By: VictoriaD,
on 9/8/2016
You might associate the recorder with memories of a second grade classroom and sounds vaguely resembling the tune of “Three Blind Mice” or “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” While the recorder has become a popular instrument in music education, it also has an extensive and interesting history.
The post 10 facts about the recorder appeared first on OUPblog.
By: AlyssaB,
on 8/24/2016
Guglielmo Marconi is popularly known as “the inventor of radio,” a mischaracterization that critics and supporters of his many rivals are quick to seize upon. Marconi was actually the first person to use radio waves to communicate. His first patent was for “Improvements in Transmitting Electrical Impulses and Signals and in Apparatus Therefor,” and he considered what he was doing to be a form of wireless telegraphy.
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By: Aviva LeShaw,
on 8/9/2016
Tuba, trumpet, trombone...which one should you pick up this fall? Read below to learn what makes the trombone the right choice, and to find out a little more about this bass instrument's long history.
The post 10 facts about the trombone appeared first on OUPblog.
By: KatherineS,
on 1/15/2016
Atheism is the absence of belief that God, and other deities, exist. How much do you know about this belief system? Julian Baggini, author of Atheism: A Very Short Introduction, tells us the ten things we never knew about atheism.
The post 10 surprising facts about atheism appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Amelia Carruthers,
on 7/26/2015
The French Revolution was one of the most momentous events in world history yet, over 220 years since it took place, many myths abound. Some of the most important and troubling of these myths relate to how a revolution that began with idealistic and humanitarian goals resorted to ‘the Terror’.
The post Ten myths about the French Revolution appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Alice,
on 10/11/2014
Why do we teach students how to prove things we all know already, such as 0.9999••• =1?
Partly, of course, so they develop thinking skills to use on questions whose truth-status they won’t know in advance. Another part, however, concerns the dialogue nature of proof: a proof must be not only correct, but also persuasive: and persuasiveness is not objective and absolute, it’s a two-body problem. Not only to tango does one need two.
The statements — (1) ice floats on water, (2) ice is less dense than water — are widely acknowledged as facts and, usually, as interchangeable facts. But although rooted in everyday experience, they are not that experience. We have firstly represented stuffs of experience by sounds English speakers use to stand for them, then represented these sounds by word-processor symbols that, by common agreement, stand for them. Two steps away from reality already! This is what humans do: we invent symbols for perceived realities and, eventually, evolve procedures for manipulating them in ways that mirror how their real-world origins behave. Virtually no communication between two persons, and possibly not much internal dialogue within one mind, can proceed without this. Man is a symbol-using animal.
Statement (1) counts as fact because folk living in cooler climates have directly observed it throughout history (and conflicting evidence is lacking). Statement (2) is factual in a significantly different sense, arising by further abstraction from (1) and from a million similar experiential observations. Partly to explain (1) and its many cousins, we have conceived ideas like mass, volume, ratio of mass to volume, and explored for generations towards the conclusion that mass-to-volume works out the same for similar materials under similar conditions, and that the comparison of mass-to-volume ratios predicts which materials will float upon others.
Statement (3): 19 is a prime number. In what sense is this a fact? Its roots are deep in direct experience: the hunter-gatherer wishing to share nineteen apples equally with his two brothers or his three sons or his five children must have discovered that he couldn’t without extending his circle of acquaintance so far that each got only one, long before he had a name for what we call ‘nineteen’. But (3) is many steps away from the experience where it is grounded. It involves conceptualisation of numerical measurements of sets one encounters, and millennia of thought to acquire symbols for these and codify procedures for manipulating them in ways that mirror how reality functions. We’ve done this so successfully that it’s easy to forget how far from the tangibles of experience they stand.
Statement (4): √2 is not exactly the ratio of two whole numbers. Most first-year mathematics students know this. But by this stage of abstraction, separating its fact-ness from its demonstration is impossible: the property of being exactly a fraction is not detectable by physical experience. It is a property of how we abstracted and systematised the numbers that proved useful in modelling reality, not of our hands-on experience of reality. The reason we regard √2’s irrationality as factual is precisely because we can give a demonstration within an accepted logical framework.
What then about recurring decimals? For persuasive argument, first ascertain the distance from reality at which the question arises: not, in this case, the rarified atmosphere of undergraduate mathematics but the primary school classroom. Once a child has learned rituals for dividing whole numbers and the convenience of decimal notation, she will try to divide, say, 2 by 3 and will hit a problem. The decimal representation of the answer does not cease to spew out digits of lesser and lesser significance no matter how long she keeps turning the handle. What should we reply when she asks whether zero point infinitely many 6s is or is not two thirds, or even — as a thoughtful child should — whether zero point infinitely many 6s is a legitimate symbol at all?
