I’m not referring to a mathematical conjecture like Fermat’s last theorem (this was proven by Wiles and Taylor, by the way).  I’m referring to presidential mettle and resolve and the current debate on whether Mr. Obama has them and should tout them, and whether Mr. Romney ever can have them.  Let’s face it:  Mr. Obama’s mettle and resolve are proven; Mr. Romney’s are not, beyond his desire to do something his father never could do.  While Mr. Romney has tried to belittle the leadership role of his opponent in saying that even Jimmy Carter could have killed bin Laden, the question still remains whether Mr. Obama should brag about it.

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Up to now, I’ve been confining my opinions on the lawsuit of the U.S. Justice Department versus Apple and the gang of five of the Big Six to my “News and Notices.”  While I’m definitely biased about this and my blog is basically op-ed, I started out thinking that this case is small potatoes compared to some of the bigger issues of our day.  Now I’m not so sure that the case is not a big, messy pommes de terre au gratin with lots of cheese where cleanup will be a challenge to any dishwasher, human or otherwise.

Let me elaborate on one compound word that is key here: price-fixing.  I didn’t quite understand where the government was coming from, but now I see the issues better.  Apple’s alleged behavior is ironically a 180-degree turn-around from their behavior with the music industry.  Steve Jobs’ company allegedly undercut record companies’ prices and forever changed the music industry.  What they allegedly offered to the Big Six publishers was a mechanism for the latter to avoid Amazon’s undercutting their prices—this is the agency model, where Apple agreed to sell eBooks at a publisher-determined price at their iStore as long as the publisher guaranteed that Amazon and every other online retailer couldn’t sell for less.  Amazon could sell the publishers’ eBooks (so they’re available for Kindle) but they couldn’t sell them for less (thus indirectly favoring the Kindle).

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#145: What’s next on my agenda?  While I’ve been thinking lately that my muses have discovered tasers, torturing me and Donna Carrick of Carrick Publishing to release my next books, I want to slow down a bit and think about what my next releases will be.  I have a plethora of old and new ideas.  It’s good to reassess which ones I will follow through on in the immediate future.  Here are some of my thoughts.

I liked both my old character, the DHS agent Ashley Scott, and the new one, Mossad agent Judy Epstein—two strong women you will find helping detectives Chen and Castilblanco in Angels Need not Apply (although Judy works behind the scenes).  Perhaps they deserve a more important role.  That would be something new to explore in my writing.  Although I haven’t neglected writing about strong women—Dao-Ming Chen and the two agents named above are but three examples—sometimes a character grabs a taser from a muse and goes at me too.

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Like many children, I admired various sports figures.  Roy Campanella, Brooklyn Dodgers’ catcher, was a role model.  I played that position and later admired the man for his tenacity and courage in facing his paralysis after an auto accident.  I also became a Dodgers fan and was overjoyed when they moved to L.A.   K. C. Jones and Bill Russell were favorites at the University of San Francisco and I followed their careers to the Boston Celtics where I became a fan, even though I was on the West Coast.  The historic confrontations between Russell and Chamberlain were more exciting than the gunfight between the Earps and the Clantons.

I can’t remember seeing any of these three athletes drink or smoke, or reading about their philandering ways in the national media.  A simpler, more innocent time?  Perhaps.  Steroids in baseball were far in the future.  Tiger Woods and Kobe Bryant were too.  Nevertheless, I can imagine how devastating it might be for a young boy or girl to see and hear about the decline of one of their sports heroes.  It must be at least as stressful as that first kiss or that first dance.

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A comment, a one-liner, I recently received to a very old blog post, read as follows:  “you suck you gay computer nerd why dont you go die.”  Even though WordPress let this through the spam filter, my usual censoring policy kicked in, and I deleted it.  That policy is this: if a comment doesn’t add to the conversation, whether it’s positive or negative, there is a—pfft!—and it’s terminated with prejudice, like via a Glock 19 with silencer.  Nevertheless, this particular comment started me thinking about how computers and the internet have allowed introverts like me to have a voice.  It’s a small voice, but it reverberates more via internet TCP/IP packets than it would ever do in personal face-to-face discussions.

