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academiablogs · 6 years

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The New Golden Age

Every age feels that they’re witnessing the death of culture. The last gasps of a once-great civilization which has declined from misuse, ignorance, and apathy. Ask anyone above a certain age and they’ll tell you how people no longer read, or ask the right questions; people can’t appreciate true art, or enjoy an intelligent conversation. “Things used to be so good...and now look at us: we’re circling the drain.” Of course, that’s what the people over a certain age said about their time, too...

It’s inevitable, perhaps, that the older generation finds fault with the young, and sees the new literature, art, or ideas as somehow degenerate—falling short of the ideal of what “once was.” But can the opposite be true as well: that we’re living in the Golden Age right now, at least in literature? Are there more good books now than there were 10 or 20 years ago? Is there more chance for an author to find his or her audience now that they can publish their own books—agents be damned? And does the zeitgeist of #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, and #OwnVoices finally level the playing field for diverse stories and storytellers like never before?

Whatever we claim about our literary moment will be a vain speculation; in the end, only time will tell. But we can take stock of the books around us and ask one important question: could they have been published in another age? Would the early 20th century have welcomed our books and ideas? Or what about the Victorians? Or the Elizabethans? Is what we have uniquely and completely our own? If we can say “yes,” then perhaps we are existing in a moment people will one day remember and write about, and not dismiss as some generic appendix to the Great Writers of Yore.

Here’s a few suspicions I have that we are, indeed, living in a Golden Age of sorts:

Comics:

In the past, we had to convince people that comics were a medium, and not a genre. That one comic isn’t the same as another, any more than one book (or even one fantasy novel) is the same as the one beside it. Now, people generally understand the difference between superhero comics and underground comics; historical comics and erotic comics; manga and bande desinnée. And these distinctions allow comics writers and artists to express an entire range of stories that would have never reached print even 20 years ago. And behold—superheroes are taken seriously as the modern myths they are, allowing writers to dramatically reinterpret Superman as more than a cardboard alien fallen to earth (check out Superman: American Alien!)

YA Literature:

The fact that we can use these two terms together without risk of laughter or outrage is a case in point. “Young Adult” may have outlived its purpose, but if nothing else, it allowed storytellers a middle path between literature and children’s books. Or perhaps it merely allowed us to go back to writing the kind of clever, wise, and thrilling books they used to write for kids of all ages such as The Hobbit, The Railway Children, and The Prisoner of Zenda. When ‘serious’ writers are starting to dabble in YA, it can’t just be to hop on the bandwagon: they’ve seen the possibility that so many other writers saw who cut their teeth on it. A chance to tell new stories in a way that so-called ‘literary’ novels would scoff at—but which readers are clamoring for. An alchemic mixture of innocence and sophistication which requires the eye of cynic and the heart of a saint.

Science fiction and fantasy:

These genres have had various golden ages in the past, most notably in the 30’s, the 50’s, and the 70’s, but the more you look, the more you realize how much great fantasy and speculative fiction is flooding the shelves. It’s finally become accepted and almost mainstream, perhaps largely thanks to film and TV learning to take it seriously, too. Star Trek spearheaded this movement way back in the 60’s, as a clever, if veiled, way to examine contemporary society. Now, as we sense ourselves losing control of our culture, dystopian literature comes to our aid, allowing us to ‘play through’ the destruction of our species—and find a way forward (Station Eleven is a case in point). Some of the works are darker than others, but few offer shopworn morals or escapist charms; rather, the authors realize that the future is an abstraction that allows us to examine the present in a vacuum, without the taint of names and dates. Fantasy, too, has moved beyond King Arthur narratives to embrace endless cultures and traditions—in turn, stretching what it means to tell a story of myth and legend. And it’s not just for boys anymore...much of the best of both genres has been written by women, and often from a woman’s perspective. This could not have happened in any other age, golden or otherwise.

Classics:

this might seem like a non-sequitir—how can classics make our age a golden one? Don’t they represent the eternal radiance of the past? True—but how many classics were available “back then”? Ironically, much of the best literature written 100 years ago wasn’t even available for people to read. Today, anyone can amass a cheap, portable library of the greatest works from every culture without even owning a bookshelf. A lightweight, relatively inexpensive Kindle holds the equivalent of Alexandria. Even better, most of the ‘great books’ are free to download or at least absurdly cheap. There’s never been a more accessible time to become a reader. And for those who prefer hard copies, imprints such as Penguin Classics, Oxford World’s Classics, and Dover publish widely across cultures to bring us “the best books ever written” (according to Penguin’s ad copy). When else could you find any book you wanted, by any author, dead or alive, in virtually any language...and on the very day you desired it?

True, there have been better ages for literature—and many more to come. But this one should be appreciated for what it is, a time of plenty, of experimentation, and of availability. There’s more than we can hope to read in a dozen lifetimes. Yet don’t despair; we don’t have to read them all. After all, isn’t it better to die with so many unread volumes lying at your feet, than knowing you’ve consumed it all? I want to go into death with questions, mysteries, and the ambition to find more books, maybe the books that never even made it to print. And those which were lost—and destroyed—or simply forgotten. We’ve never lived in an age where we could know so much—and forget even more. It’s an exciting time to be a reader and a scholar, and for all the darkness and despair in the world, books remain our constant companion. And no tyrant or warlord has managed to figure out how to shut them up yet...they go on talking for millennia, with new writers perversely being born to meet the demand for new books, new ideas, and new Golden and Silver ages to come.

#amwriting #amreading #reading #writeblr #comics #fantasy #YA #bookish #booklr

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trbl-will-find-me · 7 years

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Media Matters: ADVENT and monoculture hell

Hello, friends. It’s time to yell about XCOM again.

Today, we’re yelling about human culture, alien monoculture, and questions that need answering.

As always, what we have from the game: -ADVENT seems to have done its best to create this new world monoculture. Food architecture, iconography, hell, even language. They’re all standardized now, no matter where you’re operating in the globe. They’ve worked to demonize the world that was, with all of its distinctive cultural features, and work to elevate this bland monolith they’ve got going on. Some of this is the nature of game design, I know, but christ.

- They’ve tied themselves (and this manufactured culture) to the “improvements” of life under the Elders. To be fair, some of these improvements are pretty great. If gene therapy has eliminated things like MS, ALS, DIPG, then that’s pretty amazing --- the cost is just so high.

- It goes beyond just secular culture, though. The churches we see feature ADVENT imagery. Concept art shows megachurch like facilities prosthelytizing the Elders. This is ... creepy, to say the least.

