Thist Just Inbox: Infographic Posters from Visual Aid

Visual Aid (like The MacMillan Visual Dictionary’s kid brother) is a series of books containing loads of information that must be visualized to be understood. For example: the space race chronology, human anatomy, comparative sizes of spacecraft, swimming strokes and the like. Now, after the release of their 2nd book, Visual Aid: Stuff You’ve Forgotten, Things You Never Thought You Knew, and Lessons You Didn’t Quite Get Around to Learning, they’ve released all their graphics in poster form.

The posters are printed on 190gsm silk paper and range widely in size, from A4 to 60×40. Each one is presented exactly as it is in the book, but they take special printing requests like changing aspect ratios, switching to black and white, or swapping the background color.

Very cool and perfect for the design office, classroom, or home. Browse and buy here.

Follow the link for more samples - http://www.core77.com/blog/news/thist_just_inbox_infographic_posters_from_visual_aid_15001.asp

How SuperFreakonomics Gets Climate Engineering Wrong

The new book Superfreakonomics neglects the real dangers of geoengineering.

By Kevin Bullis

The sequel to Freakonomics, the best-selling book that uses economics to uncover surprising facts about the world, came out today. Superfreakonomics, cowritten by Steven Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, and Stephen Dubner, a journalist, is an attempt to outdo the original, and it does this in part by taking on a huge, controversial, and very important topic–climate change.

Unfortunately, the authors’ solution to climate change, which they say is simple, cheap, and safe, is actually dangerous–a cure that could be worse than the disease. (This part of the book has already generated plenty of debate online.)

The authors set up their chapter on climate change as a challenge to global-warming orthodoxy–saying that “the movement to stop global warming has taken on the feel of a religion,” putting climate-change claims in the context of past errors by scientists, and suggesting that climate models are less reliable than risk models for financial institutions that failed in the recent waves of bank closures.

So it’s a little disorienting to discover that the chapter actually argues for the development of radical solutions to global warming. It argues that not enough has been done to curb greenhouse gas emissions and warns of catastrophic events like the melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

The solution that Levitt and Dubner put forward is geoengineering. More specifically, they advocate a scheme that would inject particles into the upper atmosphere to block a small percentage of incoming sunlight and so cool the earth–an idea that’s been around since at least the 1970s. The scheme would mimic the action of big volcanic eruptions, which also inject particles into the stratosphere and have been shown to have a cooling effect.

Historically, Levitt and Dubner say, the main problem with this idea was that proposals for injecting the particles have been too expensive. They add that there might be some sort of vague environmental concerns, but label them as religious objections, not practical, science-based ones. The “moralism and angst” of these environmentalists make it hard for them to see what the authors call a “fiendishly simple” and “startlingly cheap” solution to global warming. They then describe a scheme for delivering sulfur dioxide (which will form sulfate particles) to the stratosphere and declare that it would cost $250 million for the first year and $100 million thereafter, compared to $1.2 trillion a year for reducing carbon emissions. A bargain.

Other than dismissing the potential for damage to the ozone layer, the authors don’t talk about the real environmental concerns that come with sulfate injection to the stratosphere. But there are serious and specific concerns.

Scientists studying the impact of a fairly recent, large volcanic eruption–the Mount Pinatubo explosion in the Philippines in 1991–have found that not only did the layer of sulfates it produced cool the earth, it also led to a “huge change in precipitation,” says Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. By decreasing direct sunlight, the event cut down on evaporation, leading to the “lowest rainfall amount over land since 1948,” the earliest year that good records are available, says Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO. The change in precipitation caused severe droughts that damaged crops and limited drinking water, he says. Schmidt says the potential for drought must be considered before any geoengineering is done. “What good does it do to save the Arctic if you cause the failure of the Indian monsoon on a regular basis?” he says. “That’s billions of people.”

The change in precipitation isn’t the only known adverse affect. Shading the earth does nothing about the levels of carbon dioxide in the air. This has some benefits–plants grow better with more carbon dioxide–but it also makes the ocean more acidic, which can lead to the destruction of coral reefs around the world and prevents some shellfish and crustaceans from developing, cutting off an important source of food for fish and whales, and ultimately destroying important food sources for humans.

And then there are potential unanticipated consequences. Volcanoes inject sulfates into the stratosphere sporadically. No one knows what will happen if the sulfates become a permanent part of the stratosphere. It could very well be that major problems won’t become obvious until many years or decades into a sulfate injection project. Levitt and Dubner argue that we could simply stop if problems arise. But this could be disastrous. All of the warming that’s been prevented by the sulfates over the years would happen suddenly, far too fast for people to adapt.

