JOHN KEATS : THIS LIVING HAND NOW WARM AND CAPABLE

THIS LIVING HAND NOW WARM AND CAPABLE
by John Keats 1795–1821

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is–
I hold it towards you.

YE GHOST

Do you like to be afraid?

Mystics say that this time of the year is the best time for contacting those who've passed to the other side. And for them to contact us.

So maybe this why there is Halloween, Hallowmas, All Saints Day, All Souls Day, and the Day of the Dead celebrated in various cultures in late October and early November.

I'm not at all into horror and gore or the outrageous party scene that has emerged in recent years as a celebration for Halloween. I'd rather stay at home with a candle and a book.

CROWDSOURCING:

"Your educated guess may be just as good as an expert's opinion. Statistics have long shown that large crowds of average people frequently make better predictions about unknown events, when their disparate guesses are averaged out, than any individual scholar — a phenomenon known as the wisdom of crowds."

Linking to the article : Are we all a little psychic?

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, CORNELL, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, and INDIANA UNIVERSITY SUED BY AUTHORS GUILD

THIS IS ABOUT DIGITAL COPIES OF BOOKS THAT ARE STILL COPYRIGHTED BY AUTHORS. IT'S A SERIOUS MATTER AND A TEST OF OUR LAWS.

"Authors and authors' groups in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom sued the University of Michigan and four other universities Monday, seeking to stop the creation of online libraries made up of as many as 7 million copyright-protected books they say were scanned without authorization.

The Authors Guild, the Australian Society of Authors and the Union Des Ecrivaines et des Ecrivains Quebecois, or UNEQ, joined eight individual authors to file the copyright infringement lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan against Michigan, the University of California, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University and Cornell University."

READ THE FULL ARTICLE as published in FORBES Magazine, by AP journalist Larry Neumeister, now!

MICHAEL CRICHTON : NEXT : BOOK REVIEW BY CHRISTINE TRZYNA

"This novel is fiction except for the parts that aren't"
So is the disclaimer statement on MICHAEL CRICHTON's book circa 2006 "NEXT" which I enjoyed thoroughly maybe especially because I read science fact around DNA and the Human Genome Project.

In this story human genes are being put into parrots to make them talk in full sentences and into primates to make them half human as well as other human beings to heal them. Crichton plays with the mad rush of Universities and Science Labs and Medical Companies who want to copyright human gene's that they have taken from people who submitted to clinical trials or experimental treatments: We have no right to what is taken from our bodies.

The book is damn serious but fun too; Neanderthals were the First Blondes - Stronger, Bigger Brained, Smarter than us puny Cro-Magnons.

It's not just the physical though, it's also the psychological that's being gene tweaked. Think tanks throw ideas about how to market a gene - THE COMFORT GENE - or something that cures drug addiction but has the side effect of rapidly aging a person.

Are biotech companies quietly killing off people with their experimentation, that information held from the hard news? Are American executives going to foreign countries to get the gene therapy they want and can afford because it isn't offered here? Are scientists already growing missing ears in labs?

331) "You know how gene therapy kills people? All sorts of ways. They don't know what's going to happen. They insert genes into people, and it turns on cancer genes, and the people die of cancer. Or they have huge allergic reactions and die. These goofballs don't know what they hell they are doing. They're reckless and they don't follow the rules. And we," he said, "are going to smack their asses down."

C 2006 Michael Crichton
HarperCollinsPublishers

LAUREN MYRACLE DID THE ETHICAL THING

"This year’s National Book Awards have become a story of embarrassment a month before the winners are to be announced.

Within just a few days, children’s author Lauren Myracle has been a nominee, a non-nominee, a nominee again and, finally, a non-nominee, asked to withdraw over mistakes not her own.
Myracle’s “Shine’’ was on the original list of five finalists announced last Wednesday for the young people’s literature category. But the National Book Foundation, which sponsors the prizes, cited a “miscommunication’’ with the judges and quickly said that her book had been confused with Franny Billingsley’s “Chime.’’ (To avoid advanced word leaking on the Internet, judges inform the foundation by telephone of their choices)."

Linking to this article by Hillel Italie - AP National Writer, one of many articles and reports (I first heard of this on the radio.) Some reports suggested that the American Book Awards people had not suggested she withdrawl, but because it was their mistake, had proposed both books and authors.

Lauren Myracle did the right thing in withdrawling without a fuss.

MOONDANCE VAN MORRISON