The Disturbing Prospect of Patenting Human Genes

I picked this up from Jane Ciabatari on FB,  it's worth sharing:

Been waiting to hear what bioethicist Robert Klitzman has to say about Angelina Jolie's decision. Here he is: http://t.co/HtcPl9tnQz

Awesome American Idol Finale

Great show! Glad I stayed in to watch it. For me this season's best was Angela Miller,  who I think we'll become the biggest star.

Listen to You Set Me Free:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRNUuuwhsqE

Candace, Kree, and Amber also great.  Loved the bit with Angie Miller, Adam Lambert and Jesse James. The idols producers are rocking!

Kudos to DrWeb: the best free antivirus!

In the last few days my computer started to play random music, slowed down considerably and crashed minutes after I logged in... Quite a distress since my entire life is on my laptop. I tried all the antiviruses out there: Bit Defender (advertised as the best in the world was the worst, couldn't detect a single threat), Avira and AVG didn help either, Spybook found a few small threats, Anti-Malware nothing, and finally the famous Norton found ony 1 threat (a redirecting trojan) in a 24 hour system scan.

Enter DrWeb CureIt, an obscure, free Russian antivirus recommended by someone on a yahoo forum: it found 1412 threats on my laptop in a 2 hour scan, and fixed it brand new. I didn't have to do system restore nor buy a new laptop like I had feared.

It's really mind boggling how all the big players in the antivirus market were able to find none, or up to 1 out of the the 1412 threats in my laptop!

I have no idea who are the guys behind DrWeb but I would like to thank them!
They're the best!

Flappers and Philopsohers

All the hype around the new Gatsby movie prompted me to read "Flappers and Philopsohers", F. S. Fitzgerald's first collection of short stories, and I love it!

People don't write like this way anymore!  Today's fiction is competent, fluent, well edited (it was funny to notice the lax punctuation of his collection) and often gritty and graphic, yet it lacks the (positive) intensity of soul and spirit that Fitzgerald had in spades...

He died at only 44, drank too much, and made no money as a writer...

Scandal at Wikipedia

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/apr/29/wikipedia-women-problem/

The List of Shame

The list of senators who voted against the gun control checks supported by 90% of Americans:

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/04/18/who-voted-against-gun-control-joe-and-mika-read-their-names/

Why Amazon bought Goodreads

Interesting article in The Atlantic:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-simple-reason-why-goodreads-is-so-valuable-to-amazon/274548/

I love both Amazon and GoodReads but I have mixed feelings about all this online media consolidation...

Interesting article in the NY Times today - David Mamet and other big (ICM) authors chose to self publish

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/business/media/david-mamet-and-other-big-authors-choose-to-self-publish.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Intersting idea for agents as well. It would be great if they would help self-published authors with foreign rights.

Jennifer Weiner is a kindred spirit

Just read JW's blog entry, and I think it's worth a heads up:

"Last month, the third annual VIDA count of how often major publications review work by women or publish reviews by women came out.

The results were predictably dismal. With a few exceptions, not only have things not gotten significantly better since Vida started counting, they’ve actually gotten worse. Which begs the question – when “raising awareness” (or “public shaming”) aren’t getting the job done, when the editors who once responded to the tallies with concern now greet the count with silence, and the male writers who continue to be well-served by the status quo come back with charges that best-selling women aren't allowed to point out that there's a problem, or the bizarre insistence that they're the ones with the real complaints, what can readers and writers do to urge their favorite publications to do better..."

More on this topic on her blog: http://jenniferweiner.blogspot.com

I have the same pastel colored covers in Romania, and the only collections where I can publish are packaged in a way that dumbs down the content, to a point that even clerks in the books stores are embarrassed to sell and display them. In the same time, male writers have stronger, darker colors and different, more prestigious collections, get more respect and more reviews, even if they sell dismal amounts of books, and the readers struggle to finish their novels. This is why I chose to be an independent in the US and make my own rules

My top 3 entertainment shows

I don't watch much TV, but here there are my top 3 entertainment shows:

1. AMERICAN IDOL - Stellar Angie Miller this season!
2. THE BIG BANG THEORY -  Stellar writing!
3. X FACTOR - Stellar Simon Cowell!

Angie Miller is amazing and has the whole package, and regardless if she wins the show, she'll be best  singer coming out from Idol since Adam Lambert.