Sea charts

Beauty versus Accuracy

When I was searching for images for Tupaia, Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator, I got great pleasure from the many beautiful old charts I found.  The map reproduced above was particularly intriguing, because it provided an excellent illustration of how little the old Pacific explorers knew, compared to Polynesian ocean lore.

Engraved by Pieter Goos for his book De zee-atlas ofte water-wereld (Amsterdam, 1667), this "sea-chart" has to be viewed sideways, with California invisibly off to the bottom right, and what little was known of Tasmania ("Van Diemen's Land") and New Zealand hovering about to the top left.  Otherwise, the ocean is almost empty -- not Tahiti, no Samoa, no Tonga, no Fiji -- and yet it was drawn for the use of seagoing folk, such as captains, sailing masters, and trading agents, who intended to venture into this unknown region.

Pieter Goos was the son of Abraham Goos, an Amsterdam bookseller who specialized in maps and charts.  As well as carrying on his father's business, Pieter produced pilot guides for mariners.  His Zee-atlas was a bestseller, going through many editions.

No one, however, kept count of the number of travelers it sent to a watery grave.

I was reminded of this when the captain of the unfortunate Costa Concordia reckoned his ship hit an uncharted rock.

Is such a thing possible today?  Maritime historian Bill Bunting contributed a useful and entertaining comment that demonstrates that even relatively recently all charts were not equal:

Forty-plus years ago I was the mate of a sailing vessel engaged on a  world voyage (he says). Previous owners had outfitted her chart locker with  British, German, and US charts for many Pacific island areas. The British charts were aesthetically the most beautiful, as elaborately engraved as old bank notes, and imparting more than a whiff of  empire, except that, with no colors, it was often not easy to figure  out where the water ended and the land began. Lines of soundings were  likely to be attributed to the HMS PINAFORE or whatever a hundred or  more years ago, although presumably these were better than nothing. 

The German charts were by far the most detailed, especially regarding  features of the land, except that it appeared that many of the island  hills and valleys were boilerplate added to fill in spaces which if left blank might suggest less than complete and thorough knowledge. 

The US charts were the most utilitarian, and did not hesitate to display ignorance when appropriate. With an obvious color scheme  differentiating land from water, they were the easiest to use and  thus the charts of choice, even though they projected all the romance of a gas station road map.

 

John Burnside wins TS Eliot poetry prize

John Burnside has been named the winner of the £15,000 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry for his collection Black Cat Bone.

This year's prize has proved controversial, with two poets withdrawing because of its sponsorship by an investment company.

Burnside, 56, who chose to read a poem instead of make a speech, told the BBC he was "stunned" to have been chosen.

He said he had never considered withdrawing over the sponsorship issue.

It is Burnside's second prestigious poetry prize in under six months. The Scottish writer won the £10,000 Forward Prize for the same collection in October.

Read the full BBC story by Tim Masters

Has the earth moved?

Earth scientists studying the after-effects of last year’s Japan earthquake, registering a 10 on the Richter scale, have discovered that the shifting continental plates have tilted the earth a little further on its axis. The result is a tiny, but measurable, alteration in time, distance and position in space.

According to New Zealand website SunLive, the news that the earth has moved didn’t surprise Tauranga resident Minnie Driver, who claims that her recent accident on Cameron Road was a direct result of her sat-nav being suddenly inaccurate.

“It’s been fine for ages, but since the earthquake it keeps telling me to turn about 25 metres before I get to the junction I want. True, I’ve met some interesting people, and surprised a few who were sweeping their drives, but this is clearly a new problem. I’ve spoken to makers Tom Tom, but they have investigated and blame lunchtime drinking. That’s scandalous, and probably only partly true.”

Other supposedly incompetent drivers have now come forward, and been joined by numerous other GPS users including trampers & boaties, many of whom have been hopelessly lost and branded as ‘stupid’ by emergency service staff.