The answer must be tailored to the questioner’s needs, but the natural way forward — though it took us centuries to make it logically watertight! — is the nineteenth-century definition of sum of an infinite series. For the primary school kid it may suffice to say that, by writing down enough 6s, we’d get as close to 2/3 as we’d need for any practical purpose. For differential calculus we’d need something better, and for model-theoretic discourse involving infinitesimals something better again. Yet the underpinning mathematics for equalities like 0.6666••• = 2/3 where the question arises is the nineteenth-century one. Its fact-ness therefore resembles that of ice being less dense than water, of 19 being prime or of √2 being irrational. It can be demonstrated within a logical framework that systematises our observations of real-world experiences. So it is a fact not about reality but about the models we build to explain reality. Demonstration is the only tool available for establishing its truth.
Mathematics without proof is not like an omelette without salt and pepper; it is like an omelette without egg.
Headline image credit: Floating ice sheets in Antarctica. CC0 via Pixabay.
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By: Elizabeth Gorney,
on 5/12/2014
The common stereotypes about battered women are wrong and not based on up-to-date science. Here are five common myths about battered women and the real truths about the realities and complexities of domestic violence.
Battered women keep domestic violence a secret.
Reality: Countless research studies show that most battered women disclose their partner’s violence to at least one person—about 80% to 90% of victims in many studies. Victims not only tell, they often tell multiple people and agencies. The problem is not that women don’t tell, it is that they do not receive useful help when they do disclose.
Victims just need to call the police.
Reality: Police officers cannot offer a cure-all for domestic violence. Police arrest perpetrators less than half the time when they are called to the scene of domestic violence incidents, according to the most recently available national data. Worse, arrested perpetrators seldom go to jail—approximately five out of six perpetrators arrested for domestic violence never serve any jail time.
Battered women don’t seek professional help.
Reality: Despite the limitations of police and victim services in many communities, battered women seek help at rates that are similar to people facing other problems. Battered women report to the police at rates that are similar to many other crime victims, and also similar to the helpseeking of people with psychological problems such as depression and anxiety.
Battered women just need to leave.
Reality: All sorts of dangers can increase when women try to leave, including separation violence, stalking, and increased homicide risk. Further, custody battles and other risks can, in some ways, pose even greater threats to women’s well-being and that of their children. We all wish that there was a simple solution like walking out, but the reality is far more complex.
Most women need professional help to cope with domestic violence.
Reality: Most women cope with the problem of domestic violence with informal helpseeking. In nationally representative data, it was ten times more common for women to go to a friend or family’s house than to a domestic violence shelter.
If you want to help women who have been victims of domestic violence, listen to their assessments of what is important, respect their values, and help them come up with a plan or seek resources that address all of the complexities and realities of domestic violence.
Sherry Hamby, Ph.D., is Research Professor of Psychology and Director of the Life Paths Research Program at the University of the South. She is author of Battered Women’s Protective Strategies: Stronger Than You Know.
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Image Credit: Violencia de género. Photo by Concha García Hernández. CC-BY-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The post Rethinking domestic violence: learning to see past the stereotypes appeared first on OUPblog.
By: Maggie Belnap,
on 4/29/2014
The saxophone has long been a star instrument in jazz, big bands, and solo performances. But when exactly did this grand instrument come about? Who invented it? Not many people know that when the saxophone first appeared in jazz, many performers turned up their noses to it, much preferring the clarinet. But as the hardness began to wear off, the saxophone became a hit in itself.
1. Adolphe Sax moved to Paris in 1842 and invented the saxophone in 1846.
2. The saxophone has a metal body and is played with a single beating reed, which the player controls through his or her mouth tightness.
3. There are eight different saxophones in the sax family. The highest pitched ones are known as the Sopranino and Soprano sax. The more moderately middle toned saxes are the Alto and Tenor, while the lowest pitched sax’s are Baritone Sax, Bass Sax, Contrabass Sax, and Sub-Contrabass Sax.
4. Only four members of the sax family are commonly used today: the Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass Saxophone. The most popular are the Alto and Tenor.
5. Although the saxophone is usually thought of as a jazz instrument, it has been used successfully with symphonic music such as Bizet, Massenet, and Berlioz.
6. Although the saxophone is closely related to the clarinet, the fingering of a saxophone is much easier. Because the higher and lower octaves of the sax have the same fingering, it is much easier to play than the clarinet, which over blows at 12ths, meaning a clarinet player must learn different fingers for higher and lower octaves.
