text:
Breathair Oxy-Zone
February 21, 2010 6:26 PM Subscribe
Teresa Nielsen Hayden dismantles the latest claims of plagarism leveled at JK Rowling's Harry Potter series.
posted by Artw (110 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
A wizard did it.
posted by Babblesort at 6:29 PM on February 21, 2010 [6 favorites]
Trs Nlsn Hydn dsmntls th ltst clms f plgrsm lvld t JK Rwlng's Hrry Pttr Srs.
posted by sciurus at 6:30 PM on February 21, 2010 [24 favorites]
Plagiarism suits against J.K. Rowling are like buying lottery tickets. Sure there's almost no chance of winning, but think of the huge payout if you do!
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:32 PM on February 21, 2010 [7 favorites]
Heh, yes. But it's interesting reading nonetheless.
posted by Artw at 6:33 PM on February 21, 2010
Teresa Nielsen Hayden, actually. Feel free to call her TNH. I know you need moderator help on the post, but could you fix the tag, please?
As to TNH demolishing another idiot? I never get tired of watching her work.
posted by eriko at 6:34 PM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]
There should be a warning about reading the excerpts. Really.
posted by dilettante at 6:35 PM on February 21, 2010 [2 favorites]
That mistake never would have happened if it weren't for vowels.
posted by sciurus at 6:37 PM on February 21, 2010
As someone mentions in the comments, they are indeed almost Eye of Argon level bad.
posted by Artw at 6:39 PM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]
MetaFilter: a question of nose muscle control and delicate lacquering of the air with thought pellets.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:41 PM on February 21, 2010
If I were plagiarizing whatever source JKR allegedly used, I would first strike all five trillion extraneous adverbs from the text, thereby saving a whole forest of slash pine.
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:42 PM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]
3. People who aren't accustomed to having a lot of ideas of their own have a very poor grasp of the odds that others might independently come up with the same ideas.
posted by toodleydoodley at 6:44 PM on February 21, 2010 [15 favorites]
Incredibly, that post is less readable than Harry Potter itself.
posted by DU at 6:46 PM on February 21, 2010 [2 favorites]
Teresa Nielsen Hayden, actually.
If you remove all the vowels, then the spelling is the same.
posted by grouse at 6:50 PM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]
Orson Scott Card?
posted by Confess, Fletch at 6:52 PM on February 21, 2010 [2 favorites]
Crabbe and Goyle sniggered.
posted by pianomover at 6:54 PM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]
Maybe the goal is to get Rowling to... unpublish the work?
posted by mark242 at 6:55 PM on February 21, 2010 [2 favorites]
I never get tired of watching her work.
I wouldn't call a comparative analysis of Willy The Wizard, the 36-page self-published crapfest to be demolishing exactly. And since she's a self-promoting parvenue and not a licensed attorney, I think it's recomendable to allow the court system to run its course and not make foolish predictions that bolster ones own analysis.
Bt thn gn, wh th fck crs wht tht brdg trll hs t sy? Not me.
posted by jsavimbi at 6:56 PM on February 21, 2010 [6 favorites]
Some of these people may think that they have a case--Nancy Stouffer, one of the most prominent Rowling-suers, seemed to in an interview I read--but this seems to be an effort to embarrass Rowling into settling. In William Goldman's book Heat, he describes a couple of small-time Vegas cons who send letters with fictitious law-firm letterheads to whichever musician's got the latest top single, claiming that their equally bogus client wrote it, and "settle" for piddling sums like $5000 because it would cost the artist more than that in legal fees just to get the suit dismissed. Of course, if someone decided not to pay the legal Danegeld and actually dared them to go ahead with it, they'd probably end up in jail, but it seemed like a plausible enough idea anyway. Certainly here there's a lot of emphasis placed on how Adrian Jacobs died penniless.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:06 PM on February 21, 2010
And since she's a self-promoting parvenue and not a licensed attorney, I think it's recomendable to allow the court system to run its course and not make foolish predictions that bolster ones own analysis.
She's a veteran book editor who could probably teach most would-be copyright lawyers a thing or three about the subject. She's not demolishing the book, but the legal case.
since she's a self-promoting parvenue
I learned a new word!
posted by nanojath at 7:23 PM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]
See, that's the thing.
I'm told Teresa Nelson Hayden has put in the time and work to be good at something, and I'm sure she is. But when I see her name, all I think of is disemvoweling and moderator overzealousness at Boing-Boing and Cory's self-promotion.
It's really sad, but basically her reputation outside of publishing has been hijacked and destroyed by her willing association with Cory's strange and over-dramatic little blogging world.
posted by orthogonality at 7:29 PM on February 21, 2010 [4 favorites]
Fixed the spelling in the post. If you want to turn this entire thread into GRAR TNH I really really suggest MeTa. Don't like her? Fine. Want to call her shitty names? Do it elsewhere, preferably not on MeFi at all.
posted by jessamyn at 7:37 PM on February 21, 2010 [7 favorites]
That's because you can't tell the difference between "You're wrong, Cory, here's evidence" and "You suck, Doctorow."
The former will stand -- has stood. The latter? Fuck, I'd just ban them. You haven't seen the cesspool that attempts to post at Boing Boing, and the only reason they have comments now is that TNH and her merry band will happily embarrass asshole posters.
Just like *we* do. Moderation -- sometimes harsh and public -- makes these communities work. The willingness to mock, and if need, whip out the banhammer, is why MeFi works.
As to HuronBob's idiocy. The last nine characters of his post explains why he'd been repeatedly embarrassed on one of the 'net's high traffic sites.
It's because he's a fucking idiot. TNH has merely decided that people who are such should be allowed to show that they're fucking idiots without destroying the flow of conversation.
I thought TNH was a terrible moderator. But I probably would have been no better. It only means she was unsuited for a particular job. I can think of many others who would have been worse. If you've never failed, you've never tried much. That failure doesn't make her some black-hearted bitch nor wrong about the subject at hand.
posted by tyllwin at 7:39 PM on February 21, 2010 [4 favorites]
(Oh, and thanks, Artw, for the tag fix -- and, arguably, leaving the original tags is the exact correct answer.)
posted by eriko at 7:40 PM on February 21, 2010
I once wrote a 36-page "book" about a misunderstood guy called Harry who lived with an adopted family. A lawyer took my money and told me he'd get results from Rowling and the makers of Harry and the Hendersons. Lawyers take money for lots of things.
posted by graventy at 7:43 PM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]
he describes a couple of small-time Vegas cons who send letters with fictitious law-firm letterheads to whichever musician's got the latest top single
I remember a similar stunt that somebody published as a social "experiment." He went to an office-supply store and bought a pad of blank invoices, then filled them out with bogus amounts and mailed them to various companies. Roughly half the companies paid. The theory was, those companies probably had so much red tape that the people disbursing checks never recognized most of the bills that crossed their desks anyway.
posted by cribcage at 7:48 PM on February 21, 2010
I thought TNH was a terrible moderator.
She was a terrible boingboing moderator, but she does fine at her own blog.
There's a particular kind of 'benevolent dictator' moderation that goes wonderfully well on sites built around personalities, if the personality is the dictator, or at least sets the tone. I think a perfect example of that is Warren Ellis on his delphi forum.
When I started moderating a messageboard for a nightclub, I aped Warren Ellis's style a little bit and it was fucking disastrous, because the message board wasn't about me, and I couldn't get away with 'my way or the highway'. I seriously had to moderate my tone and let the messageboard be what it was, poor spelling and idiocy and flame wars and everything. And once I stepped back and let it develop it's own voice, I think it ended up being better for it.
I think the problem with TNH at boingboing is that her moderation style didn't match AT ALL the supposed ethos of boing boing. I think that was more boingboing's fault for asking her to moderate there, though.
In my experience, when you're moderating a community that isn't about you, the best approach is a light touch and consensus building.
posted by empath at 8:13 PM on February 21, 2010 [11 favorites]
This is going to sound like a quip, but it's an honestly meant analogy: for me, hearing about a thoughtful analysis TNH may have done is like seeing Dubya on those public service spots asking for people to contribute to Haiti.
In both cases, each person has been a big enough ass that has spread enough negativity and unhappiness to others' lives that, pretty much for the rest of their lives, I'm not too interested in whatever they might have to contribute to the public square. That's not to say that whatever they have to say isn't worth being said -- it's that I'm not interested in it if they're the messenger of choice.
And I'm utterly blown away at eriko's comment relating Metafilter's moderation and TNH's antimoderation. The two are diametric opposites. There's plenty of documented occasions where TNH and her submoderators have selectively pruned arguments that they disagree with out of a thread, despite being civilly stated, simply because they're positions that TNH & subs disagree with -- and far from keeping a civil discourse, TNH's and her subs' comments in threads often raise, enflame and heighten the emotional tone of threads on Boing Boing. She's quite literally an antimoderator, as opposed to the mods on Metafilter who do an amazing job of keeping this a pretty cool place.
To liken Metafilter and TNH's moderation styles, eriko, is like saying Dick Cheney and Timothy Leary have common political platforms.
posted by WCityMike at 8:19 PM on February 21, 2010 [5 favorites]
She's not demolishing the book, but the legal case.
She did no such thing. A one-legged baboon could ascertain at first glance that the use of Mr. Jacob's pamphlet BY HIS HEIRS in a frivolous case against Ms. Rowling's work has very little chance of success. Those are the facts and they are indisputable.
