The top 100 most searched for out-of-print books
via Pages & Proofs by Richard Davies
Our friends at BookFinder compile one of the most interesting lists in the book business – the top 100 most searched for out-of-print books in the United States.
Sadly, books fall out-of-print when publishers decide that there isn’t enough demand. That’s when the used book market becomes important for ensuring that these hard-to-find titles can still be found and bought.
The most recent list is diverse.
Madonna’s famous Sex (one of the book’s few images that we could publish is seen left) is top of the list as always and Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini – dubbed the world’s weirdest book – is also in the top 10.
There’s also a cookbook from actor and fine food connoisseur Vincent Price. There are many famous authors on the list, including Stephen King (twice), Nora Roberts, Ray Bradbury, Barbara Cartland, Carl Sagan, C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle.
There are also books from major artists like Salvador Dali and Cecil Beaton, and the autobiography of musician Johnny Cash.
A small number of these books are so scarce now that even AbeBooks booksellers do not have copies. In some cases, only a handful of copies are now available which means prices have become high.
See the full list here
===========================================
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Nelson Algren lived in brothels, lost everything gambling, and spent weeks in jail. His greatest offence? A refusal to compromise... more
===========================================
Is our solar system missing a planet?
via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
Possibly, according to some scientists who are trying to understand the early days of Sol and friends.
One way that researchers study events like the creation of the solar system is to model what might have happened using computer software. The basic idea works like this: We know a decent amount about the physical laws (like gravity) that govern the creation of planets and the formation of a solar system.
So scientists can take those laws, and program them into a virtual universe that also includes other real-world data ... like what we know about the make-up of the Sun and the planets orbiting it. Then, they recreate history. Then they do it again. Over and over and over, thousands of times, the scientists witness the creation of our solar system.
It doesn’t happen the same way each time. Just like you can get a very different loaf of bread out of multiple attempts and baking the same general recipe. But those recreations start to give us an idea of which scenarios were more likely to have happened, and why. If our solar system tends to form in one way and resist forming in another, we have a stronger basis for assuming that the former way was more likely to be what really happened.
That’s what you’re seeing in this study, which Charles Q. Choi writes about for Scientific American.
Computer models showing how our solar system formed suggested the planets once gravitationally slung one another across space, only settling into their current orbits over the course of billions of years. During more than 6,000 simulations of this planetary scattering phase, planetary scientist David Nesvorny at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., found that a solar system that began with four giant planets [as ours currently has] only had a 2.5 percent chance of leading to the orbits presently seen now. These systems would be too violent in their youth to end up resembling ours, most likely resulting in systems that have less than four giants over time, Nesvorny found. Instead, a model about 10 times more likely at matching our current solar system began with five giants, including a now lost world comparable in mass to Uranus and Neptune. This extra planet may have been an "ice giant" rich in icy matter just like Uranus and Neptune, Nesvorny explained.Read the rest
===========================================
The risks of visiting volcanoes
via Boing Boing by Maggie Koerth-Baker
In 1993, Stanley Williams survived a close-encounter with a volcano. A volcanologist, he was standing on the rim of Colombia’s Galeras volcano when it erupted with little warning. Six of his scientific colleagues and three tourists were killed. Williams fled down the mountain’s slope – until flying rocks and boulders broke both his legs. With a fractured skull, he managed to stay conscious enough to huddle behind some other large boulders and dodge flying debris until the eruption ended and his grad students rescued him.
Williams and the other scientists were there to study Galeras, and hopefully get a better idea of what signals predicted the onset of eruptions.
This is something we still don’t understand well.
While volcanologists have identified some signals – like distinctive patterns of small earthquakes – that increase the likelihood of an oncoming eruption, those signals aren’t foolproof predictions. There are still volcanoes like Galeras that give no warning. And volcanoes like Mt. St. Helens. In 2004, that volcano gave signals that it would erupt. And it did. Sort of. The Seattle Times described it as “two small burps and a lava flow”. Basically, the signals don’t always precede an eruption, and even when they do happen it doesn’t tell you much about how big any ensuing eruption will be.
And that presents an interesting question, writes Erik Klemetti at Wired’s Eruptions blog. How close to volcanoes should tourists really be? That’s a question with real-world applications. This year [2012], New Zealand’s White Island volcano has been ... rather grumbly. Even as tourist boats continued to ferry people over for a view of the crater.
Read the full story
Read Stanley Williams’ account of surviving the Galeras volcano
Photo by Michael Rogers, via GFDL and CC
===========================================
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Making Bach modern. No repeats, no pedal, no precedent: Glenn Gould’s “Goldberg Variations” is an argument for the superiority of recorded music... more
===========================================
Tower Bridge draws up to let a 50' rubber duck sail the Thames
via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow
Yesterday, Tower Bridge’s drawbridge was raised to allow a 50-foot-high yellow rubber duck to sail down the Thames. It was part of the launch of “Facebook Fundation, a bursary granting funds and rewards for daft ideas to encourage Brits to have more fun”.
Tower Bridge forced to open for 50 foot rubber duck [ITV] (via Making Light)
Image: thumbnail from "Tower Bridge opens for the giant duck" by Lewis Whyld/PA Wire
===========================================
c. 1955 : “Actual Business Letters”
via Retronaut by Chris Wild
Oh boy, the whole picture is just so old. A 33rpm vinyl record on something which looks similar to a Dansette, a proper typewriter, telephone with a dial not push buttons and the stereotypical secretary!
===========================================
Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Down and out in Italy. Spendthrift and broke, James Joyce turned to journalism, film, tweed, fireworks, and fending off creditors... more
===========================================
Online map shows where Blitz bombs hit London
via The National Archives | News
A new interactive map of London, devised by The University of Portsmouth in collaboration with The National Archives, shows the location of every German bomb that landed in London over the course of eight months during the Blitz of the Second World War.
Please take the word “London” in its broadest sense. I found the red mark on the map of the bomb that blew out the windows in our house in Sidcup!
And the map detail is superb.
===========================================
Riding the Rails: 1901
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
Circa 1901
“On the Lackawanna near Scranton, Pennsylvania”
8x10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company
View original post
No comments:
Post a Comment