Have you ever wondered how chewing gum was invented? Or who made the first roller skates? Or why there are piggy banks rather than doggy banks? Imaginative Inventions answers all of these questions and tells the fascinating stories behind these, as well as potato chips, eyeglasses, doughnuts, high-heeled shoes, the wheelbarrow, marbles, the vacuum cleaner, animal crackers, and more. Written in verse and with illustrations full of offbeat characters and quirky details, this book invites young readers inside the minds of great inventors and encourages them to think imaginatively.
Blog
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Don’t Mock The Victorians
I’ve been leafing through some old Soviet science and technology magazines, and came upon this cartoon mocking inventors of the yesteryear. There’s a trunk-lifesaver, steam-powered sewing machine, a built-in bottle opener, an automatic candle extinguisher, a variety of ridiculous looking egg cookers, and … a pneumatic tea kettle, which in one shape or another can be found in just about any coffee shop, catering hall and cafeteria these days.
Also in the mix – what they imagined a cell phone would be like in the 70s.
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Link Love 1
Stack Overflow: What do programmers listen to when they write code?
The best note taking tool in the world, Evernote, finally released an API. I really, really love Evernote.
Jesse Reklaw has a new Slow Wave book, The Night of Your Life, out. You can get signed copies from Slow Wave website or buy them at Amazon. Slow Wave is in the top 5 of my favorite comics, and Jesse drew the cat and programmer graphic used in the masthead of my site.
For some reason, my former co-worker Sean posts more New York City photos than I do these days.
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Big Shots: Business the Rupert Murdoch Way
Now brought completely up-to-date for this new edition, Business The Rupert Murdoch Way not only reveals the secrets of Murdoch’s remarkable success but also draws out the universal lessons and identifies strategies that can be applied to any business or career. From thriving on risk to hard selling, and from loving the detail to betting big on the future, Business The Rupert Murdoch Way is a fascinating insight into what it takes to create a global business empire.
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The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch
If Rupert Murdoch isn’t making headlines, he’s busy buying the media outlets that generate the headlines. His News Corp. holdings—from the New York Post, Fox News, and most recently The Wall Street Journal, to name just a few—are vast, and his power is unrivaled. So what makes a man like this tick? Michael Wolff gives us the definitive answer in The Man Who Owns the News.
With unprecedented access to Rupert Murdoch himself, and his associates and family, Wolff chronicles the astonishing growth of Murdoch’s $70 billion media kingdom. In intimate detail, he probes the Murdoch family dynasty, from the battles that have threatened to destroy it to the reconciliations that seem to only make it stronger. Drawing upon hundreds of hours of interviews, he offers accounts of the Dow Jones takeover as well as plays for Yahoo! and Newsday as they’ve never been revealed before.
Written in the irresistible stye that only an award-winning columnist for Vanity Fair can deliver, The Man Who Owns the News offers an exclusive glimpse into a man who wields extraordinary power and influence in the media on a worldwide scale—and whose family is being groomed to carry his legacy into the future.
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Murdoch
It was Rupert Murdoch who invented the modern media empire. Now his reach includes two thirds of the Earth’s population. In this revised and updated edition, William Shawcross brings Murdoch’s story up to date. “Of all the biographies on Murdoch, this is the most comprehensive and balanced and comes closest to explaining a bundle of contradictions.”–Edwin Diamond, New York magazine.
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Rupert Murdoch the Communist
Do you know the famous misquote that goes something like: “A young man who isn’t a socialist hasn’t got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn’t got a head”?
Well, apparently, at some point young Rupert Murdoch was a huge fan of Lenin. The following quote is from Murdoch: Revised and Updated, page 38:
“He added an an extraordinary postscript, written in magenta ink, reaffirming his loyalty to Lenin. “Yesterday was the 29th anniversary of the Great Teacher. We stood to attention for one minute in front of THE BUST on the mantelpiece and drank several toasts-and then settled down to some good reading of adulatory Russian poetry.””
Picturing Rupert reading “adulatory Russian poetry” and owning a bust of Lenin brings a tear to my eye.