If nothing is done to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the sulfate injection scheme will have to be kept up year after year, potentially for well over a hundred years, given the lifetime of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As concentrations of the gases mount, ever more sulfate will be needed to offset the warming effect, increasing costs. And the dangers of stopping the program–due to war or economic hardship or a shift in the political winds–would mount. The same holds true for another scheme the authors mention–cloud whitening, an approach that may not work and that could also lead to severely reduced precipitation over land. It is not, as they suggest, “geoengineering that the greenest green could love.”

Geoengineering by shading the earth is simply not an alternative to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. In some extreme case–the impending collapse of major ice sheets, or the realization that the world is warming far faster than anticipated–it might be used to buy a little time. But even this is a risky proposition, not just because of the environmental concerns, but because of political ones, since some countries would be harmed more than others. The authors point out–in passing–that one can “imagine the wars that might break out over who controls the dials,” that is, who selects how much the earth should be cooled. Oddly, they don’t seem to consider this a serious objection to geoengineering.

But although the authors may be wrong in failing to point out the significant hazards of shading the earth (let alone some annoying side effects, such as obscuring the view from ground telescopes and reducing the power output from some solar power systems), they may be right that geoengineering may prove necessary. They point out that changing people’s behavior is notoriously difficult, and that the uncertainty of climate predictions makes it particularly hard to set up and enforce government policies, particularly those that require international agreements. For poor countries, the uncertain cost of climate change may seem small compared to the cost of forgoing cheap electricity, at least until cheap carbon sequestration or renewable energy is available.

Donald Johnston, the former secretary general for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), has said that political realities may make strong international emissions controls impossible: “I foresee a situation about 10 years from now where the world will be warming, the new targets for greenhouse gases set [at the December 2009 United Nations climate change meeting] in Copenhagen will be ignored by many big emitters as they have in the past, and desperation will force the world to consider reducing the penetration of the sun’s rays through geoengineering.”

If we reach that point, we’d better have a clear idea what geoengineering might entail, so we can choose the best methods and prepare for the inevitable bad side effects. That means research must be funded to create ever more sophisticated computer models of geoengineering and to run some small- and perhaps even large-scale experiments. Also, governments need to start talking about geoengineering policy. How do you decide–and who decides–how much to cool the earth? How do you decide how to reimburse people who suffer from negative side effects? How will lawsuits be handled? What’s to be done if a country decides to undertake geoengineering on its own?

This research and planning should be accompanied by continued efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, eventually, to start pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. The goal should be to shade the earth for as short a time as possible–or not at all. The only way to drive these changes is to be as clear as possible about the dangers of both global warming and geoengineering. That’s going to be a lot harder with Levitt and Dubner making geoengineering sound like a panacea.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/energy/24274/

Walmart declares war on Amazon, slashes book prices — again

By Sam Gustin

It’s a retailing clash of the titans: Brick-and-mortar giant Walmart (WMT) is going head-to-head with online retailer Amazon (AMZN) in a battle over prices for some of the hottest book titles this holiday season.

The shooting started Thursday when Walmart announced it would sell 10 hot new book releases — including Under the Dome by Stephen King, Going Rogue: An American Life by Sarah Palin, I, Alex Cross by James Patterson, and Ford County: Stories by John Grisham — for just $10 through Walmart.com.

Amazon quickly responded, matching Walmart’s ten-spot price — only to see the big-box behemoth strike back, slashing its prices to $9.

Walmart executives have been trying to position Walmart.com as a premier retail destination online, but have had a hard time surpassing Amazon’s lead. “This price war comes down to who is going to be the Walmart of the web,” says Broadpoint AMTech internet analyst Ben Schachter. “Is it going to be Amazon? Or is it going to be Walmart.com? This is a battle that is bubbling over now, but will continue for the next five or 10 years.”

While Walmart’s annual brick-and-mortar revenue of $400 billion dwarfs Amazon’s $20 billion, Amazon still has a big lead in online sales. “So far, Amazon has done a phenomenal job on the Web, and Walmart has not,” Schachter says. “If you’ve been betting against Amazon, you’ve been losing.”

Yet a price war on books could prove detrimental to both retailers. Walmart and Amazon “are eating the margins here,” Schachter says.

