“More than 90% of American public libraries have amassed e-book collections you can read on your iPad, and often even on a Kindle. You don’t have to walk into a branch or risk an overdue fine. And they’re totally free.”
Tag: 08.14.14
E-Reading Is Convenient, But It’s Less Memorable (Literally)
“In most respects, there was no significant difference between the Kindle readers and the paper readers [in the study] But, the Kindle readers scored significantly lower on questions about when events in the story occurred. They also performed almost twice as poorly when asked to arrange 14 plot points in the correct sequence.” Says one of the researchers, “It’s interesting to us that the differences were both related to time and temporality – why is that?”
Do Broccoli Eaters Get More Out Of Life?
Of course we do! “People [in a recent study] who ate more fruits and vegetables over the 13-day period reported higher average levels of curiosity, creativity, and positive emotions, as well as engagement, meaning, and purpose.”
Misty Copeland May Get Her Own Biopic
New Line Cinema has purchased the option to adapt Copeland’s memoir, Life In Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina, into a feature film; producers and scriptwriters have already been selected. The Hollywood pitch: “The Blind Side set in the dance world.”
Email Is Still The Best Thing On The Internet
Some pundits, and Silicon valley types with cloud software to sell, keep arguing that email is an antiquated, dying technology. But no: “You can’t kill email! It’s the cockroach of the Internet, and I mean that as a compliment. This resilience is a good thing.” Alexis Madrigal explains why.
The Web’s Original Sin: The Serpent Fesses Up (And Says It’s Not Too Late To Repent)
“I have come to believe that advertising is the original sin of the web. The fallen state of our Internet is a direct, if unintentional, consequence of choosing advertising as the default model to support online content and services.” Ethan Zuckerman, who wrote the code for the very first pop-up ad, points out some downsides of the ad-based business model and argues that there’s still time to come to Jesus work out a better system.
Digitizing Warhol’s Films To Save Them
“For almost a decade beginning in the 1960s,” he used 16mm film “to record hundreds of reels, many of which are still little known even among scholars because of the fragility of the film and the scarcity of projectors to show them on.” Now MoMA and the Andy Warhol Museum are joining forces to fix that.
Amazon Vs. Hachette: What Would Orwell Really Think?
George Packer: “Amazon has its own corporate lexicon, its own uses of language. Warehouses are ‘fulfillment centers,’ algorithmic recommendations are ‘personalization.’ I won’t call it Orwellian, because that poor, much-abused term should be reserved for special occasions, like North Korea. But it’s a style conducive to cheerful deception, and Orwell would have seen straight through it.”
The Great Art Collections That The Likes Of Us Don’t Get To See
“Why do companies such as UBS bother with collecting expensive modern and contemporary art at all? What’s in it for them?” Alastair Sooke looks at the Swiss mega-banks’ art collection, among the biggest held by any business.
“Commando Squad”: Anthony Tommasini’s Fantasy Music Festival
The “Commando Squad” was Virgil Thomson’s American version of Russia’s “Mighty Five”, and it included himself (of course), Roger Sessions, Walter Piston, Roy Harris and (commander) Aaron Copland. The New York Times chief music critic dreams up a musical festival focusing on their lesser-known works.