They claim that GPS systems haven’t accounted for the shift in Earth’s position.

The captain of the Costa Concordia has claimed that the rock wasn’t on his chart.

Will he now tell the world that the ‘earth moved’ for him?

It must be the holiday atmosphere.

Winnie the Pooh and Doc treated badly

Reprinted children's classics lacking in integrity

Parragon embarrassed

A publishing firm is investigating how mistakes, including a drawing of Doc from the seven dwarfs without his glasses, were printed in a series of Disney books.

Linda Weeks, of Maidstone, Kent, found 70 errors when she read the Parragon-published series to her daughter.

The librarian said Winnie the Pooh also contained American terms that English author AA Milne would not have written.  Eeyore, for instance, had "gotten all spruced up for spring."

The Bath-based publisher said it was disappointed that errors had been made.

But the publishing firm said some terms had been used to enable the "widest possible audience" to enjoy the stories.

Ms Weeks, who is a research librarian, said the books which contained the errors included Aladdin, Alice in Wonderland, Finding Nemo, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and Winnie the Pooh.

In Snow White, the text referred to an illustration of Doc, one of the seven dwarfs, but the character had been drawn without his glasses.

"That's not Doc, is it? Doc should have glasses on," she said

Read the whole story on BBC

Children's books of the future?

It's a book for kids

And it's different

It's an eBook -- but that's not what is different

It's also a cookbook -- but that is not what makes it different, either.

It's an eCookbook for Kids that's absolutely packed with apps.

But still that's not the difference.

The difference is that it's linked to a highly publicized film.

Somehow, I thought the ultimate eBook would be a dazzling production involving exotic travel, exotic animals, or classic art.  Never did I expect that it would be an eCookbook for children that not only entices them to turn cooking into a family experience, but encourages them to read. 

And it didn't ever cross my mind that it would be designed to accompany the release of a motion picture.

Creators of children's programs for TV and cinema are always keen to find ways to extend their marketing -- content that will make extra money out of creative licensing.  That's why bookstores go in for potentially profitable sidelines, such a stationery decorated with the latest cartoon characters, "Hello Kitty" and "Angry Birds" being a couple of the latest.  And that's why giant animation firms like DreamWorks are always on the lookout for innovative ideas that lead to yet more exposure for their films.

That's what led DreamWorks to a 16-strong team of creative programmers in Israel, called Castle-Builders, which has provided just what they are looking for -- an interactive cookbook, to accompany the release of Kung Fu Panda 2.  And, if they were looking for innovation, that's exactly what they got.  (I particularly like the truly imaginative trick of shaking the tablet to get a random recipe.)

This is definitely not a children's book the way I know it.  In fact, it is so far away from traditional children's print books that it's a different form of literature entirely.  

So, how did it come about? 

It began back in 2006, when 25-year-old Gili Abramovich, armed with a MBA degree from Israel's Colman College School of Business, and expertise in software development gained during his stint of military service, founded Castle-Builders.  This was a time when touch screen interactivity was science fiction territory, well before iPad, iPhone and Android, and yet Abramovich had  dreams that he was determined to turn into reality.

"Ever since I can remember I used to have ideas that I wanted to explore," he says. "I used to write them in a notebook; the digital book was simply the first I picked up and did something about. I felt that there was a trend and I just followed my instincts.  That brought me to the unique position we are in today - having our product highly interactive and compatible with the iPad, Android, Nook, PC and the Mac."

Interviewed via the miracle of the internet, his enthusiasm is almost palpable.  "As a kid, when reading a book, I was always waiting for the photo to come up every 4 pages," he confides. "That was why I thought that kids would love having an image on every single page - and since images simply do not cut it any more, I felt that every page should offer videos and animations. I wanted to create a whole world around every story, one that pulls the child into the story and keeps him mesmerized."

He calls it "a backdoor" way of getting children reading.

