Update: $28,136 Raised From 836 Supporters. They're Taking Extra Care (and Expense) To Make Sure The

Pride of Baltimore II with everything set.  Ringtail, topgallant, stuns’l, everything.  I think I’m at the helm in this picture.  It was a glorious day, though the wind had died and shifted a few minutes before.

Photo credit to Chief Mate Hank Moseley

We put a Carnegie Hall orchestra in the middle of New York City and placed an empty podium in front of the musicians with a sign that read, “Conduct Us.” Random New Yorkers who accepted the challenge were given the opportunity to conduct this world-class orchestra. The orchestra responded to the conductors, altering their tempo and performance accordingly.

Read the full story: Conduct Us | Improv Everywhere

Smart bookbindings - a lot of them

This morning I visited the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, and it was an overwhelming experience. The library was founded in 1572 by Duke Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and it is a rare example of a 16th-century library that survived fully intact. Walking through the library I encountered a big bronze door. When I opened it I suddenly stood eye to eye with something unexpected: vast bookcases stretching from floor to ceiling filled with thousands of bookbindings from the 15th to 17th centuries.

As you would expect, many have fragments of medieval manuscripts and early printed books pasted in and on them, to provide support (last pic). However, this collection is special for another reason. The duke himself wrote on each book what it contained. To find writing on the back of an early-modern book is not unusual, but the duke was a thorough man and went a little overboard, as you can see. The backs not only contain very long title descriptions, but also numbers. In fact, duke August is rumored to have invented the system where book numbers have a decimal point. If book nr. 23 contains physics, the next book he purchased with the same topic would receive nr. 23.1 - think Library of Congress. These are not just old, but also smart bookbindings, which carry history on their backs.

They were all covered with fireflies. Beautiful Joe’s Paradise; or, The island of brotherly love. A sequel to ‘Beautiful Joe’. Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull (1902).

RSS: I need it.

This post is not about the day to day operations of The Old Reader or anything of that nature. It’s about how our team came to get involved with RSS and how we see the future of this application and technology that we value so highly.

As a long time user of RSS and Google Reader, I’ve...

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(not actually by Julia Gfrörer, though she also draws mermaids who aren't interested in your problems)