Spending more than five minutes thinking about it would be a waste of time unless you had the desire to demonstrate that you possess some editorial skills and are dying to prove it by using a case against, oh I dunno, a VERY FAMOUS AUTHOR WHOSE WORK YOU ADMIRE AND WHOSE ATTENTION YOU SEEK. But before I pass judgement on that little piece of bumkissing, I'd have to see all the pro-bono analysis she's done for defendants of lesser stature just to be sure this isn't a one time thing.
In regards to her legal entreaties, I'm sure Ms. Rowling has competent counsel and will require very little legal advice from an obscure science-fiction fan who when not working at a forum-moderator job a friend hooked up for her, busies herself molesting the internets with her rambling blog posts. Talk about vanity and jumping the queue.
What Ms. Teresa Beria Numbskull did, in fact, was to attack the character of a deceased person, a man like many others who actually believed that he had something to share with the world although his literary abilities simply were not up to the publishing standards of the time. That he died broke and penniless in a hospice are brought in to further bolster her argument that he was an unsavory character who, devoid of editorial oversight committed the cardinal sin of doing business with the vanity press without using a human spell-checker and was thus punished with economic failure and obscurity. Unfortunately, Mr. Jacobs isn't here to defend himself. Because he's dead. An the dead easy target for scumbags of the world like Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
That Mr. Jacobs himself never brought suit against Ms. Rowling or was even aware of her existence prior to his death seem to be of little consequence to this parasite as she sums up her analysis by poo-pooing the plaintiff's [weak] argument for recognition, an acknowledgement that she herself seeks with every word of her poorly organized blog post.
This entry is copyrighted © 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014 by jsavimbi and you're not allowed to even read it without my consent.
Man in 2013 I'll make a mint off your work you sneaky bastard.
posted by graventy at 8:46 PM on February 21, 2010 [3 favorites]
None of this would have happened if I'd have taken a minute and spelled her name right.
posted by Artw at 8:49 PM on February 21, 2010 [2 favorites]
I leave out the unlucky years. Proceed at your own risk.
And I apologize for the name-calling. Still getting over the Violet Blue thing. Which brings up something else, and it's unfortunate that it took a reference to Ms. Hayden to remind me of it, but I met Cory in '08 while diving somewhere and I briefly asked him about the VB vs. Xeni thing and he just laughed it off. According to him, he doesn't exercise any day-to-day control over the content and management of BB and it's more of an uncoordinated association beween friends. His answer satisfied any doubts in my mind and him being a really nice guy as well I'd cut him some slack.
posted by jsavimbi at 8:52 PM on February 21, 2010
jsavimbi, your rancor towards TNH doesn't include much in the way of a rationale for itself in the topic at hand, except in the phrase "attack the character of a deceased person" and the ensuing paragraph. I've just gone and read the blog post again, and she doesn't say a word about the author's character. She's hard on the author's writing, but not as hard as she might justifiably be given how execrable that writing is. She says rather a lot about the character of those in the author's estate who filed the suit, which is also justified. It's pretty obvious (Teresa Beria Numskull???) that you have some issues with her that go well beyond the topic of this post.
posted by George_Spiggott at 8:56 PM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]
I guess people need to vent Artw, tho I don't understand why the olympic level hate towards BB and TNH. Boing Boing as a blog has pretty much run it's course, which was to be expected given how long it's been online. It was wonderful for many many years but others copied the model and made it better.
posted by Omon Ra at 8:57 PM on February 21, 2010
That Orson Scott Card essay is weird. It's so loaded with weird apples-to-oranges comparisons that you actually wonder if he was even aware of the details of the case.
doesn't include much in the way of a rationale for itself in the topic at hand
That's because you're probably missing the topic at hand. The guy is dead, his writing was crap, who cares? Like I said before, anyone with 50% of their faculties would be able to discern, at first glance, that the heirs of Mr. Jacobs are fishing for some cash and hoping for a quick settlement. The publisher's lawyers will make quick work of this.
Translation: no mystery here, the case is very low-hanging fruit.
The topic, as I see it, is not the frivolous lawsuit but the disgusting effort of a person to insert themselves into a situation involving a prominent third party in order to gain notoriety amongst a cabal of equally despicable sycophants at the expense of someone who is no longer here to defend themselves and who did nothing wrong in the first place. Aside from being an incompetent writer and investor.
Translation: attention whoring works best when you can link your whoring to a topic your followers can relate to and nobody is around to refute your actions.
And who is she to be casting aspersions about the character of the parties involved in the lawsuit? Isn't she making her own hay about the very same story she's so mad exists in the first place? If anything, she gone way, way overboard taking advantage of the situation to showcase content for the people who read her blog.
Translation: she's a parasite and a hypocrite.
And yes, for the record, I find people like her to be a detriment to intellectual progress and I don't hide my dislike for them.
Isn't she making her own hay about the very same story she's so mad exists in the first place? If anything, she gone way, way overboard taking advantage of the situation to showcase content for the people who read her blog.
Translation: she used it as a topic of a post in her blog. And you've used that as the topic for some commentary on a community blog. By extension, I think I must be some kind of contemptible attention whore myself, because I've used your comment as the subject of mine, clearly for some kind of self-aggrandizement which I will swiftly and mysteriously turn to my profit. And anyone who comments on what I've written here is similarly dirtied. My god, it's like blog leprosy! Unclean! Unclean! Mods, quick, seal the thread and put a blogohazard label on it!
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:50 PM on February 21, 2010
jsavimbi, you're throwing off really creepy stalker vibes, you might want to dial it back a notch.
posted by empath at 10:02 PM on February 21, 2010
If you read TNH's website regularly, or browse the archives, you will find a great number of posts dedicated to related topics. Since publishing is in fact her career, I don't think that is terribly surprising. What would be surprising would be any evidence, or even a coherent case, for the post being some kind of attempt to woo JKR.
posted by Nothing at 10:31 PM on February 21, 2010
I dunno. Disemvoweling always gave me the creeps. I just never liked anything that's a cutesy association with torture. Just doesn't feel right for the times, ya know?
Anyway, the only reason I know of TNH is because of the invention, and I'll say it wasn't the nicest of ways to learn about someone.
posted by effugas at 11:28 PM on February 21, 2010 [1 favorite]
What the hell, jsavimbi?
I think TNH is not a good moderator, either in style or in philosophy. The kind of moderation she champions leads not to a vibrant, diverse community but to a clique of insiders -vs- everyone else, and in many ways leads to a big echo chamber. And, no, Metafilter is nothing like that (relatively speaking).
All of that said, TNH is a great editor and has forgotten more about editing in general, science fiction in particular, and the craft of writing than you or I could possibly know. She's also, by all accounts, a great person. Yes, her online persona (as well as PNHs) can be irritating, arrogant, and combative. It's been that way for at least the nearly twenty years I've been aware of it, since the RASFF days in the early 90s. I hardly think that we at Metafilter are in much of a position to cast aspersions based on a combative online persona. Well, I'm sure nobody could ever say that I have ever in any way been combative, arrogant, or irritating. Of course. But the rest of you, I mean.
Uh, this got a little muddled. The point is you're being a jerk about someone who doesn't deserve it. And I say that as someone who think her moderation style is the polar opposite of what I believe makes for a vibrant, diverse online community. So I would advise that you should stop digging.
posted by Justinian at 11:29 PM on February 21, 2010 [2 favorites]
This line made me go back and read the entire comment in Andrew Ryan's voice.
"Is a man not entitled to the vowels in his commentary? NO, says the moderator at BoingBoing, they belong to Cory Doctorow!"
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 12:21 AM on February 22, 2010 [9 favorites]
Justinian: She's also, by all accounts, a great person. Yes, her online persona (as well as PNHs) can be irritating, arrogant, and combative. It's been that way for at least the nearly twenty years I've been aware of it, since the RASFF days in the early 90s.
You know, though, you really don't get to do that. ("You" in the more generalized sense, not you specifically, Justinian.)
An online persona is a part of a person; it's not some reflection, or distorted reflection, or what have you. If she has an irritating, arrogant, and combative online persona, that means she IS irritating, arrogant, and combative. Maybe she only manifests those personality traits when she is online, but it's not an online persona as one thing and a great person as another thing. Even if it's a fake persona different from how you act in real life, it's the same mind at work, purposefully choosing to act in certain ways -- I suppose in a way it harkens back to the whole idea of simulations versus reality. If, within the cyberverse1 you "simulate" the behavior of someone who likes to irritate, are you then really someone who likes to irritate? I say, "Yup."
So, it means that you were fortunate enough to be exposed to situations where she did whatever things make you call her a great person, and you also have -- as most of us now have -- been witness to situations where she did things that make you call her irritating, arrogant and combative. Not "her persona", because the only thing that differentiates the two communications is that for the latter, she chose to sit down at a keyboard and type words onto a keyboard. But they were still her physical fingers, hands, nerve pathways, and flesh-and-blood brain.
So, I think she deserves people being a jerk at her. Because, at least in my own opinion, her behavior is classic trolldom. That's why Boing Boing sometimes has the same allure to me as the WTF subreddit ... because it's the answer to a really bizarre what-if: what if a classic troll, one that lives up to the classic 'troll' paradigm that's existed since the days of BBSes, was in charge of the comment forums of one of the most popular websites in the world? For a man who grew up reading Marvel What If? titles like What if Dr. Doom Took Over the World?, TNH's fiefdoms is like a comic book "alternate dytopia" come to life.