7. When the saxophone was first introduced to jazz, the clarinet was much more popular and many musicians resisted the saxophone for a time.
8. However, the tenor, alto, and soprano sax’s soon caught on and became very popular in music from New Orleans jazz to rock music.
9. Gene Ammons, founder of the Chicago school of Tenor Sax, recorded, “The Big Sound” and “Groove Blues” on a single day in 1958. The album includes many talented players, especially Gene Ammons talented saxophone playing.
10. John Douglas Surman was a remarkable play of the soprano and baritone saxophones (as well as many other instruments). He attended the London College of Music and was a member of the Jazz Workshop at Plymouth Arts Center. is solo album, The Amazing Adventures of Simon Simon, includes and features many different saxophone sounds.
Maggie Belnap is a Social Media intern at Oxford University Press. She attends Amherst College.
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The post 10 facts about the saxophone and its players appeared first on OUPblog.
By: sylvandellpublishing,
on 3/15/2013
Balloon Trees, the new title from Sylvan Dell, written by Danna Smith and illustrated by Laurie Allen Klein, reveals that the rubber that makes up balloons, balls, tires, shoes and many more things actually comes from trees! What other surprising things do you think trees give us?
The house you live in may be made from wood from trees; that’s obvious, but did you know that that house is filled with gifts from trees also? Do you like that your parents are less grumpy in the morning when they have their coffee? You can thank the coffee arabica tree for that, a 20 foot evergreen that grows in warm climates of the world. A cup of hot cocoa has made a long journey from cocoa trees along the equator to reach your kitchen. Maple syrup, cinnamon, fruits, nuts, and many more delicious items also come from trees.
Ever wonder how jelly candies get so goopy and great? Check the ingredients and you’ll find “gum arabic” in the list. Gum arabic is hardened sap from an acacia tree, and it’s used in foods like desserts to lend its goopy texture to them. It is also a key ingredient in glues, paints, and many other products that manufacturers want to make ‘slimy,’ ‘goopy,’ or ‘jelly.’
“Cellulose” is part of the ‘skin’ of trees, and when manufactured it can become “Rayon” clothing to make our own skin warmer. Cellulose is even an ingredient in foods and beauty products, lending its texture to them to make them ‘thicker’ or ‘heavier.’ When fat is removed from some “diet” or “fat-free” products, cellulose is often added to try and make the food ‘feel’ the same in a person’s mouth as before.
Trees also give us many kinds of medicine, such as aspirin, and even the first medicine for fighting malaria, “quinine.” If you’ve read our book, The Most Dangerous, you know how harmful the mosquito-spread disease malaria can be. Without the discovery of quinine from Peruvian trees, malaria would have harmed that many more people, and maybe even changed world history! Soldiers in WWII that fought in the Pacific jungles took quinine everyday, and it helped the building of the Panama Canal, and the Dutch and English to build their historical empires!
Of course, this is only the beginning of the gifts that trees give us. Say “thank you” back, by planting a tree, or at least reading a Sylvan Dell book under the shade of one!
By: sylvandellpublishing,
on 1/30/2013
Quick! What’s behind you right now? Did you peek over to see desks, the wallpaper, students, books, or toys? Were those objects there even before you looked at them? Are they there now, even though you’re reading this instead of seeing them? As strange as it sounds, some scientists believe that nothing exists definitely until someone measures it, such as you did with your eyes and ears. These scientists work in a field of science called Quantum Mechanics.
In the early 1900s, smarty-pants scientists like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, and Werner Heisenberg studied, experimented and argued over the question of what light was made of. Light was very mysterious to scientists at the time, because in some experiments it acted like a wave, similar to the invisible radio and magnetic waves all around us. In other experiments though, light acted like a particle, a solid object like a Pop Tart, a textbook, a penny, a skyscraper… Anything that’s in one place and that weighs something is a particle. It didn’t seem to make sense for something to be an invisible wave and a solid particle at the same time, but in test after test, light was both! You might think it was time for these scientists to turn in their labcoats and get new jobs… this was too hard to figure out! Instead of giving up though, the scientists continued experimenting and studying the subject until they found a solution: light is a wave until it gets observed, then it becomes a solid particle!
This was huge news for scientists. If light acts like this, then other solid objects may not be so solid after all too. The scientists studying Quantum Mechanics presented this thought-provoking possibility: that that the world is actually a wave of possibilities until we observe it, then it becomes the solid place we can feel, touch, taste and smell. It’s a bit like hiding trash under your bed: if you can’t see it, it’s not there!
