Blake

With no good libraries in Gurgaon, people exchange books online

Gurgaon is no city for those who like to spend hours in a library.
The concrete jungle has over three dozen malls and over 1,000 swanky high-rise residential and commercial complexes, but it is still missing a well-equipped library.
In the name of a public library, Gurgaon has one small building with dusty books, broken chairs and erratic power supply. The renovation work of this library near Civil Lines is progressing, but it will take a few months to set the infrastructure and procure new reads.
But the city’s bibliophiles have found an alternative to their reading woes, thanks to online social networking. Book-lovers are depending on city-based social media groups to exchange and read books.

From With no good libraries in Gurgaon, people exchange books online | gurgaon | Hindustan Times

May 27, 2016 by Books EBooks Internet Libraries

The OKCupid data release fiasco: It’s time to rethink ethics education

In mid 2016, we confront another ethical crisis related to personal data, social media, the public internet, and social research. This time, it’s a release of some 70,0000 OKCupid users’ data, including some very intimate details about individuals. Responses from several communities of practice highlight the complications of using outdated modes of thinking about ethics and human subjects when considering new opportunities for research through publicly accessible or otherwise easily obtained data sets (e.g., Michael Zimmer produced a thoughtful response in Wired and Kate Crawford pointed us to her recent work with Jacob Metcalf on this topic). There are so many things to talk about in this case, but here, I’d like to weigh in on conversations about how we might respond to this issue as university educators.

From The OKCupid data release fiasco: It’s time to rethink ethics education | Social Media Collective

May 27, 2016 by Internet

How Well-Read Are You in Science Fiction?

If a university offered a master’s degree in science fiction, how many novels would it expect a graduate student to know to pass comps? The number of books would have to be small enough to study in a few years. Wouldn’t the Canon of Science Fiction, books scholars of the genre designate as the most noteworthy, be this side of 200? What about a well-read amateur? Wouldn’t reading just 50 books, but of course, the defining 50, give anyone an excellent grasp of the genre?

From How Well-Read Are You in Science Fiction?

May 27, 2016 by Uncategorized

42 Douglas Adams quotes to live by

7. “All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.”

From BBC Radio 4 – Dangerous Visions – 42 Douglas Adams quotes to live by

7. “All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.”

From BBC Radio 4 – Dangerous Visions – 42 Douglas Adams quotes to live by

May 26, 2016 by Uncategorized

The Open Data Delusion

These legal difficulties should not hide the fact that Open Data is ultimately powerful when it represents a conversation between data experts inside the system and data users who access that system. And to see the system become mature and produce better services, it needs to keep that conversation alive, learn from it, and use its lessons to change.

From The Open Data Delusion – Broken Toilets

These legal difficulties should not hide the fact that Open Data is ultimately powerful when it represents a conversation between data experts inside the system and data users who access that system. And to see the system become mature and produce better services, it needs to keep that conversation alive, learn from it, and use its lessons to change.

From The Open Data Delusion – Broken Toilets

May 26, 2016 by Legal Issues

Title Fights: Who Gets to Name an Author’s Book?

So what kinds of titles do publishers prefer? For starters, according to Garnett, they naturally favor “titles that are memorable and striking and, of course, that manage to communicate the flavor or feel of the book’s content and writing and sensibility,” though these are subjective criteria—both she and my own editor, Margaux Weisman at William Morrow, concede that the titling process amounts mainly to a gut feeling, informed by trial and error. (And it’s hard to imagine that they aren’t influenced by the desire for Google-friendliness or e-retail “discoverability”—think of the Twitter-friendly #GIRLBOSS—though nobody I spoke to claimed these were heavy considerations.) Titles are hashed out in biweekly meetings with the publisher, editor-in-chief, deputy publisher, digital and paperbacks publisher, and managing editor, and later in the process, marketing, design, and publicity departments, as well as the author and their agent.

From Title Fights: Who Gets to Name an Author’s Book?

So what kinds of titles do publishers prefer? For starters, according to Garnett, they naturally favor “titles that are memorable and striking and, of course, that manage to communicate the flavor or feel of the book’s content and writing and sensibility,” though these are subjective criteria—both she and my own editor, Margaux Weisman at William Morrow, concede that the titling process amounts mainly to a gut feeling, informed by trial and error. (And it’s hard to imagine that they aren’t influenced by the desire for Google-friendliness or e-retail “discoverability”—think of the Twitter-friendly #GIRLBOSS—though nobody I spoke to claimed these were heavy considerations.) Titles are hashed out in biweekly meetings with the publisher, editor-in-chief, deputy publisher, digital and paperbacks publisher, and managing editor, and later in the process, marketing, design, and publicity departments, as well as the author and their agent.

From Title Fights: Who Gets to Name an Author’s Book?

May 26, 2016 by Authors Books Google

Canadian Libraries feel the eBook pinch

The book worm has turned.

Local libraries are making noise about eBook prices, saying that they pay multinational publishers up to five times more than average consumers do for the same titles.

And libraries — including ones in Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax and Vancouver — say they’d like things to change, so that they can pay according to their size and needs, rather than using the current one-size-fits-all model.

From Libraries feel the eBook pinch | Toronto Star

The book worm has turned.

Local libraries are making noise about eBook prices, saying that they pay multinational publishers up to five times more than average consumers do for the same titles.

And libraries — including ones in Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax and Vancouver — say they’d like things to change, so that they can pay according to their size and needs, rather than using the current one-size-fits-all model.

From Libraries feel the eBook pinch | Toronto Star

May 24, 2016 by Books EBooks Libraries

Sherman Alexie On His New Kids’ Book (‘Thunder Boy Jr.’) And The Angst Of Being A ‘Jr.’ : NPR

Alexie tells NPR’s David Greene that he found inspiration for the book in a surprising place: his own father’s funeral. “As they lowered the coffin into the grave, his tombstone came into view and on the tombstone is Sherman Alexie — his name, my name,” Alexie says. “And I’d always struggled with being named after him, but the existential weight of being named after your father really, really becomes clear when you’re looking at a tombstone with your name on it.”

From Sherman Alexie On His New Kids’ Book (‘Thunder Boy Jr.’) And The Angst Of Being A ‘Jr.’ : NPR

Alexie tells NPR’s David Greene that he found inspiration for the book in a surprising place: his own father’s funeral. “As they lowered the coffin into the grave, his tombstone came into view and on the tombstone is Sherman Alexie — his name, my name,” Alexie says. “And I’d always struggled with being named after him, but the existential weight of being named after your father really, really becomes clear when you’re looking at a tombstone with your name on it.”

From Sherman Alexie On His New Kids’ Book (‘Thunder Boy Jr.’) And The Angst Of Being A ‘Jr.’ : NPR

May 24, 2016 by Books

China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works

Indeed, China’s Firewall is far more sophisticated and multi-tiered than a simple on-off switch: It is an attempt to bridge one of the country’s most fundamental contradictions — to have an economy intricately connected to the outside world but a political culture closed off from such “Western values” as free speech and democracy.

From China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works. – The Washington Post

Indeed, China’s Firewall is far more sophisticated and multi-tiered than a simple on-off switch: It is an attempt to bridge one of the country’s most fundamental contradictions — to have an economy intricately connected to the outside world but a political culture closed off from such “Western values” as free speech and democracy.

From China’s scary lesson to the world: Censoring the Internet works. – The Washington Post

May 24, 2016 by Censorship Internet

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