That having been said, though, I'm really not sure why jsavimbi is running the Rage Train quite so full throttle as he is. That level of emotion is far too heavy tonnage to be carrying around in one's psyche.
1I can't believe I just used that word.
posted by WCityMike at 12:27 AM on February 22, 2010 [4 favorites]
I'm really not sure why jsavimbi is running the Rage Train quite so full throttle as he is.
I don't know why he's doing it, but it sure does make for some tasty reading.
posted by rodgerd at 12:41 AM on February 22, 2010
Some of the adjectives need to go too. Like, oh, say, her repeated use of the word "frozen" before "air". Air doesn't freeze, though it may freeze matter. And no, she was not using the phrase in magical terms.
posted by orange swan at 2:36 AM on February 22, 2010
Air doesn't freeze
Sure it does. Nitrogen freezes at −210 °C and oxygen at −218.79 °C. I'm sure Rowling didn't mean that the air was that cold, of course.
her repeated use of the word "frozen" before "air"
"Frozen air" is a little silly, as per the above. "Freezing air" however is different, as it clearly means "air cold enough to freeze water" because in common usage (and especially in the pre-industrial wizarding world) water is the only thing that freezes in most people's experience.
posted by jedicus at 5:08 AM on February 22, 2010
"In light of the site to come, your post is nothing. Out of your disemvoweling, paradise was born. Like all I have done, this is an act of love."
posted by robocop is bleeding at 5:17 AM on February 22, 2010 [3 favorites]
> It's really sad, but basically her reputation outside of publishing has been hijacked and destroyed by her willing association with Cory's strange and over-dramatic little blogging world.
You mean "her reputation among the tiny group of MetaFilter commenters who not only followed that stupid BB saga but are still seething about it all this time later." Among the rest of the world that's heard of her, her reputation is deservedly high. She's a good person and a good editor. She was a lousy moderator at BB, but she hasn't been doing that for quite a while now. You might want to get over it.
posted by languagehat at 6:21 AM on February 22, 2010 [7 favorites]
And I apologize for the name-calling.
I know this is hours later, but if you're sorry, then stop.
I think she deserves people being a jerk at her.
No one deserves people "being a jerk at them" at least here on MetaFilter.
You know who else is irritating, arrogant and combative? Pretty much everyone on the Internet. You know how easy it is to get smart irritating people to act decently to each other? Pretty well impossible. I've said before I'm not a fan of TNH-as-mod (though I admire her for other things), but I know if there was a huge blow-up on MetaFilter of a VB scale and mathowie for some reason decided to just not check in and leave me twisting in the wind with a 24/7 mess [something I can confidently say he would never do] that quickly spread all over the internet, I'd probably handle it about as well.
I'm not saying that BB as a site handled that at all well, but it was pretty clear to me that while TNH didn't really handle things as well as she personally could have, she also got shafted standing out there in front trying to enforce her idea of policy while the people who really materially benefited from the site more significantly Did Not Help.
The greatest thing about the Internet, to me, is how easy it is to not go someplace you don't like. And the thing that confuses me about the BB hate and the TNH hate is why if people don't like them, they carry them so closely to their heart. Walk away. TNH isn't even there doing that job anymore. Walk away.
posted by jessamyn at 6:35 AM on February 22, 2010 [11 favorites]
Without needing to crawl through my comments, the only times that I have commented on this person were in the epic Violet Blue thread and in this one. Matter of fact, had Artw not spelled her name out in full, she would've remained removed from my memory forever. Also, if I were to stalk someone, as in having some compulsive sexual interest in a person, it would not be the aforementioned author, editor and great person. I hope you were kidding.
It's sycophantic commentary like the above that makes me wonder what draws a person to Metafilter. People who harbor inner rage to that degree and encourage it to be manifested by third parties are not the type of people with whom I would place much confidence in their ability to discern between right and wrong and usually leads to the suppression of ideas which in itself runs counter to the flow of MeFi.
She is not, nor has ever been successful in the literary world. She's probably better than most of us, but a superstar she is not. And I'm willing to guess that it's not solely based on her mediocrity (that post of hers was borderline readable), but also her notoriety as being difficult, simple-minded and petty. Those characteristics do well in academia, but not in the real world.
Hopefully I will never hear of this person again.
posted by jsavimbi at 6:47 AM on February 22, 2010 [3 favorites]
Look, jsavimbi, I believe that everybody potentially has a topic or two that they'll rant on at length, bringing in everything and the kitchen sink to support their thesis and justify their ire. Even stipulating to that, though, things like this:
Spending more than five minutes thinking about it would be a waste of time unless you had the desire to demonstrate that you possess some editorial skills and are dying to prove it by using a case against, oh I dunno, a VERY FAMOUS AUTHOR WHOSE WORK YOU ADMIRE AND WHOSE ATTENTION YOU SEEK.
[assuming that that was her sole motivation; I'd remind you again that issues of copyright and plagiarism are directly germane to what she does for a living]
Still getting over the Violet Blue thing.
[which will be two years old this June]
["harbor[ing] inner rage"? Really? Pot-kettle-black much?]
are really going beyond the pale. And I'm saying this as someone who also thinks that TNH was ill-suited for the job, and even emailed her directly once when I thought that a comment that I'd made in a contentious thread was unjustly deleted (to her credit, she reversed that decision and admitted that she'd gotten a little delete-happy). You've made your case badly and now you're just thrashing.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:38 AM on February 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
You've made your case badly and now you're just thrashing.
That would not be a first. Also, I rage at complicated sign-up forms and bartenders who don't know that baseball games start at 7:05, not 7:05ish and therefore should already have the TV tuned into the game prior to 7pm, but that's neither here nor there.
My mind was made up about her and people like her long ago and I'm not going to try and convince you otherwise. And yes, I will continue to ridicule them.
posted by jsavimbi at 9:07 AM on February 22, 2010
Rage against the machine, jsavimbi.
posted by Justinian at 9:29 AM on February 22, 2010
This discussion is very confusing to anyone who does not follow BoingBoing or know anything about the editting world -- it's all without context and not really related to the post. Could we make it a discussion about Harry Potter and ideas and stuff, please?
Now, if anyone could sue for "plagiarism" of ideas, it's Neil Gaimen and John Bolton, because Harry Potter is a magical dark-haired boy with glasses. And Gaimen has already said he wouldn't, because that would be silly -- there are lots of magical boys/girls, with or without glasses.
If we want to complain, let's complain about how Rowling has brilliant plotting, but mediocre world creation, or how she writes kids very well, but has failed to capture the feeling of adolescence. I found it difficult to finish the series (I stopped after book 6) because of the latter -- the characters were feeling less real as I got older. But that's just me - character matters more to me than most things in a book.
posted by jb at 9:32 AM on February 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
Halloween Jack: "[[Still getting over the Violet Blue thing.]]
which will be two years old this June"
You don't forget a thread with 2,500+ comments that quickly.
posted by Joe Beese at 9:39 AM on February 22, 2010
This discussion is very confusing to anyone who does not follow BoingBoing or know anything about the editting world
I'd be all for the entire BoingBoing derail being deleted by the harsh hands of Stalinist-style moderators, to be honest.
posted by Artw at 10:00 AM on February 22, 2010
[few comments removed - jsavimbi you need to go to MeTa if you want to keep this up, everyone else, maybe try discussing the article topic?]
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:30 AM on February 22, 2010
Now, if anyone could sue for "plagiarism" of ideas, it's Neil Gaimen and John Bolton, because Harry Potter is a magical dark-haired boy with glasses.
Don't forget Jane Yolen and Debra Doyle and James MacDonald and Ursula LeGuin, who all wrote about Magical Schools attended by tousle-haired, sometimes awkward, and/or divinely chosen boys.
It's a pretty common story, and had been for awhile when Rowling picked it up. Which doesn't make Orson Scott Card's claim anymore weird (for what it's worth, I always thought that Mercedes Lackey's Arrows of the Queen was pretty close to Ender's Game, plotwise. Except with magical horses.).
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:31 AM on February 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
Does he actually beleive that? I thought he was just trying to make a point.
It's a point that happens to be fairly irrelevant to the actual case, but it still makes some degree of sense if you look at it that way. For him to actually believe Rowling was ripping him off... nah, he's not THAT insane.
I think dismantling this claim is shooting fish in a barrel. It has as much going for it as that other one trying to sue Rowling based on previous use of the word "muggle" in a children's book, with no other commonality.
I know. I'll write a story about some hard-luck boy who finds out he's really secretly a superhero in a hidden secret magical world where a Bad Person has taken over (or maybe is threatening to take over.) Some old man with a white beard "trains" him (this will mainly consist of him discovering how awesome he was all along.) Then he goes on some sort of quest to defeat the Bad Person in which he faces challenges, overcomes monsters, and acquires sidekicks (one of whom is a love interest.) Then he loses everything! A sidekick (but not the love interest) or the old man dies! All seems hopeless! Then he remembers something the old man said, or the love interest gives him a pep talk, or a downtrodden peasant reminds him of how desperately the common people need him, so he gets off his ass. And then all the things he learned and gained along the quest allow him to defeat Bad Person (who, after being offered mercy by the boy, tries one last evil thing, but is hoist with his or her own petard! How ironic! Crime doesn't pay!) Finally, he marries the love interest, and is awarded the secret magical world's highest honors.