By: Jessamyn West,
on 9/20/2012
We get it. Times are tough. The public sphere is shrinking in the US and elsewhere. Libraries are around and open, doing stuff. Their funding cycle is cyclical and short and up to the whims of various people, sometimes mysterious. The public library system belongs to everyone. There is a lot to talk about; a lot of things happen there. Many people have strong opinions about how public spaces are used and public money is spent and about the library in specific. You have a 24 hour news cycle, with pages or screens to fill. That’s terrific. We’re often happy for the attention.
At the same time, there are a few tropes that do none of us any favors. You look like people who haven’t done your research or who go for the easy cliche and we look like people who can’t take a well-meaning joke (which we’ve heard for the thousandth time). Let’s get to a place where we’re all feeling good about the whole endeavor. Here are some suggestions. Hope this list, patterned off of How Not To Write Comics Criticism, is helpful. It’s called
How Not To Write About Libraries
1. Your library joke is tired, even if it’s new to you
It is almost impossible for you to make a library play on words that has not been done a million times before, even something that sounds contemporary like riffing off of “adult graphic novels”. You’re probably annoyed that you got the job writing about the library funding crisis but don’t take it out on us. Notify the headline writer also, please. We know you’re doing your best but we should never see “turns the page” or “starts a new chapter” when a new building is built or a librarian gets a new job, retires, or dies, or any sort of bun/shush/dewey/cat pun again ever. That “Overdue book returned years late” story? Heard it. Thank you.
2. Quit it with the wardrobe policing
You try working nights and weekends in a landmark building with a heating and cooling system that dates back to Carnegie times. Dressing in wool and layers is practical and smart, as is keeping your hair out of your face when you might have to crawl under a desk to fuss with a computer. Sixty-four percent of Americans wear eyeglasses, that number jumps to 90% after age 49. We’re not absurdly myopic from all that reading, we’re normal. Saying “OMG they can be sexy too!” is not actually a good response to this; as professions go we’ve always been pretty anti-censorship and sex positive.
3. We’re not all women, not even close
In 2008 the gender split among new grads was 80% female, 20% male. Last year it was more like 78% to 22% and the female/male gap is shrinking. We come from many ethnic backgrounds and we speak many languages. We date and marry people of many genders. A good number of us are just out of library school and share the characteristics of other people in our cohort: tattoos, body jewelry, a penchant for cocktails. Many of us are not just out of library school and enjoy the same things. Nothing unusual. Diversity of all kinds is important in any sort of public service position when you work for the entire public; please try to respect and represent the diversity of our population as it exists in the actual world not as it existed in the movies thirty or even fifty years ago.
4. Many different people work in a library building
This frequently comes up when there is a crime or another scandal at a library and someone gets interviewed who is invariably called “a librarian” and is later revealed to be a page, a volunteer, or maybe just an interested and chatty patron. Librarians (usually) work in libraries, but not everyone who works in a library is a librarian. There are many schools of thought on the importance of these distinctions and while we don’t expect you understand the subtle nuances of the differences between a reference librarian and a cataloger, or a circulation clerk and a shelver, it’s simply important to know that there are many different jobs within the library and not all of them are “librarian” and if you are not sure what the job title is of the person you spoke with, you should ask them. Many professional librarians, though not all, have Master’s degrees from accredited institutions. People call this level of graduate education “library school” and graduates have degrees ranging from MLib. (mine) to MSIS to MLS to MLIS.
5. There are some amazing things hidden in special collections
…and your chances of getting to see them diminish if you continually represent library archives as dusty, musty, smelly, unkempt, or populated entirely with hobbits and wizard-beings, strange and unknowable creatures unschooled in human customs. Introduce yourself and spend some time there and you’re likely to see some amazing things and learn some nifty things about your location, your neighbors or your academic institution.
6. No one with any credibility thinks “It’s all on the internet” and there are reasons why it isn’t
This is an untrue straw man argument, so you don’t have to keep bringing it up. There is a strong case to be made that the push for increasing digitization will be a net good for a society that is increasingly looking to satisfy their information needs online. However we are far from that point now, the digital divide is real and formidable. The vendor-based silos of information which are inaccessible without a payment or a password vex us as much as, if not more than, they vex you. We are trying to help people access the information they want and need. We’re sorry that the shift to digital content is causing trouble for some businesses’ bottom line, but we’ve always been publishers’ best customers and that will change only if they force it to. We would prefer that digital rights management were less onerous too. We would be happy to talk with you at length about why it’s easier to buy something from Amazon.com for personal use than it is to borrow it from the library on your Kindle. Blame copyright and capitalism, not the library.
