Sponsored by Oxford University Press' Very Short Introductions: Where's the Gap in Your Knowledge?

Quiz asks three questions in each of seven subject areas. You must answer at least two out of the three questions correctly or you have a gap in that area of knowledge.

My only gap was in Religion & Theology.

[via Sour Grapes' Google Reader]

Labels: fun, information

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:19 PM|| |

The Library in the New Age

by Robert Darnton. (The New York Review of Books. 12 Jun 2008)

Late on this. Just saw a May 2008 link from Robert Berkman's friendfeed.

The article concludes, Meanwhile, I say: shore up the library. Stock it with printed matter. Reinforce its reading rooms. But don't think of it as a warehouse or a museum. While dispensing books, most research libraries operate as nerve centers for transmitting electronic impulses. They acquire data sets, maintain digital repositories, provide access to e-journals, and orchestrate information systems that reach deep into laboratories as well as studies. Many of them are sharing their intellectual wealth with the rest of the world by permitting Google to digitize their printed collections. Therefore, I also say: long live Google, but don't count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns. As a citadel of learning and as a platform for adventure on the Internet, the research library still deserves to stand at the center of the campus, preserving the past and accumulating energy for the future.

Darnton also says (and I concur, oh, how I concur), Information has never been stable. That may be a truism, but it bears pondering. It could serve as a corrective to the belief that the speedup in technological change has catapulted us into a new age, in which information has spun completely out of control. I would argue that the new information technology should force us to rethink the notion of information itself. It should not be understood as if it took the form of hard facts or nuggets of reality ready to be quarried out of newspapers, archives, and libraries, but rather as messages that are constantly being reshaped in the process of transmission. Instead of firmly fixed documents, we must deal with multiple, mutable texts. By studying them skeptically on our computer screens, we can learn how to read our daily newspaper more effectively—and even how to appreciate old books.

Don't trust the newspapers. Don't trust books. For heaven's sake, don't trust blogs or online news sources or the story that a friend of a friend told your best friend.

Believe, but believe with healthy skepticism because the more I read and the more I know, the more I know what I read is at least twenty percent balderdash and another twenty percent complete fraud. (And despite her protestations to the contrary, the great great whatever great aunt did not trace his nibs' family roots back to Lady Godiva and beyond.)

Labels: history, information, libraries, web2.0

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:53 PM|| |

Got a phone call from this number on my handy this afternoon. I don't answer calls anyway especially ones that show up that don't have a name attached to them via my internal known-people phone directory.

Plus the # looked phunny. Look at all those zeroes, fps.

After checking to see whether the unknown someone left a message (Nope.), I ran the number through Google and came across this, specifically the entry filed by al at 5/19/2008 2:46:56 PM which reads

I am an employee of the lumber company that this number is registered to. We do not solicite anyone nor do we give out any information. We just found out today that our 800 number was spoofed by another company. We have contacted our phone company, our state attorney general, and the FTC about this matter. I am hoping we will be able to resolve this issue.

So, don't call the number to rant at someone. Seems it's probably not their fault.

(Or maybe Al is a plant from the spammer trying to get people to lay off. ... in any case. ...)

If you get a call from this number, no need to answer it. It's not Publishers' Clearinghouse telling you you've won a million big ones.

Labels: information, life, spamfraudcrooks

   posted by Sal Towse at  3:18 PM|| |

By Patrick Sawer
Last Updated: 3:04am BST 21/04/2008
[telegraph.co.uk]

Whisper it if you dare, but the age-old Highland bagpipe - beloved of sentimental Scots and American tourists in search of their Highland roots - is in fact a recent invention.

A controversial new study has claimed that far from being the time-honoured instrument which led the clans into battle against the Auld Enemy, the bagpipe as we know it was developed in the early 1800s.

It now seems that, like the kilt and most tartans, the tradition of the great Highland bagpipe was something manufactured for the benefit of nostalgic Scottish émigrés.

[...]

[via Funky Plaid at Swirling Vortex of Verisimilitude]

Labels: history, information

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:51 AM|| |

Jimbo Wales at the Commonwealth Club

Founder, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation and Wikia

[...]

"Come hear Wales talk about what's next on his agenda, his opinions on the politics of the Internet and his thoughts on the accuracy of Wikipedia posts."

6:00 p.m., Check-in | 6:30 p.m., Program
7:30 p.m., Wine and Hors d'oeuvres Reception

Club office, 595 Market St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco
$12 for Members
$20 for Non-Members
$7 for Students (with valid ID)

Labels: culture, information, San Francisco, web2.0, webstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:46 PM|| |

Love data and mashups and obscure weird factoids and coincidences?

Check out Swivel.