Then I'll self-publish and sue the creator of every subsequent fantasy book and movie for ripping me off. Profit!
posted by Zed at 10:48 AM on February 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
This sentiment seemed pretty genuine to me:
"It's true that we writers borrow words from each other-- but we're supposed to admit it and not pretend we're original when we're not. I took the word ansible from Ursula K. LeGuin, and have always said so. Rowling, however, denies everything. [. . .] Rowling claims Vander Ark's book 'constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work.'
Seventeen years? What a crock. Apparently she includes in that total the timeframe in which she was reading--and borrowing from--the work of other writers."
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 10:49 AM on February 22, 2010
PhoBWanKenobi - your comment just got me thinking that "Except with magical horses" ought to replace "in bed" as the universal tag-on for all fortune cookies. Also, it very accurately describes most of the books set in that world.
posted by jb at 10:55 AM on February 22, 2010 [2 favorites]
I'm with ArtW -- Card is characterizing Harry Potter as derivative of Ender's Game as polemic to demonstrate that Harry Potter has a whole lot of precedents that Rowling has declined to acknowledge, while she's lambased others for being derivative of her work. He's not suggesting that Ender's Game doesn't, itself, have a whole lot of precedents.
Now please don't make me act as apologist for Card again. kthxbye.
posted by Zed at 11:03 AM on February 22, 2010
Just as a note, I didn't apologize; that was someone else you were quoting for that part. The one thing I love about the MefiQuote script is it tacks on attribution, so that when you're responding to two different people, as you were, there isn't any confusion that it was one person saying both things.
jessamyn: No one deserves people "being a jerk at them" at least here on MetaFilter.
So, even if someone is a complete jerk, they don't deserve people being a jerk back at them? That's not consistent with how I've seen your moderation done on Metafilter in the past. There've been plenty of instances where some troll has "deserved" the lashing back from civilized users that their trollish provocations have earned them. I'll admit I'm not invested enough to start reading thread-by-thread to track down examples to cite, but I'm completely certain I've seen them.
jessamyn: I'm not saying that BB as a site handled that at all well, but it was pretty clear to me that while TNH didn't really handle things as well as she personally could have, she also got shafted standing out there in front trying to enforce her idea of policy while the people who really materially benefited from the site more significantly Did Not Help.
I don't have any particular opinion about TNH's role during the Violet Blue scandal; I think she was just as lousy an antimoderator during that period as she is pretty much in her totality.
jessamyn: The greatest thing about the Internet, to me, is how easy it is to not go someplace you don't like. And the thing that confuses me about the BB hate and the TNH hate is why if people don't like them, they carry them so closely to their heart. Walk away. TNH isn't even there doing that job anymore. Walk away.
I don't carry TNH hate close to my heart. When it crosses my radar (say, in the form of a discussion about her as moderator on one of my favorite websites, whether or not that discussion is on-topic), then I'm reminded of her numbskullery, and, like I do on any of a few dozen other subjects, join the discussion.
Hell, me, I don't even hate her; it's more a form of aggravation and annoyance that I don't carry in my heart, but that are attachments to the soured opinion of her, itself an inactive file in my back memory until pulled up. That's kind of why I suggested to jsavimbi that he pull back on the Rage Throttle. When you're frothing quite that much, it's a sign that the rage is doing more harm to you than it is to your target. I can speak directly from personal experience on that one.
As well as, as aforementioned, some honest fascination in how quickly and in such totality BoingBoing became its own opposite. I'm glad you briefly brought some class to the joint, Jessamyn, but it's a site that has well-earned its reputation of hypocrisy and censorship – and I marvel at that given how bringing down such used to be part of its lifeblood. It's a case in something, I don't know what: Lord Acton's comment about power, perhaps?
posted by WCityMike at 11:12 AM on February 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
He's not suggesting that Ender's Game doesn't, itself, have a whole lot of precedents.
Arrows of the Queen actually came after Ender's Game, FWIW. I read the article as a bit less tongue-in-cheek than I suspect ArtW did--not, "there are many books like these, so what's she talking about?" but rather "Rowling ripped me off, along with many other authors, and doesn't admit it, but my books sell okay so I'll say I don't care while still sounding pretty ticked off about it." Which is weird to me because Harry Potter and Ender's Game are so ridiculously different. This isn't, say, Eragon and Star Wars we're talking about.
PhoBWankKenobi: I think you're attributing far too much subtlety to Card. He is not a subtle man. He's a nutcase crank to the point where it is impossible to tell when he is being serious and when he is using hyperbole to make a point, because the times when he is being serious are so hyperbolic.
posted by Justinian at 11:25 AM on February 22, 2010
On rereading it, you may be right. I'm not sure now whether his indictment was just the polemic I read it as.
Nobody owns tropes.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:28 AM on February 22, 2010
That's not consistent with how I've seen your moderation done on Metafilter in the past.
I know you're tight with BB and all, but censoring me was lame.
posted by jsavimbi at 11:38 AM on February 22, 2010
Like i say, it;s apples to oranges - "has similar plot and themes" is radically different from "contains huge excerpts of someone else's text", whatever the arguments for or against that.
jsavimbi - please go to meta or something. Or away.
So, even if someone is a complete jerk, they don't deserve people being a jerk back at them?
Yes. Because there is no airtight definition of "jerk" and savaging people who are not at all on MeFi is weak sauce. Please consider taking the TNH derail to MeTa.
posted by jessamyn at 11:48 AM on February 22, 2010
Not sure if JK Rowling could even get through this crap, it's almost unintelligible:
Willy sat in his bath. It was here in his yellow bathroom-come-study that he did his best thinking. He lay full length....
Relaxed he was able to study, as the green treated water toned his body with Aqua Superba, a newly developed water additive from Health Clinic in Puerto Rico. This additive only available to wizards with 5 stars had the ability to drain all superstar mind-clogging pressures and re-charge the system for endurance, excitement contests.
The screen concealed the selector mechanism. Willy had fed in the contest details that he had been given at the wizards' conference and having adjusted the selector, every detail of the text was magnified so that he could peruse it at his leisure.
GAIN ENTRANCE TO LIVID LAND! AND RELEASE FEMALE PRISONERS FROM ANGRY SAM'S COMPOUND. FORTY POINTS AWARDED FOR EACH PRISONER RESCUED. Willy pressed the activator remote control and scanned the prize awards list. Wizards achieving more than 1000 stars would receive life membership of Stellar Land.... I'll be ready for a contest conference in 30 minutes. Be in your cubicles....
posted by KokuRyu at 12:11 PM on February 22, 2010
She deleted it because I didn't get there first. You need to drop this. Go to Metatalk if you have anything more to say about it, but leave it alone in here.
posted by cortex at 12:13 PM on February 22, 2010
KokoRyu, that was pretty hot
posted by jtron at 12:50 PM on February 22, 2010
Library Journal writer Lauren Barack:
"'Given the success of Rowling's Potter series it seems unlikely that she'll stop being a lightning rod for suits of this nature,' Barack wrote. 'While her stories are hugely popular, they do mirror many archetypes and story arcs found in popular tales.'"
People see J.K. Rowling as a 'gravy train.' She'll likely see more suits in the future.
posted by ericb at 1:35 PM on February 22, 2010
'While her stories are hugely popular, they do mirror many archetypes and story arcs found in popular tales.'"
Harry Potter influences and analogues.
The Harry Potter influence on Avatar is pretty clear.
I'm kinda boggled by the concept of some of the finest legal brains money can buy having to wade through the semi-literate dreck that is Wizard Willy as they prepare the case.
And I'm going to sue Rowling for using too many adverts. Which I invented years ago.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 2:19 PM on February 22, 2010
Over use of adverts is Lovecraftian.
Ooops Freudian slip there...
Well obviously I'll just have to doctor up some proof that I'm his descent and then I'll sue... (though it'll be a long long queue of appropriators including... well, eerrr, myself)
Artw, thanks for mentioning "Eye of Argon level bad" at the beginning, I didn't know of that particula bit of geekery and found it hilarious.
Eye of Argon (MiST'ed).
posted by jb at 5:56 PM on February 22, 2010
jb: If we want to complain, let's complain about how Rowling has brilliant plotting, but mediocre world creation...
Actually, this is the second time I've noticed somebody saying this in just a few days, and the grounds for it aren't obvious to me. Why do you say so?
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 6:44 PM on February 22, 2010
no, seriously, adverbs.
...Harry said, dully...
...Harry thought, dully...
...Harry sneezed, dully...
just eliminate the dullys and that's 100 pages
posted by toodleydoodley at 7:15 PM on February 22, 2010
two... - the wizard world doesn't work. It's been a while since I read the books, but one example would be: where do wizard kids go to junior school? They can't go to their local schools, or they would know about muggles. Come to think of it, if they live among us, they should know more about muggles than they do, but some of them don't know what telephones are. It's little things like this that really bothered me. Other writers with secret magic societies - Diane Duane, Gaiman - they tend to have the magic users existing among us, knowing about us, but secret from us. Or they live in an entirely different world, ala Narnia.
Other parts of her world just seem a bit trite. There are all these little bits -- the fireplace flues, wizarding street, the werewolves and shape shifters -- which are individually interesting, but they don't add up to another world, a fictional universe which nonetheless seems to fit together. Lots of little things, but it doesn't all fit together into a compelling world. Now, maybe it's because I was an adult while reading the books, but I didn't find myself imagining myself into her world like I did with Narnia.
