Daily Thoughts 01/08/2013

Artist's impression of the interior of an O'Neill Cylinder space habitat design. Artist's description: "One of my earliest Space Colony paintings was based on the giant 'Model 3' cylindrical habitats envisioned by Gerard O'Neill. I imagined the clouds forming at an 'altitude' around the rotation axis. At this time the scene is bathed in the ruddy light of all the sunrises and sunsets on Earth at that moment as the colony briefly enters the Earths shadow, out at the L5 Lagrangian Point where stable locations are easily maintained. Oil on canvas panel disposition unknown."
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Internal_view_of_the_O%27Neill_cylinder.jpg  I enjoy the aesthetics of these kinds of images.  I see them as a form of hard science ficiton.  Gerald K. Oneill wrote the book, The High Frontier Human Colonies In Space.  It had a utopian premise that in thirty or forty years there would be human colonies in space.   I can imagine giant size colonies like this two hundred years from now, but not over the immediate horizon.  There will be small spaces to start.

Daily Thoughts 01/08/2013

This morning, I started reading Management Rewired Why Feedback Doesn't Work and Other Surprising Lessons from the Latest Brain Science.  I rather like the idea that being objective is really something that should be focused on objects like books and computers not people.  Charles A. Jacobs describes how people make decisions using their emotions and create their own unique view of the world or paradigm.

This morning, I checked the social media for the library and checked the displays and gift books.  I have a copy of the Times Literary Supplement to read.  I also am going to read The New York Review of Books.  I got the latest New York Times Book Review to read as well.  While I was reading through the New York Review of Books, I found a book called The Visioneers: How A Group of Elite Scientists Pursued Space Colonies, Nanotechnologies, and a Limitless Future by Patrick McCray which I put on hold.  There was also a book by Han Han who is popular blogger and race car driver in China called This Generation.

I enjoy reading techno utopian nonfiction books.  They are often so far removed from what might happen that they are even less real than hard science fiction.  There is a strong element of blue sky thinking in Gerard K. O'Neills space colonies and technological optimism in Ray Kurzweil's work.  It is uplifting but often thoroughly impractical.

I spent some time cleaning my desk and sorting through things;  looking through advanced reading copies, promotional posters, books which I had never had a chance to read, bookmarks for services like Freegal and Learning Express Job and Career Accelerator, conference tote bags with publishers symbols on them, and similar things.

The library has the Computer Lab open today from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. and has two computer classes in the computer lab tonight.  People like the classes.  The attendees wrote a request for more classes.

I read a little bit of Management Rewired on the way home.  The author is describing how stories and metaphors can defeat logical objective statements.  He describes concepts like mirror neurons, paradigms, and reciprocity are ways which human beings act which have little to do with logic.  Charles S. Jacobs also describes how feedback and the desire for managing people scientifically can lead to the opposite effect.

Web Bits

Containers and Their Contents
http://www.roughtype.com/?p=2315
Clay Shirky and Nicholas Carr.  This came from.

Length and Spine Width In A Digital World
http://toc.oreilly.com/2013/01/length-and-spine-width-in-a-digital-first-world.html?goback=%2Egmp_2414597%2Egde_2414597_member_202320303

As Use of Libraries Grows, Government Support has Eroded
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/08/as-use-of-libraries-grows-government-support-has-eroded/?smid=tw-share

An Illustrated Talk With Maurice Sendak
http://www.nytimes.com/video/2012/12/28/magazine/100000001970456/an-illustrated-talk-with-maurice-sendak.html