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18 November 2013

Monday miscellany

A vanishing art form? A collector of second-hand books has compiled a book of fly-leaf dedications - read about it here. If you read through the comments on the article, you'll eventually get to this one:
Years ago I bought I book inscribed 'To Freddie, love from Paul' and underneath it Freddie had written 'total scumbag, please ignore his odious dedication'.


Finally you can travel around Venice from the comfort of your armchair, or at least from the comfort of your computer chair - Google Street View has conquered Venice, thanks to a "super-fit" team of camera-packers -
The article from which the photo comes also has links to other exotic armchair-travel destinations - street view Galapagos, anyone?


In The Guardian, a list of the 100 greatest novels of all time - how many have you read?
Guess which novel is no.1 on the list?

Another number one - we were wondering what the no.1 popular blog is - and it turns out to be Huffington Post, with an estimated 85 million unique visitors a month. A list of the top 15 is at ebizmba.com


#techmums is a course that aims to help women with children learn technology skills - the pilot course, run in a school in Tower Hamlets, the area of London with the highest uptake of free school meals in the UK, was so successful - for the school's pupils in general as well as the mums on the course - that the school is finding funds to run it twice more.

The head teacher of the school puts his finger on the knock-on benefit: "So many parents don't know how to track or monitor their child's internet footprint, nor do they have any sense of how to programme in a computing language. The parents' own fears create a parallel reluctance in their daughters to approach computing and computer science. But #techmums has increased confidence and self-esteem that sets them apart from people who haven't completed the course."

All this in two hours a week, over a six weeks. As the saying goes, "show a man how to catch a fish and you feed him for a lifetime."


The Tate has a series of videos called "Unlock Art" using celebrities to demystify things a little. They include Frank Skinner on performance art and Sally Phillips on the razzamatazz of the art market.
"The relationship between art and money is almost as old as art itself"

An interesting list of "art ingredients" (via) -




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