- By imposing this monoculture, they’ve created a culture of what they call ‘unity’ --- but might more accurately be labeled conformity.

Now, we jump off a little bit.

Havens are a rejection of the ADVENT ethos. They are small, messy, and ramshackle. They are also likely some of the last vestiges of individual cultures. We see havens with XCOM posters, including the original anti-alien decal from the Skyranger. They are growing their own food. While the writing we see is in English, it is definitely not the writing system we see in the city centers, and one could assume (reasonably) that writing is still localized to the language of the region.

Havens are, to some extent, growing their own food. Crops vary wildly by biome, so havens are also likely a holdout of regional, traditional foods. #locavore

Havens also still, I would wager, have human religions. I flat out refuse to believe that, especially in cases of persecuted religions like Judaism, everyone was collectively Fine And Dandy with their beliefs being supplanted by the weird alien cult. Just, no. Preservation and continued observation of earth’s religions in havens should be A Thing. I would like to believe that they are also a place where traditional art forms, music and the like are still practiced when feasible. Anything that is productive and demonstrative of the cultures of the area that was? Yeah, I’d like to believe that still goes on. Now, we get to the questions I can’t answer, the things that are driving me bonkers: - The fuck happened to earth’s existing media? Have aliens wiped it our or is it allowed to exist for its ability to demonstrate the “mistakes of the Old World?” I’d really like to know, because man, the sci fi fans should have realized something was up. Alien, Soylent Green, and all five seasons of The Twilight Zone exist on DVD and all have some Pointed Thoughts About Shit ADVENT Is Doing. There were WARNINGS. -Did ADVENT just ... hit the internet quickly? Because even if the mainstream news media was reporting ADVENT as our saviors, I’m pretty sure citizen journalism (even with all of its problems) would have been able to provide some pretty compelling evidence to the contrary. Nobody looks at a video of a chryssalid ripping a person to ribbons and thinks ‘yeah, this seems totally benevolent.’ But, if they knocked out the internet, it’s harder to get word to travel quickly.

-Also, losing the internet would probably be the modern equivalent of the Library at Alexandria burning. There is so much information that is easily accessible there that is much much more difficult to access in other forms, if not impossible for large swaths of the population. If you were trying to warp and control the narrative, though, you’d have to get rid of the easy ways to find information that contradicts your version. -Hey, speaking of warnings, what happened to books? Actual books. Because, again, we had a sample of Red Flags to draw from. War of the Worlds, 1984 and Brave New World come to mind as works that should have been a good tip off that Hey, Something Is Not Right. But seriously, so many YA dystopias. Did none of them survive? Did ADVENT burn everything? And anyone who knew about these works? What happened here? I have the uncomfortable feeling that, as ADVENT warped history, books went in the burn pile because HOW ELSE DO YOU GASLIGHT THE ENTIRE WORLD. -This is less pressing, but where are the art museums? Where are the great artworks of the world that was? All we see is ADVENT’s weird abstract paintings and their (admittedly, pretty good) propaganda. We see some stencil graffiti, so apparently that survived but, uh. Where is everything else? Did ADVENT burn Starry Night? Because if ADVENT burned Starry Night, I am Going To Be Unhappy.

-Also, less pressing, but important: What is the state of music? Do we still have rock’n’roll? Is it about things that are not ADVENT and our Benevolent Alien Saviors? Can someone still lay in the dark and blare David Bowie’s Space Oddity? W H A T H A P P E N E D, F I R A X I S?

-Media that HAS survived: what form is it in? I have a terrible feeling paper books would fall prey to kindling during cold winters, but maybe not. Are we looking at dvds? Zip drives? Secret caches on the ADVENT network? How is it accessed? Is it preserved? Who’s preserving it? I need to know. I need to know if Central made Menace team watch a pirated copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark after they were all confused why the Commander lost it at “Vipers. Why did it have to be vipers?” I need to know if the Commander, upon crossing the psionic gateway, informed Central that they had a feeling they were “not in Kansas anymore” and if the rest of the team got the joke.

-Not a question, but more a for your consideration: Havens in living history museums. The buildings are there. They have fireplaces. They are not usually in densely populated areas. They are comparatively resource-rich. They are sometimes really, really cool. Ship-based haven at Mystic Seaport in CT. Cross-time period havens in Strawberry Banke, NH and Greenfield Village in MI. It could be great.

#xcom #meta #*bangs pots and pans* GIVE ME WOTC FIRAXIS #this got long again #please someone #make wizard of oz jokes at central #p l e a s e

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pyxyystyxx · 5 years

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ATLA Highlights

Okay so things I really feel are underappreciated in ATLA are as follows:

{[(This is a long post so read under the cut)]}

Season One

-When Sokka implies that being an optimist makes you a liar (as a cynic/realist I found this hilarious)

-When Sokka gets his ass handed to him by the Kyoshi warriors and is super sexist but then realizes he’s wrong and apologizes all in one episode (that's growth and we love to see it)

-Zuko breaking into a fortress undetected (sneaking back out not so much but kudos for trying lol)

-Katara being a thief (seriously though stealing from pirates is cool)

-Katara fighting Master Pakku (seriously he’s a master and she’s been bending for how long? like two weeks? fucking amazing)

-Zuko diving in after the turtle seals because obviously they have to come up for air somewhere (but dude, how long can they hold their breath for? you’re working under the assumption that you can hold your breath as long as they can? in freezing cold water? in something that doesn’t help keep out the water or the cold? while moving? he, in this moment establishes that he is a bad ass (and persistent) motherfucker)

-Zuko dragging all of Aang’s dead weight a couple of miles through a blizzard (presumably while still soaking wet from his trip through ice cold fucker water)

-Zhao being killed by a vindictive La is everything honestly (why Zuko tried to save him is beyond me (I suppose that this established that he is a compassionate person despite his intentions and words))

Season Two

-The hippie nomads were funny (and very irritating)

-King Bumi (everything about him)

-Toph (enough said)

-The entire Zuko Alone episode (my poor angry baby)

-Foo Foo Cuddlypoops

-Wan Shi Tong’s library is what I imagine The Library of Alexandria to look like in this world

-Sokka continues to impress with his strategist mentality in The Drill

-The City of Walls and Secrets is a horrifying episode that I somehow manage to forget every time and very much regret rediscovering

-The entire Tales of Ba Sing Se episode

-Katara and Toph having a spa day is so wholesome (and the fact that they put those snobby noble girls in their place is just an added bonus)

-Iroh coaching those boys on how to face consequences like an upstanding citizen (and how to run away from the consequences when the consequence can crush you like a soda can) | Iroh teaching the would-be-robber how to properly mug someone is hilarious (also good on him for wanting to pursue a career as a masseur | Iroh being knowledgeable on flowers and spreading that knowledge to others, and singing to the fussy baby is sweet | Lu Ten’s birthday segment always make me cry (and if you tell me you don’t cry at that scene I will call you a liar, don’t at me)

-Sokka being surprisingly good at Haiku poems (yay for bonus character depth)

-Aang letting wild animals loose in the city is fucking hilarious (the fact that all the domestic animals ended up in his makeshift zoo just adds to that)

-Zuko’s (valid if not somewhat awful) attempt at dating (Iroh why did you do that to his hair, why?!)