For a taste of what's on-site, check out Tasty Data Goodies

Labels: information, resource, URL, webstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:17 AM|| |

DRO has posted her updated "Tax Tips and Resources For Freelance Writers" over at InkyGirl.

Here's my annual updated list of useful tax resources for freelance writers. Sadly (for me, anyway, since I live in Canada), most of the info is specific to the U.S., but I did manage to find some info specific to Canada and other countries, listed below in the "international tax info" section partway down this list.

I was unable to find ANY tax-related resources of use to writers outside of North America. Suggestions welcome! [...]

Labels: information, URL, writing

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:05 PM|| |

Checked and updated all links in the Business section of Internet Resources for Writers.

Before breakfast! Before coffee even!

The page includes over one hundred links classified in subsections:

• Unsorted
  
• Agents
  
• Book Publishers
  
• Copyright
  
• E-Publishing
  
• Legal, Contracts, & Taxes
  
• Marketing, Sales, Promotion, & Publicity
  
• Print-On-Demand Publishing
  
• Self-publishing
  
• Your Website

Replaced some broken links. Added a few. Commented out links to my articles on Web design and copyright that I wrote for Computer Bits, which is no more. I need to bring those articles onto either this site or internet-resources.com some day, now that the Computer Bits online archives are no more.

Labels: information, internet resources for writers, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  10:36 AM|| |

One of the sessions I missed at AAAS was a session Sunday titled, "The Neurobiology of Chocolate: A Mind-Altering Experience?"

Harold Schmitz of Mars, Inc. co-organized the symposium. Mars, Inc. happens to be sponsoring research into why chocolate is good for you and how they can make it even better. (Heard of CocoaVia?) I'd spent time in a session a few years back covering similar and/or earlier research on the subject. This session covered recent research including a presentation by Ian MacDonald (University of Nottingham Medical School) on "The Effect of Flavanol-Rich Cocoa on the fMRI Response to a Cognitive Task in Healthy Young People."

Yee haw.

Luckily, there were science writers in the audience to suck it all up for me. CNN reports: Cocoa may improve brain blood flow

Sunday, I was elsewhere -- in an all-day seminar on Virtual Worlds which included papers like "Comparing Mental Health Applications Using Individually Administered Virtual Reality and Second Life: Conceptual and Ethical Issues" from Skip Rizzo, USC, and "Virtual Publics: Youths' Lives in Emergent Social Worlds" from Danah Boyd at UCB.

John Lester (AKA Pathfinder Linden) at Linden Labs organized the seminar. Linden Labs, just down the hill from me, is the creator (are the creators?) of Second Life, which I messed around with playing with after a panel at the Commonwealth Club that we attended last December.

I finally signed up yesterday but with my computer's hiccupy-response to requests to turn and move and change the color of my coat, my experience wasn't optimal. Problems with scaling? Problems with my computer? I'll try again later today and see if I get further.

Sorry I was to miss out on the latest scoop about cocoa, but the Virtual Worlds seminars were crack.

[Thanks for the cocoa link, Sam]

Labels: information, life, SecondLife, webstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  7:45 AM|| |

Found the MacTutor History of Mathematics while looking for information on Johann Benedict Listing, the guy (not August Ferdinand Möbius) who actually discovered the Möbius Strip.

Labels: factoid, information, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:04 PM|| |

Spent a chunk of the morning checking, updating and augmenting the collection of links in the Reference & Research section of Internet Resources for Writers.

The page includes over two hundred links classified in subsections:

• Unsorted
  
• Assorted Information
  
• Experts
  
• Maps
  
• Names & Naming
  
• News Links
  
• Online Texts
  
• Research & Reference
  
• Search Engines (including image search and video search engines)
  
• Tools
  
• Warnings & Rumors

Amazing resources out there on the Web. What a wURLd.

Labels: information, internet resources for writers, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  1:14 PM|| |

From the Making of America collection comes a link to An elementary dictionary of the English language. By Joseph E. Worcester, LL. D. (1865).

I love old dictionaries. The actual wordstuff for this one begins at page 31, after all the frontal matter regarding pronunciation and all that.

Seeing how a word was used in 1865 gives one a glimpse at how the current day definition evolved. Some words in Worcester's dictionary have evolved beyond recognition. Some no longer exist.

e.g. p 168 (lacerable - lapful)

laconism - pithy phrase or expression
Lady-Day - 25th March. The Annunciation.
laic- a layman; -- opposed to clergyman.
lamantine - an animal; manatee or sea-cow.
lambative - a medicine taken by licking
laniate - to tear in pieces; to lacerate
lanuginous - downy; covered with soft thin hair

Some of those words are still in use today, although perhaps not in as common use as they were 142 years ago. "lanuginous" was used in the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee finals.

