Reading material for 10/01/12:

Some reading material from around the internet:

Why the wet dog shake gets mammals dry in no time.

Is Alzheimer’s Type 3 Diabetes?

11 things Wal-Mart has banned.

Five realizations that will help you write regularly.

How hiring really happens.

The rise of the “friendly” logo.

from here.

Why can’t we spell English words phonetically?

The 10 most amazing library laboratories.

An adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Tomb, as done in the style of Dr. Seuss.

75 biographies to read before you die.

Agatha Christie: “Why I Got fed up with Poirot.”

50 books to build your character.

from here.

The compact disc is 30 years old today.

They’re planning on remaking The Rocketeer and Videodrome.

Rian Johnson talks Looper and Breaking Bad.

David Byrne explains How Music Works in his new book.

Natalie Portman as Jackie Kennedy?

Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield will return for the sequel to The Amazing Spider-Man.

Could there be a Downton Abbey prequel?

via Steve McCurry.

Apparently the BMI test doesn’t accurately depict how prevalent obesity is.

Six mysteries that could be solved with time travel.

The man who owns the most land in America.

How to spot hidden problems in older homes.

Can you fire a pistol underwater?

9 of the world’s weirdest museums.

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Previous online reading material:

08/13/12.

08/06/12.

07/23/12.

07/17/12.

07/09/12.

Reading material for 02/20/12:

Some reading material from around the internet:

NASA unveils stunning models of future aircraft designs.

Take a ride in this absolutely terrifying elevator.

Tim Tebow asked to Military Ball by Louisiana airwoman.

The FBI might cut off the internet for millions of people on March 8th.

The image above is by celebrated illustrator Charles Santore.

Brand new Angry Birds game, Angry Birds: Space, to debut in March!

Target is not only extremely good at data mining, but they’re keeping an eye on you.

Man suffers heart attack at Heart Attack Grill!

Supreme Court Justice robbed by machete-wielding intruder.

Catch a glimpse of Google’s luxurious California HQ.

Apple considering a smaller tablet.

Also, Apple’s new operating system aims to knit its products together more closely.

The insidious evils of “Like” culture.

7 horrifying historical origins of famous corporate logos.

The future of high tech healthcare, and its challenges.

Reviewing Pinterest, the newest social media site.

The “Undue Weight” of Truth on Wikipedia.

Does anyone really care about online privacy?

How companies learn your secrets.

On this day in history:

In 1872 the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in New York city.

In 1933 the 21st Amendment, which will end Prohibition in the United States, is proposed by Congress.

In 1935 Caroline Mikkelson becomes the first woman to set foot on Antarctica.

In 1962, while aboard the Mercury spacecraft entitled Friendship 7, astronaut John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth.

In 1998 figure skater Tara Lipinski becomes the youngest individual gold medalist at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

In 2003 there’s an accident with the pyrotechnics display at a White Snake concert in a small club in West Warwick, Rhode Island and 100 people are killed and 200 more are seriously injured.

In 2009 the World Day of Social Justice is officially established and recognized each year. The goal of the World Day of Social Justice is to recognize the need to promote efforts to tackle issues such as poverty, exclusion, and unemployment all over the world.

Famous births: Rihanna in 1988, T. J. Slaughter in 1977, Brent Gretzky (Wayne’s little brother) in 1972, Kurt Cobain in 1967, Cindy Crawford in 1966, Anthony Stewart Head in 1954, Patty Hearst in 1954, Gordon Brown in 1951, Ivana Trump in 1949, Sandy Duncan in 1946, Mike Leigh in 1943, Sidney Poitier in 1927, Richard Matheson in 1926, Robert Altman in 1925, Gloria Vanderbilt in 1924, Ansel Adams in 1902.

Famous deaths: William Wallace Lincoln in 1862, Frederick Douglass in 1895, Max Schreck in 1936, Chester Nimitz in 1966, Dick York (the first Darrin Stephens on Bewitched) in 1992, Ferruccio Lamborghini in 1993, Gene Siskel in 1999, Sandra Dee in 2005, Hunter S. Thompson in 2005.

via Awesome People Reading.

The 20 most beautiful bookstores in the world.

Alan Moore sums up everything that is wrong with the entertainment industry.

A crossover between Doctor Who and Star Trek.

William Gibson and the way we understand cities.

Composite sketches of literary characters.

