All those topics that i wish i had time to pursue more earnestly.

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….

Largest archive of free culture to be built in the Netherlands:
From the Netherlands, the “Images for the Future” project is building a large-scale conservation and digitization project to make available 285,000 hours of film, television, and radio recordings, as well as more than 2.9 million photos from the Netherlands’ film and television archives. A basic collection drawn from the archive will be made available on the Internet either under CC licenses, or in some cases, in the public domain. The Government of the Netherlands, a long time supporter of the local Dutch CC project, will invest a total of 173 million Euros over a seven-year period. Their aim is to spur innovative applications with new media, while providing valuable services to the public.
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this will be great… free content is the backbone of innovation and production.

UPDATE 1-John Wiley & Sons to buy Blackwell Publishing | Reuters.com:
Publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc.
(JWa.N: Quote, Profile, Research) (JWb.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Friday it agreed to pay 572 million pounds ($1.08 billion) to acquire privately held Blackwell Publishing
Holdings Ltd., an academic and professional publisher. The deal, which is expected to close early in 2007, will create a publisher of about 1,250 scholarly peer-reviewed journals
in areas ranging from science and technology to medicine and the humanities.
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yes, well this is fairly interesting…

“For archivists with strong geeky tendencies”:
Yesterday saw the first meeting of the Data Standards Group of the Society of Archivists under its new name. It was formerly known as the EAD/Data Exchange Group. The new name reflects a new, broader remit for the group, which is now providing a focus for digital preservation as well as data exchange.
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Seems like an interesting bit of work they have going on.

PrattNews:
PRATT INSTITUTE SCHOOL OF INFORMATION AND LIBRARY SCEINCE LAUNCHES COUNTRY’S FIRST ADVANCED CERTIFICATE IN MUSEUM LIBRARIES NEW YORK, N.Y.

November 8, 2006 – Pratt Institute’s School of Information and Library Science (SILS) introduced the world’s first program focusing on museum libraries this fall semester. The Advanced Certificate in Museum Libraries will yield a Master’s degree in a course of study that consists of four required areas of study: research/curatorial, digital technology, education and outreach, and field experience.

The Advanced Certificate in Museum Libraries, which was approved by the New York State Education Department in June 2006, will prepare graduates to assume leadership roles in museum libraries, and in a range of other cultural institutions, including research and academic libraries and “virtual” libraries.

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This is a new program. There are some interesting developments in this field. It will also be great to get more people involved with museum libraries.

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.

LibraryThing: BookSuggester and UnSuggester:
Play with it a few minutes, and patterns emerge. Philosophy and postmodern literary criticism oppose chic lit, popular thrillers and the young adult section. Programming does not truck with classic literature. Memoirs of depression, like Prozac Nation, meet their match in the cheery The Night Before Christmas. Ann Coulter and David Sedaris do not see eye-to-eye. There is a strong disconnect between readers of much recent Protestant, mostly evangelical, non-fiction, and large swaths of contemporary literary fiction. For example, LibraryThing includes 2,300 readers who’ve logged Jeffrey Eugenides’ epic gender-bender novel Middlesex, and 222 readers of John Piper’s The Passion of the Christ: 50 Reasons He Came to Die. But the groups don’t overlap. No reader has both. Similar instances occur again and again.

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finally a useful tool… for book unsuggesting.

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.