European leaders agreed on a new ‘comprehensive’ solution to the Euro crisis, for the 5th or 6th time.  LOL.   This one isn’t even worth the paper it is written on.   Apparently a footnote to the treaty was inserted saying it must pass the Finnish parliament, knowing full well the treaty is unconstitutional under the Finnish law. (lots more commentary here)

The British were none too pleased either and good for them!

I think it might be something like Escape from New York (see below for video preview).  Sound Silly?    think again -

First of all, the crisis of the euro is killing the European dream. … Specifically, demands for ever-harsher austerity, with no offsetting effort to foster growth, have done double damage. They have failed as economic policy, worsening unemployment without restoring confidence; a Europe-wide recession now looks likely even if the immediate threat of financial crisis is contained.
…
Nobody familiar with Europe’s history can look at this resurgence of hostility without feeling a shiver. Yet there may be worse things happening.

Right-wing populists are on the rise from Austria … to Finland, where the anti-immigrant True Finns party had a strong electoral showing last April. And these are rich countries whose economies have held up fairly well. Matters look even more ominous in the poorer nations of Central and Eastern Europe.
…
And in at least one nation, Hungary, democratic institutions are being undermined as we speak.

One of Hungary’s major parties, Jobbik, is a nightmare out of the 1930s: it’s anti-Roma (Gypsy), it’s anti-Semitic, and it even had a paramilitary arm. But the immediate threat comes from Fidesz, the governing center-right party.
…
The European Union missed the chance to head off the power grab at the start … It will be much harder to reverse the slide now. Yet Europe’s leaders had better try, or risk losing everything they stand for.   Paul Krugman

A discussion of unemployed Wall Streeters (yes there are lots of them) looking for financial firms that practice ‘integrity and honesty’ and hedge fund managers crying ‘boohoo’ that JP Morgan has seized their MF Global funds. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Danny Schechter about plunder, the crime of our time, inspiring an economic justice movement.

The U.S. ‘celebrated’ Black Friday today, the biggest shopping day of the year. And what fun it was! Especially at Wallmart. After the 2008 incident where an employee was trampled to death, when a crowd of aggressive bargain shoppers ‘surged’ – this year they were prepared.

“I would just tell you that the plans we have in place were developed with nationally recognized crowd experts and really were the first of their kind,” company spokesperson Greg Rossiter.

This year, Walmart decided there wasn’t any sense in actually waiting until, you know, Black Friday to begin, but why not start early? Like at 10 pm on Thursday, which is American thanksgiving, and so in-keeping with feelings of gratitude and sharing with family and friends.

[A witness] said that by the time he arrived at the video games, the display had been torn down. Employees attempted to hold back the scrum of shoppers and pick up merchandise even as customers trampled the video games and DVDs strewn on the floor. Hat Tip TalkingPointsMemo

“Overall, it’s been a very safe event,”  he adds.    Oh, except for the beligerent bargain shopper who resisted arrest and was tasered by the cops.   Oh, and the riotous crowds brawled over video games, waffle irons and towels.

One of the most outrageous incidents of the day was in the Los Angeles area, where up to 20 people were injured after a woman at a Walmart used pepper spray to get an edge on other shoppers in a rush for Xbox game consoles.

Apparently their web servers buckled under Black Friday traffic as well. Shoppers from around the country waited until the middle of the night for sales only to experience broken checkout pages, emptied shopping carts, and login errors causing items to go out of stock before they could buy them.

A tribute to Nobel Prize winning economist, New York Times columnist and all-round decent guy –

http://www.epi.org/publication/epi-25-paul-krugman-video/

On the serious and complicated business of being a kid:

NY Times today ran an article on Amazon and the frightening prospect of Amazon not only selling ebooks, but actually making deals direct with authors.  The nerve!  And not even talking to the publishing companies that control the entire industy!    What’s next?

“Everyone’s afraid of Amazon,” said Richard Curtis, a longtime agent who is also an e-book publisher. “If you’re a bookstore, Amazon has been in competition with you for some time. If you’re a publisher, one day you wake up and Amazon is competing with you too. And if you’re an agent, Amazon may be stealing your lunch because it is offering authors the opportunity to publish directly and cut you out.  Full article Here

You don’t say?  Big companies are actually selling ebooks and talking to authors all by themselves!  Without publishing companies, bookstores, agents or any of that.   If you think it is just big companies like Amazon and Apple, think again.  And if you are just noticing now,  then you are pretty late to the party, and anything you do is probably going to be way too little and way too late.

