Appalachian Prisoners need books

And the Appalachian Prison Book Project has lost it’s funding.

However, if you’d like to be part of “CONNECTING LITERACY, PRISON REFORM, AND VIOLENCE PREVENTION EFFORTS,” a trifeca if ever there was one, there’s two ways to do that:

Send them some books:

Appalachian Prison Book Project
PO BOX 601
MORGANTOWN WV 26507-0601

and/or

Send them some money.

It’s just that easy. Please pass this along to interested parties. Thanks.

(via GalleyCat)

Reposting Storylandia 4 contest with correct link

click on the image for more fabulous details

Sorry about that.

Fabulous prizes for Storylandia 4 contest

click on the image for more fabulous details

Not Hackenbush but still fun.

Gamers Unlock AIDS Protein

“In just three weeks, gamers deciphered the structure of a key protein in the development of AIDS that has stumped scientists for years. According to a study published Sunday in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, the findings could present a significant breakthrough for AIDS and HIV research.

“Using an online game called Foldit, players were able to predict the structure of a protein called retroviral protease, an enzyme that plays a critical role in the way HIV multiplies. Unlocking the build of the protein could theoretically aid scientists in developing drugs that would stop protease from spreading.”
Gamers Unlock Protein Mystery That Baffled AIDS Researchers For Years, by Leslie Horn, PCmag.com, September 19, 2011

Gamers and science, yes!

Paul Krugman is tired of trying to reason with you people

How amusing.

The Music Industry

Almost got away with it:

“She (Margaret Cone)’d been tipped off that an amendment to a pending bill — quietly inserted without debate — would reclassify under the nation’s copyright laws all sound recordings, like cassettes and CDs, as ‘work made for hire.’

“If true, that slight change would mean musicians would never again be able to own their recordings. Instead, record companies would become the sole legal owners of a record over its legally copyrightable life, currently 95 years.”

~snip~

“Then, ‘on a fluke,’ she went to the buried “definitions” section of that second bill and there she found this:

“‘(e) WORK MADE FOR HIRE-Section 101 of title 17, United State Code is amended in the definition relating to work for hire in paragraph (2) by inserting “as a sound recording.’”

~snip`

“Last November, acting at the RIAA’s request, Mitch Glazier, then chief counsel for Congress’ copyright subcommittee, inserted the “sound recording” amendment to an unrelated bill. (The bill in question, the Satellite Home Viewer Improvement Act, had been green-lighted for safe passage through Congress.) The change effectively made all new commercial cassettes and CDs — from Britney Spears to Slipknot, from Eminem to Andrea Bocelli — a new category qualifying as work for hire.”
Four Little Words, by Eric Boehlert, Salon, August 28, 2000 (via)

A blast from the past, but a cautionary tale for anyone how holds or plans to hold a copyright on their own work and would like to hold their own with the industry.

Hackenbush hits New York

Oh, shocking! Wapshott goes retail in NYC!

“The address has now been confirmed: Word Up will be at 4157 Broadway, at 175 Street, across the street from the United Palace Theater, on the same block as Malecon, diagonal from El Floridita, across the street from La Rosa, down the road from Manolo . . . my mouth is watering thinking of the month ahead.”
Address has been confirmed – please and thanks for spreading the word (up)!, WordUp blog, June 8, 2011

Hackenbush hits the Nook!

Dr. Hackenbush Gets a Job: ePub; Kindle; Nook.

eBooks might not be the answer

They might not even be the question.

“Other findings on student textbook reading habits discussed in the report were:

” – Students did most of the reading in fixed locations: 47 percent of reading was at home, 25 percent at school, 17 percent on a bus and 11 percent in a coffee shop or office.
” – The Kindle DX was more likely to replace students’ paper-based reading than their computer-based reading.
” – Of the students who continued to use the device, some read near a computer so they could look up references or do other tasks that were easier to do on a computer. Others tucked a sheet of paper into the case so they could write notes.
” – With paper, three quarters of students marked up texts as they read. This included highlighting key passages, underlining, drawing pictures and writing notes in margins.
” – A drawback of the Kindle DX was the difficulty of switching between reading techniques, such as skimming an article’s illustrations or references just before reading the complete text. Students frequently made such switches as they read course material.
” – The digital text also disrupted a technique called cognitive mapping, in which readers used physical cues, such as the location on the page and the position in the book to find a section of text or even to help retain and recall the information they had read.”
Kindle so-so for students, UW study concludes, by Brier Dudley, Seattle Times, May 2, 2011

The digital text also disrupted a technique called cognitive mapping, in which readers used physical cues, such as the location on the page and the position in the book to find a section of text or even to help retain and recall the information they had read.

I thought that merited repeating. Cognitive mapping. We’ll be back in the trees without cognitive mapping.

Did we originally learn aurally and then, with the advent of writing, visually? If so, I’m not sure ebooks are going to change much very fast. At least not in my lifetime. If I’m lucky.

One in 4 Americans read eBooks

One in 4 Americans read eBooks, Mediabistro, April 29, 2011

Too bad only 1 in 3 Americans still read books at all. Bitter? Moi?