Life inside a Water Bottle

QuickTime VR is usually used to display enormous spaces such as cathedrals or museums. However, it can also be used to show somewhat moreconstrained environments.

Life Inside a Water Bottle

A Serial Novel with style

I admit I'm a sucker for serialized novels.  Armistead Maupin, Dickens, hey even the Great Gatsby is being republished as a serial. 

Salon is currently running the SciFi flavored serial novel Themepunks by Cory Doctrow in their "Tech" section.   Lots of fun, as well as thought provoking.  Even if you do need to watch an ad to get your daily "Site Pass" to read it.

http://dir.salon.com/topics/cory_doctorow/  to see all of Cory's writings.

Rare Books online at the British Library

The original Alice in Wonderland (with the hand-drawn pencil illustrations!) has just been put online by the British Library. The scans are displayed using Flash, so that the reader can "turn the pages" as they go.

There are also beautiful examples of Arabic and Jewish Calligraphy, as well as one of Leonardo DaVinci's notebooks.

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html

IgNoble Prize winner

What??  You _must_ know of the IgNoble prizes, given each year by the publishers of the Annals of Improbable Research, self-described as "a magazine printed on genuine, old-fashioned paper."

http://www.improb.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html#ig2005

http://www.improb.com/airchives/paperair/index.htm

Their material comes from actual, published, scientific papers.  As they say, "we can't make this stuff up."

ACLU - Pizza

http://aclu.org/pizza/

The Lyttle Lytton Contest

Bulwer-Lytton too wordy for you? This contest has the same requirements (first sentence of hypothetical novel, funny, awful prose) but ALSO must be brief. 2004 and 2003 were banner years, IMHO.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; I know that's a contradiction but bear with me."

http://adamcadre.ac/lyttle.html

Are we happy yet?

Four books dancing around the question, why aren't people happy?

Happy?
Carol Tavris
15 June 2005

HAPPINESS
Lessons from a new science
Richard Layard
309pp. | Allen Lane. £17.99. 0 713 99769 9. US: Penguin Press. $25.95. | 1 594 20039 4

MAKING HAPPY PEOPLE
The nature of happiness and its origins in childhood
Paul Martin
306pp. | Fourth Estate. £15.99. | 0 00 712706 5

GOING SANE
Adam Phillips
245pp. | Hamish Hamilton. £14.99. 0 241 14209 1. US: Fourth Estate. | 0 007 15539 5



http://www.the-tls.co.uk/this_week/story.aspx?story_id=2111143&window_type=print