The really surprising thing is that publishing companies, agents (et. all) have held on this long.    Things are much further along that one would suppose.  According to the Economist,  Amazon now sells more ebooks than paper books, and ebooks account for 20% of large traditional publisher’s sales.  Blockbuster novels sell equal ebooks and paper books.   And if you think about what Apple did to the music industry, ie. just took it while nobody was looking, and what NetFlix and others have done to the once formidable Blockbuster, not only is there a full length novel written on the wall, the wall has long since fallen over.

A poignant moment this weekend, when I visited a neighborhood Blockbuster that I thought was still open.  We have ZIP.ca but there was nothing I wanted to see, so I actually got in the car and drove to Blockbuster.  But they too had closed, and in somewhat of a hurry by the looks of it.  All the signs were up and parking spots were still reserved, but a hastily written note on the door informed would-be video renters they were closed forever.  :(

The traditional argument for publishers is they advance funds to authors for books that would not be otherwise written.  Nonsense.  Traditional publishers cater to A-list authors which generate huge revenue for very little cost, and any others are given puny bonuses, if you are so lucky to get that far, short print runs, and then refused further promo funds, effectively consigning author’s work to the remainder bin.

I know of several authors who spend 2+ years writing a book, were given advances under $2,000, a quick promo tour and then nothing.  A pretty dismal prospect to say the least.  I could name several clients that have sold ebooks online, directly from their website, and make a solid steady $1,000 – $2,000 per month, and have done for the last 6 years.  Not a princely sum, but with very little work once the site is up and running, a pretty attractive prospect.   And fan mail all the time from people all over the world.  Granted they had some SEO on their sites, plus some extras from a techy relative, but none of that is beyond reach.  SEO and blogging isn’t rocket science – Tips on DIY web promotion.

And the returns are not only modest.  26-year old Amanda Hocking is the best-selling ”indie” writer on the Kindle store, author of the Trylle Trilogy, has 17 novels, keeps 70% of the sales and sells in excess of 100,000 per month.  At $8 each that is a cool million bucks (per year).

And it doesn’t stop with books.  Amazon’s new Kindle FIRE now sells Graphic Novels including Watchmen, Batman: Arkham City, Superman: Earth One, and Green Lantern: Secret Origin.  As well as hundreds of magazines and newspapers,  including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, Wired, Elle, The New Yorker and Cosmopolitan.   Amazon is a little late behind Apple’s IPAD, which had loads of magazines including many on a per issue basis, available for some time.

Whither Now the Printed Book

Apple and Amazon are the new publishers and it is all over but the shouting for traditional publishers.  Bookstores aren’t going away though.  Probably fewer and much much more efficient ones though.  An interesting development that speaks volumes is Big Box Furniture maker IKEA now carries book shelves with glass doors – an ominous sign!   Books are to be seen but not read!

I love ordering technical books online at thriftybooks.com or abebooks.com (also based in Victoria BC), but somehow, nothing quite beats a visit to Russell Books, for a leisurely browse, then coming home with a big bag and sitting down in our big overstuffed couch and reading my NEW BOOKS with a big delicious cup of coffee!

Actually I would prefer oil, maybe in a pastoral setting, but if you are a prehistoric Kraken, its pretty good.

Paleontologist Mark McMenamin of Mount Holyoke College came to the conclusion that the shonisaur remains had been deposited in a “kraken” lair by its massive, tentacled squatter. From his abstract of research being presented today at The Geological Society of America’s annual meeting:

We hypothesize that the shonisaurs were killed and carried to the site by an enormous Triassic cephalopod, a “kraken,” with estimated length of approximately 30 m, twice that of the modern Colossal Squid Mesonychoteuthis. In this scenario, shonisaurs were ambushed by a Triassic kraken, drowned, and dumped on a midden like that of a modern octopus. (maybe something like this) Where vertebrae in the assemblage are disarticulated, disks are arranged in curious linear patterns with almost geometric regularity. Close fitting due to spinal ligament contraction is disproved by the juxtaposition of different-sized vertebrae from different parts of the vertebral column. The proposed Triassic kraken, which could have been the most intelligent invertebrate ever, arranged the vertebral discs in biserial patterns, with individual pieces nesting in a fitted fashion as if they were part of a puzzle. The arranged vertebrae resemble the pattern of sucker discs on a cephalopod tentacle, with each amphicoelous vertebra strongly resembling a coleoid sucker. Thus the tessellated vertebral disc pavement may represent the earliest known self?portrait.