A beautiful bookstore from a converted church

The Guardian announced this as ‘probably the most beautiful bookstore in the world’. It is a very unique and unusual location for a bookstore. Because of the design of the bookshelf, you are allowed to experience the architectural structure in a close up. The bookshelf is constructed as a walk-in shelf going over three stories. The designers, Merkx Girod, has been true to the church´s architecture, and that is what makes it so powerful. It must be magical walking up the stairs, and have a view from the third level; even stand at the ground floor looking up and experience the dimensions of the church probably gives an exceptional view.

Business Meetings Are Making You Dumb

Group settings, such as business meetings, can actually diminish intelligence, according to a new study from Virginia Tech's Carilion School of Medicine and Research Institute.

Research suggests that small-group dynamics such as jury deliberations, meetings and even cocktail parties can have a negative intellectual effect on participants.

"You may joke about how committee meetings make you feel brain dead, but our findings suggest that they may make you act brain dead as well," Read Montague, director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory and the Computational Psychiatry Unit at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, said in a statement.

From The Huffington Post. A bit more at the link.

Reading lamps from hardback books

Several more here.

Charles Dickens on Bonanza

At Ben's invitation, Charles Dickens comes to Virginia City to give a reading from "Oliver Twist". He is appalled to discover his work being reprinted without his permission by the local paper and after confronting the publisher, the newspaper's office is destroyed. Already having lost the esteem of the townsfolk, Dickens now finds that they blame him for the violence.

A Day Made of Glass 2: Same Day. Expanded Corning Vision. (video)

EUscreen - European TV archive

The EUscreen project aims to promote the use of television content to explore Europe's rich and diverse cultural history. It will create access to over 30,000 items of programme content and information, and by developing a number of interactive functionalities and dynamic links with Europeana it will prove valuable to the widest range of cultural, educational and recreational users.

The top 10 most popular Dickens characters

Ebenezer Scrooge has been voted the most popular Charles Dickens character, according to a poll held to mark the 200th anniversary of the author’s birth. Here is the complete list:

1. Ebenezer Scrooge - A Christmas Carol
2. Miss Havisham - Great Expectations
3. Sydney Carton - A Tale Of Two Cities
4. The Artful Dodger - Oliver Twist
5. Fagin - Oliver Twist
6. Joe Gargery - Great Expectations
7. Pip - Great Expectations
8. Nancy - Oliver Twist
9. Abel Magwitch - Great Expectations
10. Betsey Trotwood - David Copperfield

Found at Amanda on Writing.

Anatomical Cross-Sections Made from Paper

Artist Lisa Nilsson has taken the technique of quilling to a whole new level by creating these amazing (and kinda creepy) cross sections of the human body. Also known as paper filigree, quilling is an art form that involves the use of strips of paper that are rolled, shaped, and glued together to create decorative designs.

Several more here.

A Catalog of Bookstore Cats.

Ever wondered what is the collective term for a group of bookstore cats? We think it should be catalog. Incidentally, a clowder is the term for a group of ordinary cats and a kindle (yes, really) is a group of kittens. AbeBooks asked some of its booksellers to describe the cats that inhabit their bookshops and they now have a gallery of fine felines. Cats and literature have mixed well for a long, long time from T.S. Elliot's Practical Cats to Edward Lear's Pussy Cat and Dr Seuss' Cat in the Hat. Take a tour around these wonderful bookish cats, their owners and their bookstores.

Several more here

25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore

1. People are getting rid of bookshelves. Treat the money you budgeted for shelving as found money. Go to garage sales and cruise the curbs.

2. While you're drafting that business plan, cut your projected profits in half. People are getting rid of bookshelves.

3. If someone comes in and asks where to find the historical fiction, they're not looking for classics, they want the romance section.

4. If someone comes in and says they read a little of everything, they also want the romance section.

5. If someone comes in and asks for a recommendation and you ask for the name of a book that they liked and they can't think of one, the person is not really a reader. Recommend Nicholas Sparks.

