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March 28, 2014If Not DRM, What Then? (Part II)
A few people, some of them writers, have written to me, wondering about the fuss surrounding DRM. They very much want their work protected from copying, and didn’t realize a kind of hysteria exists ...
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March 25, 2014If not DRM, What Then? (Part I)
Over the next few days, I’m going to discuss DRM – Digital Rights Management – a way of “locking” a digital product, such as an ebook, to control its distribution. This has become a controversial ...
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March 23, 2014Cormac Mccarthy: "the Ugly Fact Is Books Are Made out of Books"
Before the publication and Oprahfication of The Road, and the Oscar success of No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthy was a critically-loved but relatively obscure novelist, unknown outside hardcore ...
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March 03, 2014
Standing in the Light
Well hi. This is me standing nervously in the spotlight, governing my nerves. The light is blinding, I cannot see you out there, but in this bath of white energy I see dust motes floating, falling slowly, ...
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April 09, 2017My final two columns: Part Two
As rob has mentioned, this is the second part of his final column for Open Book. The staff at Open Book would like to share our appreciation for a decade of columns, and for rob's contributions to the ...
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April 30, 2018May 2018 writer-in-residence Mark Sampson on Indoor Life, the Music in His Head, and Cocktailing
Mark Sampson does it all. From poetry to short stories to humour writing, Sampson's literary chameleon quality has garnered him wide acclaim as a versatile, insightful, wickedly witty writer. Now Mark ...
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December 19, 2017Monster Ink
Today’s question--what is a monster?There is only one villain in my personal gallery of rogues-- the (ughh!) earwig, which smirks and slithers. Only this horror would appear on a wanted poster in my ...
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November 30, 2017A New National Emblem
Canada is a land of plenty. But it is a state poor in symbols. Our national emblems are few and time-worn. Canada’s plant is the maple tree, which, in an annual strip tease, releases red leaves clogging ...
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December 04, 2017A New National Emblem Revisited
I was too hasty the other day. For nice, polite Canadians, the spider icon is just too darn ornery. In true Northern fashion, I apologize. We need something more civil yet found from coast to coast ...
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December 06, 2017The Striped Scrapper
When I was fifteen, Dad moved my sibs and I from the chilly West Coast to the hurricane belt—Grand Cayman Island. We spent six months living by the Caribbean Sea where Dad, bewigged and robed, practiced ...