The Wall Street Journal sounds a note of alarm, saying Walmart’s promotion “may ultimately condition consumers to expect new titles to cost $10, a price that would force the publishing industry to re-scale its entire business, including the advances paid to writers.”

Dean Koontz, the bestselling novelist whose new Breathless is among the titles being discounted to $10, told The Journal that he thinks the move may be a boon to authors. “Any time people are fighting over your work, it’s a good thing, especially when you’ve worked all those years hoping it would be fought over,” he said. “I don’t think this is going to be a long-term thing. Rather, it sounds like a promotional strategy designed to call attention to Walmart’s decision to enter the digital marketplace more heartily than in the past.”

“Our newest offering — the Top 10 pre-selling books at just $10, with free home delivery — is a true reflection of [our] commitment to better help our customers shop and save money online, just in time for the approaching holiday season,” Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez said in a statement. An Amazon spokesperson was not available for comment.

Walmart seems to be waging price wars on several fronts. The retailer slashed book prices just one day after it said it would start offering nationwide wireless service at significantly lower prices than other carriers. But on both fronts, these fire-sale prices mean the consumers win. In a slow economy, a little competition is a beautiful thing.

http://www.dailyfinance.com/2009/10/16/walmart-declares-war-on-amazon-slashes-book-prices-again/

Libraries, readers wade into digital lending

The New York Times

By Mokoto Rich

Kate Lambert recalls using her library card just once or twice throughout her childhood. Now, she uses it several times a month.

The lure? Electronic books she can download to her laptop. Beginning earlier this year, Lambert, a 19-year-old community college student in New Port Richey, Fla., borrowed volumes in the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series, “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold, and a vampire novel by Laurell K. Hamilton, without ever visiting an actual branch.

“I can just go online and type my library card number in and look through all the books that they have,” said Lambert, who usually downloads from the comfort of her bedroom. And, she added, “It’s all for free.”

Eager to attract digitally savvy patrons and capitalize on the growing popularity of electronic readers, public libraries across the country are expanding collections of books that reside on servers rather than shelves.

The idea is to capture borrowers who might not otherwise use the library, as well as to give existing customers the opportunity to try new formats.

“People still think of libraries as old dusty books on shelves, and it’s a perception we’re always trying to fight,” said Michael Colford, director of information technology at the Boston Public Library. “If we don’t provide this material for them, they are just going to stop using the library altogether.”

About 5,400 public libraries now offer e-books, as well as digitally downloadable audio books. The collections are still tiny compared with print troves. The New York Public Library, for example, has about 18,300 e-book titles, compared with 860,500 in circulating print titles, and purchases of digital books represent less than 1 percent of the library’s overall acquisition budget.

But circulation is expanding quickly. The number of checkouts has grown to more than 1 million so far this year from 607,275 in all of 2007, according to OverDrive, a large provider of e-books to public libraries. NetLibrary, another provider of e-books to about 5,000 public libraries and a division of OCLC, a nonprofit library service organization, has seen circulation of e-books and digital audio books rise 21 percent over the past year.

Together with the Google books settlement–which the parties are modifying to satisfy the objections of the Department of Justice and others–the expansion of e-books into libraries heralds a future in which more reading will be done digitally.

“As young people become used to reading virtually everything online,” said Paul LeClerc, president of the New York Public Library, “that is going to propel a change in terms of readership of e-books rather than readership of physical books.”

For now, the expansion will be slowed partly because, with few exceptions, e-books in libraries cannot be read on Amazon’s Kindle, the best-selling electronic reader, or on Apple’s iPhone, which has rapidly become a popular device for reading e-books. Most library editions are compatible with the Sony Reader, computers and a handful of other mobile devices.

Most digital books in libraries are treated like printed ones: only one borrower can check out an e-book at a time, and for popular titles, patrons must wait in line just as they do for physical books. After two to three weeks, the e-book automatically expires from a reader’s account.

But some publishers worry that the convenience of borrowing books electronically could ultimately cut into sales of print editions.

“I don’t have to get in my car, go to the library, look at the book, check it out,” said John Sargent, chief executive of Macmillan, which publishes authors like Janet Evanovich, Augusten Burroughs and Jeffrey Eugenides. “Instead, I’m sitting in the comfort of my living room and can say, ‘Oh, that looks interesting’ and download it.”

As digital collections grow, Sargent said he feared a world in which “pretty soon you’re not paying for anything.” Partly because of such concerns, Macmillan does not allow its e-books to be offered in public libraries.