I guess I just felt like the fictional universe felt like a hodge-podge of fairy tales and folklore -- good folklore (a botanist who has written on plant folklore told my husband that Rowling knows as much about traditional plant folklore as he does, or more, and all the bits about magical plants really are the traditional uses/magics), but more of a pastiche than a fresh, alien world. You can kind of tell that Rowling didn't read much fantasy -- as she claims. Because she's not really working in the fantasy/speculative fiction genre (where world creation is a bigger deal than in other genres). So it's a not very original world with world-creation holes you could drive a truck through -- every so often, I would just be jared out of the story by something that didn't really make sense. Also, how many wizarding schools in the world? There must be more than 4 - else where do the German, American, South African, Malaysian, etc, wizards go to school? And where do UK wizards who don't get into Hogwarts go to school? Can they actually threaten Harry with expelling him from Hogwarts if it's the only wizard school in the whole country? I mean, you couldn't just send him to a Muggle school, or his magic would never be trained and you don't really want untrained wizards about. This is the sort of stuff I think about.
That's not to say that the books are all bad -- Rowling is hands down the best writer I've ever read for compelling plotting and pacing. But between the lackluster world and the increasingly unrelatable characters, she sort of lost me.
posted by jb at 8:14 PM on February 22, 2010 [3 favorites]
Obviously, I ignored all the problems with the world creation to read the first 6 novels -- they were fun and I'm not that anal. I just dislike hearing praise for how "original" and "compelling" the world creation is, when it's not that coherent and lots of things are just taken straight from myths and folklore. Other kids' writers have thought up kingdoms and empires, new magical systems, compelling mythos and battles between good and evil.
Even with magical horses.
I just want to make certain I'm following all this - BoingBoing still sucks, right?
posted by Poet_Lariat at 10:28 PM on February 22, 2010
You're a picky fucker, jb. I like that.
posted by Artw at 10:34 PM on February 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
And where do UK wizards who don't get into Hogwarts go to school?
Friend of mine has had published a series of short stories set in a wizarding school, that's more akin to Grange Hill meets Scum for those who don't quite make it to Hogwarts....
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:51 AM on February 23, 2010
jb, thanks for the explanation. I suppose I still don't really see it that way...
I do find the Wizarding World compelling (I read the books between the ages of eleven and seventeen if that matters). Apart from the obvious appeal of all the enchanted ceilings, ancient evil, etc, there's the way Rowling pays so much attention to the institutions that make her world run: shops, banks, newspapers, hospitals, prisons, courtrooms, government, and of course, schools. That's one reason I don't think it's fair to say, for instance, that the wizards are unconvincing as people who 'live among us'. They don't, not really. The reason magical people in HP are so provincial is that their world is self-sufficient enough to stay mostly isolated from ours.
(And while it's true that Rowling never explains where young magical children go to school, I don't see why she needs to? It's not relevant, even if it might be nice to know, especially in a book that's already 800 pages long. In an interview, btw, she apparently said they're homeschooled.)
I get that the world isn't quite, as you say, 'fresh' or 'alien', but then it's not meant to be. What makes it (yes) compelling to so many people is that for all its cool stuff and magicking, it is comfortable and familiar. (Some people are obviously bound to find that incredibly off-putting.) It's not only that the world is constructed out of random bits of folklore and fantasy/boarding school tropes, but that it's so much like our own, just with these here differences - and people kind of delight in hearing what they are. I think there is a place for that kind of creation, even if it is a little oppressive how big of a place it turned out to be.
Not that I haven't had some Fridge Logic moments. Like, the Weasleys and Lupin and Voldemort's family being poor and/or shabby-looking to one degree or another. How possible is that sort of economic deprivation, really, under the circumstances? What stops them from just conjuring up a fancier pair of boots or whatever?
posted by two or three cars parked under the stars at 6:22 AM on February 23, 2010
Also... what about the fact that the entire plot of Goblet of Fire is totally unnecessary and irrelevant to the outcome? Why weren't some of the more tedious plotlines (Hagrid's brother) cut? And why is Rowling's characterization and treatment of the Slytherins so at odds with the explicit philosophy of the books? My problems with the series (which I do love) are much more along those lines.
a botanist who has written on plant folklore told my husband that Rowling knows as much about traditional plant folklore as he does, or more, and all the bits about magical plants really are the traditional uses/magics)
In one of the interviews/profiles I've seen with JK she hefted up this massive encyclopaedia on herbalism she uses for references for stuff like that.
two... (sorry, your name is quite long - can I just call you "two"?) -- those are all good points. I should point out that I was 18 when I read the first book, and that does make a difference. But maybe it's also that I've been a science-fiction/fantasy fan since I was a kid, and I'm a collector of kid's SF&F. And I feel like Harry Potter is an ok, but not great, fantasy/world creation when compared to the other SF&F I have read before. That said, it clearly is a more compelling story, or at least more accessible to all sorts, because none of those books have appealled to anywhere near the numbers of people of all ages.
Your points about the Slytherins are great -- I also dislike the idea that evil may be hereditary. I kept hoping Draco would turn around and say, "Hey, I might be a spoiled bully, but I'm not doing THAT" and joining the good guys to show that he had free will and could make his own choices regardless of his parentage. Maybe he does? (You can spoil me if he does -- but don't tell me if he doesn't. That way I can keep imagining that he does.)
> Now, maybe it's because I was an adult while reading the books, but I didn't find myself imagining myself into her world like I did with Narnia.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's that you were an adult. You can't argue with six billion enchanted younger readers. But:
> Rowling is hands down the best writer I've ever read for compelling plotting and pacing.
Really? I read the first book at the insistence of a friend and found it utterly lacking in writerly virtues of the sort an adult tends to look for; she's got the magic, but she doesn't have the chops. But maybe I'm so allergic to her prose I don't get caught up in the plotting and pacing.
posted by languagehat at 7:41 AM on February 23, 2010
And why is Rowling's characterization and treatment of the Slytherins so at odds with the explicit philosophy of the books?
Pfft. When I entered secondary school I was sorted into Evil House, and as it turns out, I'm an axe murderer. But that's just the way I am; nothing to do with living and socialising exclusively with other children who were told they'd grow up to be axe murderers, or the way all the teachers but that one evil one who never washed his hair looked down on us and were constantly favouring those pricks in Brave House, Boffin House and Boring House; I'm an axe murderer by nature.
posted by ArmyOfKittens at 8:13 AM on February 23, 2010 [5 favorites]
languagehat -- age does matter for a book's personal effect on a reader. But at the same time, I'm thinking of the world in comparison to other children's fantasy/SF authors, and thinking of how there are better world creators; if some of the young Harry Potter fans moved from Harry Potter to the other books, they would find even richer worlds to explore. Some would be very alien (ala Michael Ende's Neverending Story), while others have sort of our own world but different -- like Pinkwater's Alan Mendelsohn, the boy from Mars, or Diane Duane's So you want to be a Wizard?. But you're right to point out that none of these books have had the wide appeal of Rowling's.
And yeah, I wasn't talking about literary qualities of style, just plotting. That said, I'm not sure that most adults really are looking for literary style over plotting. Not that style isn't important, but I've been reading more pulp fiction lately, and the literary style of some popular authors can make Rowling look like Jeanette Winterson (for those not familier, a brilliant stylist -- though not a great plotter). But, like Rowling, they have the pull of the story working for them. Even I find that when my brain is more tired, I tend away from the better stylists, and frankly the better writers, to more pulpy and predictable fiction because it is comfortable easy in the way that watching tv is.
posted by jb at 8:18 AM on February 23, 2010
Weirdly relevant article on Hogwarts up at tor.com.
My feelings about the Wizarding World in terms of world building are close to jb's, though I didn't read the first book until I was 16 or 17. I was a little scifi and fantasy nut--immersed myself in stuff like Pern and those pesky horse books at thirteen and fourteen. I was a big fan of Edward Eager as a kid, and in tone Rowling's work always felt very close to that, but maybe not quite as seamless. Seamlessness was important to me (I remember watching that episode of Star Trek: TNG where Scotty appears, introducing huge continuity errors into the series, in middle school and feeling totally batty about it). Loose edges bothered me, and there are plenty of them in Rowling's work.
Though what I like about her work is the evident planning and rich on-going timeline of the series. The world building isn't perfect, but we watch these characters grow. Honestly? I've only read the first two, but I was engaged enough with the characters to look into what happened to them later in the series. There were other kids' series that do the same--Animorphs comes to mind--but few as well or with as much meat. Contrast this to, say, The Babysitter's Club, which was released a little over a decade before the Harry Potter books. The characters there relive the same year over and over again, with few major changes to the continuity. That bugged me even at 8.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 9:29 AM on February 23, 2010
I think the worst part of the Harry Potter worldbuilding is that it progressively made less and less sense as she added things in the later books whose existence would have had an impact on the earlier books (several of which should already have been known to Harry when he encountered them, but he was still playing the naive outsider to justify someone explaining it in small words.)
The one of these I found most glaring was the magic loyalty oath introduced in the 6th or 7th book. Why hadn't Voldemort already demanded it of all his followers before the series even began?
posted by Zed at 9:38 AM on February 23, 2010
PhoB -- the growing is a good part. I think I would refuse to read any series that didn't have character growth and change. It's bad enough that there are TV shows like that with adults, let alone children.