Fun stuff, words.

Labels: books, history, information, URL, wordstuff

   posted by Sal Towse at  2:20 PM|| |

Found a link to this site from someone I know who is working through the Japanese language course and thinks highly of the experience.

MIT OpenCourseWare is

a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world.

MIT OCW:

• Is a publication of MIT course materials
  
• Does not require any registration
  
• Is not a degree-granting or certificate-granting activity
  
• Does not provide access to MIT faculty

Japanese, German, Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, French, tralala come under "Foreign Languages and Literatures" as do classes about cultures and texts written in those languages such as "A Passage to India: Introduction to Modern Indian Culture and Society," "Twentieth and Twentyfirst-Century Spanish American Literature," "East Asian Cultures: From Zen to Pop."

The Chinese I class, f'rex, includes a downloadable textbook and other study materials. The course assumes you know absolutely NOTHING about the language.

The purpose of this course is to develop:

• Basic conversational abilities (pronunciation, fundamental grammatical patterns, common vocabulary, and standard usage)
  
• Basic reading and writing skills (in both the traditional character set and the simplified)
  
• An understanding of the language learning process so that you are able to continue studying effectively on your own.

Or you could take Introduction to Aerospace Engineering and Design, Computational Cognitive Science, Urban Design Politics, or Special Seminar in Applied Probability and Stochastic Processes.

The list of Readings for Bestsellers: Detective Fiction changes each time the class is given but the Fall 2006 session uses the following books:

• Doyle, Arthur Conan. Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1992. ISBN: 0468270556.
  
• Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1999. ISBN: 0679723420.
  
• Poe, Edgar Allen. Tales of Terror and Detection. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1995. ISBN: 0486287440.
  
• Cain, James M. The Postman Always Rings Twice. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1989. ISBN: 0679723250.
  
• Hammett, Dashiell. The Maltese Falcon. New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1989. ISBN: 0679722645.
  
• Christie, Agatha. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. New York, NY: Berkley Publishing, 2004. ISBN: 0425200477.
  
• Weber, K. J. Five Minute Mysteries. Philadelphia, PA: Running Press, 1989. ISBN: 0894716905.
  
• Sobol, D. J. Two Minute Mysteries. New York, NY: Scholastic, 1991. ISBN: 0590447874.
  
• Browning, Robert. My Last Duchess and Other Poems. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1993. ISBN: 0486277836.
  
• Sophocles. Oedipus Rex. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1991. ISBN: 0486268772.

The world is my oyster and MIT Open Courseware is a pearl.

Labels: information, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  4:02 PM|| |

Making of America -- 19th c primary sources (and some 20th c too)

Making of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. For more details about the project, see About MoA.

Amazing collection of stuff.

I was wandering around today trying to see if I could find some written context for "The man who doesn't read books has no advantage over the man who can't read them" (and variations), attributed to Mark Twain -- a discussion that popped up yesterday on Project Wombat (formerly, the Stumpers list).

I never did find confirmation or attribution for the alleged Twain quote, but I did find an essay -- patronizing to say the least -- explaining to the dear little women what sorts of books they should be asking for their husband's permission to buy and read: a six-page article titled, "Reading," by L.L. Hamline, found in "The Ladies' repository: a monthly periodical, devoted to literature, arts, and religion."

Whoo boy.

With the thousands of books and thousands of articles the MOA folks have scanned and continued to scan, you could spend a long while in these archives.

Maneuverability is good. The search is FAST and can be simple, Boolean, &c. MOA pulls up matches giving title &c. and number of pages your search terms are on. You can wend through the pages of a given work or ask for those specific pages within the work that have your search term(s).

The app doesn't highlight the found word on the page, which is unfortunate when you have a dense page filled with tiny print.

Interesting stuff. A peek into where we've come from.

Labels: books, history, information, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  12:52 PM|| |

From WSU, the archived coursework and resources for the university freshman-level World Cultures class.

Texts, maps, &c. Ignore the "available for distance learning registation" [sic] notices and the links to discussion areas. This site is archival only.

Want to read up on Bhagavad-Gita? You'll find yourself here. Click "contents" and you'll get to an online text (a downloadable version is also available) or click "resources" and you'll get a list of hyperlinks to other online texts, essays, commentaries and such like.

While away the afternoon.

No search functionality, alas.

(Found when searching for the etymology of "no retreat, no surrender" -- the title of DeLay's new book-- which drew me toward Sparta, which brought me here. Could any of the erudite readers reading this tell me whether there was a Spartan rule which translated as "no retreat, no surrender"? Thanks much.)

Labels: information, URL

   posted by Sal Towse at  11:57 AM|| |