thirst edition

From: CICLOVIVO

"Each page [of The Drinkable Book] is its own little filter that can clean up to 100 liters of water (that’s around a 30-day supply). This means each book can provide a single person with up to four years of clean water. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon and University of Virginia developed a special kind of paper that’s coated in silver nanoparticles, which kill bacteria."

— Lis Stinson, Wired
Read more…

not just a slip of the tongue

From: someecards.com

“The Idler Academy, an offshoot of the magazine which offers courses in everything from philosophy to ukulele playing, has announced the shortlist for its 2014 Bad Grammar award, set up to highlight 'the incorrect use of English by people and institutions who should know better.'
     The shortlist is headed by Tesco, for using 'less' not 'fewer' in reference to numbers on loo-roll packaging – 'Same Luxury. Less Lorries' – and for describing its orange juice as 'most tastiest.'"
— The Guardian
Read more…

“[…] should grammar be prescriptive or descriptive? In other words, should we all adhere to a set of hard rules from the 16th century or should we just blunder along, let language take its course and assume we know what each other means? Obviously, the answer lies between those two extremes.
     […] One doesn't need to be Thomas Gradgrind to be interested in the rules underlying the English language, or to believe that good communication and understanding depend on clarity. Grammar is not just about learning sentence construction: it's about speaking clearly and plainly and cutting through obfustication. But even aside from that, and most importantly of all, good grammar will help you get laid.”
— Hadley Freeman, The Guardian
Read more…

Hachette Job

“Amazon has begun discouraging customers from buying books by Malcolm Gladwell, Stephen Colbert, J. D. Salinger and other popular writers, a flexing of its muscle as a battle with a publisher spills into the open.

     The Internet retailer, which controls more than a third of the book trade in the United States, is marking many books published by Hachette Book Group as not available for at least two or three weeks. [...]
     Generally, most popular books are available from Amazon within two days. [...]
     'We have been asked legitimate questions about why many of our books are at present marked out of stock with relatively long estimated shipping times on the Amazon website, in contrast to immediate availability on other websites and in stores,' said Sophie Cottrell, a Hachette spokeswoman. 'We are satisfying all Amazon’s orders promptly.'
     But, she added, 'Amazon is holding minimal stock' and restocking some of Hachette’s books 'slowly, causing "available 2-4 weeks" messages.'
     For at least a decade, Amazon has not been shy about throwing its weight around with publishers, demanding bigger discounts and more time to pay its bills. When a publisher balked, it would withdraw the house’s titles from its recommendation algorithms.
     ‘Typically, it was about 30 days before they’d come back and say, “Ouch, how do we make this work?”’ an Amazon buyer told the journalist Brad Stone in his book about the company, The Everything Store.”
— David Streitfeld, The New York Times
Read more...

Buy Brad Stone's book, and all the books mentioned in this New York Times article here...

See a related post here...

From: Retronaut

“…the overmanaged, time-sucking, and keystroke-counting world of work.”

“[…] Cubed [ by Niki Saval] takes us on the happy journey from cozy countinghouse rooms at the turn of the last century to open-plan offices in the wide-open ’60s and ’70s to the heinous hell-boxes born out of the mass layoffs of the ’80s. In the wake of this latter shakeout, Saval writes, 'corporations responded by giving a privileged elite the few remaining offices while cramming everyone else into partitioned spaces.'

     This was the era famously captured by Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, in which he birthed the phrase 'veal-fattening pen' as a painfully accurate description of the office cubicle. These holding facilities, Coupland memorably observed, were 'small, cramped office workstations built of fabric-covered disassemblable wall portions and inhabited by junior staff members. Named after the small pre-slaughter cubicles used in the cattle industry.' A grim stop, in other words, where the life-hating, managerially disrespected masses can kill time until they’re led to their own metaphorical killing floor to be laid off.
     All this talk of design and repression brings to mind the resemblance Black Panthers first pointed out between slave-ship design and the layouts of supermax prisons. Saval gives us statistics on the dimensions of a standard worker-bee workstation circa 2006, 'when the average cubicle was seventy-five square feet.' According to the latest information, the average Solitary Housing Unit at Pelican Bay supermax averages about eleven and a half by seven and a half feet. So in this case, if in few others, convicts serving time in solitary come out ahead of salaried cubicle dwellers.”
— Jerry Stahl, BookForum
Read more…

Buy this book here...

Scott Chantler... see him at the Festival on May 25

"'I love to tell stories,'" says Scott Chantler. 'That's what drives me. So when the chance came along to work on a graphic novel, I seized it.'

     Days Like This, illustrated by Chantler and written by J. Torres, is the fictionalized account of a teenage girl group's rise to stardom during the early 1960s. 'This was a fascinating project for me,' explains Chantler. 'It's exactly the type of work I'd been looking for in comics, because I can't think of another book like it. It's personal and character-driven, and makes meaningful use of the time period. It's not just some nostalgia trip. It gave me an opportunity to do a lot of juicy research and challenged me to represent the era properly, but without ramming it down people's throats. There is something iconic to the story that I wanted to reflect in the art.'
     The book hits store shelves March 26 and makes its official debut at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival on March 29. If it is not available at your favourite bookseller, it can be ordered.
     At [the University of] Waterloo, Chantler refined his talents as a visual story teller while he studied Fine Arts and Film. His popular comic strip, 'Manly Man', ran in Imprint 1991-92. More importantly, it was at Waterloo [University] that he met his wife Shari.
     After graduation, he landed a position with Creative Options in Waterloo. He illustrated employee communications campaigns on safety, loss prevention, and customer service for major American retailers such as JCPenney, Pep Boys and Hallmark.
     'But there are only so many ways to creatively illustrate how to lift a box safely and I yearned for work that was more challenging and entertainment-driven,' explains Chantler. Shortly after setting up shop as a freelance illustrator, he started an online comic strip, which caught the attention of comic book writer J. Torres (Sidekicks, X-Men: Ronin). Their online correspondence eventually led to Torres offering him the art chores on Days Like This.”
— James Howe, University of Waterloo
Read more...

Go to Scott Chantler’s website here…

Buy all his books here…

Spread the word...