The Smith Public Library Teen Center

fairytalemood:

“Pullman will retell 50 of the tales, ‘from the quests and romance of classics such as Rapunzel, Snow White and Cinderella to the danger and wit of such lesser-known tales as The Three Snake Leaves, Hans-My-Hedgehog and Godfather Death’ with additional commentary on the history of each story.” (via Tor.com)

Release date: November 8, 2012

infoneer-pulse:

Can physicists produce insights about language that have eluded linguists and English professors? That possibility was put to the test this week when a team of physicists published a paper drawing on Google’s massive collection of scanned books. They claim to have identified universal laws governing the birth, life course and death of words.

The paper marks an advance in a new field dubbed “Culturomics”: the application of data-crunching to subjects typically considered part of the humanities. Last year a group of social scientists and evolutionary theorists, plus the Google Books team, showed off the kinds of things that could be done with Google’s data, which include the contents of five-million-plus books, dating back to 1800.

Published in Science, that paper gave the best-yet estimate of the true number of words in English—a million, far more than any dictionary has recorded (the 2002 Webster’s Third New International Dictionary has 348,000). More than half of the language, the authors wrote, is “dark matter” that has evaded standard dictionaries.

The paper also tracked word usage through time (each year, for instance, 1% of the world’s English-speaking population switches from “sneaked” to “snuck”). It also showed that we seem to be putting history behind us more quickly, judging by the speed with which terms fall out of use. References to the year “1880” dropped by half in the 32 years after that date, while the half-life of “1973” was a mere decade.

» via The Wall Street Journal (Subscription may be required for some content)

ofiliap:

This just adds to the slew of anti-female energies out in the world this week.

infoneer-pulse:

To the graduating class of 2012: All that money you or your parents have spent or borrowed to pay your tuition for the past few years? It’s not getting the same return on investment it did a decade ago.

According to the folks at the Economic Policy Institute, the average inflation-adjusted wage for male college graduates aged 23 to 29 was $21.68/hour. That’s an 11% over decline over the last ten years. And while wages for females in the same age and education group are only down 7.6% during that same time period, women still make significantly less on average ($18.80/hour).

» via The Consumerist

infoneer-pulse:

Marrier Ferrier, president of Texas A&M at San Antonio, says the school has developed a bachelor’s of information technology that will cost students $9,700 for four years—including books. And Texas A&M at Commerce president Dan Jones and South Texas College chief academic officer Juan Mejia say both of their campuses will offer bachelor’s of applied science in organizational leadership for under $10,000 beginning next year.

Jones told the audience that the degree programs will rely on online courses and open education textbooks as well as competency-based learning, which allows students to prove mastery of a concept without taking a required number of classes. The challenge, he acknowledged, will be making sure businesses trust the degree enough to hire graduates. One of the major criticisms of the no-frills $10,000 degree is a concern the programs will eliminate critical thinking or problem solving from higher education, turning the college experience into a diploma mill.

» via GOOD