Category — General

The extraordinary story of Rupert the rhino | the Daily Mail:
As pets go, Rupert the rhino fulfilled everything expected of him.

Faithful, friendly and a fearsome ‘guard dog’, like so many beloved household creatures he simply became one of the family.
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ahhh, a nice animal interest story… of course, the animal dies in the end…

Remembering Joe Hill:
I first heard of Joe Hill listening to Utah Phillips’ music. November 19th marks the anniversary of his execution. Joe Hill was an I.W.W. Activist and fought for worker’s rights. Back in his day workers were literally risking their lives fighting for rights we take for granted today. For the 8 hour day, minimum wage, 40 hour work week and worker’s compensation thanks go to people like Joe Hill and the countless other men and women who fought for worker’s rights.
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‘I dreamed i saw joe hill last night, alive as he could be’ — a lyric from a billy bragg concert.

i too learned of joe hill from utah phillips, but… i doubt many people know about him these days of 60 hour work weeks and million dollar 2 bedroom apts.

the cool hunter – GOING TO SCHOOL IN DENMARK:
We thought we’d covered the best in our Kool Kids Spaces, but out come the Danes with a school that makes us (almost) want to go back to elementary school. In Lego-bright contrast to the gloomy fate H.C. Andersen prescribed to his original Little Mermaid (that would be death, no less), today’s blond little school-going Danes are encouraged to do the sort of things for which some of us got spanked.

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How schools should be built…. for kids.

CLIR Report:
This report summarizes a review of 12 e-journal archiving programs from the perspective of concerns expressed by directors of academic libraries in North America. It uses a methodology comparable to the art of surveying land by “metes and bounds” in the era before precise measures and calibrated instruments were available. It argues that current license arrangements are inadequate to protect a library’s long-term interest in electronic journals, that individual libraries cannot address the preservation needs of e-journals on their own, that much scholarly e-literature is not covered by archiving arrangements, and that while e-journal archiving programs are becoming available, no comprehensive solution has emerged and large parts of e-literature go unprotected.

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I’ve not finished reading this yet, but it looks like it could be fairly interesting.

What’s an Encyclopedia?:
John Pederson asks:

You do understand that Wikipedia is less about building an encyclopedia and more about “collecting the sum of all human knowledge and making it available for free to everybody on earth”, right?

Um… aren’t those pretty much the same thing?

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yes… and no… an encyclopedia generally is about perspectives on knowledge, one of those perspectives is sort of this ‘objective framing’ of knowledge as existent outside of human minds. I think wikipedia closes some of that gap… It is very clear, much more clear to me than from a heavily edited print encyc, that wikipedia is closer to knowledge presented as a plurality of subjective processes of coming to know and its expression in the world Even if people are being projective in that way, I do not think that wikipedia objectifies the same way as print encycs and that is important.

OpinionJournal – Taste:
This fall, the nation’s art museum directors have been in a state of near panic over a surprise change in the tax laws that, they say, has curtailed their ability to build their collections.
Until the Pension Protection Act of Aug. 17, museums could entice donors with a fractional gift. A collector could give his Rembrandt a little at a time, say 20% each year, then take a tax deduction based on that percentage of its value every year for five years. The museum could show the painting for 73 days—20% of 365. If the value of the artwork went up from one year to the next, so would the deduction.
But the new law has changed the rules. Deductions no longer increase with value, but they do decline when value goes down. Also, the museum must take “substantial possession” of the object within 10 years. Otherwise the donor must refund his deductions, with interest, and pay a 10% penalty.
Dean Zerbe, senior counsel for the Senate Finance Committee, told the New York Sun in September that the law was changed to stop abuses. “Very wealthy people were taking huge deductions and keeping the art at their homes.”
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personally, i think museums should avoid selling their collections… but they do need operating capital sometimes….

2blowhards.com: 1000 Words — Gold Medal Books:
What if you could trace the French New Wave, Sam Peckinpah, cyberpunk, “Pulp Fiction,” “Mulholland Drive,” and “Sin City” back to one business gamble taken by a third-tier publisher in 1949? In fact, you can, and without being guilty of too much overstatement. A little, sure, but not that much.

The publisher was Roscoe Kent Fawcett of Fawcett Publications, and his gamble was to try something no one else had tried before. He decided to publish original novels in paperback. In 1950, his new line of paperback originals was launched. It was called Gold Medal Books, and it became not just a tremendous commercial success but a culture-shaping one too.

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and i learn something new every day….

The Bicycle Forest :: The HulaBike:
The HulaBike is another hand built creation from the Bicycle Forest.
Instead of a conventional drivetrain, the HulaBike uses an eccentrically
laced rear wheel. Because the hub is offset from the centre of the rim,
the bike can be propelled by hopping up and down with the right rhythm.
You may not get far on the HulaBike, but you’ll have fun trying.

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for some reason…. this is strangely enticing as a concept… but i can’t see every riding one.

Library of Congress features new “Women Who Dare” Book Series:
The seven authors of the Library of Congress Women Who Dare series, which celebrates the lives of remarkable women who have shaped American history, will discuss their books at 6 p.m. on Thursday, November 16, in the Montpelier Room of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. A book signing will follow the presentation, which is part of the Books & Beyond author series sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. The Library’s Publishing Office, which published the books in cooperation with Pomegranate Publications, is cosponsoring the event. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required

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It might just be me, but I’m reading a whole secondary discourse into this ‘women who dare’ title. it implies to me that they shouldn’t dare, that they weren’t acting appropriately, and indeed that this was a part of their life that could have went drastically wrong. I think that is the wrong way to approach this. The title should simply ‘Women Changing the World’ or something else that does not imply a huge burden of normalization.

Hello World Programs.:

A very funny (and true) compilation of various “Hello World” programs from high school level up to CEO. Link – via digg

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pretty funny.