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You, Too, Can Invest Like Elizabeth Warren!

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Erika Eichelberger - Jun. 06 (Comment) - Along with her reputation as a crusader for the middle class and scourge of bad banks, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also has a history as a personal finance guru. In 2005, the former Harvard law professor, who is worth between $2.8 and $12 million, co-wrote with her daughter a no-nonsense, no-magic-bullets financial advice book called All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan. We've cross-referenced Warren's recently released financial disclosure forms with the book to distill the essence of her financial planning wisdom. Now you, too, can invest like a populist defender of the public interest.

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5 Ways Biotech Is Changing Our Pets and Wildlife

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Sarah Zhang - Apr. 08 (Review) - Ever since humans first tamed a friendly wolf, we've been shaping animals to conform to our needs and wants. Just look at a Siberian husky next to a poofy, orange Pomeranian. Science journalist Emily Anthes' new book, Frankenstein's Cat , explores animals created by molecular genetics or wired up to electronics, but, she says, the ethical questions that come along with these futuristic critters are not completely new.

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Technology should help us share, not constrain us

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Richard Stallman - Apr. 18 (Opinion) - Companies like Amazon can control the way we use the ebooks we buy. Instead let's build a publishing model based on freedom I love the detective novel The Jehovah Contract , and I'd like everyone else to love it, too. I have lent it out at least six times over the years. Printed books let us do that. I couldn't do it with most commercial ebooks; it's not allowed. And if I felt like telling the publishers to take their evil rule and stuff it, the software in e-readers has digital restrictions management – malicious features that restrict access, so it simply won't allow it. And the books are encrypted in such a way to force you to use that malicious software. Many other habits that readers are accustomed to are not allowed for ebooks. With the Amazon Kindle, for instance, you're not allowed to buy a book anonymously. Kindle books are typically available from Amazon only, and Amazon doesn't accept cash so users must identify themselves. Thus Amazon knows exactly which books each user has read. ...

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Where Are the Women Writers? (ASME Edition)

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Adam Weinstein - Apr. 04 (Special Report) - They called it the Count, and the concept was simple: Tally up how many women get published in some of the world's top literary magazines and journals, compare it with the number of men gracing those pages, and slap the results into a pie chart. Red for men, blue for women. The result was a lot of big red pie slices . First published in 2011, they conveyed a clear fact: From Harpers to The New Yorker to The Atlantic , it's still very much a man's world. Roughly 65 to 75 percent of the space in the prestigious magazines went to male writers. The Count is the brainchild of two accomplished poets, Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu. In 2009, the duo founded VIDA: Women in Literary Arts , a nonprofit that acts as part online community, part advocate and agitator for women of letters. The idea, Belieu says, came in a "moment of loathing and terror and revolutionary spark." They intended the Count to be a conversation-starter, and it certainly has been : After they published the first round, some major ...

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The Hunger Games: The world after a climate apocalypse, teen fiction style

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:29:00 -0700

Grist - Mar. 19 - The revolution will be televised. So will the post-apocalyptic fight to feed ourselves on a ruined planet. Those are two key themes of the wildly popular young adult (YA) trilogy that begins with The Hunger Games, whose movie version comes out this week.

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After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Julie Bosman - Mar. 14 (News Report) - Bowing to the competition online, the encyclopedia's publisher said the 2010 edition, a 32-volume set that weighs in at 129 pounds, would be the last.

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Details of Steve Jobs' life emerge before launch of official biography

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

OpenGlobe - By Fetchcomms, OpenGlobe contributors - Oct. 21 (News Report) - New details of Steve Jobs' life have emerged as advance copies of his official biography, due to go on sale Monday, were released to media organizations. The 630-page book by Walter Isaacson, "Steve Jobs," sheds new light on Jobs' personal life, thoughts, and philosophies, as well as his relationships with major political figures and other companies.

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10 myths about Afghanistan

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Jonathan Steele - Sep. 28 (Special Report) - In 1988, the Soviet army left Afghanistan after a concerted campaign by the western-backed mujahideen. But since then, many enduring myths have grown up about the war-torn country. In his new book, Jonathan Steele sorts the fact from the fiction 1. Afghans have always beaten foreign armies, from Alexander the Great to modern times Afghan history is certainly littered with occasions when foreign invaders were humiliated. But there have also been many cases when foreign armies penetrated the country and inflicted major defeats. In 330BC, Alexander the Great marched through the area of central Asia that is now Afghanistan, meeting little opposition. More than a millennium later, the Mongol leader Genghis Khan also brushed resistance aside. Since Afghanistan emerged as a modern state, there have been three wars with Britain. The British invasion of 1839 produced initial victory for the intruders followed by stunning defeat followed by a second victory. In 1878, the British invaded again. ...

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Amazon's Kindle Fire just nuked the tablet market: Winners and losers

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

ZDNet - By Larry Dignan - Sep. 28 (News Report) - Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos took the stage Wednesday to unveil an arsenal of devices that are going to disrupt rivals like Barnes & Noble as well as Android tablet makers.