Simon & Schuster, whose authors include Stephen King and Bob Woodward, has also refrained from distributing its e-books to public libraries. “We have not found a business model that works for us and our authors,” said Adam Rothberg, a spokesman.

For now, the advent of e-book borrowing has not threatened physical libraries by siphoning away visitors because the recession has driven so many new users seeking free resources through library doors. And in some cases, few library patrons seem to know that e-book collections even exist.

In the Brooklyn Public Library system recently, eight people were waiting for three digital copies of “The Lost Symbol,” Dan Brown’s follow-up to “The Da Vinci Code,” while 715 people were waiting for 526 print copies.

Some librarians suggest that because digital books never wear out, take up no shelf space and could, in theory, be read by multiple people at the same time, the purchasing model for e-books should be different than it is for print.

Pam Sandlian Smith, library director of the Rangeview Library District, which serves a suburban community north of Denver, said that instead of purchasing a set number of digital copies of a book, she would prefer to buy one copy and pay a nominal licensing fee each time a patron downloaded it.

Publishers, inevitably, are nervous about allowing too much of their intellectual property to be offered free. Brian Murray, the chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, said Smith’s proposal was “not a sustainable model for publishers or authors.”

Some librarians object to the current pricing model because they often pay more for e-books than do consumers who buy them on Amazon or in Sony’s online store. Publishers generally charge the same price for e-books as they do for print editions, but online retailers subsidize the sale price of best sellers by marking them down to $9.99.

“‘The Lost Symbol’ is $9.99 on the Sony Reader book page, and I just paid $29.99 for that for the library,” said Robin Bradford, the collection development librarian at the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library. Bradford said she would consider buying additional digital copies if the price were lower. But “to buy nonphysical copies at the same price,” she said, “I just won’t do it.”

Academic publishers have been more willing to experiment with subscription models, inviting libraries to pay an annual fee for unlimited access to certain books. Scholastic, the children’s book publisher, also offers library subscriptions to BookFlix, a collection of picture books that children can read online.

Steve Potash, the chief executive of OverDrive, said publishers should regard library e-books as a form of marketing. Many people who browse a library’s online catalog end up buying the books, he said, although he could provide no evidence of that.

Some publishers agree that library e-books, like print versions, can attract new customers. “We’ve always strongly believed that there is a conversion point where they do start to buy their own,” said Malle Vallik, the director of digital content at Harlequin Enterprises, the romance publisher.

In libraries, readers are attracted to free material. Nancy Gobel, a dental hygienist who already downloads digital audio books from her library in Indianapolis, said she currently buys print books. But she is considering purchasing an electronic reader so she can borrow them for free. “I would still continue to buy, but I would download as much as I can,” she said. In many cases, she said, buying “doesn’t make sense.”

Entire contents, Copyright © 2009 The New York Times. All rights reserved.

http://news.cnet.com/Libraries%2C-readers-wade-into-digital-lending/2100-1025_3-6250175.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

EA Puts Children’s Books On DS With Flips

Electronic Arts is launching a line of interactive children’s books for Nintendo DS it calls Flips, in conjunction with major UK publishers Egmont Press and Penguin.

Each title will include six to eight books, with titles like The Enchanted Wood, Artemis Fowl, and Too Ghoul For School, among numerous others. The interactive books use the touch screen to encourage kids to read by including interactive material like quizzes.

“Flips is a brilliant way of getting children into reading who may love their DS but may not normally pick up a book,” says Egmont Press director Cally Poplak.

“We are proud to be at the heart of this innovation and thrilled to be a part of this first collection bringing authors such as Enid Blyton to the digital world, and encouraging more children to take up reading for pleasure rather than seeing it purely as part of their homework.”

EA is hoping the new line will position it well for the holiday season, and at its London event, it told press outlets like GamesIndustry.biz that it hopes to score a top 20 placement on the DS charts.

“I would like to think that we can get into the top 20 at Christmas, which would be sales of – depending on how the market goes between now and then – between 2000 and 5000 units per week,” said Electronic Arts UK VP and GM Kevin Ramsdale at the event. “I would think that would be a very good place for us to be at that time.”

http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=25589

H.G. WELLS: 9 Predictions That Have, And Haven’t, Come True

Actor Rod Taylor “tests” a time machine in a still from the 1960 film The Time Machine, inspired by a 1895 novella by British writer H.G. Wells. One of the founders of modern science fiction, H.G. Wells would have celebrated his 143rd birthday today.