7. The money thing is complicated, take some time to understand it
Libraries are funded differently from state to state and sometimes from county to county. Reporting on a funding “crisis” when it’s just a possible budget adjustment does us all a disservice with the “sky is falling” approach. Giving people real information about what is happening with and to the budget, and why, would be a great service. More information less doomsaying please. And, as always, if you need the numbers we’ll be happy to give them to you. They’re public. Public libraries have regular meetings of the library board that are open to the public and worth attending if this sort of thing piques your interest.
8. Not all libraries are public libraries
I work in a public library and so I fall into this trap myself. The public library system in the US is a sort of amazing decentralized mutual aid sort of creation, but it’s not the only library system in the US. School libraries and academic (college and university) libraries and law libraries and medical/hospital libraries and other special libraries all have their own systems and procedures and governing bylaws and mission statements and professional associations. Make sure that you are not reporting on one and ascribing it the values and traditions of another entirely different type of library.
9. The entire public is welcome in the public library
…including types of people you may dislike or find distasteful. And possibly including people who find you distasteful. With few exceptions people who are spending entire days or weeks in the library or who are looking at things on their computer screen that people might feel they should be viewing in private are doing so because they lack better or more genuine options. This is a larger societal problem and we are trying to help, making the best of a difficult situation within the structure of our mission statement and policies and procedures. The situation is complicated and deserves a better treatment than the usual “Porn in the library!” headline-grabbers.
10. Libraries are full of joyful noise
Not always, but often enough to say goodbye to the tut-tutting and the shushing and the QUIET PLEASE canards. While we try to have spaces that can accommodate quiet reading as well as rambunctious storytimes and group projects, libraries’ approaches to this are as varied as our buildings. Libraries are more popular than ever by most measures of library popularity and are still tremendously well-loved cultural institutions that are available to and for every single person. The reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated, especially on the internet.
However it is true that most of us like cats and mostly do not hate Wikipedia.
Here are some more pointers to places to get good, factual information about libraries in the US.
- ALA’s Library Bill of Rights
- ALA Library Fact Sheets
- ALA’s research and statistics section including the Library ROI bibliography
- IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services) reports
- ALA’s State of American Libraries report
- Library Journal’s Placement and Salaries Survey
All images come from the Library of Congress’s Prints & Photographs Online Catalog and have no known restrictions on publication. Article specifically inspired by this tweet. Thanks to Andy Woodworth for reading the draft.
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By: Matthew Cheney,
on 4/2/2012
My latest Strange Horizons column is about John D'Agata and Jim Fingal's book The Lifespan of a Fact, which has been provoking a lot of discussion.
My favorite of the responses to the book is Ander Monson's "The Skeptical Gaze", because not only has Monson read Lifespan with some care (which cannot be said for many of the people punditing about it), but he's also done some wonderful work himself to explore the possibilities and boundaries of fact and fiction (I wrote about his excellent book Vanishing Point a couple years ago for Strange Horizons). (Pardon another parenthetical, but I also want to add that comparisons between Mike Daisy and John D'Agata are superficial and fundamentally wrongheaded, as Josh Voorhees pointed out at Slate. Daisy hid his lying and worked hard to do so, D'Agata has put his fictionalizing front and center and let the world respond. I wrote the column before the Daisy scandal broke, however.)
Anyway, my own take on The Lifespan of a Fact was written about a month ago, but for scheduling reasons couldn't be published till now, so it feels a little bit superfluous to the conversation. I'm glad it's out there nonetheless, because I don't think mine is quite the same perspective as many of the others.
By: Lauren,
on 9/29/2011
Some of you may know that today is National Coffee Day. I've, personally, been trying to ignore the free/discounted offers around New York City since I'm trying to cut back, and decided to distract myself by putting together this quick video post about coffee and caffeine. Now, I would be reimiss if I did not first mention the fantastic book Buzz: The Science and Lore of Alcohol and Caffeine by Stephen Braun. This is a
In the wake of @Charlie Sheen taking over Twitter and apparently #winning, Lindsay Lohan and the case of the missing jewels, and the myriad of other famous folks whose lives have gone awry it got me thinking about a different kind of celebrity. The kind that deserves every ounce of their popularity and stature.
I'm talking about trees. Celebritrees!
Duh.