-Momo bonding with the pygmy pumas after freeing them is so wholesome (and the pygmy pumas leading Momo to Appa’s footprint was amazing too)

-Zuko freeing Appa

-(yay for the Earth King finding a spine)

-(of all the godforsaken food combinations why banana and onion juice, that sounds like a pregnancy craving if I ever heard one)

-The catacomb scene with Katara and Zuko (was the beginning of my descent into shipper hell)

-You were this 👌 close Zuko, why did you do that? (what happened to Azula always lies)

Season Three

-Aang going to school like a normal twelve year old (why would you make up words to an anthem you don’t know? instead of just not talking which is far less noticeable that getting it wrong? (also getting into fights on your second day is bad Aang (but Katara and Sokka pretending to be his parents is funny, I wonder if it was awkward for them? I imagine it was)))

-Katara continuing to be a bad ass motherfucker in The Painted Lady

-Sokka in Sokka’s Master was monumental for Sokka’s character growth, I really don’t feel the need to add anything to it, the episode speaks for itself

-The Beach is (for me at least) the cringiest fucking episode like jfc how did this get past everyone (the writers had to get this past editing, producers, directors, animation department, and the sound department, and for some reason no one saw anything wrong with any of it (”I don’t hate you”, “I don’t hate you too” and then they kiss, like for fuck’s sake man how?!))

-(also Zuko, jealousy is an ugly look on everyone, you’re not exempt from that)

-(sparky sparky boom man, really Sokka, that’s what you’re going with?)

-The Puppetmaster was another horrifying episode (cool but horrifying, like thanks I hate it)

-(I’m going to reiterate the point that all of us having been making for years... why the fuck are the adults letting children fight their battles? who does that? like ‘oh I’m fourteen and ready to fight in a war that I am wholly unprepared for’ like I don’t fucking think so, go sit your ass down in a corner somewhere and color or something)

-(Aang kissing people when you think you might die is cliche)

-(Zuko breaking up with someone in a letter is the modern equivalent of breaking up over text (which is a shitty thing to do))

-Toph inventing metal bending is the most bad ass thing I’ve ever seen

-(hooray Zuko, for standing up for yourself to your father though, I’m proud of you)

-(Iroh breaking out of a max security prison is fucking bad ass)

-Zuko making that speech to the frog was priceless honestly (he’s so awkward it’s adorable)

-Toph being the only pragmatic person in the group

-(”why am I so bad at being good?!”)

-(pettiness isn’t a good look on anyone Katara (says the pettiest person on the planet))

-The Firebending Masters was a very cool (du du tssss) episode (like visually speaking)

-(you should probably plan things out a little more than that Sokka)

-Sokka and Zuko being awkward turtle ducklings

-(that scene with Zuko in the cooler, when he looks up and exhales fire and smirks? I was dead, big sexy)

-Suki being a bad ass motherfucker

-(Shout out to Mai and Ty Lee for standing up to Azula, but being imprisoned doesn’t sound fun)

-The Southern Raiders episode (my shipper heart melts a little every time I watch it)

-The Ember Island Players (*side eye* *cringe* yikes)

-(Aang, kissing people when they don't give you explicit permission or when they say they're confused is... wait for it... shitty (I'm gonna be nice and not call it r@pist behavior even though I could))

-Everyone (except for Aang) being realistic about what it is they’re doing (or about to be doing rather)

-(glue bending? really Aang? also thanks for fucking off to nowhere in the middle of a war Aang, that’s super helpful)

-June and her shirshu Nyla are fucking amazing (also June, among a few others, should have tipped me off to the fact that I wasn’t straight, but small me was super oblivious)

-The Order of the White Lotus (enough said)

-(time for you to grow the fuck up Aang, even your past lives agree)

-Iroh and Zuko’s tearful reunion is so heartwarming

-Lion Turtles are fucking amazing and I want like eight of them

-Azula’s descent into madness is both revealing and sad

-Sokka, Suki, and Toph on the airship is amazing (airship slice!)

-The Agni Kai between Azula and Zuko is one of the greatest fucking scenes in cinematographic history, the graphics are truly awe inspiring (no I will not be taking any criticism at this time nor is this open to debate)

-The scene on the airship with Sokka and Toph is honestly so gut wrenching | like when they fall and Sokka breaks his leg and he catches Toph with one arm while on his back looks so painful | and when he throws his boomerang and sword but then more fire benders come rushing out and Toph starts slipping and they’re both crying (like goddamn it would be less painful to just rip my heart out and stomp on it)

-Aang in the avatar state is (visually speaking) really awesome

-When Zuko dives in front of the lightning to save Katara (him shouting no like that kills me) | The fact that Katara immediately tries to rush to Zuko (even though Azula was standing right there also kills me)

-Katara defeating Azula (who is at her most powerful, along with every other fire bender) proves that she truly is a master and in a league all her own

-Azula after her defeat was heart wrenching to watch (what did Ozai do to you Azula?)