A delightful list and the rest are here.

Links to (almost) all the Super Bowl ads in advance

* Audi: Vampire Party

* Bridgestone: Performance Balls and Puck (teaser)

* Budweiser: Flash Fans (Reportedly only airing in Canada)

* Cadillac: Green Hell

* Careerbuilder: Business Trip (PETA went ape)

* Cars.com: Confident You

* Century 21: Deion Sanders (teaser)

* Century 21: Donald Trump (teaser)

* Chevrolet: 2012

* Chevrolet: Aliens

* Chevrolet: Joy

* Chevrolet: Stunt Anthem (with OK GO)

* Coca Cola: Catch: New England Bear / New York Bear (which one airs will depend on how each team performs during the second quarter)

* Coca Cola: Penguin Thief

* Coca-Cola: Superstition

* Dannon: Oikos Greek Yogurt (with John Stamos)

* Disney: John Carter

* E*TRADE: Fatherhood

* GoDaddy: Body Paint

* GoDaddy: The Cloud

* H&M: David Beckham Bodywear

* Honda: Matthew's Day Off (With Matthew Broderick, Jalopnik was unhappy about this one: SAVE FERRIS from Honda's Sacrilegious Super Bowl Ad)

* Honda: Transactions (with Jerry Seinfeld and others)

* Hyundai: All for One

* Hyundai: Cheetah

* Hyundai: Faster Acting

* Hyundai: Victory Lap

* Hyundai: Think Fast

* Kia: A Dream Car. For Real Life. (with Adriana Lima, Chuck Liddell and Motley Crue. Also see 5 Hours of Adriana Lima)

* Marvel: The Avengers (teaser)

* Pepsi: Check Out

* Pepsi: King's Court (With Elton John and Melanie Amaro)

* Samsung: Galaxy Note, The Next Big Thing is already here... Again

* Suzuki: Sled

* Teleflora: Adriana Lima

* Toyota: It's Reinvented

* Volkswagen: The Dog Strikes Back

Prime Burger (short video)

Clever and touching ad shows just what you can do "in camera". (video)

Disclaimer: I love Field Notes. I use them every day and there is one in my back pocket as I write this. Sometimes analog is best.

Riusuke Fukahori Paints Three-Dimensional Goldfish Embedded in Layers of Resin

Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori paints three-dimensional goldfish using a complex process of poured resin. The fish are painted meticulously, layer by layer, the sandwiched slices revealing slightly more about each creature, similar to the function of a 3D printer.

Found at This is Colossal

42 Unseen Photos Of Child Labour in US History

During the Victorian era Child Labor was quite common employing children as young as four in production factories with dangerous, and often fatal, working conditions.

39 more revealing images at SNAPYZ.

Transportation Library Menu Collection

The Menu Collection of the Northwestern University Transportation Library currently includes more than 400 menus from 54 national and international airline carriers, cruise ships, and railroad companies, with coverage from 1929 to the present. U.S. airlines predominate, but European, Asian, African, Australasian, and South American companies are also represented, with particular strength from the 1960s to the late 1980s.

The full collection is here.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (video short)

An amazingly poignant short film inspired, in equal measures, by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books, “Morris Lessmore” is a story of people who devote their lives to books and books who return the favor. Morris Lessmore is a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story. Using a variety of techniques (miniatures, computer animation, 2D animation) award winning author/ illustrator William Joyce and Co-director Brandon Oldenburg present a new narrative experience that harkens back to silent films and M-G-M Technicolor musicals. “Morris Lessmore” is old fashioned and cutting edge at the same time.

Found at Libraryland

A bathtub for reading (photo)

(Via 1001 Books To Read Before You Die.)

Old Hollywood: A wonderful Tumblr stream

138 more wonderful pages of images.

