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An assortment of spiffo stuff from the handouts at the National Book Festival:
Internet Archive Bookmobile Imagine Project Gutenberg with a print-on-demand service. The IAB drives around and makes low-cost books. Information at the link on what it is, where it goes, and how to set one up.
National Book Bank A group dedicated to promoting literacy by giving low-income children their first book. Needs volunteers, especially now that they are also trying to provide books to Katrina evacuees.
Small Press Book Fair They're advertising a fair in NYC December 3-4, but not giving any information on the website yet.
Odd random book fact: Just as Melville wrote Moby Dick after hearing about the sinking of The Essex, Shakespeare seems to have written The Tempest after hearing about the wreck of the Sea Venture.
Odd random science fact: Dr. Richard Lenski of Michigan State University has been doing evolutionary research on escherichia coli bacteria, following the bacteria over hundreds of thousands of generations, and testing that it has, yes, evolved. Taken from the article by By Rick Weiss and David Brown:
Richard E. Lenski, a biologist at Michigan State University, has been following 12 cultures of the bacterium Escherichia coli since 1988, comprising more than 25,000 generations. All 12 cultures were genetically identical at the start. For years he gave each the same daily stress: six hours of food (glucose) and 18 hours of starvation. All 12 strains adapted to this by becoming faster consumers of glucose and developing bigger cell size than their 1988 "parents." When Lenski and his colleagues examined each strain's genes, they found that the strains had not acquired the same mutations. Instead, there was some variety in the happy accidents that had allowed each culture to survive. And when the 12 strains were then subjected to a different stress -- a new food source -- they did not fare equally well. In some, the changes from the first round of adaptation stood in the way of adaptation to the new conditions. The 12 strains had started to diverge, taking the first evolutionary steps that might eventually make them different species -- just as Darwin and Wallace predicted.
Science is cool.
ETA: No resolutions post this month, as I rather embarassingly have nothing I can check off. And yet, it's been a busy month!
And also, not sure how long I'm staying, as I think I'm not just tired from running around but have actually been actively getting sick for a while now... those mysterious "ah, it's just hot" flashes and "ah, I just didn't get enough sleep" headache have been matched with a sore throat that isn't shaking loose and general blah-ness...
Internet Archive Bookmobile Imagine Project Gutenberg with a print-on-demand service. The IAB drives around and makes low-cost books. Information at the link on what it is, where it goes, and how to set one up.
National Book Bank A group dedicated to promoting literacy by giving low-income children their first book. Needs volunteers, especially now that they are also trying to provide books to Katrina evacuees.
Small Press Book Fair They're advertising a fair in NYC December 3-4, but not giving any information on the website yet.
Odd random book fact: Just as Melville wrote Moby Dick after hearing about the sinking of The Essex, Shakespeare seems to have written The Tempest after hearing about the wreck of the Sea Venture.
Odd random science fact: Dr. Richard Lenski of Michigan State University has been doing evolutionary research on escherichia coli bacteria, following the bacteria over hundreds of thousands of generations, and testing that it has, yes, evolved. Taken from the article by By Rick Weiss and David Brown:
Richard E. Lenski, a biologist at Michigan State University, has been following 12 cultures of the bacterium Escherichia coli since 1988, comprising more than 25,000 generations. All 12 cultures were genetically identical at the start. For years he gave each the same daily stress: six hours of food (glucose) and 18 hours of starvation. All 12 strains adapted to this by becoming faster consumers of glucose and developing bigger cell size than their 1988 "parents." When Lenski and his colleagues examined each strain's genes, they found that the strains had not acquired the same mutations. Instead, there was some variety in the happy accidents that had allowed each culture to survive. And when the 12 strains were then subjected to a different stress -- a new food source -- they did not fare equally well. In some, the changes from the first round of adaptation stood in the way of adaptation to the new conditions. The 12 strains had started to diverge, taking the first evolutionary steps that might eventually make them different species -- just as Darwin and Wallace predicted.
Science is cool.
ETA: No resolutions post this month, as I rather embarassingly have nothing I can check off. And yet, it's been a busy month!
And also, not sure how long I'm staying, as I think I'm not just tired from running around but have actually been actively getting sick for a while now... those mysterious "ah, it's just hot" flashes and "ah, I just didn't get enough sleep" headache have been matched with a sore throat that isn't shaking loose and general blah-ness...