So instead of sticking your tots in front of the mindless updates that Extra gives us, share with them some deserving celebs! The trees featured in this book have earned their title for their global fame and significance. Both in fact and in legend, these fascinating trees remind us not only how much pleasure trees bring, but what they can tell us about history.
And that is what I call #winning.
Happy reading!
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By: Rebecca,
on 6/4/2010
J. C. McKeown is a Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His new book, A Cabinet of Roman Curiosities: Strange Tales and Surprising Facts from the World’s Greatest Empire, is a collection carefully gleaned from the wide body of evidence left to us by the Romans themselves. Each fact or opinion highlights a curious feature of life in ancient Rome. Below we have excerpted some tidbits from the chapter on Roman toilets.
♦
The Romans were justly proud of their extensive system of aqueducts. Frontinus boasts, Could you compare with all these many massive and serviceable acqueducts the useless pyramids or the famous but idle works of the Greeks? (On the Water-Supply of Rome 1.16). Much of the water from the aqueducts was used to keep the public toilets clean, maintaining a constant flow through these facilities directly to the sewers and on to the Tiber.
♦
According to the notitia regionum, an early-4th-century A.D. catalog of the city’s buildings and landmarks, Rome then had 144 public latrinae.
♦
The standard of engineering in Roman latrinae was not achieved again in Europe until the 19th century.
♦
Just as aqueducts provided an abundant water supply, so a certain degree of sanitation was ensured by the system of sewers, especially the Cloaca Maxima (Main Drain). Begun in the city’s earliest times, it was much admired in antiquity, and is still, to a very limited degree, operational today.
♦
Until recently, not much research was done on ancient toilets. Archaeologists were often reluctant to identify them for what they are. Likewise, in antiquity, Vitruvius and Frontinus were very reticent about waste disposal in the influential treatises on architecture and aqueducts, respectively.
♦
Almost all the private houses excavated in Herculaneum and Pompeii had toilet facilities, often in the kitchen or under the stairs; there is little evidence for doors to these cubbyholes.
♦
At the animal-fighting recently, one of the Germans who was getting ready for the show withdrew to relieve himself – that was the only privacy he had, away from his guard. There he choked himself to death by ramming down his throat the stick with a sponge attached that is provided for personal hygiene (Seneca…). Remnants of sponges have been discovered in a Roman sewer at York in northern England.
♦
Apollinaris medicus Titi Imp. hic cacavit bene (“Apollinarius, physician to the emperor Titus, had a find shit here”) (Corpus of Latin Inscriptions… a graffito in the Casa della Gemma in Herculaneum).
♦
I do not think that silver chamber pots are included with heirlooms, since they are not part of the silver collection (Justinian’s Digest…). This legal ruling presumably exists because chamber pots were often made of silver. Even gold ones are mentioned occasionally; most notoriously, Mark Anthony was criticized for using one (Pliny Natural History…).
♦
The Emperor August Caesar, son of a god, Pontifex Maximus, designated
By: Julia,
on 1/7/2010
In 1926 Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson and other African American and white scholars, launched “Negro History Week” so that Americans could reflect on the history and contributions of African Americans. In 1976, the Bicentennial (200th birthday) of the U.S.A., the week-long observance was extended to the entire month of February in order to have enough time for celebratory programs and activities.
We are pleased to announce that Media Meltdown is on the Graphic Novels for African American History Month list.
Media Meltdown follows the adventures of a group of kids who have discovered that a local developer is up to no good, and he is getting away with it because he’s a heavy advertiser with the town’s only media company. Working together Pema, Bounce, and Jagroop use web and media technologies to make their own media and to show everyone the truth. Bounce is African American.
Ok, when you were a child or even an adult have you ever wondered why you cannot ever seem to reach the end of a rainbow?
Rainbows are formed when light reflects off droplets of water.
This causes the light to seperate into it’s original colours. For those of you who do not know, ‘plain’ light consists of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet light all combined together to form what we know as being white light. This process is called refraction and it basically reverse engineers light to it’s original colours and makes it visible. Now you know why you see the colours of the rainbow.
A rainbow does not actually exist at a specific point in the sky, it is the person looking at the rainbow which decides it’s apparent position and this is why it is always moving when you move, or at least until there is now more rain or the sky darkens.
So, now that we have established that you could never reach the end of a rainbow because it never has an end, let me tell you about rainbows.
If you want to see an amazing rainbow, you should go somewhere where there are rainclouds and it is still dark but the sun is starting to rise (dawn preferably). This would allow you to see for only a few minutes a spectacular rainbow, it’s colours would be very rich and vivid as it is contrasted to a dark background.
