Poems based on Google fill-in.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Monday, November 12, 2012
The Top 10 Cities in Literature
The 10 cities that have received the finest treatment in literature, and the books to read for each, include... Care of Publisher's Weekly.
Why You Learn More Effectively by Writing Than Typing
The act of writing helps you clarify your thoughts, remember things better, and reach your goals more surely.
From a piece on Lifehacker...
Patrick E. McLean's defense of writing longhand is a poetic dissertation on the subject; words can rush out in their raw, feral state when the pen is your tool. Technology, meanwhile, can be too distracting and distancing.
Maybe you're on the other side of the fence, though, and think all this just a lot of pure romanticism: People may feel more comfortable and productive with pen and paper because that's what they've used most of their lives (and what we as a species have used for centuries), but some like typing more and can do it more quickly. Certainly, more of us are becoming fast typists by necessity and the art of handwriting is deteriorating.
A couple of studies, though, substantiate why the physical act of writing really does boost learning and goal achievement.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Note-Taking’s Past, Deciphered Today
The New York Times was taking notes at a note taking conference.
From the story...
“I thought I’d take my notes in a new way today,” said Judith Davidson,
an associate professor of education at the University of Massachusetts,
Lowell, who was using Penultimate software and a stylus to inscribe
cursive notes onto her iPad — when she wasn’t filling every bit of
blank space with colorful abstract doodles, that is.
“I’m a felter, so sometimes I slip into thinking about felting,” she
explained. “There are all these other things that go on in your head
when you take notes.”
The far-flung things that go on in scholars’ heads when they think about
notes became clear at the daylong gathering. Presentations touched on
talking points scribbled on Sarah Palin’s hand during a speech, fliers
stapled to telephone poles and Twitter posts about the conference itself
that were read from the stage all day (the event was live-streamed),
many of which expressed anxieties about listeners’ own note-taking
abilities.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
What Does the Future Hold for Printed Books?
That's the question recently posed in the New Criterion.
From the piece...
For books, whose disappearance the digitization of La lyre exileé seemed to presage, have played an immense part in my life. It would be vain to suggest that I valued them only for their content, as a rationalist might say that one ought; I valued them as physical objects and have accumulated thousands of them. I am not a bibliophile in the true sense, that is to say someone who finds excitement in a misprint on page 278 which proves that the book, which he might or might not ever read, is a true first edition. Nor am I a bibliomaniac in the true sense, the kind of person who will eventually be found lying dead under a pile of books that he has incontinently or indiscriminately collected because of some psychological compulsion to accumulate. No, I am something in between the two (as a physician put it when I was a student, as he tried to explain to a patient that he had myeloma, which was neither cancer nor leukaemia, “but something in between the two.”) I prefer a good edition, physically as well as literarily speaking, to a bad one; I buy more books than I read, though always with the intention of reading them; I am not an aficionado of rarity for rarity’s sake, though I have some rare things, upon which the eye of the avaricious bookseller called in by my relict will immediately alight as he offers her yardage, $5 a yard of books.
For the moment, however, I derive a certain comfort from looking over, and being surrounded by, my laden shelves.
In Praise of the Hashtag
The New York Times waxes eloquent.
From the story...
In the early days, hashtags were primarily functional — a way of
categorizing tweets by topic so that members of the Twittersphere could
follow conversations of interest to them by searching for a list of
similarly tagged tweets. The first hashtag, proposed by the user Chris
Messina, was intended to collate conversations about the tech conference
BarCamp, so the hashtag was #barcamp. Other tags in the early days
served as straightforward metadata, directing people to tweets about
news, events and user interests: #sandiegofires, #roseparade, #education
and so on.
Over time, though, the hashtag has evolved into something else — a form
that allows for humor, darkness, wordplay and, yes, even poetry. During
this same period, Twitter as a corporation recognized the power of the
hashtag, which has now become a part of the site’s design, lingo and
sales pitch to advertisers. Your particular hashtag, for example, can
let the whole world know who’s talking about the release of #Halo4.
As a result, we’ve arrived at a strange moment for the hashtag. The
people at Twitter are fond of saying that the hashtag is the new URL —
and it’s true that you’re just as likely to see the former as the latter
these days on-screen at the end of a movie trailer.
Yet the rise of the hashtag’s commercial possibilities shouldn’t lead us
to overlook what is truly remarkable about it. This bit of utilitarian
Web ephemera, invented with functionality squarely in mind, has
blossomed into a marvelous and underappreciated literary device.
Friday, November 09, 2012
200 Years of the Brothers Grimm
On December 20, 1812, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm published a book called Children's and Household Tales (Kinder und Hausmärchen in German) and helped popularize one of the most enduring aspects of Western popular culture – the fairy tale.
From a piece on AbeBooks...
The Brothers Grimm did not originate the stories. They were scholarly researchers and linguists who selected the stories from various dialects and regions, and then published them as a collection.
The Grimms collected folktales for many years before becoming a publishing phenomenon. That historic first volume of tales contained 86 stories and the second volume, published in 1814, had 70 stories.
Many of those tales had been handed down in the oral tradition but some had already been published. Those early volumes pulled no punches. There was often something very nasty in the woods and villains were punished with brutal violence. The toning down process began soon after and continues to the present day with the likes of Disney and the hundreds of children’s book publishers who reprint the stories each year.
Thursday, November 08, 2012
9 of the Most Beatiful Words in the English Language
The list (though I might have to disagree since my favorite word, sequoia, is not listed), care of Huffington Post.
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