-(Katara crying over Zuko as she heals him)

-Aang defeating Ozai by taking his bending away is amazing (seriously, spirit bending is cool)

Honorable Mentions:

-Aang and his dedication to mastering earth bending and also him learning spirit bending

-Katara learning to stand up for what she believes is right | Katara learning to forgive (those who deserve it) | Katara mastering her element in less than a year | Katara being a beacon of hope to everyone around her | Katara allowing herself to be human and make mistakes

-(Katara and character growth)

-Sokka unlearning his misogynistic bullshit | Sokka becoming a humble and thoughtful young man, but never losing his sense of humor | Sokka learning to apologize and forgive

-(Sokka and character growth)

-Toph inventing metal bending (it’s worth mentioning twice) | Toph learning when to apologize | Toph learning it’s okay to be vulnerable

-(Toph and character growth)

-Zuko learning to stand up for himself (to his father and Azula) | Zuko unlearning his biases | Zuko learning to own up to misdeeds and apologize | Zuko learning to forgive (himself) | Zuko learning to accept help from others | Zuko learning it’s okay to be vulnerable | Zuko learning how to love people again (starting with his uncle and the small group of kids he helped end the war with)

-(Zuko and character growth across the whole fucking board)

-(Mai and Ty Lee for learning to stand up to Azula, and for what they believe in)

-(Ty Lee joining the Kyoshi Warriors)

Dishonorable Mentions:

-Azula for being a monster (even if I really (heavily) blame Ozai)

-Ozai for being the shittiest dad in the whole world (though admittedly his father was worse for wanting him kill his own son (then again the fact that he was absolutely and without hesitation willing to do so makes him even worse so never mind))

-(Zuko what on earth made you pick Mai as someone you wanted to date? who told you that was a good idea? cause they lied)

-Aang, when someone says they’re confused that is not the time to kiss them, I don’t care that he’s only twelve that is a shitty move (and you’re not allowed to be upset when you’re rejected either (that makes you even shittier))

-Also Aang had absolutely no character growth or development whatsoever in this series (don’t at me, I love Aang, but he didn’t grow as a person, like at all) | Aang on a consistent basis runs away from things that are difficult or that upset him | Aang thinks he’s entitled to people (no, just because you’re the avatar doesn’t mean anyone owes you their affection, attention, or their time) | Aang never learned how to face his demons head on (him learning spirit bending was just a cop out so Aang could stay this “perfect and pure child” with all his innocence and naiveté in tact), but that’s not how the real world works (sometimes you have to do hard things that you don’t like or agree with, life isn’t always fair.)

TL;DR

Avatar: The Last Airbender was a staple of my childhood that I love dearly. And though there are faults (personally for me they were faults, this won’t be the case for everyone obviously), it was a key foundation of my sense of self, like I’m sure it was for so many others.

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busines303-blog · 5 years

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Myspace Lost A Lot Of Music And With It, Hip-Hop Lost A Huge Chunk Of Its History

New Post has been published on https://howtobuyfranchises.com/awesome/myspace-lost-a-lot-of-music-and-with-it-hip-hop-lost-a-huge-chunk-of-its-history/

Myspace Lost A Lot Of Music And With It, Hip-Hop Lost A Huge Chunk Of Its History

Getty Image/ Uproxx Studios

For the past several years, much ado has been made of the wave of rowdy, rule-breaking rappers that bubbled up from the underground on the music streaming site Soundcloud, dubbing their movement in honor of the service and praising or censuring the DIY, freeform aesthetic nature that the site helped facilitate. We’ve called them Soundcloud rappers, crediting them with bypassing the usual conventions of the recording industry and all its trappings.

The thing is, what they did wasn’t precisely new, even though the scale of assessments and ease with which they spread their viral, contrarian punk rap had been unseen. Soundcloud rappers like the Juice WRLD, Lil Pump, Lil Yachty, and Tekashi6 9 were simply building on a blueprint that had been laid out a decade before — one that was obstinately chugging along, struggling to maintain its relevance even today. Myspace was like the precursor to Soundcloud, the launching pad for a million dreams, a million narratives, and even one of rap’s biggest careers.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to stay relevant when you lose over 50 million sungs in an ill-fated server migration geared toward the effort to do so. By now, you’ve probably heard: Myspace confirmed this week that the company lost millions of files dating all the style back to the social site’s launch in 2003 up until only four years ago. Leaving aside the surprising news that anyone was still uploading songs to the site long after the advent of Soundcloud, Spotify, and other dedicated streamers, it’s actually a minor misfortune that such a large repository of music has been lost, because, with it, we’ve also lost a huge chunk of hip-hop history.

It’s odd, but for all the written histories of the world, so much of what we know about what’s been written is third-hand knowledge from surviving accounts — think of it as a library losing every transcript of the Harry Potter franchise, but maintaining an repository of literary magazines containing reviews of the books themselves. We’d be left with volumes about volumes, but no tangible proof of what was in the original texts — what they was like, how much they weighed, and more importantly, what was in them, to begin with.

Myspace’s disastrous loss is the digital equivalent of the decline of the Library of Alexandria — the real tragedy is we won’t even know what was lost, aside from hazy, anecdotal firsthand recollections and maybe dead connects on reference sites. Many of the sites that would have contained information about which artists, bands, labels, and songs got their starts on the groundbreaking social networking site are themselves lost to antique, their servers long since shut down or wiped, which means that even the guideposts we would use to remember that there were these little nuggets of information are gone.

Here’s one of those anecdotal bits that won’t appear on the top references that interested researchers would check first. Neither the Wikipedia nor the Genius entries for Drake’s seminal mixtape, So Far Gone, mention that one of its songs — in fact, the first sung that uncovered Drake to millions of fans, feeding the fever pitch of anticipation for the project’s release — began its official life on Drake’s Myspace page, which now appears nothing like it did then.

“Brand New,” originally a reference anthem for an unidentified R& B vocalist — fans have posited Chris Brown, Omarion, and Trey Songz as possible recipients — leaked via an unscrupulous engineer or label athlete to file sharing sites and music forums, despite the fact that it was never supposed to be released in its rough draft form. Knowing he was able to never get that particular genie back in its bottle, Drake instead released it on his Myspace page, which until that phase had recently hosted a handful of tracks from his second mixtape, Comeback Season.

The song was an instant sensation. Back then, you could see play counts on Myspace’s music player — another way the site paved the way for its successors — and “Brand New” attained popularity several orders of magnitude beyond anything any of his previous ways had done. In short, an unmixed, unfinished reference way shared on a social media profile may very well have led to one of the most prolific musical careers of the past decade, or hell, considering the fact that Drizzy has violated records by The Beatles, one of the most prolific musical careers in the world itself, but the proof of that fact is lost. The tale is gone, and all that’s left are narratives about the narrative. For instance, there are old articles that mention the site, and even some that captured its faded glory, long after Myspace had fallen out of favor with whoever decides what the next technological advancement on the internet looks like.