The time machine was one of many future technologies that H.G. Wells popularized in his 20 novels and dozens of short stories. Although such a device isn’t one of Wells’s fancies that has since come to fruition, a time machine is within the realm of possibility, said Richard Muller, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley.

“There are many physicists who will tell you it is proven impossible, but that is not the case,” Muller said. “We just haven’t figured out how to do it.”

(Tune in to the National Geographic Channel’s Time Machine on Thursday, September 24 at 11 a.m.)

–Richard A. Lovett

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/photogalleries/hg-wells-pictures/index.html

H.G. Wells’s deadly heat ray, used by invading Martians in 1898’s The War of the Worlds, has become reality–albeit in a nonlethal form: above, the U.S. military’s Active Denial System stands at the ready at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia in January 2007. The device uses microwave radiation to make crowds uncomfortable enough to disperse.

(Related: “War of the Worlds: Behind the 1938 Radio Show Panic.”)

H.G. Wells described his ray gun as “an almost noiseless and blinding flash of light”–nearly 60 years before the first laboratory lasers were invented. Some of today’s lasers even use infrared light, “the definition of heat,” said Gregory Benford, a science fiction writer and physicist at the University of California, Irvine.

Furthermore, Benford said, the most powerful military lasers deliver a sizeable blast of energy, which can subdue a hostile crowd without seriously harming anyone. “The upper limit is classified,” he said, “but I can tell you it can produce megawatts.”

H.G. Wells Predictions Ring True, 143 Years Later

H.G. Wells was born 143 years ago today, into the steam-powered, horse-driven England of 1866—the same year the easy-open tin can was patented and a year before dynamite. Yet Wells, often called the father of science fiction, produced an explosive array of ideas and inventions that are now staples of the genre and, in some case, everyday items—including time travel, lasers, invisibility, interplanetary war, wireless communications, and answering machines.

(Also see “H.G. Wells: Ten Predictions That Have, And Haven’t, Come True.”)

H.G. Wells: Fiction’s Father of Time Travel?

H.G. Wells “played with ideas that kind of defined the genre,” said Jerry Oltion, a science fiction writer and telescope maker in Eugene, Oregon. “Mary Shelly beat him to the Frankenstein idea, but he got most of the others.”

Many of Wells’s biggest ideas came out in a book-a-year burst of productivity near the end of the 19th century, beginning with The Time Machine in 1895. In that book, the main character travels millions of years into the future, though it’s not exactly clear how.

Even today scientists aren’t sure whether we really might time-travel, H.G. Wells style. But some experts say we may someday do it Albert Einstein style.

“There are many physicists who will tell you it is proven impossible,” said Richard Muller, a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “But that is not the case.”

“Einstein himself pointed out that time travel is possible in general relativity,” added Gregory Benford, a science fiction writer and physicist at the University of California, Irvine.

Einstein’s theory of relativity suggests that, if a person could safely travel at or near light speed—a big if—he or she would experience the alteration of time. In a staple scenario of post-Wells fiction, the traveler would arrive in the future not a day older than when he or she left.

Getting home&8212;going backward in time—is a thornier problem but may be accomplished by harnessing theoretical particles called tachyons. The as-yet-unobserved particles travel backward in time, some physicists speculate.

Lasers and Gene Engineering in the World of H.G. Wells

Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) is full of ideas that proved slightly less fanciful than century hopping.

The alien invaders, for example, kill people with a deadly heat ray that Wells described as “an almost noiseless and blinding flash of light.”

It sounds amazingly like a laser or the U.S. military’s so-called heat-ray gun. Unveiled in 2007, the Active Denial System’s invisible beam of microwave radiation causes a burning sensation meant to help disperse crowds. Unlike with Wells’s ray, however, there is no flash, fire, or physical harm.

Another now real H.G. Wells conceit is genetic engineering of animals—and humans.

The Island of Dr. Moreau involves the mad doctor’s attempts to mold animals via vivisection—operating on a live animal.

Today, true-life scientists tinker with life-forms largely at the genetic level, creating such oddities as glowing animals (pictures) along with less flashy innovations like pest-resistant plants.

H.G. Wells: Original Gear Head?

H.G. Wells was particularly interested in gadgetry, sometimes describing imaginary devices with excruciating precision.

Telescope maker Oltion sees it as almost a form of play for Wells. “It’s a sign of somebody who enjoys their [imaginary] universe, when you get that kind of detail.”

