Kirsten Mortensen's blog

Via Miss Snark, a great on-line resource for writers who want to avoid scams and sham “agents.” Which is, presumably, most writers. Quips about fools being born every minute notwithstanding.

Technorati Tags: literary agents, writing

Since one can never have too much extraneous information clogging one’s inbox, I’ve subscribed to the Wordcraft “Word of the Day” email. Many days the word is one I already know, or, since I don’t aspire to David Foster Wallacian writing, is too arcane to be of interest.

But yesterday’s email was kind of fun. The theme is untranslatable words: words that don’t exist in English but should. The email first introduced a book on this subject, “They Have a Word for It,” by Howard Rheingold, then gave the word of the day, the German Korinthenkacker (core-IN-ten-COCK-er): “a person overly concerned with trivial details, [Literally, 'raisen-sh*tter']“:

The Korinthenkacker is the guy whose desk has every item perfectly in place, neatly aligned. The Korinthenkacker is the guy who insists on figuring the precise to-the-penny amount (plus tax) owed by each of six people who have dined together at a restaurant. The Korinthenkacker, says Rheingold, is “anyone who couldn’t find a forest because he or she is too busy applying a magnifying glass to an inspection of the bark of one tree.”

I agree, a very useful word; I plan to bandy it about, liberally, the second it catches on :-)

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Rochestarians are understandably uneasy. What’s happened to winter? Our average annual snowfall is 92.3 inches. So far this season, we’re up to ten: two inches of snow in January, three inches in December, and five in November.

My daughter is particularly bummed — she wants snow, and is fervently hoping the Groundhog sees his shadow on Thursday.

I’m with her on this one, albeit for different reasons. Drop the other shoe, Mother Nature, and get it over with!

Technorati Tags: annual snowfall, Rochester weather

Zubalove, in a post about NY State politics, references one of the state’s archetypes: the perennial rivalry for money and political power between New York City and “Upstate.”

(Upstate, for anyone who has never been here, is about as different from NY City as you could imagine: a patchwork of New Englandish, rural communities, woodlands [some quite extensive], dairy farms, and small-to-medium cities, most of which are a bit tattered around the edges.)

Zuba writes:

The increasing chasm between the economy of a world-class metropolitan area and the milder and volatile rust belt characteristics of upstate becomes more and more difficult to negotiate every year. This regional problem transcends political party, because neither group seems incredibly willing to stand up and make the necessary changes to the financial barriers of this state. As long as downstate hums along, it doesn’t faze any of the leaders in Albany that the cost of doing business in this state is astronomical and the tax rate is oppressive.

It’s the tyranny of the majority: Upstate is more sparsely populated than our state’s famous namesake city, therefore, our priorities tend to be backburnered. Sure, the politicians pass through to garner swing votes during election season (in 1999, the Clintons famously chose Skaneatales for a summer vacation, in large part to help soften the Upstate turf for Hillary’s upcoming Senate run). But we live in a very large shadow, and short of breaking the state in two, we always will.

Zuba suggests that we can adjust the balance of power by breaking up the status quo of our state government, and mentions a new book by Jay Gallagher, Gannett News Service’s Albany bureau chief, cheerfully titled “The Politics of Decline.”

It will be interesting to see what Gallagher prescribes — and whether anybody pays any attention.

Technorati Tags: Rochester, New York State Politics

No, it’s a Northern Hawk Owl, and Junk Store Cowgirl trucked her family out today to look at it.

This species of owl, she writes, isn’t supposed to be found this far south, so it’s generating a bit of excitement in the local birding community. It’s also stirring up sentiments of a different kind:

In a bid to keep the owl around, some birders have been releasing pet store mice into the fields near where the owl’s been spotted. So I knew we were in the right area when I spotted a sign saying, “Do not release live mice on my land.”

LOL

Here is one site with some info on this owl, and here is another. It’s a pretty distinctive-looking bird. I can see why people are excited.

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Last Friday, Publisher’s Marketplace reported in their e-newsletter that Riverhead, a Penguin subsidiary that had contracted with James Frey to write two more books, is having second thoughts: “The ground has shifted. It’s under discussion.”