10 tips on writing from David Ogilvy.

Every Bart Simpson chalkboard quote ever.

Zora Neale Hurston’s love spells and rituals to get a man.

Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby adapted as an opera.

An essential postmodern reading list.

from here.

The cast of Game Of Thrones in normal clothes.

A supercut of television shows referencing other television shows.

Michael Bay will return to direct Transformers 4, which will be a reboot. Seriously.

Get ready for the Hannibal Lecter TV show.

Jon Hamm drops more hints about the new season of Mad Men.

10 things from the Hunger Games books that the movie(s) probably can’t pull off.

Billy Bob Thornton is making a road trip movie about his marriage to Angelina Jolie.

Gael Garcia Bernal is the Zorro of the post-apocalyptic future.

Author Kevin J. Anderson will novelize Rush’s new album.

Crystals may be possible in time as well as space.

Butterflies light the way to better thermal imaging.

The stupid things you do online (and how to fix them).

They know now at what time of day that you’re most likely to get an infection.

The inside story of climate scientists under siege.

Phonemes probably can’t reveal the ancient origins of language after all.

Do you think you could have passed Thomas Edison’s job interview test?

Cats as fonts.

Second graders take a field trip to a parking garage.

How to tie your shoes (Hint: you’ve been doing it wrong for a while now).

* * *

Previous online reading material:

02/13/12.

02/06/12.

01/30/12.

12/27/11.

12/19/11.

Author quotes: Burning books.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. once said, “We must be careful what we pretend to be,”  which is one of my favorite quotes of all time, but Vonnegut was a highly opinionated and prolific author and essayist, and he was always a good source for a good quote or a witty turn of phrase.

The other day I got into a conversation with a few patrons not just about the need for intellectual curiosity in people, especially in this day and age, but the need for constant access to the tools that could inspire and grow that curiosity in these modern times, and it reminded me of something Vonnegut had said a few years before his death (in 2007):

“While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And still on the subject of books: our daily news sources, newspapers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books do we learn what’s really going on.”

-from A Man Without A Country, his 2005 memoir/essay collection.

You can find an excerpt from the book over at The Guardian, which includes the portion the above text comes from. Much of this book, and in particular this excerpt, are very political with Vonnegut discussing his disappointment in the then-current political climate of the country. Whether you agree with Vonnegut’s politics there or not, you have to admire that there are some nuggets of common sense true for all people, and that he always maintained a strong humanistic outlook on life.

Also, on a side note, in the paragraph preceding the above quote Vonnegut references Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, his documentary about the September 11 attacks and everything after, and reminds us that the title of the documentary is a reference/parody of Ray Bradbury’s great, classic science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451. That novel refers to the fact that 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the combustion point, at which paper and the information on it will burn.

The gist of it is this: Not to toot our own horn (too much) but libraries curate and cultivate information, and with information comes intelligence, which is never a bad thing and always in short supply. The library is a resource that you should never let go to waste.

by Eddie Campbell, from here.

Elsewhere on the internet:

Vonnegut’s obituary in The New York Times.

15 things Vonnegut said better than anyone else ever has or will.

Venus On The Half-Shell by Philip José Farmer under the name “Kilgore Trout.”

Vonnegut’s advice for writers.

Vonnegut’s story diagrams.

“Harrison Bergeron,” Vonnegut’s classic short story.

An interview with Vonnegut in The Paris Review.

“2BR02B,” a 1962 short story that appeared in Vonnegut’s third collection, Bagombo Snuff Box.

“The Big Trip Up Yonder,” a short story that appeared in Vonnegut’s first two collections under different names.

The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library in Indianapolis.

Dave Eggers reviews Vonnegut’s first collection of unpublished fiction.

At the library we have quite a few books both by Vonnegut and about his life and work, including When Mortals Sleep, a posthumous release of previously unpublished short fiction by the author, as well as And So It Goes – Kurt Vonnegut: A Life, a new biography of the author by Charles J. Shields, and…

Vonnegut And Hemingway: Writers At War by Lawrence Broer, which draws interesting parallels between these two literary artists, who previously might have been only been coupled together by how vastly different they were. Both were born under the spectre of hereditary insanity, forged in wartime experiences, and used their writing as a means of therapy and survival. And how much more fitting to see them linked, since Hemingway was our quoted author last week? I hope you’ll come and check them out.