e-Bookvine http://e-bookvine.com The Universe of eReaders and eBooks Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:00:24 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 How America made its children crazyhttp://e-bookvine.com/how-america-made-its-children-crazy/ http://e-bookvine.com/how-america-made-its-children-crazy/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 11:00:00 +0000 eBookvine http://e-bookvine.com/?guid=5fdb6bb529650e78793ef0c47b520c30

Now we know that computers don’t help children learn and that drugs don’t help them concentrate, because the establishment mandarins who sold us the computers and drugs have conceded failure. In the January 29 New York Times, [1] a prominent professor of child development shows that attention-deficit-disorder drugs only harm the three million children who take them. One out of 10 American children have been diagnosed with so-called Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and most of them have been medicated. [2] 

Some months ago, the Times reported that test scores lagged in school districts that invested massively in digital education. [3] It does not seem to have occurred to the mandarins that computers cause attention deficit disorder. The brain is a machine, in the enlightened secular model, and so-called brain science teaches

Dilbert
mute

  

us to tweak its functioning with pharmaceuticals, or stimulate its development through digital approximations of intelligence. The grand result of a generation’s worth of brain-science application is a generation of schoolchildren who are disproportionately illiterate, innumerate, anxious, angry, and unhappy. 

Professor L Alan Sroufe’s debunking of ADD medication in the New York Times contains this admission:

”Back in the 1960s I, like most psychologists, believed that children with difficulty concentrating were suffering from a brain problem of genetic or otherwise inborn origin. Just as Type I diabetics need insulin to correct problems with their inborn biochemistry, these children were believed to require attention-deficit drugs to correct theirs. It turns out, however, that there is little to no evidence to support this theory.”

That is an astonishing statement: in the mainstream view of the academic psychologists, the brain is another pancreas, except that its function is to secrete thoughts as opposed to insulin. That is to say that the psychologists have a pancreas where their brains should have been. ………
http://atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NA31Dj01.html

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]]> http://e-bookvine.com/how-america-made-its-children-crazy/feed/ 0 Newspaper accounts of Titanic make riveting readinghttp://e-bookvine.com/newspaper-accounts-of-titanic-make-riveting-reading/ http://e-bookvine.com/newspaper-accounts-of-titanic-make-riveting-reading/#comments Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:39:00 +0000 eBookvine http://e-bookvine.com/?guid=2b71cfa2b5d93f72d2bbbde2bf122309

With the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic coming up in April, prepare to be inundated with books about the disaster.

With the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic coming up in April, prepare to be inundated with books about the disaster. One attractive offering comes from the British publisher Haynes, distributed in the United States by the Quayside Publishing Group of Minneapolis – “Titanic: The Unfolding Story as Told by the Daily Mirror,” by Scottish writer Richard Havers and English journalist Carol King.

This handsome coffee-table book tells the story in real time, with images and text from London’s Daily Mirror, beginning with a blurb on Sept. 16, 1908, announcing that the ship had been commissioned and ending in 2009 when a pocket watch salvaged from the wreck was put on display. …

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/138594649.html

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]]> http://e-bookvine.com/newspaper-accounts-of-titanic-make-riveting-reading/feed/ 0 Debate on Ebooks and the future of democracyhttp://e-bookvine.com/debate-on-ebooks-and-the-future-of-democracy/ http://e-bookvine.com/debate-on-ebooks-and-the-future-of-democracy/#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:01:00 +0000 eBookvine http://e-bookvine.com/?guid=7d82d5ee790aae1d57a86d6e7262b5fc

Do e-books threaten democracy? Best-selling novelist (and former Time Magazine cover subject) Jonathan Franzen made waves when he declared that electronic books – like those available on readers such as the Kindle, the Nook and the iPad – don’t have the value and staying power of good old-fashioned printed paper tomes.

“It’s going to be very hard to make the world work if there’s no permanence like that,” Franzen told a British newspaper. “That kind of radical contingency is not compatible with a system of justice or responsible self-government.”

Are e-books bad for society? Or are Franzen and his ilk just cranky?

JOEL MATHIS: Last year, I read “The Federalist Papers” for the first time. The book is a collection of 200-year-old newspaper essays from Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison – Founding Fathers all – explaining and defending the Constitution of the United States. I read almost none of it on paper.

Instead, I read the venerable document on these devices: a netbook, an iPhone, my iPad, a desktop computer and a Kindle. I took notes and made highlights, and many of the ideas I discovered and engaged in that book, on those devices, later became the basis for points I make in this weekly column.