The Greatest Books of All Time, As Voted by 125 Famous Authors

 

The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books asks 125 of modernity’s greatest British and American writers — including Norman Mailer, Ann Pratchett, Jonathan Franzen, Claire Messud, and Joyce Carol Oates — “to provide a list, ranked, in order, of what [they] consider the ten greatest works of fiction of all time– novels, story collections, plays, or poems.”

Of the 544 separate titles selected, each is assigned a reverse-order point value based on the number position at which it appears on any list — so, a book that tops a list at number one receives 10 points, and a book that graces the bottom, at number ten, receives 1 point.

In introducing the lists, David Orr offers a litmus test for greatness:

If you’re putting together a list of ‘the greatest books,’ you’ll want to do two things: (1) out of kindness, avoid anyone working on a novel; and (2) decide what the word ‘great’ means. The first part is easy, but how about the second? A short list of possible definitions of ‘greatness’ might look like this:

1. ‘Great’ means ‘books that have been greatest for me.’
2. ‘Great’ means ‘books that would be considered great by the most people over time.’
3. ‘Great’ has nothing to do with you or me — or people at all. It involves transcendental concepts like God or the Sublime.
4. ‘Great’? I like Tom Clancy.

From David Foster Wallace (#1: The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis) to Stephen King (#1: The Golden Argosy, a 1955 anthology of the best short stories in the English language), the collection offers a rare glimpse of the building blocks of great creators’ combinatorial creativity — because, as Austin Kleon put it, “you are a mashup of what you let into your life.”

The book concludes with an appendix of “literary number games” summing up some patterns and constructing several overall rankings based on the totality of the different authors’ picks. Among them (*with links to free public domain works where available):

TOP TEN WORKS OF THE 20TH CENTURY

1. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
2. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. The Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust
4. Ulysses* by James Joyce
5. Dubliners* by James Joyce
6. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
7. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
8. To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
9. The complete stories of Flannery O’Connor
10. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

TOP TEN WORKS OF THE 19th CENTURY

1. Anna Karenina* by Leo Tolstoy
2. Madame Bovary* by Gustave Flaubert
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
5. The stories of Anton Chekhov
6. Middlemarch* by George Eliot
7. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
8. Great Expectations* by Charles Dickens
9. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
10. Emma* by Jane Austen

TOP TEN AUTHORS BY NUMBER OF BOOKS SELECTED

1. William Shakespeare — 11
2. William Faulkner — 6
3. Henry James — 6
4. Jane Austen — 5
5. Charles Dickens — 5
6. Fyodor Dostoevsky — 5
7. Ernest Hemingway — 5
8. Franz Kafka — 5
9. (tie) James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, Mark Twain, Virginia Woolf — 4

TOP TEN AUTHORS BY POINTS EARNED

1. Leo Tolstoy — 327
2. William Shakespeare — 293
3. James Joyce — 194
4. Vladimir Nabokov — 190
5. Fyodor Dostoevsky — 177
6. William Faulkner — 173
7. Charles Dickens — 168
8. Anton Checkhov — 165
9. Gustave Flaubert — 163
10. Jane Austen — 161

As a nonfiction loyalist, I’d love a similar anthology of nonfiction favorites — then again, famous writers might wave a knowing finger and point me to the complex relationship between truth and fiction.

(Via Brain Pickings.)

Another beautiful reading space (photo)

Click to enlarge

Assembling a yurt (video)

Putting up a yurt (also called a ger) is fast and easy, but its best done by an entire family. This yurt was moved by the family of Shagdarsuren Herelchuluun, on the east side of Lake Hovsgol, in northern Mongolia, not far from the Russian border.

Found at Boing Boing.

On fixing academic publishing

Nancy Sims, of the University of Minnesota Libraries, responds to The Atlantic's criticisms of JSTOR, an academic database that can be difficult and expensive to access: "There are things JSTOR does that I do have issues with. I wish it was doing more to provide more open access to the public domain materials it holds, for example. The JSTOR independent researcher program has all kinds of problems. But JSTOR is, for the most part, a pretty good element of the existing landscape."

