$45 000 Author Visit

Author Neil Gaiman is in the center of a library-related stink. Apparently it costs $45 000 to have Neil come to your library. He explains why in his blog post, though the answers don't satisfy everyone.

I'm not really sure where I stand on this one. Neil Gaiman is a very popular author, and one whose work I have enjoyed. He draws massive crowds, which ultimately mean people in the library, which is good. If the library can ever hold that many!

On the other hand, couldn't that forty-five thousand go elsewhere? Maybe to hire transportation and shipping of older books to needy places? Maybe not quite as big an event as having Neil Gaiman come in, but then if you advertise something like a Not-Neil fundraiser where people are asked to donate to help other libraries instead of paying to get Neil Gaiman...? I'm not sure.

William Gibson on Twitter

So somebody asked William Gibson if his latest book would've been written faster if Twitter didn't exist. (Is this blog going to need a Twitter tag? Ugh.)

“Twitter, or the internet at large, feels to me like an automation of what I have to do, anyway, in order to write,” the Neuromancer and Spook Country novelist wrote on his official website. “Stare out window. Read a magazine. Gaze at shoe. Answer a letter. Think about something new (or newly). Access random novelty.”

That's a vote in favour of the Library of Congress keeping all tweets, right? I suppose for every person reporting on the kind of sandwich they had for lunch there's something a little more worthwhile. Or at least something I'd consider a little more worthwhile.

Harry Potter, Freedom of Speech, and Failure

JK Rowling gave a commencement speech at Harvard University about the fringe benefits of failure. You can also watch it here:

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

I thought one of the most interesting parts was when Rowling spoke of the time she worked at Amnesty International's headquarters in London:

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.