I recently blogged about a great source of used books: Better World Books. I used them again to purchase a copy of Design Patterns and was presented with another excellent book replete with a bookmark. That’s not really the topic of this entry… but I am getting there I’m writing about serendipity in the small world in which we live.
The bookmark took the the form of Simon Quellan Field‘s business card (of Kinetic MicroScience) and pointed me to a site full of science experiments you can do with your kids. Simon also maintains a blog. I love little experiments, actually anything that enthuses kids about science, and this site serves it up in spades. There are experiments with magnetism, motors, DIY radio receivers, optics, biology among others. Older kids will no doubt get a buzz out of the film canister cannon (below). The construction of a spectroscope using a CD as the diffraction grating is near to my heart as an astronomer. Spectroscopy is a major part of astronomy because it allows determination of the temperature, composition, and physical size (to some degree) of stars at immense distances.
That a business card left by a science enthusiast in a book in California should make its way via a second hand book dealer to another science enthusiast in Australia drives home how connected the world is these days.
When I look back on my childhood one of the things that I remember fondly is having free and easy access to books. My mother always made sure there were books in the house and, for a small country town, Kilkivan had well stocked community and school libraries. I could lose myself for hours reading about the space race, history, or aircraft (never was much into fiction). I cannot imagine life without books, but for much of the world that is the status quo.
I recently decided to revisit a book I read five years back (Philip Ball, Designing the Molecular World, Chemistry at The Frontier, ISBN 0691029008) and set about trying to find a copy. My local library drew a blank so it looked as if I would have to buy. The obligatory search at Amazon turned up a lot of used copies that were much cheaper than the new version. The cheapest used book vendor with a copy in good condition was Better World Books (my book was AU$11 delivered). When I looked I found that Better World has a interesting take on business that appeals to my altruistic side.
Better World provide some of every sale to one of a range of literacy programmes like Room to Read, Books for Africa, Worldfund, and the National Center for Family Literacy. Better World also provide books directly to schools where they are needed. A commission goes back to the library that provided the used book for sale: source libraries save on the cost and effort of holding their own used book sales. A levy is placed on every order to cover the carbon emissions in processing and delivering the book: making the process carbon-neutral through CarbonFund.org. To cap it all off you can email Better World books and get a reply from a real person, the books are well priced (prices change dynamically with demand), and the international shipping is very cheap (US$2.97 vs. Amazon’s US$12).
Better World is somewhere to buy that actually has a social conscience. They support providing the joy, indeed the necessity, of books to those in need in the hope of making the world a slightly better place. So, the next time you want a book try Better World Books and feel better for it. Incidentally, I’d love to hear of an Australian equivalent.
If you’ve ever listened to a Free Software bigot ranting about the evils of software patents, monopolies, and the like you might be forgiven for wondering what it’s all about. Surely these are fringe views and there is not much to it for the bulk of us?
One of the large figures in the free software world is Eben Moglen, a professor of law and legal history at Columbia University and heavily involved in defending and extending the GNU General Public License. In the video below Eben Moglen is speaking at a lecture for the Scottish Society for Computers and Law titled, “The Global Software Industry in Transformation: After GPLv3.” The video is 80 minutes long (about 160MB) but Moglen manages to eloquently encapsulate why Free Software is important in the first 20 minutes. If you are in the slightest interested it is well worth the time.
I found this talk one of the most persuasive arguments for the freedom of software (and knowledge in general). In addressing the reproduction of knowledge in digital form Moglen notes that the incremental cost of further copies is approaching zero and follows:
The consequence of those changes is the onset of a very powerful moral question. If it is possible, easily possible, to give to each human being who wishes it, anything of utility or beauty in our world of civilisation, if it is possible to deliver any such entity anywhere at any time at low cost or at zero cost, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything she wants?
Television viewing has changed quite a lot in my household since I started using a MythTV box. I no longer worry about what is on and when…I just turn on the box and look at the stuff it has remembered to record for me when I feel like watching some TV. On of the trickiest elements I found was getting the machine to reliably wake up to make recordings at obscene o’clock and shut down when idle. I guess I could have left it running 24×7, but that’s not the environmentally sound option. This is how I tackled the wakeup problem. [Read more →]
The image to the left was taken by the adaptive optics team at the Keck Observatory during 2005. It shows a distant Kuiper Belt object known at that time as 2003 UB313, and a small companion object. Despite poetic naming not being an astronomy strong point the discoverers of 2003 UB313 [1] had unofficially nicknamed the object Xena (in the Greek gods theme of planet names). The Keck astronomers, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, nicknamed its companion Gabrielle after the TV show sidekick of Xena. As time goes by we are learning more about these remote solar companions. [Read more →]
I recently blogged about a great source of used books: Better World Books. I used them again to purchase a copy of Design Patterns and was presented with another excellent book replete with a bookmark. That’s not really the topic of this entry… but I am getting there 
I’m writing about serendipity in the small world in which we live.
That a business card left by a science enthusiast in a book in California should make its way via a second hand book dealer to another science enthusiast in Australia drives home how connected the world is these days. 
As time goes by we are learning more about these remote solar companions.