On some very rare occasions, most commonly in Alaska, moonbows can be seen. This is an incredibly rare phenomena that usually only occurs a few times every year as it needs rain and a very bright moon. This does not mean a clear sky, it actually involves the position of the earth on it’s axis of rotation and how close it is too the moon before a clear sky is even taken into account.
If you were to rent an airplane and be lucky enough to see a rainbow from the sky, you would see a complete circle. This is because you are looking directly onto the light and water droplets instead of looking at them from an angle which only allows you to see half of the rainbow.
So, that’s it! I’m all done with rainbows.. for now anyway. I would have made this a lengthier article but i tried doing some research on the science behind rainbows.. My head felt like it was going to explode, it is very complicated!
Anyway, i hope you have enjoyed this article and maybe it has helped to enlighten you as to the whereabouts of the end of a rainbow. Nowhere.
*Just incase you haven’t figured out that there is no pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, purely because there is no end to a rainbow !
By: MJeffs,
on 8/12/2009
I recently attended a course on ebooks through Simon Fraser University’s summer publishing program (I recommend this program for those interested in publishing). There were great presentations and inspiring discussions about the future of the ebook. With Amazon’s Kindle, the Sony Reader and the recent launch of Shortcovers all claiming success, it certainly appears that ebooks have entered the mainstream. There seems to be a great deal of debate about whether this is a good thing or not.
There are predictions of the death of the print book, but these predictions have been around for a couple of decades now, and I haven’t been invited to any funerals yet. Of course I’m biased. I love print books and I’m certain I’m not alone in this. Besides – an electronic reader in the bathtub? That strikes me as unsafe.
There are some interesting things going on in the world of digitization. Textbooks and computer manuals have been widely available in digital formats for quite some time, of course, but the new options for your average reader are really interesting. Bookglutton is a site where readers can not only read books for free, but comment on them as they read. A US company, Hol Art books has a fascinating project on the go. They are allowing authors to post book proposals onto their website. Readers can comment on the project and even become participants in the development of the finished book.
Everybody seems to have smart phones these days, and ebook retailers have created applications for reading books on the little gadgets. It seems silly to those of us who love books, but it got me thinking about those teens I see everywhere plugged into their phones. Would a book on an Iphone appeal more to these kids than a book in the library?
Like it or not, the publishing industry seems to be edging its way toward digitization and Orca Book Publishers has joined in. We proceed with care, mindful of copyright issues Currently our books are available in rights managed PDF format through a number of channels. If you want a particular title in ebook format, just gooogle the title with the word ebook. Most recently we have ordered over 200 titles to be converted into epubs and xml files (xml is a system of tagging documents – boring but useful). Many of our books are available through Tumblebooks, an online read-a-long program.
It’s a mysterious process, so far, this digitization of books, but an exciting one as well. I have visions of the family cell phone plan being used for a shared reading experience – everyone reads a chapter on their way home from school or work and talks about it over dinner. Busy teachers can download books onto their phone so they can get caught up on classroom prep while they wait in line at the grocery store. There’s a whole world of possibilities out there.
What’s possible is not always what’s probable though. It really is up to readers to decide how ebooks are used. What I’m most interested in is what you think. Are any of you reading digital books? Are you using the readers, your phone, a PC? What works for you? What doesn’t? Not interested in posting to the blog? Send me an email [email protected]. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
1. More than half the bones found in your entire body is located in your hands and feet.
2. We are all colorblind at birth.
3. Blood is actually and organ.
4. When born we have 350 bones but when fully grown we only have 206
5. Research has shown that guilt damages your immune system. Spell check won’t let me type the reason why.
6. We are basically water bags, 70% of our body is water.
7. We take about 600,000,000 breaths a lifetime.
1. More than half the bones found in your entire body is located in your hands and feet.
2. We are all colorblind at birth.
3. Blood is actually and organ.
4. When born we have 350 bones but when fully grown we only have 206
5. Research has shown that guilt damages your immune system. Spell check won’t let me type the reason why.
6. We are basically water bags, 70% of our body is water.
7. We take about 600,000,000 breaths a lifetime.
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Have you ever thought about how things were in the 1500’s compared to now? Here are a few facts you may not know about.
Now, let’s see if you got the answers correct!
Bread was divided by status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the bread. Family members got the middle of the bread. Guests got the top, or the upper crust of the bread.
Image Source
Have you ever thought about how things were in the 1500’s compared to now? Here are a few facts you may not know about.
Now, let’s see if you got the answers correct!