Perhaps he should call it a "kitchen door" way, because it gets them cooking, too.

Photoshopping unrealistically beautiful bodies

Ever suffer from a surfeit of Beautiful People?

Common sense should tell you that those gorgeous blokes and girls splashed over billboards and magazines are not nearly so pretty in reality. 

Let's face it, it has always happened.  Cleopatra bathed in ass's milk, and arrived attired in fetchingly flattering costumes.  In the early days of cinema, actors and actresses beginning to show their years were photographed through cheesecloth.  Makeup artists were deft at covering up blemishes.

Photoshopping has taken this art to a whole new level, and there is scientific evidence out there that proves that it is bad for the health of many people.  While most merely wince when a glimpse in the mirror compares unfavorably with the cover of the latest mag, there are some who become so driven by a bad self-image that they develop life-threatening dietary problems, or embark on risky surgery.

Now, two American computer scientists, Prof. Eric Kee and his grad student, Hany Farid, have developed a program that could be used to alert readers to the amount of photoshopping involved in pictures -- rather like the lists of ingredients and their calorific content that are printed on food packages.

Their paper, A Perceptual Metric for Photo Retouching, begins with this abstract:

In recent years, advertisers and magazine editors have been widely criticized for taking digital photo retouching to an extreme. Impossibly thin, tall, and wrinkle- and blemish-free models are routinely splashed onto billboards, advertisements, and magazine covers.

The ubiquity of these unrealistic and highly idealized images has been linked to eating disorders and body image dissatisfaction in men, women, and children. In response, several countries have considered legislating the labeling of retouched photos.

We describe a quantitative and perceptually meaningful metric of photo retouching. Photographs are rated on the degree to which they have been digitally altered by explicitly modeling and estimating geometric and photometric changes. This metric correlates well with perceptual judgments of photo retouching and can be used to objectively judge by how much a retouched photo has strayed from reality.      

You can download the entire article and supporting material HERE.

Warning: it's not easy reading.  And the advertisers and magazine publishers who have been offered the free use of the system are predictably unimpressed.

In meantime, comfort yourself with the bracing thought that those glamorous faces and slinky bodies are the products of a computer program, not of nature.

PS.  If you like the photoshopping illustrated above, you can see more examples HERE
      

Publishers Weekly bestsellers January 2012

Intriguingly . . .

While the fiction list is replete with the same tired old names, several of the "collaborators" in the bestseller fiction industry have at last been given space on the title page.

Hardcover Fiction

1. "Private: #1 Suspect" by James Patterson & Maxine Paetro (Little, Brown,$27.99) -

2. "Love in a Nutshell" by Janet Evanovich & Dorien Kelly (St. Martin's, $27.99) -

3. "Death Comes to Pemberley" by P.D. James (Knopf, $25.95) 2

4. "77 Shadow Street" by Dean Koontz (Bantam, $28) 1

5. "11/22/63" by Stephen King (Scribner, $35) 3

6. "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" by Stieg Larsson (Knopf, $27.95) 10

7. "Locked On" by Tom Clancy with Mark Greaney (Putnam, $28.95) 4

8. "The Litigators" by John Grisham (Doubleday, $28.95) 6

9. "The Best of Me" by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central, $25.99) 7

10. "Kill Alex Cross" by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $28.99) 5

Hardcover nonfiction

1. "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster, $35) 1

2. "American Sniper" by Chris Kyle, with Scott McEwen & Jim DeFelice (Morrow, $26.99) -
3. "Real Marriage" by Mark & Grace Driscoll (Thomas Nelson, $22.99) -
4. "Killing Lincoln" by Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard (Holt, $28) 2
5. "Taking People with You" by David Novak (Portfolio, $25.95) -
6. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30) 7
7. "The 17 Day Diet" by Dr. Mike Moreno (Free Press, $25) 4

8. "The Dash Diet Action Plan" by Marla Heller (Grand Central, $22.99) -

9. "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand (Random House, $27) 3

10. "Catherine the Great" by Robert K. Massie (Random House, $35) 10

It will also be interesting to see when Publishers Weekly updates its list to include digital books.  This year?  Next year?  Never?