But I did feel like the later books didn't quite ring true to adolescent thinking. In the first books, Harry et al felt like real kids and I liked that a lot. But by the time he was 15 or 16, I couldn't believe him as a teenager. He didn't seem to talk or relate like a teenager, other than being a bit more grumpy. Part of the problem is the age range of the readers -- as a friend pointed out, if he were like many boys, about 14 or 15 years old Harry's thoughts would have turned into "sex, sex, oh, Voldemorte, sex". But that just couldn't happen in a mass market book for 8-12 year olds. Some books go ahead with this, but discretely, but even when they do it still might be too much for adults. I remember my mum having a problem with how the 17-year old Alanna had relationship issues and a physical relationship when I was reading that series at age 10 or so. I didn't tell her I'd been reading way less discrete books from her shelf.
posted by jb at 10:24 AM on February 23, 2010
Oh -- and Star Trek continuity drives me batty!
Clearly there should be 100 years between TOS and TNG, not 75 as many chronologies have it -- after all, McCoy is 137 when he appears in the first episode of TNG, and Sarak is 102 on TOS and over 200 when he appears on TNG.
Also, everything I like from the novels ought to be canon, but nothing I don't like :P
Well, you could be trying to reconcile Dr. Who's continuity...
It's the Time War, Artw. It's always the Time War.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 2:20 PM on February 23, 2010
It seems to me that these complaints I hear about Rowling's writing or world-building—too many adverbs!, or it's dumb, where do wizard kids go to grade school?—always miss the point. She gets compared to Philip Pullman and C. S. Lewis, but I think someone like Charles Dickens is a much more precise analogue.
Rowling is, as Dickens was, a magpie-like conjurer of popular entertainment, a storyteller whose fluency with character, dialogue, and suspense is more than enough to distract us from the soggy patches in her prose and the occasionally rickety scaffolding of her plots. For most people who read them—including zillions of adolescents for whom Potter was the doorway to a life of reading—the books are like friends. Humor, adventure, mystery, romance! What's wrong with any of this? Doesn't the world have enough dull-as-horsecrap "literary fiction" these days, however few adverbs it uses?
I have to agree with Sleary's lisped admonition to Gradgrind in Hard Times:
"People mutht be amuthed, Thquire, thomehow," continued Sleary, rendered more pursy than ever, by so much talking; "they can't be alwayth a working, nor yet they can't be alwayth a learning."
They have their faults as literature or philosophy, but as witty, moving, page-turning Dickensian entertainment, I think the Potter books are pretty sound.
posted by cirripede at 5:14 PM on February 24, 2010
Dude, acknowledging fault in Rowling's work doesn't mean we're all literary snobs. I'm a big fan of LJ Smith, for crissake.
PhoBWanKenobi, sorry! That's not at all what I meant to imply. You're probably a great deal less snobbish about your reading than I am—and I have many of my own criticisms of Rowling. I meant only to argue that the objections I most frequently see, to her continuity problems or clichéd prose, don't matter a great deal within the kind of storytelling she does.
Oh my god. I just realised I spelled "Sarek" wrong. I'm so embarressed, I want to sink through the floor.
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More "Penny Dreadful" Season 2 Details
Friday, July 25th 2014 10:10 am
Showrunner John Logan and three of the hunky male cast from Showtime's "Penny Dreadful" all turned up for a panel yesterday at this year's San Diego Comic Con. The hot topic of discussion was the soon to head into production second season of the supernatural series.
Logan confirms that after the shadowy vampire villain of the first season, this year the drama will be dealing with a human antagonist in the form of Helen McCrory's Madame Kali who made brief appearances two episodes of the first season. Logan says "Her supernatural world becomes the threat to all the gentlemen sitting on the stage with me" referring to Reeve Carney's Dorian Gray, Harry Treadaway's Dr. Frankenstein and Josh Hartnett's Ethan Chandler.
Logan says the first season was about building the show's central family of characters, whereas next season is very different: "Having spent ten years building this world in my mind, I talk about the first three seasons of what the story is. What excites me about season two is … it gets much larger."
More of Ethan's backstory will be explored in the second season, and his father Jared will be introduced at some point: "He was a monstrous man who treated his son brutally. Something happened in Ethan's life that became this curse/blessing. But in the larger theology/cosmology, there's other elements to it, which we'll explore in season two."
Logan also revealed he hopes to introduce Dr. Moreau at some point on the series.
Source: The Live Feed
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Akhenaten the Heretic
The Art of Amarna: Akhenaten and his life under the Sun
Graves show culture clash that let Nubians rule Egypt
The Pharaoh of Egypt was considered to be an immaculately conceived resurrected form of the god Osiris carried in an Avatar of the Divine that held the homoousion essence as the son of Osiris, Horus.
Although Pharaoh was considered to be a descended god his queen was considered to be a mortal consort.
The sons of Pharaoh were immaculately conceived.
Born of a virgin queen impregnated - not by a mortal man - but by the god Horus carried to Earth in the physical form of the body of Pharaoh which acted as an Avatar of the Divine.
1360 BC Pharaoh Amenhotep III, son of Pharaoh Thutmose IV, and Queen Tiye had two known sons.
The goddess Neith was required to give birth while remaining a virgin.
When the elder brother died as a teenager Pharaoh Amenhotep III had to re-brand his wife as the goddess Neith as she obviously was not a virgin after having given birth previously.
Death of the Firstborn Egyptians
This made the second son, rebranded Amenhotep IV, able to fulfill the mandate of being born of a virgin which assured the Pharaoh's lineage of succession.
Strict religious traditionalists considered this re-branding heretical.
1350 BC Amenhotep IV, educated in the court of Amenhotep III in the royal capital of Memphis, is branded the god Horus at the religious capital of Thebes.
Amenhotep IV ascended to the throne at the age of 18.
Amenhotep IV quickly wrought nothing less than a complete revolution in religion, art, construction and governance.
Amenhotep IV did away with the old gods, which were generally portrayed with human bodies and the heads of animals.
In the place of the old gods, Amenhotep IV decreed that there was only one God, the god of his father and grandfather - Aten, symbolized by the Sun.
Amenhotep IV changes his name to Akhenaten, which means roughly, "The useful Son of the Sun Disc."
Akhenaten begins replacing the names of the old gods from temples and public buildings with gods being combined and blended into Aten, much as Menes had done at Memphis 17 centuries earlier.
The difference between night and day became, simply, that Aten was no longer present at night. No longer did other gods rule the dark.
"The real revolution implied transformation of thought patterns, in which all the traditional forms were bathed in the glare of the Lumière Infinie which the traditional Egyptians came to find intolerable.
Beginning with the change in the king's birth name, from which the name of the Amun was removed, there was a step-by-step process of elimination.
Amun was replaced by Aten, mythical statement by rational statement, many-valued logic by two-valued logic, the gods by God.
This was accomplished according to a well-conceived plan." - Erik Hornung
Monoculture: The Worst Mistake Humans Ever Made
"Akhenaten was not a visionary but rather a methodical rationalist.
Akhenaten was a rational philosopher who took the throne of perhaps the most powerful empire on earth at that time, and implemented reforms one by one as soon as the necessary political conditions had been created.
Akhenaten manipulated the power of the priestly institutions at his command very brilliantly.
The new religion could be summed up as there is no god but Aten, and Akhenaten is his prophet. " - Jimmy Dunn
Akhenaten was the first Head of State on Earth to attempt complete unification of diverse religious traditions through a declaration of the monotheistic embrace of the moral order of One God.
This rebranding required the population to be 'converted' (re-educated).
Akhenaten called himself the son of Aten (God), prefiguring the legend of the Mystery of Christ.
Akhenaten also provoked a change in art forms.
In the long history of Egyptian art, Pharaohs were generally presented as ideal figures, with athletic bodies and handsome faces.
Portraits and statues made during Akhenaten's rule were much more realistic in style, often showing Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti, the Chief Royal Wife, in intimate, affectionate poses or with their children, six daughters, on their laps.
At times, Akhenaten is shown riding with Nefertiti in a chariot, kissing Nefertiti in public and with Nefertiti sitting on his knee.
Akhenaten carved images of Nefertiti onto the four corners of his granite sarcophagus and she provided the protection for his mummy, a role traditionally played by the female deities Isis, Nephthys, Selket and Neith.
Akhenaten was portrayed with a long, narrow face, wide hips on a somewhat deformed body, a small potbelly, and unusually long fingers and toes.
A variety of evidence suggests that Akhenaten may have suffered from Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder that alienated him from his family.
Marfan sufferers recall feelings of rejection and isolation in childhood.
The community may have shunned him due to his unusual appearance and that isolation may have led him to reject the gods of the old religion.
The connective tissue defect was shared by Abraham Lincoln.
The Mystery of Akhenaten: Genetics or Aesthetics?
the family of Tutankhamun
Akhenaten later sired Tutankhamun (meaning "Living Image of Aten), likely by the royal wife Kiya.
Each of the royal women had her own sanctuary, frequently called a sunshade temple, usually situated in a parkland environment of vegetation and water pools.
Crucially important to Akhenaten was renewal of creation through reproduction, basic to Akhenaten's personal life, but also in the daily renewal of creation affected by Aten.
Another change Akhenaten wrought was the elevation of women.
Akhenaten compares with Muhammad ibn 'Abdullāh and Siddhartha Gautama in founding a religion respectful of women as human beings.