Today, Publishers Lunch says that a movie deal based on “A Million Little Pieces” is also in jeopardy:

Warner Bros. President Alan Horn said Friday “We’re reevaluating our position on what to do” about the planned film adaptation of James Frey’s A MILLION LITTLE PIECES.

The LA Times says Frey received a $125,000 option and another $150,000 to write the screenplay, and would be due $425,000 if the movie gets made. Warner’s had been planning on shooting the film this spring.

Hmmmm. I guess Frey’s happy ending isn’t so real, either . . .

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I’m a firm believer that if you want something, your mindset is crucial.

I also believe that people who succeed maintain a certain mindset despite appearances. Even when they seem to be failing, they maintain an inner certainty that they are destined to succeed.

So isn’t it interesting that the root of the word “confidence” is the Latin con fide.

With faith.

Steve Rubel’s Micropersuasion predicts that Google’s refusal to turn over search records to the US Department of Justice is only the first sally in what will become a protracted power struggle:

Years from now we will remark that this was the beginning of the end of Google as we know it. The reason is one day – maybe sooner than we think – the government will try to break up Google. This may accelerate depending on the outcome of the 2008 election.

Whether DOJ would succeed here is entirely an open question. However, if this does indeed happen, it will certainly slow down the search giant and the Web economy overall, much as DOJ did for Microsoft and the PC economy.

My gut tells me this is right on. “Do no evil” becomes exponentially more difficult the more people you need to please.

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I’m working on a new trick with my dog. It’s a complex one, which is good — it stretches my training skills.

Ultimately, what I hope my dog will be able to do is to hunt for an object I’ve hidden somewhere in the house and bring it to me. I bought three toys specifically for this trick with the idea that she will need to retrieve only the toy I name.

To train it, I’m breaking the behavior down into pieces, one of which is “fetch.” We’re making progress. A big hurdle: the toy sneaker has a squeaker in it, and the noise seems to worry my dog terribly. I’m trying to figure out if it’s related to her impeccable fashion sense or whether the squeak has an encoded message about obeying cats.

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Political parties always face hard decisions about who, within their ranks, should have the most influence — the wings or the middle. Today, one of these flashpoints can be found in the Democratic Party; it was the subject of a Washington Post article that a number of blogs have noted.

Democrats are getting an early glimpse of an intraparty rift that could complicate efforts to win back the White House: fiery liberals raising their voices on Web sites and in interest groups vs. elected officials trying to appeal to a much broader audience.

These activists — spearheaded by battle-ready bloggers and making their influence felt through relentless e-mail campaigns — have denounced what they regard as a flaccid Democratic response to the Supreme Court fight, President Bush’s upcoming State of the Union address and the Iraq war. In every case, they have portrayed party leaders as gutless sellouts.

Okay, I’m going to break the “short posts are best” rule here, because . . . because it’s my blog & I can break the rules if I wanna. And I feel like writing about this :-)

I think it’s fair to characterize the “activist” elements referenced above as comprising people who are fully persuaded that the country is in terrible shape, is on the wrong track, etc. etc. This is a power struggle, and the objective of the activists is to take control of the Democratic Party and use it as a tool for change — social change, changes in our foreign policy, changes in domestic policy.

The activists are suspicious of the party’s more centrist elements. They don’t believe the moderates’ claim that, to get/keep political power, it’s necessary to please the middle.

The activists also believe in the power of the protest march.

The protest march ideal is this: huge numbers of earnest and passionate people descend on a community and, through sheer numbers and force of spectacle, change that community’s political point of view. Since we’re talking national politics, the “community” is the entire US, making Washington the geographic focal point of choice for the quintessential physical protest. Leftist online communities can congregate anywhere, of course, thus the email campaigns etc. referenced in the WaPo excerpt.

Whether it’s physical or virtual, however, any time you take part in a protest, it’s easy to feel that ideal embodied around you. You’re in a crowd. You can feel the energy. Your convictions are mirrored everywhere you look. The sense of pulling together with other people — strangers — toward a common goal is palpable and thrilling.

But here’s the problem.

I’d be willing to bet my next paycheck that very, very few individual’s minds are ever changed by witnessing a protest march. That is, the percentage of people who are swayed by change imposed from without is miniscule — perhaps even negligible.