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Black leaders give 'The Help' a hand in marketing

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Nicole Sperling - Aug. 09 (News Report) - The chairwoman of the NAACP is among those spreading the word about the DreamWorks film, which focuses on relationships between white Southern women and their maids during the civil rights era. When Roslyn Brock, chairwoman of the NAACP, first heard about "The Help," a new film based on a novel about the volatile relationships between Southern white women and their black maids at the dawn of the civil rights movement, she was skeptical.

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Aliteracy Anxiety

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Time Passing - By Lance Strate - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - Aliteracy may be the trend of the future. Reading limited to short bursts. Street signs. Restaurant menus. Headlines. Status updates and tweets. Short paragraphs online. And reading that is limited to the functional, reading for directions, for instructions, for getting tasks done. As opposed to reading for pleasure. And as opposed to reading as a cultural activity.

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Small bookstores thrive amid change

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Arizona Republic - By Max Jarman - Aug. 03 (News) - The rise of online bookstores and digital-reading devices such as Kindles and iPads is indirectly fostering a resurgence of independent bookstores.

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Sidestepping Apple: Companies rethink app strategies

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

CNN - By Tim Carmody - Jul. 26 (News Report) - We all knew that once Apple starting enforcing new rules for in-app purchases, it would change how media companies do business on the iPhone and iPad. Now, we're beginning to see just what that looks like for companies trying to avoid giving a 30% cut to Cupertino. Amazon, Kobo and Barnes & Noble all removed the stores from their iOS applications on Monday, as well as any hyperlinks to or mentions of their online stores.

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What Hemingway Would Think of the Internet

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Wired - By Marty Beckerman - Jul. 02 (Opinion) - If Ernest Hemingway hadn’t killed himself 50 years ago today at age 61, he probably would have died by now anyway. (No human liver could withstand more than a century of nonstop alcoholic pummeling. Not even Papa’s.) But Newsweek can fantasize about Princess Diana cheating death, so we can imagine Hemingway walking — or staggering — among us in 2011. What would the hard-drinking, adventure-loving writer think of our modern technological lifestyle? Not bloody much. We’re obsessed with conquering the digital world — accumulation of Twitter followers, Facebook friends, LinkedIn recommendations — whereas Hemingway conquered the physical world. The thrill of a retweet from Roger Ebert or Ashton Kutcher will never compare to the thrill of running with (more like from) the bulls or fighting a pack of voracious sharks over the remains of a prize-catch marlin.

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'Go The F*k To Sleep' Hits Parents' Raw Nerves

Mon, 16 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Leanne Italie - May. 16 (News Report) - Playing dress up or running around the park, kids can be so darn cute. Until it's 3 a.m. and they won't go the (bleep) to sleep. The F-bomb plea on the minds of every parent at one point or another is the title of a buzz magnet of a book parody written in kid-friendly rhyme. Beware, parents, it's decidedly unworthy of a bedtime readaloud.

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Google can't be trusted with our books | Simon Barron

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 10:43:12 -0700

The Guardian - By Simon Barron - Apr. 26 (Opinion) - The threat to Google Videos shows businesses are not suitable cultural custodians – they can't be held accountable to the publicGoogle announced last week that it would be deleting the content of the Google Videos archive. After a public outcry, it said it would work on saving all the video content and making it available elsewhere. In this instance, the public managed to change Google's mind and stopped the mass deletion of a unique digital archive but the situation raises concerns about data under Google's control, including the unique archive of Google Books.The reason cited for Google Videos' closure is that the company would like to focus on its raison d'être, search, "[the] ability to let people search videos from across the web, regardless of where those videos are hosted". Shifting its priorities is its prerogative as a company: the issue is that on the basis of refocusing its business priorities, its first impulse was to delete the gigabytes of content given to it by users.This situation has disturbing implications for Google Videos' sister project, Google Books, and the approximately 15 million scanned documents in the archive. In partnership with some of the greatest research libraries in the world – the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Harvard University Library, the New York Public Library – Google Books has built up a huge digital library containing thousands of unique documents.Google Books has suffered problems in the past: practical problems – lawsuits from publishers and authors, criticism of its inconsistent metadata – and philosophical problems involving the theoretical concerns of allowing a private sector company to control shared cultural resources. These concerns have remained abstract but now, with the company's disregard towards videos, become more concrete.As a private sector company, the core aim of Google is to make money. The Google Videos situation shows that in order to lower expenditure and adjust its priorities, Google was willing to delete content entrusted to it by users. Libraries have trusted Google with millions of documents: many of the books scanned by Google are not digitised or OCR-processed anywhere else and, with budgets for university libraries shrinking year after year, may not be digitised again any time in the near future. Google acted admirably by listening to users and working to save the videos but entrusting such vast cultural archives to a body that has no explicit responsibilities to protection, archiving and public cultural welfare is inherently dangerous: as the situation made clear, private sector bodies have the ability to destroy archives at a whim.Enabling access to digital information should be one of the key responsibilities of our cultural institutions and our public sector. Keeping these resources in the public sector and ensuring that they are freely available to everyone is the key to bridging the UK's widening digital divide: the chasm between those who can access digital information via internet access at home and the 27% of households who cannot. Last week, Amazon announced that it was working with libraries in the US to allow users to borrow Kindle ebooks. This mutual co-operation between the private and the public sector should allow more people to access shared digital resources and hopefully help bridge the US digital divide.As Peter Singer and others have argued, we need to develop a digital library that can make resources available in the same way as Google Books but that will be accountable to the public. Google Books is one of the largest digital libraries in the world but, as Robert Darnton has argued, we cannot trust it to be the sole custodian of our digital archives forever. A national digital library would be subject to regulations to protect our cultural heritage and would take responsibility for the artefacts placed in its care. Publicly funded libraries and archives are important precisely because they are not committed to the "market fundamentalism" of pursuing profit above all other motives. Some libraries and archives need to modernise and make resources digitally available but this requires support and the protection of our public sector libraries.Google's motto is "don't be evil". Not doing the evil thing is not the same as doing the right thing. In this instance, it has done the right thing: next time, it may not.GoogleDigital videoLibrariesInternetUnited StatesSimon Barronguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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The Google Books settlement should teach the company humility. It won't