In the fourth year of his reign, Akhenaten decided to build his own capital city, and he chose the site now known as Tell el-Amarna, midway between Memphis and Thebes.
To speed construction, Akhenaten changed the way buildings are built.
In the past, public buildings have been put together with large blocks of sandstone, often weighing as much as 12-1/2 tons.
Akhenaten decrees that the masons use blocks that averaged only about 10 inches square and 20 inches long, making them much easier to transport and assemble.
They are quarried from a soft sandstone that could be easily shaped.
(The Harappans used the same sized bricks, which they fired, and standard weights in 2500 BC, 1200 years earlier than Akhentan used bricks and 1500 years earlier than the Chinese fired brick. The Masons that built the cathedrals of Europe used nearly the same size stones. The reason is simple - it takes only one man to lift and place the building blocks.)
Akhenaten moved into the new city, called Akhetaten, or "Horizon of the Sun Disc", two years after construction began.
Elaborate drawing and narratives were carved onto the outside of the buildings and painted.
Akhenaten built eight structures at East Karnak, some the size of four football fields.
This method of building was abadoned at the end of the reign of Akhenaten.
Unfortunately their was a backlash to this revolution in thought.
Cracks can be seen in the Egyptian empire , and they became ever more evident during the reign of Akhenaten.
Colonies begin to be neglected near the end of the reign of Amenhotep III.
During the reign of Akhenaten the civil and military authority was left to Ay, 'Father of God', possibly the father-in-law of Akhenaten, and Horemheb.
Ay and Horemheb both eventually became kings before the end of the 18th Dynasty, and Horemheb particularly was instrumental in reversing the Egyptian state religion back to its previous traditional form.
Many of the followers of Akhenaten and Aten, the inhabitants of Akhetaten, fled from Eygpt when the Egyptian state religion was converted back to its previous traditional form.
This wandering tribe came to be known as the Hebrews.
The main difference between the Sun Disc and the god of Moshe Rabbenu is that Akhenaten focused on the creative aspects of God - the reproduction of life, the daily resurrection of the life giving warmth of the sun, the seasonal life giving aspects of the waters of the Nile, etcetera whereas the god of Moshe Rabbenu, although still the God of Creation, has a nomadic hunter warrior characteristic as manifested in Yahweh rather than a settled gatherer fertility god like Osirapis.
Contrary to the rumor that the entire race of Hebrews were enslaved by Pharaoh many were employed by Pharaoh building pyramids.
Joseph (Yosef), who was sold into slavery by his brothers, became Pharaoh's trusted adviser.
The Egyptians planted and harvested in the proper seasons and after harvest they went down to the city to work as craftsman in the construction of the pyramids which are most likely a poured in place forerunner of concrete.
Near a Giza pyramid was discovered the first bottled beer factory.
Those bottles have been found scattered at places of habitation throughout the Mediterranean Sea basin.
"The mouth of a perfectly contented man is filled with beer." - ancient Egyptian proverb
Bare-breasted women engaged in sudsy brewing work adorn tomb paintings and clay models from the dynastic period.
To slake his thirst, each laborer on the pyramids got a daily beer allotment of 1 1/3 gallons.
Everyone partied at the annual celebration of the Drunkenness of Hathor, goddess of fertility, motherhood and the Milky Way.
There has been rumors since the Pyramids of Giza were built that no human could accomplish such a feat.
There has been speculation that an alien race of reptilians fled Mars when the sun cooled down 10,000 years ago and founded a civilization on the Nile.
The pyramids have a secret and that is they act as a gateway to Heaven, or Orion, depending on your loyalty.


Qwest Cyber.Solutions Aims to Please - InternetNews.
In a move that supports the recognized importance of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to the success of the ASP industry, Qwest Cyber.Solutions LLC (QCS) today becomes the first ASP to unveil an industry leading package of SLAs called QCS ProofPositive, promising total customer satisfaction.
With comprehensive, well-defined SLAs available at three levels -- 99, 99.7 and 99.99 percent -- QCS is helping customers significantly decrease the business impact of downtime. The availability levels range from 7 hours 20 minutes of downtime per month to no more than 4 minutes and 22 seconds for selected platforms.
To deliver on ProofPositive, QCS developed QCS Sentry, a process for reliable delivery of world-class applications and maximum system availability designed to improve the end user experience of critical business systems.
QCS has made significant financial and technological investments to develop QCS Sentry, which will provide comprehensive and proactive management, monitoring and reporting infrastructure for application and transaction performance.
QCS has taken an aggressive approach to building the right tools and technology that enable these new ProofPositive SLAs. To meet the variety of customer requirements, QCS ProofPositive offers a choice of three service levels on selected platforms: Standard, Enhanced Response and Business Critical.
ProofPositive Standard provides strong service guarantees on all components of QCS' ASP services including the application, performance and disaster recovery. For QCS Ultimate Freedom customers choosing ProofPositive Standard, QCS guarantees 99 percent application availability, 30-minute response to critical issues, which will be escalated within 2 hours. In addition, QCS will provide less than 70 percent CPU utilization and less than 90 percent storage utilization. QCS will also provide disaster recovery with 7 days recovery time for failed systems to the last available data recovery point, and QCS will meet the "customer satisfaction" level based on feedback from a quarterly survey.
The Enhanced Response SLA is for customers requiring added availability and faster recovery requirements beyond the basic offering. Beyond the standard offering, this level provides customers with 99.7 percent application availability, 20-minute critical issue response and 3-day disaster recovery.
Customers with time sensitive, mission critical data will benefit from the Business Critical level SLA that provides assurances for the highest level of application performance and response time. ProofPositive Business Critical provides 99.99 percent application availability, 10-minute response to critical issues, and 4-hour disaster recovery.
"We are strong believers that customers should expect more from their ASP partner than checkbook compensation for insufficient service levels," said John Charters, CEO, Qwest Cyber.Solutions "Today only a handful of the largest enterprises have the financial and technology resources to ensure maximum availability of applications, but now with QCS Sentry and ProofPositive, QCS is setting the new standards for service in the ASP environment."
QCS delivers scalable and reliable business critical software solutions through remote management and hosting of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Business-to-Business (B2B) E-Commerce applications. A joint venture between Qwest Communications International Inc. (NYSE:Q) and KPMG Consulting, QCS leverages Qwest's state-of-the-art Internet protocol broadband network and CyberCenters as well as KPMG's consulting and software integration expertise. QCS' software applications portfolio includes Ariba, Captura, Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel and others.


Perth's land market is finally showing clear signs of recovery with positive growth in price and sales following several years of downturn.
The Urban Development Institute of WA has categorically called the bottom of the market, with new land sales up 4 per cent during the December quarter and price growth recorded.
UDIA WA President Nick Allingame said new land values increased by a moderate 0.5 per cent during the December 2017 quarter to $235,941.
"The average price of land in Perth has increased for three consecutive quarters and reflects the incremental growth that the region is experiencing as confidence returns to the market after a period of uncertainty," he said.
"Given we are at the beginning of this new market cycle, and interest rates are expected to start rising this year, now is definitely a great time to get into the new land market in Perth.
Stockland WA general manager residential Col Dutton said there were early signs of improved economic conditions in WA, particularly in Perth, which was good news for the future residential land market.
"The West Australian economy is showing signs of improvement with jobs growth just off its strongest level in five years, the population growing at its fastest rate in two years and job vacancies last year outperforming all other states and territories," he said.
Mr Dutton said more affordable options and low interest rates had led to increased first-home buyer purchases, with homebuyers taking advantage of the current market conditions to take their first steps on the property ladder.
LWP managing director Danny Murphy said though industry sales were subdued with sales during the March quarter being less than the same period in 2017, consumer sentiment had improved.
"Security of employment is the most important factor in the purchase decision. With the more positive outlook for the Western Australian economy, confidence is returning to a number of key sectors, such as mining," he said.
Mr Murphy said a key factor to market improvement was the stock of established homes.
"This stock needs to diminish for demand for new to re-emerge," he said.
The residential land market remained competitive with signs of a slight improvement when compared to 2017, Satterley Property Group chief executive Nigel Satterley said.
Housing Industry Association WA executive director John Gelavis said high levels of competition were providing great deals for people thinking about building a new home.
"Consumers, like first-home buyers, are taking advantage of state government stimulus such as the first-home owner grant and stamp duty exemptions," he said.
UDIA new land data shows there were 1419 land sales during the December quarter, at an average price of $235,941.
The average size of lots sold was 382-square metres, while the number of lots under construction for release within 12 months was 2492.
Lot sales were down 14.5 per cent compared to December quarter 2015 data, where 1658 lots were sold at an average price of $235,820.
While the number of lots under construction predicted for release over 12 months was down 68 per cent across the Perth metro area compared with what was predicted five years ago, construction numbers were stabilising as supply evened out with demand, Mr Allingame said.
"We expect those figures to start creeping up over the next couple of quarters," he said.
Furthermore, the December 2017 quarter data revealed the North West metropolitan region — incorporating the Cities of Joondalup and Wanneroo — dominated the market with 29.3 per cent of sales across Perth.


