Matt’s Comments (group member since Jul 28, 2011)

Matt’s comments from the ROBUST group.

They Say, I Say by Graff and Birkenstein should take care of your needs.

Good examples in Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War.

I did confuse you with someone else. I thought I might have added my friend Georgina Young-Ellis to this group a while back, and she was only now posting here. My bad. Best wishes!

Georgina, what have you been working on recently? I haven't heard anything of late? More time travel romance, or something else?

I think it's fairly likely that the real-life Trojan War, whatever the pretext, was really about the Trojans' control of trading vessels passing through the Bosporus.

If that helps any.

That's a remarkable story, Daniel. Our lives are saved in unpredictable ways.


My life is best compared, perhaps, to Bel Kaufman's Up The Down Staircase. I can tell crazy high school stories...

You knew Douglas Adams? I had no idea. I memorized huge chunks of Hitchhiker's Guide, including one I still remember, the Vogon poetry.

I can't see the item by clicking that link. It's not available in the U.S. iTunes store. I was redirected to the Ireland iTunes store, but then told it wasn't available there either. What title is it?

Not The Wealth of Nations, right?

Here's another sample.


https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

I have uploaded the first sample of my (I hope) September release, the pro wrestling novel Squared Circle Blues. Here it is on my goodreads blog.

The cover is on my Facebook. I can't access my website. Soon I will start a blog for the novel and have more material there.

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

I hadn't heard of the kids with wings. I just wikipedia-searched that. The series actually looks pretty interesting. If I had a library card and no review queue and didn't despise him I'd give that series a try. Not well-written, Andre?

School year is nearly done. I have several books to finish writing. Would love to publish something this year...

Is there any indication whether Windows 10 will be worth getting? I've clung to Windows 7 pretty tightly.

https://www.masterclass.com/classes/j...

For $90, James "hire other people to flesh out my outlines" Patterson will let you watch 22 video lessons in which he will expose all the secrets of putting fiction together.

I expect the "secrets" are things that lots of people know and that will not explain his success. His success can't be replicated, as like every success, it is the result of variables like timing, personal connections, and the steamroller effect of already being successful, which helps in and of itself to increase success in not all, but very many instances.

Thus we continue the process of marketing "secrets" to the gullible, where "secrets" means "things you don't happen to know." On the other hand, $90 is not that expensive compared to what he might have been able to command from the rubes. I went to graduate school for five years to get two degrees in writing. That probably cost my parents and the states in which I did it collectively more than $100,000. Wish I could have just gleaned it at JP's knee.

...notwithstanding, I'm not a fan of his in particular.

Wilson was a racist -- his nigh first act in office was to fire all the blacks from government jobs. Also, his adventurism in Russia and Mexico does him no credit. Not only that, but he had a messianic complex, and was observed to refuse meaningful compromise on implied grounds of exceptionalism. So, League of Nations notwithstanding, and his more moderate position on Versailles notwithstanding, i'm not a big fan of his.

I stayed out of the political discussion here also though I am the OP. I get too angry about politics especially current US politics which are 100% polarized now.

Here is a case Southern Poverty Law Center is involved in that affects the poor and the law.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...

And their own article on the same:

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed...

And another issue they are involved in...

http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/s...

The essential problem is the growing gap between rich and poor, the unlimited degrees of greed and wealth accumulation in progress, along with the fundamentally wrong prioritization of corporate interests over the interests of citizens and individuals, which with the impending Trans-Pacific Partnership is about to reach the international level -- an international tribunal is under discussion which will allow corporations to sue governments for uses of national law which interfere with their profits.

Really?


I have never seen things so bad before. They have been going bad for a long time; the conditions necessary for the big-business takeover of the world have been created gradually for decades.

At this point I am following the blog of Robert Reich, whose position on these issues I find most persuasive. He is not the only one to make these points. Even some of the wealthy are admitting what is going on and taking personal stands against it, advocating different uses of extreme wealth.

Very nice looking book.

Did a 1944 economist predict the present political situation in the United States?

Addicting info is an extreme liberal political site, but the economist's ideas are whatever they are. Any view?

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/03/...

Sorry you got dissed, Sharon. The forums are pretty nasty places. Either nasty as in people lose their composure and savage each other (common in Kindleboards), or nasty as in they totally ignore you if you aren't cool enough(my experience in K-boards).


By the way, apropos of nothing we were talking about, if you all (NOT SHARON specifically -- I hope I didn't seem to imply that) would like to enter to get a free paperback copy of a book entitled Manwhore, here is the link.

http://www.confessionsfromromaholics....

Just saying.