Now, hip-hop basically lives on Soundcloud, the en vogue archive for music on the internet. A whole new generation is starting out launching their careers and sharing their work with growing fan basis. New artists are being detected, by both corporate interests and curious listeners, every day. But Soundcloud is no safer than Myspace — in fact, it’s already had its own scare in recent years after shutting multiple offices and coming up short in the profit projections. More and more of our art, our run, our voices, lives online, but those lives are unstable and — as shown in the case of Myspace — all too ephemeral.

What happens if or when Soundcloud’s servers finally go kaput one day? Sure, by then we’ll have all moved on to something new — or simply uploaded our brains to the cloud or something — but again, huge pieces of history will be lost, affecting our ability to keep accurate records or even just sentimentally return to a place where something meaningful happened for us personally. Soundcloud, and whatever other services succeed it, need to take steps to ensure that there are backups for their backups to avoid such a thing happens again. It seems like these archives are stable and permanent, but as we have all been reminded, they aren’t.

Drake’s is likely far from the only nothing-to-something success story lost in Myspace’s migration. In fact, there were probably even more tales of missed opportunities, of dreams artists chased that got away, of shared underground favorites and best kept secrets. There were probably lessons to be learned and wisdom to bestow, millions of tales instructive and emotional and personal and unusual and universal. Now all those narratives are gone and if we aren’t careful, we could keep losing those stories over and over again, because those who don’t learn from history … Well, you get the rest.

Read more: uproxx.com

#brand new #drake #hip-hop #home page #music #myspace #soundcloud

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213hiphopworldnews · 5 years

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Myspace Lost A Lot Of Music And With It, Hip-Hop Lost A Huge Chunk Of Its History

Getty Image / Uproxx Studios

The thing is, what they did wasn’t exactly new, even though the scale and ease with which they spread their viral, contrarian punk rap had been unseen. Soundcloud rappers like the Juice WRLD, Lil Pump, Lil Yachty, and Tekashi69 were simply building on a blueprint that had been laid out a decade before — one that was stubbornly chugging along, struggling to maintain its relevance even today. Myspace was like the precursor to Soundcloud, the launching pad for a million dreams, a million stories, and even one of rap’s biggest careers.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to stay relevant when you lose over 50 million songs in an ill-fated server migration geared toward the effort to do so. By now, you’ve probably heard: Myspace confirmed this week that the company lost millions of files dating all the way back to the social site’s launch in 2003 up until just four years ago. Leaving aside the surprising news that anyone was still uploading songs to the site long after the advent of Soundcloud, Spotify, and other dedicated streamers, it’s actually a minor tragedy that such a large archive of music has been lost, because, with it, we’ve also lost a huge chunk of hip-hop history.

It’s odd, but for all the written histories of the world, so much of what we know about what’s been written is third-hand knowledge from surviving accounts — think of it as a library losing every copy of the Harry Potter franchise, but maintaining an archive of literary magazines containing reviews of the books themselves. We’d be left with books about books, but no tangible proof of what was in the original texts — what they looked like, how much they weighed, and more importantly, what was in them, to begin with.

Myspace’s disastrous loss is the digital equivalent of the decline of the Library of Alexandria — the real tragedy is we won’t even know what was lost, aside from hazy, anecdotal firsthand recollections and maybe dead links on reference sites. Many of the sites that would have contained information about which artists, bands, labels, and songs got their starts on the groundbreaking social networking site are themselves lost to antiquity, their servers long since shut down or wiped, which means that even the guideposts we would use to remember that there were these little nuggets of information are gone.

Here’s one of those anecdotal bits that won’t appear on the top references that interested researchers would check first. Neither the Wikipedia nor the Genius entries for Drake’s seminal mixtape, So Far Gone, mention that one of its songs — in fact, the first song that exposed Drake to millions of fans, feeding the fever pitch of anticipation for the project’s release — began its official life on Drake’s Myspace page, which now looks nothing like it did then.

“Brand New,” originally a reference song for an unidentified R&B singer — fans have posited Chris Brown, Omarion, and Trey Songz as possible recipients — leaked via an unscrupulous engineer or label runner to file sharing sites and music forums, despite the fact that it was never supposed to be released in its rough draft form. Knowing he could never get that particular genie back in its bottle, Drake instead released it on his Myspace page, which until that point had only hosted a handful of tracks from his second mixtape, Comeback Season.

The song was an instant sensation. Back then, you could see play counts on Myspace’s music player — another way the site paved the way for its successors — and “Brand New” achieved popularity several orders of magnitude beyond anything any of his previous tracks had done. In short, an unmixed, unfinished reference track shared on a social media profile may very well have led to one of the most prolific musical careers of the past decade, or hell, considering the fact that Drizzy has broken records by The Beatles, one of the most prolific musical careers in the world itself, but the proof of that fact is lost. The story is gone, and all that’s left are stories about the story. For instance, there are old articles that mention the site, and even some that captured its faded glory, long after Myspace had fallen out of favor with whoever decides what the next technological advancement on the internet looks like.

Now, hip-hop basically lives on Soundcloud, the en vogue archive for music on the internet. A whole new generation is starting out launching their careers and sharing their work with growing fan bases. New artists are being discovered, by both corporate interests and curious listeners, every day. But Soundcloud is no safer than Myspace — in fact, it’s already had its own scare in recent years after shutting multiple offices and coming up short in the profit projections. More and more of our art, our work, our voices, lives online, but those lives are unstable and — as shown in the case of Myspace — all too ephemeral.

What happens if or when Soundcloud’s servers finally go kaput one day? Sure, by then we’ll have all moved on to something new — or just uploaded our brains to the cloud or something — but again, huge pieces of history will be lost, affecting our ability to keep accurate records or even just sentimentally return to a place where something meaningful happened for us personally. Soundcloud, and whatever other services succeed it, need to take steps to ensure that there are backups for their backups to avoid such a thing happening again. It seems like these archives are stable and permanent, but as we have all been reminded, they aren’t.

Drake’s is likely far from the only nothing-to-something success story lost in Myspace’s migration. In fact, there were probably even more tales of missed opportunities, of dreams artists chased that got away, of shared underground favorites and best kept secrets. There were probably lessons to be learned and wisdom to bestow, millions of stories instructive and emotional and personal and unusual and universal. Now all those stories are gone and if we aren’t careful, we could keep losing those stories over and over again, because those who don’t learn from history… Well, you get the rest.

source https://uproxx.com/hiphop/myspace-loses-music-hip-hop-loses-history/

#hiphop #hip hop legend #hip hop history #hip hop #music #trending #hip hop news #ballin #hip hop scen

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thetruthseekerway · 5 years

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Western Thinkers' View on Early Muslim Scientists

New Post has been published on http://www.truth-seeker.info/quran-science-2/western-thinkers-view-on-early-muslim-scientists/

Western Thinkers' View on Early Muslim Scientists

By Mansoor Alam

Reality Check–Today’s Muslim World

If one looks at the general picture of the Muslim world today it is hard to find something positive on the horizon. There is political chaos and regional turmoil all over the Muslim world. Muslims seem to have lost control of their affairs. They feel frustrated and helpless. Many Muslim governments are persecuting their people – in the name of Islam. Can Muslims hope for a better future under these circumstances?

