Historian Daniel J. Boorstin brings his customary depth and range to this compelling book on Western art, taking on everything from European megaliths (Stonehenge, for example) to Benjamin Franklin's autobiography ("the first American addition to world literature"). Boorstin does not aim at being comprehensive--he much prefers to linger over certain "heroes of the imagination" as he surveys human accomplishment in the fields of architecture, music, painting, sculpting, and writing--yet The Creators certainly feels comprehensive, as Boorstin carefully places everything he describes within a grand tradition of aesthetic achievement. Boorstin knows that good history demands good writing, and his prose makes this big book easy to absorb. "This is a story," he writes, "of how creators in all the arts have enlarged, embellished, fantasized, and filigreed our experience"--an apt description of the role art plays in our life and an equally apt description of the way Boorstin interprets it for readers.

The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination

Perhaps the greatest book by one of our greatest historians, The Discoverers is a volume of sweeping range and majestic interpretation. To call it a history of science is an understatement; this is the story of how humankind has come to know the world, however incompletely ("the eternal mystery of the world," Einstein once said, "is its comprehensibility"). Daniel J. Boorstin first describes the liberating concept of time--"the first grand discovery"--and continues through the age of exploration and the advent of the natural and social sciences. The approach is idiosyncratic, with Boorstin lingering over particular figures and accomplishments rather than rushing on to the next set of names and dates. It's also primarily Western, although Boorstin does ask (and answer) several interesting questions: Why didn't the Chinese "discover" Europe and America? Why didn't the Arabs circumnavigate the planet? His thesis about discovery ultimately turns on what he calls "illusions of knowledge." If we think we know something, then we face an obstacle to innovation. The great discoverers, Boorstin shows, dispel the illusions and reveal something new about the world.

The Discoverers

I've been sitting in ETech for the past few days being bombarded with ideas about attention. These have ranged from the profane to the profound.

Following the path from intention to attention | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

Last fall, my friend Sally Satel wrote about the issue in general and her own search for a kidney donor. Between the time she wrote the article and the time it appeared in the NYT, I heard about her situation and volunteered as a donor. Our tissues turned out to be unusually compatible for nonrelatives and, when her Internet donor dropped out, I moved from backup to actual donor. We have our surgeries tomorrow morning.

Update is here.

Dynamist Blog: A Medical Adventure

MyToday helps you to get News and Views easily at one place. You can keep yourself updated on diverse topics in pages called Dailies. MyToday helps you by eliminating the need to go to different sources everyday! And if you are BORED, you can have a nice time using MyToday dailies like Fun. More on MyToday at our Blog and F.A.Q pages.

MyToday.com

The site header says it all: "x:posted is a marketplace for buying and selling online content". x:posted (read crossposted) is meant to give you a way to connect directly with potential buyers of the content you are already creating.

x:posted

The science we do at Yahoo! Research Labs reflects a range of expertise both broad and deep, and focuses on solving key technology problems for the online industry. Recent publications report on work in machine learning, statistical data mining, efficient algorithms, and market theory.

Yahoo! Research Locations
Yahoo! Research New York
45 West 18th Street, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10011

Yahoo! Research :: Publications

In a previous post, I mentioned our efforts around lowering barriers to entry for participation, i.e. empowering consumers with tools that transform them into creators.� Tagging is perhaps the simplest and most direct example of how lowering a barrier to entry can drive and spur participation.

Elatable | Bradley Horowitz

We assembled an eclectic group of�thinkers to identify the trends that will shape our future. It included an Internet entrepreneur who owns a basketball team, a mother who writes about the American family, a specialist in popular culture and an Op-Ed editor at a large city newspaper. We heard a fascinating conversation about how video games are making kids smarter, how consumers are turning into inventors and why some of us are taking longer showers. Listen to most of that discussion at TIME.com Here are some excerpts:

Around The Corner

My old sparring partner and current NYU colleague Mark Dery and I have been having an interesting exchange in the comments thread about the presence of The Bell Curve in my personal "canon." This morning, I started typing out a longer response, and thought I'd bump it up to the front door, since others may be interested.

Readers Want To Know: What The Hell Is The Bell Curve Doing On My Bookshelf?