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Siva Vaidyanathan - Mar. 23 (Opinion) - Google has been humbled. For a company with the audacity to make "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible" its mission statement, it takes a lot to take Google down a peg. But yesterday federal Judge Denny Chin did just that. He ruled—after more than two years of study and debate—that the elaborate new used-book store that Google had designed in collaboration with the most elite authors and publishers could not stand. Or, at least, Chin ruled that the methods Google chose to build this massive digital bookstore, now called Google Books, was improper.

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Federal judge rejects Google digital book settlement

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By David Sarno - Mar. 23 (News Report) - He rules that Google's agreement with publishers and authors to share and sell the millions of books it has scanned would give it a major advantage over competitors.

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Digital Textbook Startup Inkling Nabs ‘Multi-Million Dollar’ Investment From McGraw-Hill And Pearson

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

TechCrunch - By Leena Rao - Mar. 22 (Opinion) - Inkling, a startup that develops an innovative digital textbook platform, has scored a ‘multi-million dollar investment from educational content giants McGraw-Hill and Pearson. Inkling’s technology delivers interactive textbooks that include the ability to collaborate, add multimedia and communicate within content. The startup adds another layer to online textbooks by adding 3-D objects, video, quizzes, and even social interaction within the content.

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Amazon's Kindle opens new chapter for publishing industry

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Alex Pham - Dec. 29 (Interview) - Russ Grandinetti, the head of content for Amazon.com's Kindle business, talks about Amazon's plans for its rapidly growing Kindle business. When Amazon.com Inc. launched its Kindle digital book business in 2007, little did many people realize that the company was really rewriting the book on the entire publishing industry.

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Google E-Book Venture to Launch Monday

Mon, 06 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Wall Street Journal - By Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Amir Efrati - Dec. 06 (News Report) - Google said it would launch on Monday its long-anticipated digital bookselling enterprise, Google eBooks, competing for a slice of the almost $1 billion digital books business.

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C.K. Chivers' The Gun explains how the AK-47 changed the world.

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 11:09:00 -0700

Slate - By Nicholas Schmidle - Nov. 01 - In late 1945, Sergeant Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov entered an office contest more pressing than even the most rabid of Fantasy Footballers could fathom. Joseph Stalin wanted a new gun, and the Soviet leader tasked his army with selecting the best

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Opinion: Books are better without pages

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Nicholas Negroponte - Sep. 02 (Opinion) - The paper book is dead. Long live the narrative. Kindle owners buy twice as many books as non-Kindle owners. Just one of the many signs that while the paper book is dead, the narrative will live on. If you are saying to yourself, “That sounds horrible. I hope books do not go away,” I ask you to consider the world’s poorest and most remote kids. The manufactured book stunts learning, especially for those children. The last thing these children should have are physical books. They are too costly, too heavy, fall out-of-date and are sharable only in some common and limited physical space. Paper books also do not do well in dampness, dirt, heat or rain. Not to mention that 320 textbooks require, on average, one tree and produce about 10,000 pounds of CO2 in manufacturing and delivery. This makes no sense. Kids in the developing world should not be sent physical books.

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Orwell and the Tea Party

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

the Millions - By Darryl Campbell - Jul. 31 (Opinion) - George Orwell never thought that his work would outlive him by much. After all, he considered himself “a sort of pamphleteer” rather than a genuine novelist, and confidently predicted that readers would lose interest in his books “after a year or two.” Yet sixty years later, Orwell endures, and I am not sure that this is a good thing.

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The Trouble With Amazon

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

The Nation - By Colin Robinson - Jul. 14 (Special Report) - Amazon has not grown to where it is today by being touchy-feely. Sure, it adopted the informal trappings that characterized many of the new technology start-ups of the 1990s. But if Bezos's first desk at the company was an old door on trestles, the business conducted from behind it has been as ruthless as anything he encountered in his previous gig as a Wall Street broker. Soon after Amazon's launch in 1995, Bezos told his employees that he wanted a place that was both "intense and friendly" but that "if you ever had to give up 'friendly' in order to have 'intense,' we would do that."

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