Bread was divided by status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the bread. Family members got the middle of the bread. Guests got the top, or the upper crust of the bread.
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10. Coconut crabs will climb coconut trees to eat
9. An Octopus has 4 different hearts.
8. There are more stars in the universe then grains of sand on earth. (O.o)
7. It takes an oysters take about 5 years to make a pearl
6. The first cell phone ever made weighted 1 kg.
5. No words rhyme with purple or orange.
4. Dogs can smell cancer, and low blood sugar levels.
3. Animals can rain the sky.
2. It’s possible to have an erection after death.
1. Your heart beats 10,00 times a day.
If you want you can post some of your interesting facts in the comments.
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By: Susan E. Goodman,
on 7/10/2009
Continuing on the theme of “great discoveries while researching…”
I have found so many weirdly wonderful facts while researching that I don’t even know where to start. Some are hilarious; some are profound. Some are both. Think about this one, which I discovered while writing The Truth About Poop: When they are upset, chimps who have been taught sign language (but not in this context) indicate their frustration by making the sign for poop.
But perhaps the most amazing thing I’ve discovered while researching kids books and magazine articles from my previous career is that just about everything is interesting. Everything, as long as I can understand it. There have been many times when I started a project (especially assigned ones) thinking ho, hum. But once I started looking around, asking questions, sinking into that world—it was fascinating.
Iris breeders not only know all about genetics and beauty, they also have a microcosm as complete as any society with the conservatives and the radicals and the innovators and the ideologues and all the feelings that past between them. Allowing hunters to cull herds of bison or elk might actually be the most humane thing people can do to prevent disease and starvation. A bunch of guys got together in Philadelphia a few hundred years ago and, by cherrypicking an idea here from Rome and there from France, managed to create the principles of a nation. We all know how hard it is to research an idea and come up with a decent book. How did they pull that off?
Once you look at something, really look at it, it is fascinating. No matter how big or how small, the whole world is in it.
How incredible is that?
By: Susan E. Goodman,
on 6/12/2009
I’m always working to catch up on the ever-increasing pile of New Yorkers at my house (or as one of their cartoon captions once said, “How is never? Is never good for you?”). But I’ve just read a great article in the February 9/16, 2009 issue by John McPhee about fact-checking. And fact-checking in particular at the New Yorker.
The prowess of NY’s fact-checkers is legend, perhaps matched only by National Geographic. I used to work for some of Nat Geo’s publications and remember hearing the following story more than once. (Is it true or urban myth? I did hear it from an editor there, but that hearsay source wouldn’t satisfy a real fact checker!)
Anyway, a writer returned from Africa where he was researching a story about elephants. Supposedly he went to the fact-checker’s office and plunked a bag on her desk. I’ll be writing about the color and smell of elephant dung, he said, and knew you would demand verification.
It’s a funny story, but it also seems a bit hostile. I can understand that. Sometimes fact-checkers can be a little too precise. Their exacting minds can take the fun or magic out of things. In my book On This Spot, I was describing a prehistoric bloodbath and wrote, “Meanwhile a phytosaur was slipping into a shallow lake. When he opened his jaws, nearly 170 teeth swam toward a giant amphibian called a metoposaur. The fact-checker’s comment? “Must change, teeth can not swim.” (ps. Poetic license won the day.)
But I think the hostility in that Nat Geo story actually comes from the fact that it’s embarrassing to be caught with your pants down—to be wrong about something, especially when it’s your business to be right. I’ve felt that flash of embarrassment, maybe even a touch of hostility. But within seconds, I am profoundly grateful that the fact-checker has saved my butt. I pride myself on doing good research, but I’ve messed up more than once. Like the time the tour guide at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center (which houses NASA's Educator Resource Center) said that NASA had the disposable diaper developed for the space program. Sounded good to me until the wonderful Janet Pascal, fact-checking my Truth About Poop manuscript, gave me the URL for the “Diaper Evolution Time Line” and I realized babies were wearing Pampers before Alan Shepard.
Three cheers for fact-checkers! It’s expensive, but I wish all publishers used them. You can’t have too many eyes on a page.
Ps. Then there’s the other problem—NO ONE has the right fact. That book On This Spot took a place in Lower Manhattan all the way back in geologic time to the very beginning—or at least, to when the earth was just rock, water and a dusting of algae. When was it? The top guy at Columbia gave me one date. The Harvard expert gave me another. They were many millions of years apart. And it didn’t seem as if conventional thinking took one side. What do you do?
I’m a little nervous the Matrix is real, but I’m quite glad I can keep hiding trash under my bed.