According to Franzen, though, my experience is impossible. According to Franzen, I should’ve opted to use those devices to play “Angry Birds” instead………

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/oped/debate-ebooks-and-the-future-of-democracy-1.3500652

]]> http://e-bookvine.com/debate-on-ebooks-and-the-future-of-democracy/feed/ 0 Yale Daily News: The Book of Lifehttp://e-bookvine.com/yale-daily-news-the-book-of-life/ http://e-bookvine.com/yale-daily-news-the-book-of-life/#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:59:00 +0000 eBookvine http://e-bookvine.com/?guid=02b548fd48544adc7d5aa9c3fc643083

For a talk about “The Future of the Book,” the Historical Library within the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library – part Victorian study, part evil-Swiss-scientist chalet – with high wooden ceilings, dark velvet curtains and a balcony of dusty books, acts as a room of speaking corpses. In the evening of Monday, Jan. 30, John Collins “91, founder and artistic director of Elevator Repair Service Theater Ensemble, talked to Yale English and theater studies professor Marc Robinson DRA “92 about Collins” extensive experience with “Staging the Imaginative Act of Reading.” Named tongue-in-cheekly after a career placement questionnaire that suggested the menial job to Collins, Elevator Repair Service Theater Ensemble is one of New York’s most acclaimed experimental theater companies.

Collins may have produced his senior project in a “forgotten storage room [that felt] 110 degrees all the time beneath the dining hall” in Pierson’s basement pre-renovation, but since then he’s gone on to win numerous awards (including the TCG Peter Ziesler Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and a US Artists Foundation Fellowship) and was named best theater director by the Village Voice.

Even at Yale, Collins was already drawn to working in unusual spaces with nontheatrical and unconventional texts that were cleared of the playwright’s presuppositions for the stage.

The ensemble researches the complexities of a subject matter, incorporating the problems of the creative process along the way, to rehearse and produce an original piece of theater. This means that part of the joy of live theater, Collins says, comes from accepting that the play is never done. Even when his show is in production, Collins sits in the audience during virtually every performance. Which is sometimes very long. …

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/feb/03/the-book-of-life/

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]]> http://e-bookvine.com/yale-daily-news-the-book-of-life/feed/ 0 Random House Will Keep All Its E-Books In Libraries, With A Price Increasehttp://e-bookvine.com/random-house-will-keep-all-its-e-books-in-libraries-with-a-price-increase/ http://e-bookvine.com/random-house-will-keep-all-its-e-books-in-libraries-with-a-price-increase/#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:58:00 +0000 eBookvine http://e-bookvine.com/?guid=2e050fc3f660cf0d949049e06224d253

Random House is now the only big six publisher to allow unrestricted access to all of its e-books in libraries – and it said yesterday it will continue to do so, though it is raising prices.

Random House met with the American Library Association in New York on Tuesday. “Our commitment to libraries, as imperative to our momentum, if not to our existence as publishers, is greater than ever,” Random House spokesperson Stuart Applebaum told Library Journal blog The Digital Shift. …

http://feeds.paidcontent.org/~r/pcorg/~3/oACe6REWGeI/

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]]> http://e-bookvine.com/random-house-will-keep-all-its-e-books-in-libraries-with-a-price-increase/feed/ 0 Putting Your Amazon Kindle Fire to Workhttp://e-bookvine.com/putting-your-amazon-kindle-fire-to-work/ http://e-bookvine.com/putting-your-amazon-kindle-fire-to-work/#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:56:00 +0000 eBookvine http://e-bookvine.com/?guid=c77c1a3ef11a45f5fb008a14de77cbc3

Amazon hit a home run with the Kindle Fire. It has the combined benefits of being a product of Amazon, being a Kindle, and being an Android-ish tablet. Amazon has positioned the device as a consumer-oriented gadget – a sort of gateway to all things Amazon. But, its Android roots also give it the functionality and flexibility to get some real work done as well.

The line between business and consumer technology is a bit blurry these days. You can play Angry Birds, watch a Zak Galafianakis movie, or post to Facebook from a business-class desktop PC, and you can create a business presentation, check your email, or review a draft of a white paper on your tablet. Where exactly is the line that determines which side of the consumer / business fence a device sits on?

I am not suggesting that you ditch your laptop and just use the Kindle Fire as your primary mobile computing device (although I have argued in the past that you could conceivably get away with that with the iPad). However, if you are traveling and you only want to take one device, it is nice to know that the Kindle Fire is capable of meeting your needs at least in the short term………
http://feeds.pcworld.com/click.phdo?i=035d5c6a180df77ca48cac5b05d953a5

]]> http://e-bookvine.com/putting-your-amazon-kindle-fire-to-work/feed/ 0 Book recommendations visualized: a new site for Amazon book search resultshttp://e-bookvine.com/book-recommendations-visualized-a-new-site-for-amazon-book-search-results/ http://e-bookvine.com/book-recommendations-visualized-a-new-site-for-amazon-book-search-results/#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:54:00 +0000 eBookvine http://e-bookvine.com/?guid=7130de6062c9084d907d01b6243528b0

Let’s face it: we all love book recommendations. It’s evidenced by how often we use Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…” feature. It’s why you read this blog. If you also happen to be creative, or a visual learner, or just like looking at book covers or web diagrams, you should explore Yasiv, an Amazon books visualization and recommendation site. The brainchild of Andrei Kaschcha, it is still in its nascent stages, and its homemade feel is quite charming.

Users have the option to search a book and then watch, as if by magic, as that book’s cover materializes in the center of the screen. Blossoming lines will then radiate out from the cover, pointing to other magically appearing book covers, creating a webbed network of a number of related and recommended books. Here is an example of a search run for the popular novel, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. 

