Atul Gawande on the Daily Show

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Atul Gawande
www.thedailyshow.com

Atul Gawande went on the Daily Show to promote his new book "The Checklist Manifesto. How to Get Things Right." The book includes basic recommendations like washing your hands and knowing all the staff's names, then backs it in numbers with how many lives it saves. Pretty awesome.

(From BW)

Espresso Book Machine ("EBM")

The Expresso Book Machine is a really fast printer that makes books.  And by makes I mean prints and binds and everything. 

The video is kind of boring and commercial-ey but the idea is really cool.  I like that you can upload your own files and self-publish really quickly.

Not that I have a great American novel half-written or anything.  I just like the idea that if I did, I could print it. Also, I only talk about books that I want to publish when I'm drunk.  I wonder if I'm drunk.  I digress.

According to Justine,

"I read about this today in the "Chronicle for Higher Education"...something that gets passed around the Grad Studies Office...and it sounds so cool! I wish I had my own personal Espresso Book Machine!"

(From my friend Justine )

GIRLS ARE PRETTY FOREVER

GIRLS ARE PRETTY FOREVER is a blog by Bob Powers that invents something tragic to celebrate every day.  His blog has morphed into a book titled, "Happy Cruelty Day!" Daily Celebrations of Quiet Desperation.  Each entry is a flight of fancy you would expect from your 12-year-old cousin, narrated in the second person. Edgy. 

A sample entry goes as such: 

"Pay Your Uncle Pete To Ask You To Be An Assassin Day!

At around 1PM today, have your Uncle Pete show up to your social studies class dressed in all black. He’ll knock on the door and the teacher will let him in, thinking he’s a responsible adult who has something important to share. Then he’ll find you and he’ll say what you told him to say, word for word.

'I’m sorry to interrupt your studies, but I can’t take no for an answer when we both know that life as a highly paid killer is your destiny. Will you join our Secret Order of International Assassins?' ... "

Another bloodshed favorite:

"Some Christmas Trees Can Talk and Fight Terrorism Day!

Today, at age 35, you’re going to be woken up when your front door bursts from its hinges and an old, brown Christmas Tree still sprinkled with tinsel comes hopping through your apartment to your bed.

'Why didn’t you kill them?' the Christmas Tree will ask..."

And so on an so forth.  More recently, Bob has a second book out, a choose-your-own-adventure titled, "YOU ARE A MISERABLE EXCUSE FOR A HERO," which was featured on NPR. My favorite part of the NPR story is when he reads the opening of the book: 

"Be very careful! You're directing the story and the choices you make can result in murder, graduate school enrollment, torture, marriage, post-apocalyptic slavery, unwanted pregnancy, and even temping!"

If you've ever worked as a temp, you know it's right up there with post-apocalyptic slavery.  I don't usually read fiction, but I'll make an exception when I'm bored. Cute link. 

(From my friend Cammie)

Read at Work

Read at Work is a website dedicated to disguising short stories, poems, and classic novels in a corporate Powerpoint layout format. The purpose is to make you appear to be working hard at your boring office job to the casual nosy cubicle-peering passerby. Especially your boss. If your boss is illiterate.










Clearly, the site is more fun than function. But it's worth a mention. When you click on the site, it turns your browser window into what appears to be the start up screen of a windows machine. Then it opens a windows desktop, with click-able folders, files, and email links. This was an impressive feat of cognitive dissonance, as I was viewing this through my Mac.

Read at Work is sponsored by the New Zeland Book Council, a Wellington based not-for-profit that promotes books and reading. (Which explains the New Zeland writers folder and the draconian reading list.) I was informed that some of the files are "not available" in my area, which was somewhat disappointing.

The Wall Street Journal noted Read at Work has origins in the "boss key" of video games of yesteryear, and is similar to the website workFRIENDLY. Workfriendly extracts the text of any website and spits it out as a faux word document. Again, probably works best if you're doing it in Windows.

Overall, very nice work. Sure, the readability suffers, but the faux working windows shell is way well executed. This deserves an A for ingenuity. (From Mefi, Da Buzz)

Freakonomics Covers From Around the World

According to Freakonomics (2005) authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, their 320-page, 3-million-copies-sold book exceeded expectations by a factor of about 100. Clearly, it shouldn't have. If you roll into a editor's office and pitch a 3.2 page book, you're an arrogant bastard and you've set the bar too low. I digress.

The non-fiction book's wild success is due in part to clever marketing. Around the world, publishers chose different covers to suit local tastes. A quick stroll through Freakonomics Covers enlightens us as we judge cultures by their book covers. From the covers we can surmise that:

1. Serbians only eat organic, non-waxed apples.
2. Danish people eat ham, pass on green eggs.
3. French people are skinny because they don't eat at all.
4. Hungary's entire supply of scissors comes from the 1960s.
5. Indonesia has employed Sherlock Holmes to un-closet its tube-based paint supply.
6. Norway doesn't believe in consuming citrus fruits or apples, only phalluses.

(From kottke)