(Via Boing Boing.)

The Universe Bound: Astronomical by Mishka Henner

We are all well aware that the reading of books can open up new worlds  but who knew you could fit the entire universe in a set of 12 books.

Mishka Henner does just that with Astronomical; twelve hefty volumes representing a scale model of our solar system from the Sun to Pluto with the width of each page representing one million kilometers!

The Sun pops up in Volume 1 and Pluto closes out the set on the last page of Volume 12 and there is a plethora of darkness in between and just like that the entire universe is contained between the covers.

The Sun

Details:
The first 10 sets retail for £100 and each is printed-on-demand.  Each volume is 5.5″ x 8.5″, perfect bound with white interior paper (50# weight), black and white interior ink, and white exterior paper (100# weight).

Here's a video preview:


ASTRONOMICAL - The Movie from Mishka Henner on Vimeo.

(Via Book Patrol.)

Yosemite in HD (video)

Much better in full-screen mode.

Searching for Context: Modeling the Information-Seeking Process of College Students in the Digital Age

What is it like to be a college student in the digital age? Alison Head — lead researcher for the national study, Project Information Literacy, Berkman Fellow, and Research Scientist in University of Washington’s Information School — presents a working typology of the undergraduate information-seeking process, including students’ reliance on and use of Web sources.

MP3

OGG audio format!

More info on this event here (includes video clip)

Harvard University. Berkman Center for Internet & Society Podcast

(Via Celia's.)

Fritz Goro's Photos: The Art of Science (photostream)

Stephen Jay Gould once said that LIFE photographer Fritz Goro, who died in 1986, was "the most influential photographer that science journalism (and science in general) has ever known." LIFE.com has posted a gallery of his truly wonderful photos.

In the photo above Edwin Land, the president and co-founder of the Polaroid Corporation, demonstrates his company's "60-second film" in 1963. By allowing photographers to see (almost) immediately what they had shot, Polaroid revolutionized photography and foreshadowed the advent of digital photography and its emphasis on instant gratification.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read

Thanks for this ongoing interest in my book suggestions. From some of your reflections, it looks like the intent of the list was not as clear as I thought. The one-line comment after each book is not a review but a statement about how the book’s content influenced the behavior of people who shaped the western world. So, for example, it does no good to say what the Bible “really” meant, if its actual influence on human behavior is something else. Again, thanks for your collective interest.

1.) The Bible (eBook) - “to learn that it’s easier to be told by others what to think and believe than it is to think for yourself.”

2.) The System of the World by Isaac Newton (eBook) – “to learn that the universe is a knowable place.”

3.) On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth.”

4.) Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (eBook – Audio Book) – “to learn, among other satirical lessons, that most of the time humans are Yahoos.”

5.) The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine (eBook – Audio Book) – “to learn how the power of rational thought is the primary source of freedom in the world.”

6.) The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself.”

7.) The Art of War by Sun Tsu (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that the act of killing fellow humans can be raised to an art.”

8.) The Prince by Machiavelli (eBook – Audio Book) - “to learn that people not in power will do all they can to acquire it, and people in power will do all they can to keep it.”

Click this link for more commentary and links to free copies

Another collection of beautiful libraries (photostream)

Several more here.

Happy 130th Birthday, A. A. Milne: “Happiness” and the Origin of Winnie-the-Pooh

On rainy days and the simplicity of happiness.

One hundred and thirty years ago today, Alex Alexander Milne (1882-1956) took his first breath. Best known for authoring the Winnie-the-Pooh book series, among the most beloved children’s books with timeless philosophy for grown-ups, A. A. Milne was also a prolific poet. In 1924, two years before the first Winnie-the-Pooh book, he penned When We Were Very Young — a collection of poetry for young children, illustrated by E. H. Shepard. In the 38th poem of the book, titled “Teddy Bear”, the famed Winnie-the-Pooh character makes his first appearance. Originally named “Mr. Edward Bear” by Christopher Robin Milne, Milne’s own son, Winnie-the-Pooh is depicted wearing a shirt that was later colored red for a recording produced by Stephen Slesinger, an image that eventually shaped the familiar Disney character.