But such whiz-bang details are sometimes at odds with real-world practicality.

Take the now humble automatic door, which Wells envisioned decades before anyone built one. “Like most science fiction authors, he made it needlessly complicated,” Oltion said.

For instance, the Wells door slid upward, into the ceiling. That “means you have to have room for the door to move into,” Oltion said, “and it’s not room you would normally have free in a house.”

H.G. Wells as Social Commentator

Though in many ways ahead of his time, H.G. Wells was also a keen critic of his own place and era.

Co-starring the Morlocks—descendants of 19th-century working-class humans, who live literally under the childlike Eloi class, the descendant upper-crust Britons—“The Time Machine was a kind of cautionary tale of social stratification, and where that might ultimately lead,” Oltion said.

The theme would have been especially resonant in turn-of-the-century Britain, where the industrial revolution was making ever plainer the strikingly different lifestyles of the workers and the middle and upper classes.

“One of the jobs of science fiction writers is not so much to predict the future as to prevent the future,” Oltion added. “In that regard, Wells did a very good job.”

More on H.G. Wells
• H.G. Wells Birthday Quiz: The Man Behind the Fiction
• H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds: Behind the 1938 Radio Show Panic
• Are Neighborhood Aliens Listening to Earth Radio?
• Honoring H.G. Wells: Crop Circles Go Worldwide Overnight
• ON TV: Time Machine, Airing Thursday, September 24

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090921-hg-wells-hgwells.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells

Near-instant book printer adds Google Books titles

A morning’s worth of output from the Espresso Book Machine, which used Google Books as the source of the data.

Google is hell-bent on digitizing the world’s books, but it’s also aware that sometimes you just want to turn the pages.

On Demand Books, makers of the Espresso Book Machine, are expected to announce Thursday that they have been granted access to Google’s library of public domain digital books for use with their product. The Espresso Book Machine can print a 300-page book in four minutes, complete with a cover and a bound edge. It ranges in price from $75,000 to $97,000, depending on the configuration, and is found mostly at universities, libraries, and institutions around the globe.

The machine has been around for a while, earning a “Best Invention of the Year” award from Time Magazine in 2007. And the concept of using smaller on-demand printers is also old: Barnes and Noble was playing around with the idea 10 years ago, and publishers have long wanted a system that would allow them to match book supply and book demand more closely.

A few publishers, such as Lightning Source, a division of Ingram Book Group, have signed up with On Demand Books to allow their titles to be printed by the machine, but adding Google’s public domain library dramatically increases what is available through one of the machines, said Dane Neller, chief executive officer of On Demand Books. Around 2 million public domain works have been scanned by Google, while On Demand Books offers 1.5 million titles through its existing agreements.

One way of thinking about Google’s Book Search project is that it creates opportunities for other companies to develop businesses around new ways of distributing and consuming books, since a digital book is nothing but a large file. While things like the Kindle show that people are interested in acquiring and reading digital books in digital form, the Espresso Book Machine allows authors and publishers to reach an audience that isn’t ready for a digital book reader without having to spend the money required for a full-scale printing run of a book with limited appeal.

Of course, Google’s participation in On Demand Books’ service only involves public domain books, which don’t inspire nearly as much controversy as the out-of-print yet copyright protected books at issue in Google’s settlement with book authors and publishers. It’s not clear whether if the proposed settlement is approved in October, On Demand Books (and other such publishers) will have access to those books; a Google representative said that would be “speculation” at the moment.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10355318-265.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

“LOST SYMBOL” PHOTOS: Real Places From Dan Brown’s Book

The House of the Temple

Released September 15, 2009, The Lost Symbol, novelist Dan Brown’s sequel to The Da Vinci Code, is a puzzle-packed fantasy. But its settings are real, and rife with history, science, and yes, symbols—right from the prologue, set in Washington, D.C.’s House of the Temple, headquarters of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry’s Southern Jurisdiction.

Guarded by 17-ton sphinxes, the circa-1915 Masonic temple was designed in homage to one of seven wonders of the ancient world, the pre-Christian Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (see picture).

In the Freemasons’ hundred-foot-tall (30-meter-tall) Temple Room, The Lost Symbol’s villain–a muscular, tattooed, eunuch named Mal’akh (“angel” in Hebrew)–clasps a wine-filled skull during his initiation into the Masonic rite’s highest ranks.

