the state I'm living in
“IN a coffee shop not long ago, I saw a mug with an inscription from Henry David Thoreau: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.” At least it said the words were Thoreau’s. But the attribution seemed a bit suspect. Thoreau, after all, was not known for his liberal use of exclamation points. When I got home, I looked up the passage (it’s from “Walden”): “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”
—Falser Words Were Never Spoken - NYTimes.com (via newspaperthings)
September 2011
34 posts
August 2011
40 posts
“This time last year, I was metaphorically invited to the only party I’ve ever wanted to be seen at. My first novel, The English Monster, was picked up by an agent, and then by a publisher, Simon and Schuster. It hits the streets in March 2012. I’ve made it, I thought to myself as I clutched my invite to the most exclusive set of all. I’m going to be a published author. So imagine my surprise - nay, dismay - to discover that publishing’s streets were not paved with gold, but stalked by the anxious, the gloomy, the suicidal. “Publishing’s dead!” shouted men in sackcloth on Bloomsbury street corners. I had arrived at the party, but the coats were being handed out, the drink had dried up and the hostess had collapsed… According to Nielsen BookScan, the publishing industry standard for book sales data, book sales are pretty healthy, with one significant proviso which I’ll come to. Ten years ago in 2001, 162m books were sold in Britain. Ten years later – a decade in which the internet bloomed, online gaming exploded, television channels proliferated, digital piracy rampaged and, latterly, recession gloomed – 229m books sold. So, a 42% increase in the number of books sold over the last 10 years… So why the very, very deep uncertainty and the gloom? Because 2011 is the year this may all change. Here’s the proviso on the sales figures I mentioned. These numbers above do not include any ebook sales at all.”
—The death of books has been greatly exaggerated | Books | guardian.co.uk
“Kevin Kelly wrote a thought-provoking post about how “the impossible” is happening more often nowadays, thanks in no small part to large scale collaboration over the Internet. In other words, the hive mind. He cites eBay and Wikipedia as two examples of things he would’ve thought impossible in decades past. Collaboration over the Web is still evolving. One way it might be immediately improved is by adding more women to collective intelligence projects and by shutting up the loud mouths. I’m not idly speculating here, those were the findings of a recent study by MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence.”
—The Hive Mind Needs More Women
“United Airlines said on Tuesday that it would give iPads to the 11,000 pilots who fly United and Continental Airlines planes. The new iPads are being labeled electronic flight bags, or E.F.B., and the airline said they would completely replace the pilot’s paper flight manuals… The difference between the paper manuals and the new iPad version is staggering. Current paper flight manuals, which a pilot needs to carry before, during and after a flight, usually contain 12,000 sheets of paper and weigh 38 pounds. The iPad weighs only 1.5 pounds. United said there were considerable environmental benefits from switching its pilots to all-digital flight plans. The airline currently prints 16 million sheets of paper a year when distributing flight plans to pilots. Removing the additional weight on planes will also save United 326,000 gallons of jet fuel a year, or 3,208 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, the airline said.”
—United Pilots Get iPad Flight Manuals - NYTimes.com
“In a city as diverse as ours, with a large population of new Canadians from all over the world, free access to great works, tools for learning and information is so essential, it’s obvious cost-efficiency types keen on closures and privatization haven’t read past the introduction. I wasn’t the least bit surprised to discover that Toronto’s public library system, with 18 million visits and 32 million items borrowed last year, is the world’s busiest. And yet the cultural contribution made by our libraries isn’t limited to public access to books and information.”
—Von Hahn: Turning the page on sleek architecture - thestar.com
“The City of Copenhagen in collaboration with Atkins Denmark have started testing Flex Parking zones in Copenhagen. Starting with the street outside Ingrid Jespersen’s High School in Ndr. Frihavnsgade (that’s a street name)… The primary goal is to create a safe environment for cycling to school. Many schools built at the turn of the last century in Copenhagen have space problems regarding bicycle parking in the school yards or on the street. Thus this new pilot project called Flex Parking. Flex Parking lets cycling citizens and motorists share street space. During school hours the street space is reserved for bicycles - from 07:00-17:00. The rest of the time it is reserved for car parking Instead of removing car parking spots and turning them into bicycle racks, the idea is to exploit the city space as best as possible by reserving the space for cyclists only when they actually use it.”
—Copenhagenize.com - Building Better Bicycle Cultures: Flex Parking Shared by Bicycles and Cars
“We’ve seen plenty of music houses sculpted around the concept of music—warm wood-paneled theaters that evoke the insides of instruments; symphony halls where a massive pipe organ becomes part of the architecture. But it’s not often that the form of the building itself is driven by music. Anisotropia is a concept by Orproject for an opera house in South Korea where the music — a composition for piano, to be exact — shapes the building’s form.”
—A Piano Tune Generates This Opera House’s Architecture | Co. Design
“My experience, purely anecdotal, is that the more rangers try to bring the nanny state to public lands, the more careless, and dependent, people become. There will always be steep cliffs, deep water, and ornery and unpredictable animals in that messy part of the national habitat not crossed by climate-controlled malls and processed-food emporiums. If people expect a grizzly bear to be benign, or think a glacier is just another variant of a theme park slide, it’s not the fault of the government when something goes fatally wrong.”
—National Parks Aren’t Theme Parks - NYTimes.com (via newspaperthings)
“The “Concise” differs from its behemoth cousin, the OED, in philosophy as well as size. As the following promotional video explains, the shorter work aims to provide an accessible guide to “current English” — the language as it is actually used day-to-day — rather than a survey of its words’ historical meaning. (Where size is concerned, it’s worth noting that the new COD boasts just over 240,000 words and phrases, compared to the 20-volume OED’s 600,000.) The dictionary’s centenary edition has adopted words from the technological sphere — such as “cyberbullying,” “cloud computing” and “sexting” (even the exclamation “woot” can now celebrate its lexicographical coming-out)…”
—Concise Oxford Dictionary adds “sexting,” “woot” - Language Police - Salon.com
“Laura Moulton is a Portland-based artist, writer, and teacher who recently received a RACC grant for her Street Books project. As Street Books librarian, Laura wheels a custom-modified Haley Tricycle to two locations around town (Skidmore Fountain and South Park Blocks), providing free library services to people living outside.”
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Interview: Street Books Librarian, Laura Moulton - Reading Local | Reading Local
An interesting/eye-opening/thoughtful interview by U of O Portland Librarian Karen Munro.