Allah has blessed Muslims with plenty of natural resources. Yet, they are dependent for most of their basic needs – not to speak of their dependence in the field of science and technology, and on knowledge, in general – on non-Muslims. Their resources are being plundered and wasted on an unprecedented scale, while the majority population suffers extreme hardship.

Muslims generally tend to blame others for their problems. Some blame their rulers. Others blame one another. There may be truth in all of this. But what is lacking from Muslim discourse is an honest and intelligent diagnosis of problems facing the Muslim Ummah.

Representing more than a billion Muslims, the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) – the official organ of the Muslim countries for discussing such problems – has become no more than a platform for passing resolutions upon resolutions of empty words with no teeth. No wonder it has been dubbed “Oh! I see!” Most other Islamic organizations, more or less, suffer from a similar fate.

In the present environment, Muslims mostly live individual lives (in their own little islands) while using the term Ummah in their discussions. Some seem to cooperate on issues affecting Muslim lives, but that is limited mostly to charity work. Muslims do not have a unifying plan (or, rather, are not interested) to chart out the future course of action for the Ummah. Muslims appear to behave like billions of individual atoms without any strong bonds.

Is there a silver lining in this dark cloud? Will this long, dark chapter in Muslim history ever end?

Muslim Scientist As Building Blocks of Modern Science

When we read the history of Muslim contribution to world civilization, it seems very recent that Muslims were on top of the world. They were pioneers and leaders in all areas of human endeavor. They invented new branches of science and mathematics. They not only laid the foundation of modern knowledge but propelled it to new heights. In particular, their contribution to the world of medicine is legendary.

So what happened? How did Muslims lose this crowning position of power in the world? And how did they lose leadership in science, mathematics, and medicine?

The history of how this loss occurred is heart-wrenching. One way to tell this history is to describe the extraordinary achievements of past Muslims. This makes Muslims feel proud of their past glory – as, indeed, it should; we try to re-live, mentally, at least, the stages of that glory when we talk or write about the history of Islam and science. And this is what we will also do in this article – with one difference. We will not treat this as an end in itself, but with an eye to figure out how to reclaim that past glory.

We begin with a brief description of the achievements of some of the Muslim scientists, as stated, not by Muslim, but by non-Muslim scholars, to avoid any impression of a Muslim bias. The quotations below may seem extensive but they serve an important purpose to highlight the depth and breadth of the new knowledge that past Muslims created and developed, and which, according to Western historians of science, formed the backbone on which the Western renaissance in science began. This shows that Muslims may have forgotten the lesson of their own past intellectual giants in making science history, but the West has not. It continues to build its scientific superstructure for modern science on the foundations laid by our ancestors.

While reading these quotations, it would be beneficial to reflect and ponder on where we are, and whither we are going.

George Sarton pays tribute to Muslim scientists in Introduction to the History of Science:

“It will suffice here to evoke a few glorious names without contemporary equivalents in the West: Jabir ibn Haiyan, al-Kindi, al-Khwarizmi, al-Fargani, al-Razi, Thabit ibn Qurra, al-Battani, Hunain ibn Ishaq, al-Farabi, Ibrahim ibn Sinan, al-Masudi, al-Tabari, Abul Wafa, ‘Ali ibn Abbas, Abul Qasim, Ibn al-Jazzar, al-Biruni, Ibn Sina, Ibn Yunus, al-Kashi, Ibn al-Haitham, ‘Ali Ibn ‘Isa al-Ghazali, al-Zarqab, Omar Khayyam – a magnificent array of names which would not be difficult to extend. If anyone tells you that the Middle Ages were scientifically sterile, just quote these men to him, all of whom flourished within a short period, 750 to 1100 A.D.”

European Renaissance Drawn From Muslim Civilization

In Intellectual Development of Europe, John William Draper writes:

“I have to deplore the systematic manner in which the literature of Europe has continued to put out of sight our obligations to the Muhammadans [British term for Muslims]. Surely they cannot be much longer hidden. Injustice founded on religious rancor and national conceit cannot be perpetuated forever. The Arab has left his intellectual impress on Europe. He has indelibly written it on the heavens as anyone may see who reads the names of the stars on a common celestial globe.”

Robert Briffault states in his magnum opus, Making of Humanity:

“It was under the influence of the Arabs and Moorish revival of culture and not in the 15th century, that a real renaissance took place. Spain, not Italy, was the cradle of the rebirth of Europe. After steadily sinking lower and lower into barbarism, it had reached the darkest depths of ignorance and degradation when cities of the Saracenic world, Baghdad, Cairo, Cordova, and Toledo, were growing centers of civilization and intellectual activity. It was there that a new life arose which was to grow into a new phase of human evolution. The stirring of new life began when the influence of Muslim culture began to make itself felt.”

“It was under their successors at Oxford School (that is, successors to the Muslims of Spain) that Roger Bacon learned Arabic and Arabic Sciences. Neither Roger Bacon, nor his later namesake, has any title to be credited with having introduced the experimental method. Roger Bacon was no more than one of the apostles of Muslim Science and Method to Christian Europe; and he never wearied of declaring that knowledge of Arabic and Arabic Sciences was for his contemporaries the only way to true knowledge. Discussion as to who was the originator of the experimental method… is part of the colossal misinterpretation of the origins of European civilization. The experimental method of Arabs was by Bacon’s time widespread and eagerly cultivated throughout Europe.”

“Science is the most momentous contribution of Arab civilization to the modern world; but its fruits were slow in ripening. Not until long after Moorish culture had sunk back into darkness, did the giant, which it had given birth to, rise in his might. It was not science only, which brought Europe back to life. Other and manifold influences from the civilization of Islam communicated its first glow to European life.”

“For although there is not a single aspect of European growth in which the decisive influence of Islamic Culture is not traceable, nowhere is it so clear and momentous as in the genesis of that power which constitutes the permanent distinctive force of the modern world, and the supreme source of its victory, natural science and the scientific spirit.”

