Book Cover Archive
Dec 11, 2009 Art, General, Image based
Just because you don’t judge a book by its cover doesn’t mean you can’t appreciate them. Here’s a massive archive of over 1000 book covers for you to enjoy.
Intel’s E-Book Reader For The Blind Is Awesome, But Will Publishers Accuse It Of Stealing?
Dec 10, 2009 Science and Technology
Intel threw its hat into the e-reader ring today with the release of the Intel Reader–which, unlike any other reader, is built specifically for the blind. With an onboard camera, Intel’s device can convert text from any page photographed by a user into audio, which is read aloud through headphones. Which will surely upset someone, somewhere.
The Intel reader is designed for the 55 million people in the U.S. alone that suffer from some kind of vision-related ailment that impairs their reading. And on top of the photo text recognition feature, a separate content capture station can convert large amounts of text, even an entire book, into audio for easier consumption.
And therein lies the snag: publishing companies have expressed distaste in the past for any device that takes copyrighted printed word and converts it into audio–see the recent dispute over Kindle 2’s ability to read its books aloud, which was intended for use by the blind.
Full article at PopSci
Fastest Reader In The World?
Dec 8, 2009 General
There are plenty of people out there who would like to improve their reading speed, and for those of you into superfast reading a quick Google search will turn up any number of speed-reading courses of no doubt variable quality. There’s more than one speed-reading method out there, as Wikipedia outlines, and the current world champion is Anne Jones, who set a new record by reading the final Harry Potter book in 47 minutes. If you think you can do better than that, there’s even a competitive side to it – according to the World Speed Reading Council, it’s one of five Learning Mind Sports showcased regularly by the international Festival of the Mind.
What do you think – useful skill, or largely a bit of a gimmick?
Breaking The Spell: Religion As A Natural Phenomenon
Dec 6, 2009 Philosophy & Thinking, Religion and Ethics
In Breaking The Spell, Daniel Dennett argues for taking a rational, objective view of religious belief and behaviour in light of discoveries in neuroscience, evolutionary theory and other advancements in human understanding. Beginning with a discussion of the taboo of treating religion as a natural occurrence and examining it scientifically, the book goes on to do just that, and plead for the reader to do the same. I found it lacks the sometimes-harsh tone of Dawkins and Hitchens, and is aimed at believers as well as atheists, making it hard to accuse Dennett of preaching to the choir.
Summary: In his characteristically provocative fashion, Dennett, author of Darwin’s Dangerous Idea and director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, calls for a scientific, rational examination of religion that will lead us to understand what purpose religion serves in our culture. Much like E.O. Wilson (In Search of Nature), Robert Wright (The Moral Animal), and Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene), Dennett explores religion as a cultural phenomenon governed by the processes of evolution and natural selection. Religion survives because it has some kind of beneficial role in human life, yet Dennett argues that it has also played a maleficent role.
Daniel Dennett: Breaking The Spell: Religion As A Natural Phenomenon
Books Bound In Human Skin; Lampshade Myth?
Dec 5, 2009 Unusual Releases
On a daytrip to Providence during fly-out week, I stumbled across an unusual and startling artifact on display at Brown University’s John Hay Library – an anatomy book bound in human skin. While such specimens are unusual, they are not as rare as you might think. Many older libraries and rare book collectors, including several at Harvard and in the Boston area, have an almost-literal skeleton in the closet: anthropodermic bibliopegy, the technical term for books bound in human skin.
Full article at Harvard Law Record
And interestingly enough, a book bound in human skin was exhibited at a Boston book fair just a few weeks ago, according to the New England News.
Your Brain On Books
Dec 4, 2009 Science and Technology
Stanislas Dehaene holds the chair of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at the Collège de France, and he is also the director of the INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit at NeuroSpin, France’s most advanced neuroimaging research center. He is best known for his research into the brain basis of numbers, popularized in his book, “The Number Sense.” In his new book, “Reading in the Brain,” he describes his quest to understand an astounding feat that most of us take for granted: translating marks on a page (or a screen) into language. He answered questions recently from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook.
Full article at Scientific American
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion – Free Download
Dec 4, 2009 History, Philosophy & Thinking, Religion and Ethics, Skeptical books
The Scottish Enlightenment was the dawn of a new way of thinking – rationalism, and the rejection of reasonless authority. Intellectuals were gathering in Edinburgh to discuss the discoveries of Newton, Copernicus and Bacon, and were churning out treatises and essays on philosophy, economics and political science at a breathtaking rate. Right in the middle of this was David Hume.
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion consists of a debate between three characters – Cleanthes, Philo and Demea – who between them hash out some of the conflicts between rational thought and religious belief. Hume does not challenge the idea of a god as such, and this is not an atheist treatise, but he intelligently questions the assumptions of the time about such a being’s omnipotence and morality. He also presents arguments against the apparent self-evidence of intelligent design, a debate that still rages on over two centuries later.
The very idea of looking at, and questioning, the idea of god through the lens of rationality is something that many of us take for granted, and it can be hard to remember that it was once a novel concept. It’s worth picking up this book just to be reminded of that.
Free download from Librivox
The Terrifying Effects of Reading
Dec 3, 2009 Bad Books, Comedy, History
The Guardian has an article on the dangers of reading, according to 18th Century physician Samuel Auguste André David Tissot – normally a massive opponent of masturbation, in Diseases Incidental to Literary and Sedentary Persons, with Proper Rules for Preventing Their Fatal Consequences, and Instructions for Their Cure, he outlined some of the alleged unfortunate effects that reading too much can have on individuals:
“[Philosopher Nicolas] Malebranche was seized with dreadful palpitations with reading Descartes’s Man; and there is still living in Paris a professor of rhetoric who fainted away whilst he was perusing some of the sublime passages of Homer.”
If you’ve experienced any such effects after picking up some of the volumes recommended in this blog, feel free to let us know, but please remember we can’t be held liable for reading-induced faints or palpitations.
Full article over at the Guardian.
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: or The Murder at Road Hill House
Dec 3, 2009 Biography, History, Specialist Subjects
I’m not really a fan of true crime. I’m never really attracted to apparently thrilling accounts of gruesome murders, and I don’t usually have a burning desire to know whodunnit – in fact, I often feel that true crime stories lack a certain sense of humanity. That being said, this book completely fascinated me and turned those expectations upside down. Kate Summerscale focusses on the rather nasty murder of a middle-class Victorian child, and in doing so, paints a very vivid picture of Victorian family life, the birth and development of the police force, and the life of a detective. Weaved into the story are tidbits about the origins of detective fiction and its terminology, the lifestyle of a nun, court proceedings and even a bit of photography. It’s very engaging, despite the gory murder at the centre of the book.
