3 Free eBooks - June 2015

I’ve latched onto several series within the Internet Archive this past month - one from museums.

Atil, Esin. Art of the Arab World. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. 1975. Available from the Internet Archive here. This book was one of the 1970s and 1980s exhibition books from the Freer Gallery of Art. A number of museums are scanning their archives and making them available this way. I liked the sketched bird and the colors of the bowl in the clipped image to the left. After such success with the Freer Gallery of Art books…I am not working through the back issues of the Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago) Bulletins from the later 20th century.

Valentine & Sons United Publishing. Canadian Rockies. Montreal: Valentine & Sons United Publishing Co. 1910. Available from the Internet Archive here. I found quite a few tourist booklets for the Rockies on the Internet Archive. The trek between Banff and Vancouver must have been a very popular in the early 1900s. After the Rockies, I searched for books on the Pyrenees and am still working my way through the results of that search.

Cassin, John. Illustrations of the birds of California, Texas, Oregon, British and Russian America. Philadelphia: JB Lippincott & Co. 1862. Available on the Internet Archive here. I found this book by accident and was surprised that the author (I looked up his bio on Wikipedia) had died relatively young  - from arsenic poisoning because he handled so many pelts and skins that were treated with arsenic to preserve them; that use of arsenic had been mentioned as a historical note in my Master Naturalist class - a piece of trivia that somehow stuck. After enjoying this book - I looked to see what the Internet Archive had of Audubon’s work; they have The Birds of America in 7 volumes! Those books were published more than 20 years before Cassin’s work and the positioning of the birds seems much more contrived. Both probably did their work with dead birds rather than living specimans.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 31, 2015

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles and websites I found this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

At 90, She's Designing Tech for Aging Boomers - She was a designer all her life! Good for her…for the company that is using her ideas…good for consumers.

Telescope to seek dust where other Earths may lie - This article caught my attention because my daughter recently was there for a ‘field trip.’ The Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) is run by University of Arizona.

Sleep tight and stay bright? Invest now, researcher says - I am so lucky to be able to go to sleep easily and awake on my own after 7-8 hours. This study says (once again) that good sleep is linked to a lot of good health and mental outcomes. One of the joys of post-career is not waking up with an alarm clock!

The lip of the caldera - I couldn’t resist sharing this picture of the inside wall of Santorini.

Decorative and flexible solar panels become part of interior design and the appearance of objects - I enjoy technology that is functional and beautiful. So many times the engineers focus exclusively on functionality.  

Should arsenic in food be a concern? - The answer in this article was ‘no’ but I was frustrated that they focused primarily on plant foods and did not mention the status of nitarsone/histostat (an organoarsenic compound used in poultry production).

Boston's leaky pipes release high levels of heat-trapping methane - Not good for Boston and probably many other older cities….and worse is that there is little economic incentive to make the necessary investments to reduce the incidental losses from leakage.

What to do in a flu epidemic? Stay at home and watch TV - This was a study to assess the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during epidemics - particularly of flu.

The Chemistry of Highlighter Colors - Download the graphic (link at the bottom of the article) and take a look at how the colors are made.  Note how that they have a lot of ‘rings.’

Is Hospice Losing Its Soul? - My grandmother’s last few months were spent at home under hospice care; the hospice support to her and our family was invaluable. This article is troubling because the trend in hospice is toward standardization/institutionalization….not the tailored, compassionate practice that has been the strength of hospice from its inception. I hope there are enough people that will demand that hospice stay true to its roots.