A fuzzy Charon visible

Scientific American's Christopher Crockett wrote...

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, now en route to Pluto, got its first glimpse of the dwarf planet’s largest moon, Charon, in this image released July 10.

Pluto is the bright spot in the center of the image. Charon is the faint smudge up and to the left. New Horizons snapped the picture at about 900 million kilometers from Pluto—six times the distance between Earth and the sun. At that distance, the light from Charon and Pluto takes about 48 minutes to reach New Horizons’s cameras. Charon is roughly the size of Texas, but to the approaching craft it appears no wider than a U.S. quarter seen from 17 kilometers away

Until 2005 Charon was Pluto’s only known moon. Since then astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered four more: Nix, Hydra, Kerberos and Styx. Kerberos and Styx are the smallest, each only about a dozen kilometers across; they received their official names just last week.

Launched in early 2006 New Horizons is scheduled to pass within 13,000 kilometers of Pluto in July 2015. The flyby will give astronomers their first close-up look at the tiny world and its moons. Mission scientists will study Pluto’s terrain, composition and atmosphere as well as the space environment in an unexplored, distant corner of the solar system. In the meantime, as New Horizons races toward Pluto, it will frequently snap photos of the dwarf planet’s surroundings to better understand the orbits of the known moons and to look out for potential hazards, such as smaller moonlets or a system of dusty rings.

Pluto belongs to a belt of icy debris beyond Neptune called the Kuiper Belt. Out there, much of the debris left over from the solar system’s formation sits in frozen storage. By studying Pluto and its moons, astronomers learn about more than a single world—they gain access to a record of our solar system’s birth and subsequent growth. In the end, Pluto may be able to tell us more about ourselves and how we got here.

Imagination can sometimes be better than reality...Ray Bradbury's "The Rocket"

An anthology including The Rocket.

Plot [Wikipedia]...

The story begins with Fiorello Bodoni, a poor junkyard owner, who spends his nights admiring nearby rocket launches bound for the Moon, Venus and Mars. After six years, he has finally saved enough money to send one of his family members to Mars. However, when he presents the opportunity to his wife and children, they quickly realize that none could bear the guilt of experiencing such a wonderful journey while the rest stay behind. Bodini dejectedly returns to his business, but after a stroke of luck, is offered the chance to purchase a mock-up rocket.

He decides to spend his savings on the mock-up and secretly spends the night building a replica rocket with a theater in the cabin using color film, mirrors and screens. He then excitedly tells his family that they will all be able to make the journey to Mars and back. Despite his wife's hesitations, he takes his children on a convincing trip to outer-space, one that they say they will "remember... for always."

In the end, his wife realizes what a wonderful memory he has given their children, even though the rocket never left the ground, and agrees to share a short trip in the rocket with him in the future.

Audio presentation...

NBC Short Story's The Rocket by Ray Bradbury [1952]

NBC Presents: Short Story [Wikipedia]

"Silent Snow, Secret Snow"...a forgotten Conrad Aiken short story

Silent Snow, Secret Snow was written by Conrad Aiken in 1934 and included in hundreds of anthologies over the decades. Gene Kearney directed a short film in 1966 and Rod Serling's Night Gallery offered a fifteen minute adaptation in 1971 narrated by Orson Welles and directed by Gene Kearney.

Wikipedia plot...

The story tells of a boy named Paul Hasleman, who finds it increasingly difficult to pay attention to his classwork, and grows more distant from his family. He is, instead, becoming more and more entranced by daydreaming about snow. This began when he was lying in bed one morning, awaiting the approach of the postman. Unable to hear the expected footfalls, the boy imagines that they have been muffled by newly fallen snow, and is surprised when he looks out the window and discovers that there is no snow on the ground.

Paul's increasing distance and indifference to the world around him alarms his parents. He has to struggle to get dressed and converse with others, because of the allure of his daydream about snow. They eventually call in a physician, who makes a house call to examine Paul. After revealing that he likes to think about snow, Paul tears himself away from the meeting with the physician and retires to his room. When his mother pursues him, he tells her "Go away... I hate you!", and is lost in the dreamworld of the snow.

There is a lot of philosophy going on in the story.

Wikipedia offered this viewpoint...

The story tells of a normal boy's descent into a dream world of snow that he finds preferable to the "dirty," mundane world. The story can also be thought of as a Symbolist rejection of reality. The progressive withdrawal from reality and social relationships, as well as preoccupation with idiosyncratically meaningful ideas could be interpreted as characteristic of schizophrenia, while the preoccupation with a specific interest could be interpreted as characteristic of Asperger syndrome.

The short story...

Silent Snow, Secret Snow

1966 short film by Gene Kearney...

Conrad Aiken [Wikipedia]

Expansion of the universe...who conceived this notion?

Abstract...

The recent literature of history of astronomy and cosmology has included a good many suggestions for "who first recognized the expansion of the universe?" with cases having been made for Lemaître, Lundmark, de Sitter, Slipher, Shapley, Friedmann, Wirtz and perhaps others. I will touch on these but also mention others (some of whose names have not come down to us) who might reasonably be credited with some part of the basic idea, but conclude that "Hubble's Law" is the right choice ("because it was discovered by Lundmark" in accordance with Stigler's Law). Of course there are a couple of previously unsung heroes (Dose and Zöllner), and the discussion bears some traces of its origins as an after-dinner talk.