While “you suck” might be appropriate (however, some people do like my writing), I reluctantly inform this reader/commenter that 1) I am not gay, although I’m a supporter of human rights, and those include gay rights; 2) I am not a computer nerd (more on this later); and 3) I don’t have any plans to die soon, but that’s mostly out of my control—and his too, I hope.  The title of the post this person read was “Short stories versus novels…” from October 20, 2010.  I reread this post.  Besides its obvious length (a recurring failure of mine, compared to others’ posts), I fail to see what our writer of negative tweets found so objectionable.  Take a look and comment if you see something I don’t.  (I recently had an eye exam, but I could have missed something.)

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Sunday’s (Jan. 29) edition of the NY Times featured an article on Barnes & Noble bookstores in the business section.  A summary of the article:  B&N thinks that it’s doing everything it can to survive.  My observation:  No, there are things it could do but doesn’t want to do.  Since we are in the middle of a paradigm shift in the publishing world, I wouldn’t dare make predictions on how eBooks and indie publishing are going to affect legacy publishers.  I can warn them to look out, though.  I remember opting for betamax because it was technically the best option, but VHS won the day (and now, no one uses either one!).  Predicting the fickle fate of modern technologies is best left for people that don’t eat enough protein and can use the egg on their face.

So, what things would I do if I were B&N?  (I’ll ask the same question of small mom and pop bookstores below.)  First, I’d bring out a competitor to the Kindle.  Check that off.  I don’t like the Nook, but I know people who do.  When I say Kindle, I’m referring to the e-ink low glare screen version I have, the one where you can only read books and newspapers.  The Fire is a Nook is an iPad—I don’t like any of them because I’m not an apps-icon pusher.  Apps are baby computer programs, the computer version of drug addiction.  I get along just fine without them and probably always will.

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I read that teachers in Idaho are pushing back on requirements that they become computer savvy (NY Times, Jan. 3).  While the Idaho Statesman, a local newspaper, writes this off as politics (there are always at least two sides in these matters), blaming it on legislators pandering to high-tech companies (apparently they contributed to some school superintendent’s election campaign), it reminds me that I’ve heard about teachers resisting technology even in high tech areas like the Northeast and the West Coast.  (I apologize for my bias, but I can’t think of Idaho as another Californian Silicon Valley or Bostonian 128 Loop.  It’s the land of down-to-earth good people—the exception being Aryan supremacy groups—and beautiful, rustic scenery.)

In defense of teachers in general, it’s not like school districts make it easy for them to get any kind of additional training, let alone computer literacy.  Legislatures and governors everywhere are slashing budgets for education, so teacher training goes down the toilet with many other programs.  This is certainly happening here in NJ where, in spite of appearances, our governor performs well in the role of the anti-Santa Claus.  I’m at a lost to come up with a way for a teacher, who has been twenty years on the job and wants to update his or her knowledge and skill sets, to actually do so.  I give education a high priority.  I also know things are wrong with the system.  But slash and burn tactics on the part of governors and legislators is not the answer for our kids.

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The crowds forcing their way into stores on Black Friday or Blue Thursday confirmed my prescient labeling of Thanksgiving and the day after as black-and-blue events.  People fought and were trampled, shots were fired, pepper-spray was used—it was as if we were in Egypt but with consumerism as the goal, not democracy.  What do people outside the U.S. think of us when we become so mesmerized by the ownership of goods?  “I want your Xbox!” or “That’s my wide-screen TV” takes the place of “Down with the military junta!” or “Out with dictator X!”

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Indie authors know all about the internet as a home for cottage industries.  Even if you use Amazon or Barnes & Noble or some other online retailer as a distributor, an indie author still has to publish, market, and sell his or her books.  The author’s writing or content is the industrial product and the reader is the customer who buys that product.

Services for authors and readers are a natural for internet cottage industries.  Google “ebook formatting” and see how many different services you find, for example—or “eBook cover design.”  There’s a website with info on forensics and many websites that discuss some or multiple aspects of the writing trade (see the list in “Steve’s Writing” here at this website).  For readers, there are services from the monolithic Goodreads (that probably started as a cottage industry) to websites or blogs more focused on reviews (see Holly Hook’s bargainebooks) to several online ezines—eFiction is one of the latest and open to submissions.

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I never met the man, although I can say he was very much a part of my life—for most of my life as a scientist, at least.  He was the consummate snake-oil salesman, giving most people what they needed and convincing them they needed it whether they knew they needed it or not.  While that need was often a fix to satisfy an addiction to new technology—in other words, a perceived need, as a child needs new toys—there is no doubt that he was a genius in bringing to market many user-friendly devices that have changed how the world uses computers.

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