daily Galaxy

If you think nursery rhymes are safe to ingrain in children’s rote memory, think again. Hidden within the seemingly innocuous and humorous lines are images and concepts even adults will cringe over. Most nursery rhymes run the gamut of insane to inane.

Ring Around The Rosie is about the stench carried by the rashes of bubonic plague that killed million of people who had to be cremated. It is said that Mary in the rhyme Mary, Mary Quite Contrary refers to Bloody Mary or Queen Mary I, the daughter of King Henry VIII, who was a staunch Catholic and was infamous for her persecution of Protestants. The ‘silver bells and cockle shells were instruments of torture and the maiden was a device used to behead people.’ The garden is a cemetery filled with Protestants.

Three Blind Mice is again about Bloody Mary. After three Protestant bishops were convicted of plotting against her, she had them blinded, dismembered, and then burnt at the stake.

One look at the thoughts provoked by Rock-a-Bye, Baby and Humpty Dumpty and one will glean images of painful death.  Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater is a warning about infidelity, and that Peter solves his problem by killing his harlot wife and hiding her body in a giant pumpkin shell.

Jack and Jill is about the beheading of King Louis XVI and the eventual fall of Queen Marie Antoinette. London Bridge is about the ‘rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII of England. Boleyn was accused of adultery and incest and was ultimately executed for treason.’

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Via brainz

Catcher in the Rye is an amazing novel written in the first person narrative. The novella was authored by Existential writer J.D. Salinger in 1951. The novel was banned for sometime because of its profanity and also anti religious sentiment. The novel has been widely read and has reached a cult status.

Most teenagers and young adults ca identify with the protagonist Holden Caulfield. He is the typical 16 year old who is so innocent and finds the whole world fake and artificial. Because he sees the world as it is, he is hated by everyone. He hates everyone too, but he has compassion for those who he hates as well.

He sees the world from a pure perspective and is not colored. Holden is the tragic hero that one talks about but his heroic attempts have largely been ignored. People like Holden rarely achieve any love and affection in a world that is filled with phonies and pretentious people.

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