Richard Nash talks about book publishing: Basically, the best-selling five hundred books each year will likely be published much like Little Brown publishes James Patterson, on a TV production model, or like Scholastic did Harry Potter and Doubleday Dan Brown, on a big Hollywood blockbuster model. The rest will be published by niche social publishing communities.

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The Future of Books and Publishing

Part of the Pocket Penguin Series, the 57 pages in this book are culled from a number of different volumes by Elizabeth David. She brings colour and life to whatever she describes. Most of the content of this book is concerned with the food and markets of France, but the following is taken from a short excursion to the country markets of Italy: Here the cabbages are cobalt blue, the beetroots deep rose, the lettuces clear pure green, sharp as glass.

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Of Pageants and Picnics

In Brooklyn tomorrow, advocates, researchers and service providers will rally around the release of new data on the real cost of living for seniors in New York State. The findings of the New York Elder Economic Security Standard Index™ (Elder Index), a new tool developed by Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW) and the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts-Boston , show that an older New Yorker needs between about $16,100 to over $42,700 to meet basic needs, depending on his or her housing and health status. We all know it is expensive to live, let alone retire, in New York, particularly in the state’s urban areas.

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WOW Launches New York Elder Initiative!

Congrats to our Wisconsin partner, the Wisconsin Women’s Network ! It placed an op-ed in today’s Cap Times on the development of a supplemental poverty measure announced by the U.S. Census Bureau last month. Check out “A Better Way to Measure Poverty” and comment today

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Op-Ed Published by WOW’s Wisconsin Partner on Measuring Poverty

Le Grand Meaulnes, being one of those volumes that most good writers turn to at some point in their career, is arguably one of the most influential novels of the 20th century. Here’s a sample: They pulled up beside a wood of firs. The passengers had to wait a moment on the gangway, pressed against one another, while one of the boatmen unlocked the gate .

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Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier

This week, with health care reform passed, the New York Times speculated that Social Security, “the other big entitlement program,” would be the next big program to “tackle,” specifically within the context of reducing the nation’s debt. Reports followed that suggest the program is in crisis, despite the fact that predictions show Social Security can pay benefits in full until 2037.

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Social Security Isn’t in “Crisis” – But Older Women Are.

Thanks to the hard work of elder advocates across the country, the Community Living Assistance Services & Supports (CLASS) became law after a decade long health care reform effort which culminated on Tuesday when the President signed the bill. The provisions of the CLASS Act set up a voluntary long-term care insurance program in 2011 that will provide workers with an opportunity to save for their chronic health needs through monthly payroll deductions. The program will help those with significant functional disabilities afford services and supports in the community.

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Health Care Reform: CLASS Act Now Law

Richard Aronowitz’s second novel, It’s Just the Beating of My Heart, is a first-person narrative in the voice of John Stack, a borderline alcoholic living alone in the Gloucestershire countryside after being abandoned by his wife. He is an Art dealer, but not doing as well as he used to; in denial about his drinking and with little more to brighten his week than weekend visits from his twelve-year-old daughter, Bryony.

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It’s Just the Beating of My Heart

A French animator’s soundtrack visualization brings to mind the Kaossilator. So, this video by animator Renaud Hallée isn’t quite a pure infographic–but as you’ll see, it’s pretty damn close.

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Infographic of the Day: All Music Should Look Like This

It hasn’t officially been rebranded, of course; God is notoriously conservative about updating that Bible of His. But, as reported by the New York Times , Reboot, a nonprofit Jewish think tank, has come up with a new version of Shabbat that is not only restive but sort of cheekily appropriate. And if you notice a lack of Jews on the internet, starting about now, you’ll know why

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Nation’s Jews Abandon Facebook and Twitter, One Day Per Week, Starting…Now

You can make anything from 3-D printing, from impossibly complex lamps to chain-mail bags to entire buildings . So it’s actually kind of surprising that 3-D printed shoes aren’t more common

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3-D Printed Shoes: Quite the Feet

Ninteno’s guru Shigeru Miyamoto has just revealed that Nintendo might be aiming at a surprising new market for its games consoles: Schools. With all the controversy about distractions and violence, is this sensible? Miyamoto’s words came during an interview with the AP .

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Nintendo DS in Classrooms to Help Japanese Schoolkids Find the Square Root of Mario

A pair of senators, one red, one blue, have today proposed a biometric ID system to “mend” immigration. It’s part of a bipartisan immigration bill backed by President Obama, and proposes to replace everyone’s social security cards with one that stores biometric information about the individual.

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Why the Bipartisan Proposal for Biometric ID Cards Will Probably Fail

Good news for anyone who has old records but no record player: you can make your own record player pretty easily–just add cardboard. Griffiths, Gibson and Ramsay Productions (GGRP), a Vancouver-based sound design studio, exploited the idea in a direct mail marketing piece. The company created a record player from a corrugated cardboard envelope that can hold a 45 rpm record in place

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Cardboard Record Sleeve Turns Into Record Player

A week after the FCC debuted a beta tool for consumers to measure their broadband speeds, we’ve got the first set of stats. 150,000 people decided to avail themselves of the widget, available on Android, iPhone and Web platforms, giving the commission a more realistic idea of the state of the U.S.’s Internet connections than the figures bandied about by the ISPs

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FCC’s Broadband Measuring Tool Gets 150,000 Takers, Shows West-Coast Bias

In the future DARPA’s ISIS blimp may be hovering above the horizon near to conflict zones, feeding real time radar data to troops and smart weapons from on high. True to its name, it’s also a little more magical than the Goodyear blimp as it’s almost totally automated. In fact, the Integrated Sensor Is the Structure has almost nothing in common with the Goodyear aircraft apart from its shape and helium-filling

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DARPA’s Smart Blimp: Mysterious, Hovering Future of Battlefield Surveillance

Most of us don’t think about the cultural context of our washing machines–we just toss in clothes, turn on the device, and don’t ponder it further. But the reality is that the majority of people on the planet wash clothes by hand, mostly because of poverty and lack of available resources.

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Open Source Washing Machine Project Rethinks Clothes-Washing

Got spare change? A Coke robot, a used panties dispenser, a pet cockroach machine, and other coin-operated tools of instant gratification cater to inexplicable needs

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The Weirdest Vending Machines in the World

If you assume a desktop computer’s a big box full of chips, hard drives and other paraphernalia, it’s hard to see how to make it cheaper. Unless you go down the virtualization route: NComputing thinks the ultimate cost could be zero

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How Cheap Could Computing Get: Free? NComputing Thinks So

Film maker John Waters famously dubbed the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA)’s annual fund-raiser, “Dining by Design,” the “Cannes of Tabletop.” And with good reason. If these tables could walk, they would have been at home strolling the red carpet at the Palais des Festivals, dressed to kill. Such design heavy-hitters as David Rockwell, David Stark, Vincente Wolf, Joseph Carini, and Michael Tavano put their talent where their heart is this week by ponying up designs for the event, which is being held at New York’s Pier 94 in conjunction with Architectural Digest’s Home Design Show.

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Top Designers Strut Their Flatware at "Cannes of Tabletop," DIFFA’s Dining Extravaganza