The Library Hotel

At the Library Hotel in Manhattan the rooms are organized according to the Dewey Decimal System and housed within its guest rooms and lobby are over 6000 volumes.

Here's how the Library Hotel describes its concept in a press kit:

"Each of the 10 guestroom floors of the Library is dedicated to one of the ten major categories of the Dewey Decimal System including: Social Sciences, Literature, Languages, History, Math & Science, General Knowledge, Technology, Philosophy, The Arts and Religion. Each of the 60 exquisitely appointed guestrooms have been individually adorned with a collection of art and books relevant to one distinctive topic within the category of floor it belongs to."

Found at The Washington Post Full article at the link.

Honoring the "Boys of Summer"

It's a long season has assembled a most excellent series of images that beautifully express the sport of baseball.


Found at Coudal Partners

Created Equal photo series by Mark Laita

Photographer Mark Laita's "Created Equal" is a series of portraits of Americans juxtaposed in rather provocative diptychs. Pairings include the likes of marine/war veteran, Baptist churchgoer/white supremacist, pedophile/child, and, seen above, polygamist/pimp. Turnstyle interviewed Laita and presents a selection of the Created Equal photos.

From the interview:

"Created Equal is different from my other work in that it’s not politically correct. Perhaps it’s a reaction to all the years of working for advertising clients, producing work that was pleasing to look at. Almost all commercial work has a committee or focus group making certain that the end result is “nice.” I felt the need to produce something that was raw and real, as life truly is, not just what we aspire to."

More photos at the link.

Found at Boing Boing

Checklists for marital bliss circa 1930

Click to enlarge


Found at Boing Boing

Analysis of a Presidential motorcade

Click to enlarge

Found at TYWKIWDBI

Image courtesy of The Atlantic

Covers and posters by Swedish illustrator Rolf Lagerson

The rest are here

Found at Coudal Partners

26 rules for writing good

Blatantly stolen from Reformation 21

1. Don't abbrev.

2. Check to see if you any words out.

3. Be carefully to use adjectives and adverbs correct.

4. About sentence fragments.

5. When dangling, don't use participles.

6. Don't use no double negatives.

7. Each pronoun agrees with their antecedent.

8. Just between you and I, case is important.

9. Join clauses good, like a conjunction should.

10. Don't use commas, that aren't necessary.

11. Its important to use apostrophe's right.

12. It's better not to unnecessarily split an infinitive.

13. Never leave a transitive verb just lay there without an object.

14. Only Proper Nouns should be capitalized. also a sentence should begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop

15. Use hyphens in compound-words, not just in any two-word phrase.

16. In letters compositions reports and things like that we use commas to keep a string of items apart.

17. Watch out for irregular verbs that have creeped into our language.

18. Verbs has to agree with their subjects.

19. Avoid unnecessary redundancy.

20. A writer mustn't shift your point of view.

21. Don't write a run-on sentence you've got to punctuate it.

22. A preposition isn't a good thing to end a sentence with.

23. Avoid cliches like the plague.

24. 1 final thing is to never start a sentence with a number.

25. Always check your work for accuracy and completeness.

Unnoticed objects in public places.

Sil Krol, an interesting artist from the Netherlands places "familiar" abjects in public places and the public ignores them:

"Because of the growing individualism and the abundance of objects, advertisements and other visual structures in public space, people are less conscious of their surroundings and what's actualy in there. When I install a wooden imitation of an archetype electricity box, there was nobody (except some dog) that noticed this sudden appearance. It's located on a vacant lot near the Zuidas, the major business destrict of Amsterdam. Until now, the sculpture hasn't been removed."

Float: The magic of ultra-ultra light model aircraft

iPad scores high points in Reed College report

Apple’s iPad received glowing marks for its performance in college classrooms from the eagerly anticipated Reed College evaluation, according to a new report shared with Fast Company. Excerpts follow:

The iPad’s smooth interface kept up with the lighting-quick pace of college lectures, helping it to overcome the very same gauntlet that killed the Kindle’s hope of education dominance a year earlier. Most importantly, the report predicts an explosion of opportunity for both Apple software developers and tablet competitors.

After extensive student interviews throughout the Fall 2010 semester, "The bottom line feeling was that the Amazon Kindle DX was not adequate for use in a higher education curricular setting," Chief Technology Officer Martin Ringle tells Fast Company. "The bottom line for the iPad was exactly the opposite."

The most impressive iPad feature was also the simplest: a smooth scrolling touchscreen. "The quick response time of the touch screen was highly praised and seemed to be extremely beneficial in class discussions because it allowed students to navigate rapidly between texts to reach specific passages,” notes the report. In contrast, the Kindle’s joystick navigation was exceedingly slow , and "the delay broke into the natural rhythm of the discussion and therefore was unacceptable," says Ringle.

and

Apple’s new favorite child is not without its flaws. The virtual keyboard is a pain for composing anything beyond short notes. The nonexistent file system makes finding important documents difficult and sharing across applications nearly impossible. Finally, managing a large number of readings in PDF format becomes a major time-suck. Syncing PDFs via iTunes was found to be "needlessly complicated," emailing marked-up versions back to oneself was "prohibitively time-consuming," and even the cloud-based storage, Dropbox, "failed to work seamlessly with PDF reading/annotating applications."

Who knew? Playboy in braille.

So I suppose some do actually peruse Playboy for the articles.....

WSJ reports Borders is bankrupt

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Borders Group Inc. is in the final stages of preparing a bankruptcy filing, clinching a long fall for a company with humble beginnings that helped change the way Americans buy books but failed to keep pace with the digital transformation rocking every corner of the media landscape.

"Borders's finances crumbled amid declining interest in bricks-and-mortar booksellers, a broad cultural trend for which it offered no answers. The bookseller suffered a series of management gaffes, piled up unsustainable debts and failed to cultivate a meaningful presence on the Internet or in increasingly popular digital e-readers."

Full article is here

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Typography

Bibliodyssey has a splendid collection of vintage map typography from the Sanborn Insurance Company. Two examples are offered below and many more at the link.



Found at Coudal Partners

Vintage recipes from hell

The Vintage Cookbook Vault highlights recipes from an insane stash of books and pamphlets from the early 20th century onward. These recipes make Paula Deen look like a vegan....

The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator

The Malcolm Gladwell Book Generator


Found at Coudal Partners

Kurzundschön

FeedMe Design has produced the opening sequence for the shortfilm competition "kurzundschön" (Short & Nice). It is simply and staggeringly beautiful.

Found at Coudal Partners

"We Love Paintings": An amazing Tumblr stream...

Dozens and dozens in hi-res.

Photo essay: 15 of the world's most amazing libraries

14 more

Leda and the Swan (well....Monday IS valentine's day).

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower[20]
And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

—Leda and the Swan, William Butler Yeats

Reblogged from artemis dreaming

New John Le Carré editions...

British designer Stuart Bache has created wonderful covers for the latest editions of John Le Carré’s spy stories.Click to enlarge