The third poem in the book is a short gem titled “Happiness” — a wonderful meditation on how little it takes to find happiness. (And, clearly, a giant missed opportunity for Apple.)

(Via Brain Pickings.)

A Brief History of Computing Platforms (video)

Carved book landscapes by Guy Laramee

Several nore here.

Amazing images of Saturn via Cassini

NASA's Cassini spacecraft is now a nearly a year into its extended mission, called Cassini Equinox (after its initial 4-year mission ended in June, 2008). The spacecraft continues to operate in good health, returning amazing images of Saturn, its ring system and moons, and providing new information and science on a regular basis. The mission's name, "Equinox" comes from the upcoming Saturnian equinox in August, 2009, when its equator (and rings) will point directly toward the Sun. The Equinox mission runs through September of 2010, with the possibility of further extensions beyond that. Collected here are 24 more intriguing images from our ringed neighbor.

Found via TYWKIWDBI.

Top 100 Library Stories of 2011

Via The Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian

Friday Fun: The complete version of Baby Trashes Bar. (video)

The Light of Day (video)

It’s not hard to grow old but making peace with the challenges of aging is no easy task. Photographer Simon Biswas glimpses the conflict in a series of emotional video portraits that tell his subjects’ stories with honesty and dignity. His sitters regale us with fond memories of collecting Brooklyn Dodgers autographs and tragic losses like the death of a child. The Light of Day celebrates the experience of growing old and pays respect to those who have preceded us in making sense of life’s many unanswered questions.

Phone Stacking (cool idea)

We have all been there. You are out in a restaurant or club with friends. The conversation is going well. And then a cell phone rings, is answered and the conversation is halted. Well, someone over at Tumblr has come up with a novel idea - "Phone Stacking".

The rules are simple and begin after ordering: Each person at the table is required to place their phone facedown, (for dramatic effect you can stack the cellphone pile in the center of the table) at the beginning of the meal. While eating, incoming email and text notifications will sound, and the first person who picks up his/her phone also picks up the entire bill. If no one gives into temptation, every participant is declared a winner and pays for his/her own meal.

There are variations and more info at the link.

Found at PSFK

On Gratitude: A most inspiring video

"You think this is just another day in your life. It’s not just another day — it’s the one day that is given to you, today. It’s given to you, it’s a gift. It’s the only gift that you have right now, and the only appropriate response is gratefulness. If you do nothing else but to cultivate that response to the great gift that this unique day is, if you learn to respond as if it were the first day in your life, and the very last day, then you would have spent this day very well.”

10 fascinating facts about the human body (infographic)

via

The Shins A Simple Song (music)

I have missed them and thought some of you might enjoy....

Simple Song by The Shins

Organizing the Bookcase (video)

The Joy of Books (video)

Thanks Aimee

Every Hobbit book cover ever

Literally hundreds more over at The Tolkien Library.

TateShots: An Interview with Maurice Sendak

Very mild profanity.

Book Sale (photo)

(Via 1001 Books To Read Before You Die.)

The Venn of Ron Paul

Click to enlarge

Mother Jones attempts a taxonomy of libertarian thought in order to figure out where Ron Paul fits. Much more analysis at the link.

Found at Boing Boing

A United States Map: One man's work of love.

Over 2 years, 7 days a week, David Imus invested 6,000 hours to hand craft "The Essential Geopgraphy of the United States of America". His work of craftsmanship based on 35 years of cartography experience won the prestigious "Best of Show" award at the 38th annual competition of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society. Competing against maps from large organizations (National Geographic, CIA, US Census Bureau) Imus' masterful work of love easily outshone the others. If you don't think that there could be such a difference between maps, take a look at the comparison. The more you look the more you appreciate the quality and clarity of this creation.