Temple spokesperson Jason VanDyke said Brown’s descriptions of the Temple were “right on.” Everything else “is pretty much fiction.”

“We don’t drink wine from a human skull,” he said. “We don’t do many rituals up in the Temple room at all.”

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/photogalleries/lost-symbol-dan-brown-pictures/index.html

“The Lost Symbol” and the Freemasons: 8 Myths Decoded

Novelist Dan Brown’s new book, The Lost Symbol, is doing for the Freemasons what its predecessor, The Da Vinci Code, did for the Catholic Church’s Opus Dei—showering new fame, and new fictions, on a brotherhood that’s already catnip for conspiracy theorists.

(See “Lost Symbol Pictures: Real Places From Dan Brown’s New Book.”)

Since long before The Lost Symbol, Freemasons have been accused of everything from conspiring with extraterrestrials to practicing sexual deviancy to engaging in occult rituals to running the world—or trying to end it. Detractors include global conspiracy theorists and religious organizations, including the Catholic Church.

Released today, The Lost Symbol isn’t likely to squelch any rumors, beginning as it does with a wine-filled skull, bejeweled power brokers, and a dark Masonic temple steps away from the White House.

But what if Freemasons—the world’s largest international secret society—are just a bunch of guys into socializing, non-satanic rituals, self-improvement, and community service?

To separate Freemason fact from Lost Symbol-style myth, National Geographic News went inside the centuries-old order with two Masons and a historian of the ancient Christian order from which some claim the Masons sprang in the 17th or 18th century.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090915-lost-symbol-dan-brown-freemasons-book.html

FREEMASON MYTH 1
Masonic Symbols Are Everywhere

It’s true that Masonic symbols are anything but lost, said Freemason and historian Jay Kinney, author of the newly released Masonic Myth.

Freemasonry is rich in symbols, and many are ubiquitious—think of the pentagram, or five-pointed star, or the “all-seeing eye” in the Great Seal of the United States.

But most Masonic symbols aren’t unique to Freemasonry, Kinney said.

“I view the Masonic use of symbols as a grab bag taken from here, there, and everywhere,” he said. “Masonry employs them in its own fashion.”

The pentagram, for example, is much older than Freemasonry and acquired its occult overtones only in the 19th and 20th centuries, hundreds of years after the Masons had adopted the symbol.

Likewise, the all-seeing eye saw its way to the Great Seal—and the U.S. dollar bill—by way of artist Pierre Du Simitiere, a non-Mason.

The eye represents divine guidance of the U.S. ship of state, or as Secretary of the U.S. Congress Charles Thompson put it in 1782, it alludes “to the many signal interpositions of providence in favour of the American cause.”

There was one known Mason on the committee to design the seal, Benjamin Franklin. His proposed design was eyeless, and rejected.

FREEMASON MYTH 2
Masons Descend From the Knights Templar

Much has been made of the Freemasons purported lineage to the Knights Templar. The powerful military and religious order was established to protect medieval pilgrims to the Holy Land and dissolved by Pope Clement V, under pressure of King Phillip IV of France, in 1312.

After modern Masonry appeared in the 17th- or 18th-century Britain, some Freemasons claimed to have acquired the secrets of the Templars and adopted Templar symbols and terminology—naming certain levels of Masonic hierarchy after Templar “degrees,” for example.

“But those [Knights Templar] degrees and Masonic orders had no historic connection with the original Knights Templar,” Kinney explained.

“These are myths or symbolic figures that were used by the Masons. But because the association had been made with these degrees, and the degrees had perpetuated themselves, after a time it began to look like there had been a connection.”

Helen Nicholson, author of The Knights Templar: A New History, agrees that there is no possibility that Freemasons are somehow descended from the Knights Templar.

By the time of the first Masons, the Cardiff University historian said, “there were no more Templars.”

FREEMASON MYTH 3
Masons Are Hiding Templar Treasure

One of the Templar-Mason theory’s many veins suggests that some Templars survived the order’s 14th-century destruction by taking refuge in Scotland, where they hid a fabulous treasure beneath Rosslyn Chapel (as seen in The Da Vinci Code).

The treasure, and the Templar tradition, were eventually passed down to the founders of Freemasonry, the story goes.

In fact, there was Templar treasure, Nicholson said, but it ended up in other hands long ago.

“The most likely reason [the Templars were dissolved] is that the king wanted their money. The King of France was bankrupt, and the Templars had lots of ready cash.”

