“We don’t see things as they are. We see them as we are.”

~Anaïs Nin

I expecially remember the passage about how Everyone has two lives–one open and visible, full of work, convention, responsibilities, jokes, and the other “running its course in secret”–and how easy it is for circumstances to line up so that everything you hold most important, interesting, and meaningful is somehow in the second life , the secret one.

-Elif Batuman
The Possessed pg 31.

Why be a slave to the arbitrary truth? I didn’t care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years–it took the experience of lived time–to realize that they really are the same thing.

-Elif Batuman
The Possessed Pg 10

1. The Democrat running for the open Senate seat (the one that use to be held by Obama) will be the current Illinois State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias.

2. The Republican running for the same open Senate seat willbe Illinois state Senator Mark Kirk.

As of this moment I’m a Alexi supporter, mainly becuse of his stated desire to reform health care and health insurance, which I believe makes more sense than Kirk’s.

The gubantorial race here in Illinois is shaping up to be very intersting.

1. Patt Quinn has been the Governor of Illinois since the ousting of Rod Blagojevich, and until recently he was facing some competition from from with in his own party as state comptroller Dan Hynes challenged Quinn for the Democratic parties nomination.

2. Now with Hynes out of the race Quinn will face off against Republican Bill Brady. My guess is that Quinn will be on the defensive more, simply because of the fact that he inherited the state from Blagojevich. i.e. Blame for the corruption of Illinois state government will be placed on Quinn’s shoulders by Republicans who will say that they will “clean up” the “broken” state government.

For me Illinois politics are more interesting to watch than most spectator sports, and I’m sure that the 2010 election season will be filled with some interesting competition.

-N

There is one bit of test in the second chapter that I found very thought provoking. The scene is that a American soldier is in a political science class at Princeton university being taught by a professor who is somewhat famous for his left wing ideas. The professor is having his class compare modern day America with Imperial Rome. The professor has stated that, in his opinion. America is still in a Republic phase, not an imperial phase. The professor also states that America only buys and sells things, that it is a successful nation state because it has a very powerful military and economy, but it lacks an Augusts to push it into an imperial age

America is at the end of its republic. Just as the Roman Senate and counsls became incapable of ruling their widespread holdings and fighting off their enemies, so America’s antiquated Constitution is a joke. Bureaucrats and courts make most of the decisions, while the press decides which Presidents will have enough public support to govern. We lurch forward by inerita alone, but if America is to be an enduring polity, it can’t continue this way… The American idea was thrown out with Social Security. We nailed the coffin shut with group rights. We don’t want individual liberty because we don’t want individual responsibility. We want somebody else to take care of us. If we had a dictator who did a better job of it than our present system, then as long as he pretended to respect Congress, we’d like his hands like dogs.

The American Soldier says that given the choice between becoming a imperial power the way that Rome did under Augustus and falling, he would rather that America just fall.

The complexity of this issue, and the way that Card turns the roles of Princeton professor and American Soldier on their heads is very interesting to me. Both as a reader, and someone who thinks about politics.

1. Amazon’s Kindle ruled the ebook market despite limited competition from a few other companies like Sony and Barns & Noble.
-It seemed that Amazon liked selling most ebooks for about $9.99 even though publishers wanted to sell ebooks for more.

2. Apple announced the iPad, and the iBook store.
-The iBook store will be selling many ebooks for more than $9.99

3. According to Mashable, the largest publisher of books is a company called Macmillan tried to

Macmillan told Amazon that it wanted to change its pricing and compensation agreement, upping the price of some books from $9.99 to $15 and splitting sales 70/30, the same model Apple uses for the iPhone app store and its upcoming iBooks store.

Amazon did not like that idea very much, so it decided to show that they can play hard ball as well by…

Amazon’s apparent response was to flex its muscle and pull countless Macmillan books off the virtual shelves… That’s why Amazon decided to use its biggest weapon, Amazon.com itself, against Macmillan to send a message to every publisher: If you don’t play by its rules, then you can’t be in its store. While a publisher can likely survive without the Kindle, the same cannot be said for Amazon.com. Publishers simply cannot afford to leave the world’s largest online retailer.

My Thoughts

The Price of ebooks should be about $9.99. I know that publishers, and many writers totally disagree with that. I just don’t care.

As for Amazon pulling all of the Macmillan books (in digital or dead tree format) off their store is a good business move. But what about the customers who want to buy Macmillan’s books, is Amazon screwing them by doing this?

If you look at things in the short term: Yes.

Customers will have to buy the books someplace else, and chances are that they will have to pay more than Amazon’s low prices when they do.

If you look at things in the long term: No.

Amazon will force publishers to keep their prices low, which means that customers will be able to by books at low prices for a longer period of time.

Going to Amazon.com confirmed this…

Looks like Amazon is really hoping to move a lot of these things during the holiday season this year.