Nature’s so terribly good. Don’t you think so, Mr. Stanhope?”
Little Things
For me, microbiology always communicates a sense of secret revelation – it is so intimate, our very flesh & blood, and yet so intricate and strange. What a wonder to be able to see some small portion of the invisible entities that underlie our physical life!
The Infinite Book: The Plastic Logic Reader (and the Real Nature of Books)
A book is essentially whole, unitary — a little world of human thought, word, & spirit, chosen, shaped, and bound within its covers. Books are bundles; a book is what is bound together. For what makes a book more than it’s binding?
Gutenberg’s PC: The Espresso Book Machine
The Espresso Book Machine brings the flexibility and ubiquity of digital media to the old medium of printed paper books, extending the transformation that Gutenberg’s press began, and putting the final say on publishing a book firmly in the hands of the authors and readers. So what will happen when everybody has one of these?

Shiny new software…
Snow outside, snow on Matt’s blog, WordPress 2.7 (with a snazzy redesign and full support for child themes!), and Firefox 3.1 Beta 2. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…
Does Your Book Deserve My Vote?
Kids react to books much as they react to their favorite candidates: they like them because everyone else does, adding titles to their favorites list even when they haven’t read them. Voting for a Book, part of the Youth Radio series on NPR.
There’s Something Happening Here…
Nicholas Carr says, This is your brain online. You’ve been warned. Now go forth and read.
Civility on the Web (or, If you talk, be polite)
The New York Times explores calls for a Code of Conduct (like this from Jimmy Wales, or this from Tim O’Riley) on the web, as well as the motivations and secret lives of the Trolls Among Us; and Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, explains why A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy.
Male and Female: Equal After All
Cecilia Ford’s investigations into the power of conversation for her new book, Women Speaking Up: Getting and Using Turns in Workplace Meetings, are reviewed here: Researcher finds that women are speaking up; and Janet Hyde, author of Half the Human Experience, has published research that finds no gender differences in math performance.
The Library Has Landed! Phoenix Takes Books to Mars
Human interactions with the Red Planet have long been a blend of wonder, science, imagination, fear, longing & engineering. In honor of this interplay, The Planetary Society has placed a DVD among the scientific instruments on board the Phoenix Lander that touched down on the Martian south pole this last memorial day. And it carries books.