“The debt of our science to that of the Arabs does not consist in startling discoveries or revolutionary theories; science owes a great deal more to Arab culture, it owes its existence. The Astronomy and Mathematics of the Greeks were a foreign importation never thoroughly acclimatized in Greek culture. The Greeks systematized, generalized and theorized, but the patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute method of science, detailed and prolonged observation and experimental inquiry were altogether alien to the Greek temperament. Only in Hellenistic Alexandria was any approach to scientific work conducted in the ancient classical world. What we call science arose in Europe as a result of a new spirit of inquiry, of new methods of experiment, observation, measurement, of the development of mathematics, in a form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs.”

“It is highly probable that, but for the Arabs, modern European civilization would never have arisen at all; it is absolutely certain that but for them, it would not have assumed that character which has enabled it to transcend all previous phases of evolution.”

Muslim Scholars of Medicine and Mathematics

In Legacy of Islam, Arnold and Guillaume shed light on Islamic science and medicine:

“Looking back, we may say that Islamic medicine and science reflected the light of the Hellenic sun, when its day had fled; they shone like a moon, illuminating the darkest night of the European Middle Ages; some bright stars lent their own light, and moon and stars alike faded at the dawn of a new day – the Renaissance. Since they had their share in the direction and introduction of that great movement, it may reasonably be claimed that they are with us yet.”

Again, George Sarton in the Introduction to the History of Science says:

“During the reign of Caliph Al-Mamun (813-33 A.D.), the new learning reached its climax. The monarch created in Baghdad a regular school for translation. It was equipped with a library, one of the translators there was Hunayn Ibn Ishaq (809-77) a particularly gifted philosopher and physician of wide erudition, the dominating figure of this century of translators. We know from his own recently published Memoir that he translated practically the whole immense corpus of Galenic writings.”

“Besides the translation of Greek works and their extracts, the translators made manuals of which one form, that of the ‘pandects,’ is typical of the period of Arabic learning. These are recapitulations of the whole medicine, discussing the affections of the body, systematically beginning at the head and working down to the feet.”

“The Muslim ideal was, it goes without saying, not visual beauty but God in His plentitude; that is God with all his manifestations, the stars and the heavens, the earth and all nature. The Muslim ideal is thus infinite. But in dealing with the infinite as conceived by the Muslims, we cannot limit ourselves to the space alone, but must equally consider time.”

“The first mathematical step from the Greek conception of a static universe to the Islamic one of a dynamic universe was made by Al-Khwarizmi (780-850), the founder of modern Algebra. He enhanced the purely arithmetical character of numbers as finite magnitudes by demonstrating their possibilities as elements of infinite manipulations and investigations of properties and relations.”

“In Greek mathematics, the numbers could expand only by the laborious process of addition and multiplication. Khwarizmi’s algebraic symbols for numbers contain within themselves the potentialities of the infinite. So we might say that the advance from arithmetic to algebra implies a step from being to ‘becoming’ from the Greek universe to the living universe of Islam. The importance of Khwarizmi’s algebra was recognized, in the twelfth century, by the West, – when Girard of Cremona translated his theses into Latin. Until the sixteenth century this version was used in European universities as the principal mathematical textbook. But Khwarizmi’s influence reached far beyond the universities. We find it reflected in the mathematical works of Leonardo Fibinacci of Pissa, Master Jacob of Florence, and even of Leonardo da Vinci.”

“Through their medical investigations they not merely widened the horizons of medicine, but enlarged humanistic concepts generally. And once again they brought this about because of their overriding spiritual convictions. Thus it can hardly have been accidental that those researches should have led them beyond the reach of Greek masters. If it is regarded as symbolic that the most spectacular achievement of the mid-twentieth century is atomic fission and the nuclear bomb, likewise it would not seem fortuitous that the early Muslim’s medical endeavor should have led to a discovery that was quite as revolutionary though possibly more beneficent.”

“A philosophy of self-centerdness, under whatever disguise, would be both incomprehensible and reprehensible to the Muslim mind. That mind was incapable of viewing man, whether in health or sickness as isolated from God, from fellow men, and from the world around him. It was probably inevitable that the Muslims should have discovered that disease need not be born within the patient himself but may reach from outside, in other words, that they should have been the first to establish clearly the existence of contagion.”

“One of the most famous exponents of Muslim universalism and an eminent figure in Islamic learning was Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna (981-1037). For a thousand years he has retained his original renown as one of the greatest thinkers and medical scholars in history. His most important medical works are the Qanun (Canon) and a treatise on Cardiac drugs. The ‘Qanun fi-l-Tibb’ is an immense encyclopedia of medicine. It contains some of the most illuminating thoughts pertaining to distinction of mediastinitis from pleurisy; contagious nature of phthisis; distribution of diseases by water and soil; careful description of skin troubles; of sexual diseases and perversions; of nervous ailments.”

“We have reason to believe that when, during the Crusades, Europe at last began to establish hospitals, they were inspired by the Arabs of the Near East… the first hospital in Paris, Les Quinze-vingt, was founded by Louis IX after his return from the Crusade 1254-1260.”

“We find in his (Jabir, Geber) writings remarkably sound views on methods of chemical research, a theory on the geologic formation of metals (the six metals differ essentially because of different proportions of sulphur and mercury in them); preparation of various substances (e.g., basic lead carbonatic, arsenic and antimony from their sulphides).”

“Ibn Haytham’s writings reveal his fine development of the experimental faculty. His tables of corresponding angles of incidence and refraction of light passing from one medium to another show how closely he had approached discovering the law of constancy of ratio of sines, later attributed to Snell. He accounted correctly for twilight as due to atmospheric refraction, estimating the sun’s depression to be 19 degrees below the horizon, at the commencement of the phenomenon in the mornings or at its termination in the evenings.”

“A great deal of geographical as well as historical and scientific knowledge is contained in the thirty volume meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems by one of the leading Muslim historians, the tenth century al Mas’udi. A more strictly geographical work is the dictionary ‘Mujam al-Buldan’ by al-Hamami (1179-1229). This is a veritable encyclopedia that, in going far beyond the confines of geography, incorporates also a great deal of scientific lore.”

