The future just got a little closer, methinks. The Pirate Bay (better known for illegal downloads of the latest Hollywood schlock-busters and whatever drivel passes for music these days) has started a new category of downloads for what it calls "physibles" - object definition files for 3D printers. The idea is that some day (hopefully soon), when ( Read more... )

Disclaimer: I don't have this book, I didn't write this book, and I haven't even read this book. But, based on the description, I think I want this book ( Read more... )

I've actually managed to read a fair number of books in the last few months. Yay, reading is fun! This after-school moment is brought to you by the letters F and T, and the number 17.

Okay, where was I? Right, books.

First up, Victorious, book six of the Lost Fleet series, by John G. Hemry writing as Jack Campbell, in which our hero wins an ( Read more... )

May is Zombie Awareness Month (wear a grey ribbon!), and it might be a good time to talk to your kids about the zombie threat. To that end, Matt Mogk (founder of the Zombie Research Society) is releasing a new book, "That's not your Mommy anymore". Go to the link for an interview with the author, including his favourite anti-zombie weapon.

Sheldon is kind of a fun strip that I've been reading on-and-off for a few years. One of the compilations ("Literature", being strips of a literary theme) has now been nominated for an Eisner award (Best Humor, category 8), and the author is making review copies available for download. Go, read, and enjoy.

HarperCollins is apparently enforcing a new license restriction on e-book sales to libraries - the e-book can only be "checked out" 26 times before the license expires and the library has to re-buy it. Given that e-book prices are rapidly approaching "real" book prices, this will certainly take a huge chunk out of library acquisition budgets in ( Read more... )

Apparently, the Anarchist Cookbook turns 40 this year.

Powell wrote the book as a 19-year-old antiwar activist, “pissed off,” as he would later write, “at the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam to fight in a war that I did not believe in.” But the “secrets” he revealed were hidden in plain sight; he conducted most of his research at the ( Read more... )

Coming soon to a bookstore near you, Farmville For Dummies. Is that title redundant? I'm not sure.

Tim Ferriss has just released a book called The 4-Hour Body, which details the results of various "experiments" he ran on himself to do things like put on as much muscle as he could in 28 days. One of the other things he did was to eat a diet of primarily beef and nuts for 28 days, to see what would happen to his serum cholesterol levels. ( Read more... )

My favourite statistician, William M. Briggs, has released his two books in electronic format (PDF and Kindle/mobi) format for free, as in gratis. One of them, Breaking the Law of Averages, is the text he uses to teach introductory statistics at the college level, and the other one, So, You Think You're Psychic?, is a somewhat skeptical look at ( Read more... )