FREEMASON MYTH 4
Washington, D.C.’s Streets Form Giant Masonic Symbols

It’s long been suggested that powerful Freemasons embedded Masonic symbols in the Washington, D.C., street plan designed mainly by Frenchman Pierre L’Enfant in 1791.

The Lost Symbol is expected to prominently feature “Masonic mapping,” detecting pentagrams and other symbols by connecting the dots among landmarks. Pre-release clues released by author Dan Brown, for example, include GPS coordinates for Washington landmarks.

“Individually, Masons had a role in building the White House, in building and designing Washington, D.C.,” said Mark Tabbert, director of collections at the George Washington Masonic Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia. “And [small scale] Masonic symbols can be found throughout the city, as they can in most U.S. cities.”

But there’s no Masonic message in the city’s street plan, Tabbert said. For starters, Pierre L’Enfant wasn’t a Mason.

And, Tabbert asked, why would Masons go to the trouble of laying out a street grid to match their symbols?

“There has to be a [reason] for doing such a thing,” said Tabbert, himself a Mason. “Dan Brown will find one, because he writes fiction. But there isn’t one.”

FREEMASON MYTH 5
Freemasons Rule the World

Maybe it’s the impressive list of prominent Freemasons—from Napoleon to F.D.R. to King Kamehameha (IV and V!)—that’s led some to suggest the group is a small cabal running the globe. But Kinney, the Masonic historian, paints a picture of a largely decentralized group that might have trouble running anything with much efficiency.

“I think the ideals that Masonry embodies, which have to do with universal brotherhood, are shared by Masons around the world [regardless of] religious, political, or national differences,” he said.

“But having shared ideals is one thing—having some sort of shared hierarchy is something else altogether.”

Kinney noted that the U.S. alone has 51 grand lodges, one for each state and the District of Columbia. Each of these largely independent organizations oversees its many local blue (or beginner) lodges and has little real coordination with other grand lodges.

Internationally, Masonic lodges not only don’t speak with a single voice but sometimes refuse to even recognize each other’s existence.

Also, many Masons are independent minded and tend to resist edicts from above, Kinney said. “There is no way that they could be run by a single hierarchy. There is no such entity.”

FREEMASON MYTH 6
Freemasonry Is a Religion—Or a Cult

But Masons stress that their organization is not a religion, that is it has no unique theology and does not represent a path for believers to salvation or other divine rewards.

Even so, to be accepted into Freemasonry, initiates must believe in a god—any god. Christians may be in the majority, but Jews, Muslims, and others are well represented in Masonic circles. At lodge meetings religious discussion is traditionally taboo, Kinney and Tabbert said.

But some religious leaders believe that Masonic rituals and beliefs—with its temples, altars, and oaths—do constitute an opposing faith. And the Masonic refusal to rank one religion above the others hasn’t always been popular.

A 1983 Catholic declaration approved by Pope John Paul II, for example, said that “Catholics enrolled in Masonic associations are involved in serious sin and may not approach Holy Communion.”

FREEMASON MYTH 7
Freemasons Started the American Revolution

Prominent Freemasons like Ben Franklin and George Washington played essential roles in the American Revolution. And among the ranks of Freemasons are 9 signers of the Declaration of Independence and 13 signers of the Constitution.

But Freemasonry—born in Britain, after all—had adherents on both sides of the conflict. Tabbert, of the George Washington Masonic Memorial, said Masonic groups allowed men on both sides of the revolution to come together as brothers—not to promote a political view, which would be against Masonic tradition.

“For many years [Masons] claimed in their own quasi-scholarship that all of these revolutionaries and Founding Fathers were Freemasons,” Tabbert said. “A fair number of them were, but they weren’t doing these things because they were Freemasons.”

FREEMASON MYTH 8
Membership Requires Shadowy Connections

Contrary to The Lost Symbol, you don’t have to drink wine from a skull to become a ranking Freemason. In fact, tradition dictates that Masons don’t recruit members but simply accept those who approach them of their own free will.

When Freemasonry hit its peak in the U.S. during the late 1950s, Kinney, the Masonic historian, said, almost one of every ten eligible adult males was a member—a total of some four million and hardly a tiny elite.

Today membership numbers, like those of other fraternal organizations, have declined dramatically, and only about 1.5 million U.S. men are Masons.

But with The Lost Symbol already igniting interest in Freemasonry, Masonic centers are bracing for tourists—and maybe a few new recruits.