“They studied, collected and described plants that might have some utilitarian purpose, whether in agriculture or in medicine. These excellent tendencies, without equivalent in Christendom, were continued during the first half of the thirteenth century by an admirable group of four botanists. One of these Ibn al-Baitar compiled the most elaborate Arabic work on the subject (Botany), in fact the most important for the whole period extending from Dioscorides down to the sixteenth century. It was a true encyclopedia on the subject, incorporating the whole Greek and Arabic experience.”

“‘Abd al-Malik ibn Quraib al-Asmai (739-831) was a pious Arab who wrote some valuable books on human anatomy. Al-Jawaliqi who flourished in the first half of the twelfth century and ‘Abd al-Mumin who flourished in the second half of the thirteenth century in Egypt, wrote treatises on horses. The greatest zoologist amongst the Arabs was al-Damiri (1405) of Egypt whose book on animal life, ‘Hayat al-Hayawan’ has been translated into English by A.S.G. Jayakar (London 1906, 1908).”

“The weight of venerable authority, for example that of Ptolemy, seldom intimidated them. They were always eager to put a theory to tests, and they never tired of experimentation. Though motivated and permeated by the spirit of their religion, they would not allow dogma as interpreted by the orthodox to stand in the way of their scientific research.”

This approach of describing past Muslim achievements is effective in making us, Muslims, feel proud. It may even motivate a few of us to excel in science – thanks to the West. But in describing the history of Islam and science, should one stop here? Does this approach provide clues about how past Muslims systematically discovered new knowledge? How they invented so much new scientific knowledge without the modern facilities that we have today? Was this the result of their natural instincts or intellectual aptitude? Were they motivated (like most of us) by wealth, career, or fame? Why did they devote their entire lives seeking knowledge of Allah’s creations even while suffering extreme hardships? Most important of all, what was the driving force behind their constant pursuit in advancing the frontiers of new knowledge? Unless we probe these questions, we will not be able to fully appreciate the achievements of past Muslims or learn from their stories.

References:

George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science, Vol. I-IV, Carnegie Institute of Washington, Baltimore, 1927-31; Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, 1950-53.

Robert Briffault, The Making of Humanity, London, 1938.

T. Arnold and A. Guillaume, The Legacy of Islam, Oxford University Press, 1931.

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, London, 1900.

———-

Taken with slight editorial modifications from islamicity.org.

#Allah #Faith #Featured #God #Islam #knowledge #science #Western Thinkers' View on Early Muslim Scientists

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ecuenglishprof-blog · 6 years

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The Golden Age of Reading

Every age feels that they’re witnessing the death of culture. The last gasps of a once-great civilization which has declined from misuse, ignorance, and apathy. Ask anyone above a certain age and they’ll tell you how people no longer read, or ask the right questions; people can’t appreciate true art, or enjoy an intelligent conversation. Things used to be so good...and now look at us: we’re circling the drain. Of course, that’s what the people over a certain age said about their time, too...

It’s inevitable, perhaps, that the older generation finds fault with the young, and sees the new literature, art, or ideas as somehow degenerate—falling short of the ideal of what “once was.” But can the opposite be true as well: that we’re living in the Golden Age right now, at least in literature? Are there more good books now than there were 10 or 20 years ago? Is there more chance for an author to find his or her audience now that they can publish their own books—agents be damned? And does the zeitgeist of #Black Lives Matter, #Meetoo, and #Ownstories finally level the playing field for diverse stories and stortyellers like never before?

Here’s a few suspicions I have that we are, indeed, living in a Golden Age of sorts:

* Comics: in the past, we had to convince people that comics were a medium, and not a genre. That one comic isn’t the same as another, any more than one book (or even one fantasy novel) is the same as the one beside it. Now, people generally understand the difference between superhero comics and underground comics; historical comics and erotic comics; manga and bande desinnée. And these distinctions allow comics writers and artists to express an entire range of stories that would have never reached print even 20 years ago. And behold—superheroes are taken seriously as the modern myths they are, allowing writers to dramatically reinterpret Superman as more than a cardboard alien fallen to earth (check out Superman: American Alien!)

* YA Literature: the fact that we can use these two terms together without risk of laughter or outrage is a case in point. “Young Adult” may have outlived its purpose, but if nothing else, it allowed storytellers a middle path between literature and children’s books. Or perhaps it merely allowed us to go back to writing the kind of clever, wise, and thrilling books they used to write for kids of all ages such as The Hobbit, The Railway Children, and The Prisoner of Zenda. When ‘serious’ writers are starting to dabble in YA, it can’t just be to hop on the bandwagon: they’ve seen the possibility that so many other writers saw who cut their teeth on it. A chance to tell new stories in a way that so-called ‘literary’ novels would scoff at—but which readers are clamoring for. An alchemic mixture of innocence and sophistication which requires the eye of cynic and the heart of a saint.

* Science fiction and fantasy: these genres have had various golden ages in the past, most notably in the 30’s, the 50’s, and the 70’s, but the more you look, the more you realize how much great fantasy and speculative fiction is flooding the shelves. It’s finally become accepted and almost mainstream, perhaps largely thanks to film and TV learning to take it seriously, too. Star Trek spearheaded this movement way back in the 60’s, as a clever, if veiled way to examine contemporary society. Now, as we sense ourselves losing control of our culture, dystopian literature comes to our aid, allowing us to ‘play through’ the destruction of our species—and find a way forward (Station Eleven is a case in point). Some of the works are darker than others, but few offer shopworn morals or escapist charms; rather, the authors realize that the future is an abstraction that allows us to examine the present in a vacuum, without the taint of names and dates. Fantasy, too, has moved beyond King Arthur narratives to embrace endless cultures and traditions—in turn, stretching what it means to tell a story of myth and legend. And it’s not just for boys anymore...much of the best of both genres has been written by women, and often from a woman’s perspective. This could not have happened in any other age, golden or otherwise.

* Classics: this might seem like a non-sequitir—how can classics make our age a golden one? Don’t they represent the eternal radiance of the past? True—but how many classics were available “back then”? Ironically, much of the best literature written 100 years ago wasn’t even available for people to read. Today, anyone can amass a cheap, portable library of the greatest works from every culture without even owning a bookshelf. A lightweight, relatively inexpensive Kindle holds the equivalent of Alexandria. Even better, most of the ‘great books’ are free to download or at least absurdly cheap. There’s never been a more accessible time to become a reader. And for those who prefer hard copies, imprints such as Penguin Classics, Oxford World’s Classics, and Dover publish widely across cultures to bring us “the best books ever written” (according to Penguin’s ad copy). When else could you find any book you wanted, by any author, dead or alive, in virtually any language...and on the very day you desired it?

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