When you think about the political changes that did catch on in the 1960s — and which defined the template of today’s protest-march activism — it was inside-out change. Feminism, for instance, didn’t catch on because a bunch of men started organizing marches against bras. It caught on because it gave a vocabulary to women coming of age in the post WWII era; it let them organize and articulate an unease they felt with the social roles they’d inherited from their mothers and grandmothers.

Many leftists today feel frustrated by the American electorate. How could so many people vote for Bush? Support the invasion of Iraq? Support a ban on partial birth abortion? It must be ignorance, stupidity, or a perverse combination of the two.

But here’s the thing. You aren’t going to change anyone’s mind on any issue by imposing your views from without. Some right-leaning bloggers recognize this; their attitude is expressed by remarks like this one from Indcjournal:

“Clintonian Triangulation” gets two thumbs down from the Kos crowd; noted. Maybe y’all should just, you know, fight harder! I mean, on every issue. Think – maybe it’s just that you’re not quite left-wing enough for all those middle-class midwestern and southern voters …

Peoples’ minds aren’t changed by strangers. The opinions we hold are deeply personal. We aren’t wired to give them up because of a sharply-worded placard. If we are influenced by others, it’s by people with whom we identify. And unless we’re crazy — literally — we don’t typically permit others’ influence to change our opinions 180 degrees. Strangers might help shape beliefs we already hold. But they aren’t going to plant whole new beliefs in our heads.

Yes, people do experience radical changes in their beliefs, but that usually occurs through a personal experience of some kind. A woman has an abortion, finds herself regretting it, and switches from pro-Choice to pro-Life. Another woman, raised Catholic, has an abortion, experiences tremendous relief, and becomes pro-Choice.

Those are obviously simplistic, even cartoonish examples, but I think they are more realistic than the notion that somone’s going to change her views about abortion because somebody else shoved a pamphlet in her hand.

So this, in a nutshell (albeit a somewhat large nutshell) is the reason I agree with other prominent bloggers (including Instapundit) that the current activist wing of the Democratic Party is doomed to fail — either by burning itself out in futile efforts to take over the party, or by rendering the Democrats too marginalized to garner any power.

In the 1960s and 70s, a significant percentage of American youths found themselves spontaneously leftivizing. Radical leftist politics “fit” — it felt right — it was the zeitgeist — and yeah, it was a movement. But it’s a mistake to think that you can induce that sort of change by sheer force of activity or attitude. That’s not what happened then, and it’s not going to happen now.

Nor can you induce it by presenting people with “facts.” This is another leftist myth — that protest marches bear with them piles of facts, which are thereby deposited at peoples’ feet, and when people see them, their minds are changed. What actually happens is that people gravitate toward facts that support what they already believe, and dismiss as false or irrelevant facts that don’t support their current beliefs. As one example: what anti-war leftist would give any credence to the idea that Iraq had WMD, and that the reason they weren’t found is they were shipped to Syria? Ain’t gonna happen. To anti-war leftists, it “doesn’t pass the sniff test.”

What leftists have to understand is that their pet collection of facts is just as dismissible from the perspective of the right. Not only that, but the exchange of information is more sprawling and decentralized than ever, today. Consumers of facts have a lot of outlets to choose from — and it will take more than controlling the Democratic Party to fight that.

So what can liberal activists do?

By themselves — nothing.

For leftist beliefs to gain ascendency, the activists would have to find people in the center who hold leftish ideas and give them the movement’s leadership. They need to find the anti-war Nascar dads, the pro-choice devout Catholics, the hunters who supports gun control. These are the people who could reach their peers. Get them marching, and you’d get somewhere.

Unfortunately, even if such political oddities exist, the leftists don’t seem interested in them — because Nascar dads, devout Catholics, and hunters are as alien to leftists as leftists are to them.

Another possibility: a miracle could happen. I find it plausible, for instance, that the pro-life movement gained traction in middle America when ultrasounds became common. Seeing a movie of your unborn baby swimming around in your womb is precisely that sort of personal, emotionally-charged experience that can change a person’s belief. But note that this wasn’t a phenomenon engineered by pro-lifers.

One, final alternative is for leftists to grab power and use it to wield tools like propoganda, top-down imposition of laws, criminalization of right wing positions, etc. But do rank and file leftists really want to resort to that to change America’s course?

I hope not.

Technorati Tags: politics, Democratic Party