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Delaware Rules Again on Disclosure of Competing Projections
Here's news – and analysis – from Tom Bayliss of Abrams & Bayliss:
Recently, the Delaware Court of Chancery issued a decision in In re Orchid Cellmark Inc. Shareholder Litigation. The 37-page letter opinion authored by Vice Chancellor John Noble articulates the basis for an order denying an application to enjoin Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings, Inc.'s proposed $85.4 million acquisition of Orchid Cellmark Inc. by first step tender offer and second step merger. The Orchid Cellmark decision provides helpful guidance on the impact of disagreements among board members about the advisability of a transaction, the materiality of projections prepared by management but revised downward by a financial advisor, the disclosure of investment banker work product regarding alternatives that the company declines to pursue and merger agreement provisions that prevent a target from exempting other bidders from its poison pill.
Notable Facts
Four notable facts colored the parties' dispute over the LabCorp transaction. First, the process leading to the transaction involved dissention among Orchid's directors. The Company's CEO and another director voted against continued negotiations with LabCorp at a January 21, 2011 board meeting (they were out-voted by the Company's four other directors). The Company's CEO also voted against a binding agreement to provide LabCorp a thirty-day exclusivity period on February 3, 2011. When the board finally approved the LabCorp transaction on April 5, 2011, the CEO abstained from the vote. The Company's public filings later confirmed that the CEO did not intend to tender his shares in the deal.
Second, the Company's public filings disclosed that Oppenheimer & Co., Orchid's financial advisor, had advised the board that "no third party would likely propose a bid for the [C]ompany that would yield a result for the stockholders that would be higher than LabCorp's … $2.80 per share indication of interest." But a consortium of private equity firms had verbally expressed interest in purchasing Orchid's U.K. operations for amounts that implied a value of between $2.74 and $3.04 per share for the Company. Oppenheimer had reduced this range to "approximately $2.93" per share and concluded that the figure was "comparable" to LabCorp's $2.80 offer, but it had emphasized that the expression of interest remained "preliminary and entaile[d] significant uncertainties."
Third, Oppenheimer did not adopt, and the Company's public filings did not disclose, the financial projections prepared by Orchid's CEO and CFO. Instead, Oppenheimer treated these projections as an "upside case," contrasted them with lower "base case" and "downside case" projections and ultimately used the "base case" projections when rendering its fairness opinion.
Fourth, Orchid maintained a poison pill, and the merger agreement governing the transaction provided that the Company would exempt only LabCorp from its operation. Section 5.2(a)(v) of the merger agreement expressly prohibited Orchid from exempting other bidders from the pill without first terminating the merger agreement and paying LabCorp a termination fee.
The Rulings
The Court found that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a reasonable likelihood of success on their claim that the directors had violated their Revlon duties by failing to consider the CEO's dissenting views. Vice Chancellor Noble held that the "[b]oard simply disagreed with his optimism toward Orchid's remaining as a stand-alone company." The Court determined that the Company's public filings adequately disclosed dissention at the board level by noting the CEO's opposition to the transaction and his decision to abstain from the vote to approve the deal. The Court concluded that the split board vote over continuing negotiations with LabCorp was not material and its disclosure would not have altered "the total mix of information available to shareholders."
The Court found that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a reasonable likelihood of success on their claim that the directors had violated their Revlon duties by failing to inform themselves or pursue the private equity firms' interest in a transaction involving Orchid's U.K. operations. The Court credited evidence indicating that the board deliberated over the likelihood that the expression of interest would materialize into a superior transaction and discussed the risks associated with pursuing an alternative transaction where no offer had yet been made. The Court ultimately concluded that, while it was possible to "hypothesize a complex, multi-part transaction involving the sale of Orchid's U.K. business to a private equity firm," there was "no reason to second guess this [b]oard's decision."
The Court rejected the contention that the Company's public disclosures regarding the potential sale of its U.K. operations were materially misleading. Because of the execution and consummation risk associated with the expression of interest, Oppenheimer's conclusion that the private equity firms' proposal regarding the U.K. operations implied a value of $2.93 per share was "not necessarily incompatible" with its publicly disclosed advice that "no third party would likely propose a bid for the Company that would yield a result for the stockholders that would be higher than LabCorp.'s current $2.80 indication of interest." Moreover, the Court determined that "disclosing the $2.93 per share price, without an accompanying and perhaps confusing modification for the potential negative value in the U.S. or the transaction costs associated with splitting up the Company would have been misleading."
The Court found that the plaintiffs lacked a reasonable likelihood of success on their claim that the board violated its Revlon duties by "massaging" the projections provided by the CEO and CFO so it could sign-off on the transaction. The Court found no basis to question the motivation of the independent directors or to doubt the independence and credentials of Oppenheimer. By contrast, the CEO (a) held a large number of underwater options and (b) had prepared the projections in response to LabCorp's acquisition offer. Vice Chancellor Noble emphasized that "[i]n evaluating the fairness and advisability of th[e] tender offer, the Special Committee and its financial advisor [were] not precluded from considering various sets of financial projections before determining that one set reflect[ed] the best estimate of future performance." The board's determination that the "'base case' most accurately captured Orchid's future performance" was not "an unreasonable conclusion."
The Court rejected the contention that the projections prepared by the CEO and CFO should have been disclosed (alongside the base case projections prepared by Oppenheimer), despite the plaintiffs' characterization of the CEO as "the most knowledgeable person concerning the Company's operations" and his strong belief that the "management projections were more accurate and reliable than the 'base case' developed by Oppenheimer." The Court noted that the ultimate responsibility for managing the affairs of the Company rested with the board, which had deemed the base case projections more reliable than the projections advocated by the CEO.
The Court found that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a reasonable likelihood of success on their claim that Section 5.2(a)(v) of the merger agreement was an unreasonable defensive measure. Although it prevented Orchid from exempting any competing bidder from its poison pill, the board retained its right to terminate the merger agreement (and the limitation on its ability to exempt other suitors from the pill) upon a determination that a competing bid constituted a superior proposal. The applicable termination fee made this option costly, but no more costly than terminating the merger agreement for any other reason.
Take-Aways and Further Thoughts
1. The opinion is a helpful reminder that Revlon does not require consensus at the board level (or even the support of the corporation's CEO).
2. The opinion provides critical guidance on a difficult disclosure question that arises frequently: if a company and its advisors develop multiple sets of projections and determine to disclose at least one set, must the others be disclosed? The decision in Orchid Cellmark suggests that only the board-endorsed projections relied upon by the financial advisor need to be disclosed. This apparently remains true even when the company's principal officers provide more optimistic projections and continue to believe that their projections are more reliable than the projections endorsed by the board.
3. Interestingly, the opinion does not appear to accord the CEO's views on projections disproportionate weight. Presumably the board appointed the CEO after determining that he was the individual best suited to run the Company. It is unclear how the CEO could lose the board's confidence with respect to forecasting but nevertheless retain the board's confidence as an operator. The opinion also highlights a potential question: what constitutes so-called "management projections" under Delaware law: (a) projections prepared by officers of the corporation, or (b) projections endorsed by the directors charged with a duty to "manage" the corporation under Section 141(a) of the DGCL?
4. In a footnote, the Court emphasizes that the CEO's underwater options and the preparation of the projections in response to the LabCorp offer justified "a deviation from the general principle, set forth in such cases as Maric Capital Master Fund, Ltd. … that management's estimate of cash flow for purposes of assessing a cash merger is clearly material information." Since target management frequently prepares its projections after the commencement of a sales process, the importance of the CEO's underwater options in the Court's calculus may become the focus of future debate. Regardless, Maric is distinguishable when there is "obvious tension" between the CEO and the board and the board makes a "collective decision to move forward" using projections prepared by others.
5. The Court explains that it was "not for this Court to question that decision or to determine which set of projections better captures the Company's financial condition where the [b]oard's decision appears to be reasonable." Of course, one could argue that the disagreement militated in favor of disclosing both sets of projections so the stockholders could assess those provided by management and compare them to the projections endorsed by the board. For similar reasons, one could argue that the existence of the disagreement over the projections was a material fact warranting disclosure and explanation.
6. The opinion acknowledges that the ruling on the materiality of the expression of interest in the Company's U.K. operations and Oppenheimer's analysis suggesting that the transaction implied a value of $2.93 per share was a "close call." The Court appears to have been persuaded in part by the suggestion that it might be "misleading to disclose the $2.93 per share price without … accompanying and perhaps confusing" details. But it is unclear why the directors could not be charged with an obligation to disclose the analysis to their stockholders in the same plain English used describe complicated financial analyses routinely conducted by their financial advisors.
7. The Court's endorsement of merger agreement provisions limiting the ability of a target to exempt competing bidders from its poison pill is a helpful guidepost. The Court notes that "a sophisticated and serious bidder would understand that the [b]oard would likely eventually be required by Delaware law to pull the pill in response to a [s]uperior [o]ffer." The Court stops short of addressing the potential impact of such a pill on the post-announcement aggregation of significant positions by arbitrageurs potentially interested in exercising bargaining leverage based on their accumulated stakes.
8. The opinion is the second instance in which the Court of Chancery has assessed the preclusive effect of a termination fee based on its percentage of the target's aggregate equity value, despite the target's significant cash reserves. Commentators have noted that enterprise value may be a better metric for assessing the impact of a termination fee on an acquirer because it often provides a better estimate of the aggregate consideration required from the acquirer and its financing sources to complete the transaction. In Orchid's case, the $2.5 million termination fee represented less than 3% of the Company's equity value but 4.6% of the Company's enterprise value because of its $19.8 million in cash on hand.
Posted by Broc Romanek
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