Symantec sued for making false claims

Talk about stirring the pot!

A group of Indian hackers has offered support to an American man, James Gross, who has filed a lawsuit against Symantec Corp.

A spokesman for the group, which is known as "Lords of Dharmaraja," released more than 13,000 files that were part of the product's source code from a 2006 version of Norton Utilities, a software program at the heart of the legal dispute.

"Pass it on to forensics and win the lawsuit," YamaTough said via Twitter.

The proposed class-action lawsuit claims that Symantec seeks to convince consumers to buy Norton Utilities and PC Tools software programs by scaring them with misleading information about the health of their computers. Symantec has said those claims are without merit.

It was not immediately clear how the source code might help the case. And one of the attorneys working with plaintiff James Gross said that he did not welcome assistance from the Indian hackers.

Read the full story

The Reader-Written Novel

"Crowd-sourced" novel in the Sydney Morning Herald

 It was the neatest idea of the Christmas season. 

The Sydney Morning Herald invited its readers to contribute to the creation of a new art form, a "crowd-sourced" novel featuring a mysterious necklace, which was to be published over the next three weeks.

The first chapter was published on Boxing Day (December 26) in the newspaper's Summer Herald section, on smh.com.au and on the Herald's tablet app.

Readers were invited to read that chapter and then write the next one, submitting it within two days.

One contribution was selected and published as the next chapter (on the tablet app and online only, but still, what a great idea). The editor -- Michael Duffy -- envisaged a novel nine chapters in length, which would appear as an evolving serial for three weeks, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

There were rules.  Each chapter had to be set in a different suburb, be strongly described, and be between 1500 and 2000 words. The only necessary linking element was the necklace introduced in the first chapter. Each subsequent chapter had to explain how the necklace got to be in a new suburb -- given or sold, stolen or inherited, perhaps. The chapters could move back and forth in time.

And lo, the public responded.  The final chapter has just been published, and it's a humdinger, starring Cate Blanchett, no less.

You can read the completed novel HERE  Just click each chapter in order.

The first typewritten manuscript

Who produced the first typewritten manuscript?

Mark Twain, it seems, with his story "Life on the Mississippi"

And can you blame him?  "Mississippi" is a lot easier to type than to write.

Joking aside, there is an interesting discussion developing on the internet, starting with milestones in publishing (such as the first typewritten manuscript), and focusing on word processors.

So, who was the first to produce a manuscript on a word processor?

No one knows, according to a fascinating article in the NYT by Jennifer Schuessler.  But there are plenty of guesses, mostly involving science fiction writers -- which is only logical, when you think about it.  Frank Herbert could well have been the first to submit a book on floppy disks, but in the absence of the disks themselves, let alone the data on them, it is impossible to prove.

(For that matter, it could have been yours truly.  In 1990 I produced She Was a Sister Sailor on a Brother rather like the one pictured above, and sent it to the publisher -- Mystic Seaport -- on floppy disks, which were a lot cheaper to mail than a typewritten manuscript.  They had to borrow an identical machine to read the confounded things.)

In her NYT story, Jennifer Schuessler tells us about Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, a university professor who is hot on the trail of the first word processor-produced manuscript, according to a recent lecture at the New York Public Library, saucily titled "Stephen King's Wang."  (A Wang was King's first word processor.)  Mr. Kirschenbaum also collects old word processors, and has a novel method of cleaning mother boards -- by putting them through the rinse cycle of the dishwasher!

According to Ms. Schuessler, the lecture was drawn from Mr. Kirschenbaum’s book Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing, which Harvard University Press is set to publish in 2013, or as soon as he can finish tapping it out on his iBuyPower 64-bit laptop.