According to the website, “Yasiv is a viual recommendation service that helps people to choose the right product from Amazon’s catalog…it shows what people are buying with other products. A link between two products means that they are often bought together. By simply observing the network of products one may guess what has more popularity and what has less.” ……….
http://www.examiner.com/books-in-greensboro/book-recommendations-visualized-a-new-site-for-amazon-book-search-results

]]> http://e-bookvine.com/book-recommendations-visualized-a-new-site-for-amazon-book-search-results/feed/ 0 Book recommendations visualized: a new site for Amazon book search resultshttp://e-bookvine.com/book-recommendations-visualized-a-new-site-for-amazon-book-search-results/ http://e-bookvine.com/book-recommendations-visualized-a-new-site-for-amazon-book-search-results/#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:54:00 +0000 eBookvine http://e-bookvine.com/?guid=7130de6062c9084d907d01b6243528b0

Let’s face it: we all love book recommendations. It’s evidenced by how often we use Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…” feature. It’s why you read this blog. If you also happen to be creative, or a visual learner, or just like looking at book covers or web diagrams, you should explore Yasiv, an Amazon books visualization and recommendation site. The brainchild of Andrei Kaschcha, it is still in its nascent stages, and its homemade feel is quite charming.

Users have the option to search a book and then watch, as if by magic, as that book’s cover materializes in the center of the screen. Blossoming lines will then radiate out from the cover, pointing to other magically appearing book covers, creating a webbed network of a number of related and recommended books. Here is an example of a search run for the popular novel, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. 

According to the website, “Yasiv is a viual recommendation service that helps people to choose the right product from Amazon’s catalog…it shows what people are buying with other products. A link between two products means that they are often bought together. By simply observing the network of products one may guess what has more popularity and what has less.” ……….
http://www.examiner.com/books-in-greensboro/book-recommendations-visualized-a-new-site-for-amazon-book-search-results

]]> http://e-bookvine.com/book-recommendations-visualized-a-new-site-for-amazon-book-search-results/feed/ 0 Guardian Review – Keynes – Hayek by Nicholas Wapshotthttp://e-bookvine.com/guardian-review-keynes-hayek-by-nicholas-wapshott-2/ http://e-bookvine.com/guardian-review-keynes-hayek-by-nicholas-wapshott-2/#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:52:00 +0000 eBookvine http://e-bookvine.com/?guid=86ed5fc4a8b993273cb2d057090915d7

The ideological struggle at the heart of our economic crisis 

In 1949 a famous free-market economist made a significant decision. He knew that in Arkansas the state laws made divorce easy – and cheap. He was married to a woman whom he acknowledged had been “a very good wife” for more than 20 years, and with whom he’d had two children. But his real love, previously married herself, had told him that she was now free to remarry. So the economist got a job at the University of Arkansas and, once resident, also got a divorce, quickly and efficiently, all at a very reasonable price.

The episode shows a certain consistency in Friedrich Hayek’s actions at this juncture of his long career. Many former friends, however, took the view that his behaviour was deplorable. As moral conservatives, they were shocked, though perhaps they should have remembered Hayek’s frequent protestations that he was not himself a conservative but an old-fashioned liberal. Such cross-cutting standards of judgment are still on display today, not least in the United States. Glenn Beck has rediscovered Hayek as a hero, but the great prophetess of libertarianism, Ayn Rand, privately scourged him as a “total, complete, vicious bastard”…….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/feb/03/keynes-hayek-nicholas-wapshott-review

]]> http://e-bookvine.com/guardian-review-keynes-hayek-by-nicholas-wapshott-2/feed/ 0 Guardian Review – Keynes – Hayek by Nicholas Wapshotthttp://e-bookvine.com/guardian-review-keynes-hayek-by-nicholas-wapshott/ http://e-bookvine.com/guardian-review-keynes-hayek-by-nicholas-wapshott/#comments Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:52:00 +0000 eBookvine http://e-bookvine.com/?guid=86ed5fc4a8b993273cb2d057090915d7

The ideological struggle at the heart of our economic crisis 

In 1949 a famous free-market economist made a significant decision. He knew that in Arkansas the state laws made divorce easy – and cheap. He was married to a woman whom he acknowledged had been “a very good wife” for more than 20 years, and with whom he’d had two children. But his real love, previously married herself, had told him that she was now free to remarry. So the economist got a job at the University of Arkansas and, once resident, also got a divorce, quickly and efficiently, all at a very reasonable price.

The episode shows a certain consistency in Friedrich Hayek’s actions at this juncture of his long career. Many former friends, however, took the view that his behaviour was deplorable. As moral conservatives, they were shocked, though perhaps they should have remembered Hayek’s frequent protestations that he was not himself a conservative but an old-fashioned liberal. Such cross-cutting standards of judgment are still on display today, not least in the United States. Glenn Beck has rediscovered Hayek as a hero, but the great prophetess of libertarianism, Ayn Rand, privately scourged him as a “total, complete, vicious bastard”…….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/feb/03/keynes-hayek-nicholas-wapshott-review

]]> http://e-bookvine.com/guardian-review-keynes-hayek-by-nicholas-wapshott/feed/ 0