"Anybody but Hubble" by Virginia Trimble

Deceased--Arthur J. Rosenthal

Arthur J. Rosenthal
September 26th, 1919 to July 6th, 2013

"Arthur Rosenthal, Academic Book Publisher, Dies at 93"

by

Paul Vitello

July 8th, 2013

The New York Times

Arthur J. Rosenthal, a publisher of intellectual masterworks in an era of fast-buck publishing who led Basic Books in the 1950s and ’60s and created a model for universities nationwide by leading Harvard University Press to solvency in the ’70s and ’80s, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 93.

His death was confirmed by his son Jim.

Mr. Rosenthal, who founded Basic Books in 1952, let his taste in nonfiction and his quasi indifference to profit margins guide him as a publisher. But it was an early connection to the society of psychoanalysts (his mother ran a salon for psychoanalytic debate in their Manhattan home when he was growing up) that led Mr. Rosenthal to his first publishing deal, the three-volume official biography of Dr. Sigmund Freud by a disciple, Dr. Ernest Jones.

Dr. Jones’s biography, “The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud,” became one of the basic texts of Freud scholarship. Dr. Jones “only expected sales of about 600 copies to other psychoanalysts,” Mr. Rosenthal told The New York Times in 1985. “We had world rights and no contract, just a handshake.” The book became a mainstay of Basic Books.

Mr. Rosenthal’s interests in psychology, sociology, current affairs, history and philosophy led him to publish a library full of important social science volumes over the next decades, including early works by the behavioral scientists Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson.

In 1972, after selling Basic Books to Harper & Row for a reported $4 million, Mr. Rosenthal took his talents to the nonprofit Harvard Press, which had been faltering. There, his ability to bring what he called “borderline academic books” to a wider audience helped put the press in the black and served as a model for university presses elsewhere. He introduced new lists in science and technology, professionalized marketing and began picking winners.

Among the titles published during Mr. Rosenthal’s tenure were Bernard Bailyn’s 1975 National Book Award winner, “The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson”; E. O. Wilson’s “On Human Nature” (1978), which received the Pulitzer Prize; Alfred D. Chandler Jr.’s “Visible Hand,” which received both the Pulitzer and Bancroft Prizes in 1978; Carol Gilligan’s “In a Different Voice” (1982), which sold over 500,000 copies and became a major text of the women’s movement; Thomas K. McCraw’s Pulitzer-winning “Prophets of Regulation” (1984); Jane Goodall’s “Chimpanzees of Gombe” (1986), an account of Dr. Goodall’s first 25 years working with chimps; and Eudora Welty’s “One Writer’s Beginnings” (1984), which spent 46 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list.

“When a press like ours can publish a roaring best seller,” Mr. Rosenthal said in 1986, “it helps all university presses, and it increases the bookstores’ recognition that we are not only handing out dead mackerel.“

He said he was proud to publish any book — whether profitable or not — that managed “to push our culture one grain of sand forward.”

John Leonard, a Nation columnist and former editor of The New York Times Book Review, described Mr. Rosenthal as an endangered species in a 1997 commentary about the corporatization of the publishing industry for the CBS News program “Sunday Morning”: “He prided himself on being able to publish any book he cared about.”

In the publishing world, Mr. Leonard added, “We used to be able to count on the Arthur Rosenthals.”

Arthur Jesse Rosenthal was born in Manhattan on Sept. 26, 1919, to Arthur and Grace Rosenthal. His father was a stockbroker and a member of the New York Stock Exchange. His mother, who was a patient in the 1920s of Dr. Otto Rank, an Austrian psychoanalyst who was one of Freud’s first pupils, pursued a lifelong interest in psychology.

After graduating from Yale in 1941, Mr. Rosenthal served four years in the Army as the chief of publications for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, directing press and propaganda work in the Philippines and occupied Japan.

Before starting Basic Books, Mr. Rosenthal was a special assistant to James G. MacDonald, the first United States ambassador to Israel.

Besides his son Jim, Mr. Rosenthal’s survivors include a daughter, Kathryn Goldman; a son, Paul; and eight grandchildren. Mr. Rosenthal’s two marriages ended in divorce.

Mr. Rosenthal, who retired from Harvard Press in 1990, was 70 when he started his last job, as publisher of Hill & Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

In an interview at the time, Mr. Rosenthal acknowledged that the business was becoming more difficult. But his enthusiasm was a constant.

“Something happens,” he said. “You get an idea. You meet an author. You can’t be depressed and be a good publisher.”

Basic Books [Wikipedia]

A Brief History of Harvard University Press

Inseperable...philosophy and science

Abstract...

In this paper I review the problematic relationship between science and philosophy; in particular, I will address the question of whether science needs philosophy, and I will offer some positive (if incomplete) perspectives that should be helpful in developing a synergetic relationship between the two. I will review three lines of reasoning often employed in arguing that philosophy is useless for science: a) philosophy’s death diagnosis (‘philosophy is dead’) and what follows from it; b) the historic-agnostic argument/challenge “show me examples where philosophy has been useful for science, for I don’t know of any”; c) the division of property argument (or: philosophy and science have different subject matters, therefore philosophy is useless for science).

These arguments will be countered with three contentions to the effect that the natural sciences need philosophy. I will: a) point to the fallacy of anti-philosophicalism (or: ‘in order to deny the need for philosophy, one must do philosophy’) and examine the role of paradigms and presuppositions (or: why science can’t live without philosophy); b) point out why the historical argument fails (in an example from quantum mechanics, alive and kicking); c) briefly sketch some domains of intersection of science and philosophy and how the two can have mutual synergy. I will conclude with some implications of this synergetic relationship between science and philosophy for the liberal arts and sciences.

"Science and Philosophy: A Love Hate Relationship" by Sebastian de Haro

Textbook's demise...not good, not bad

"Death of the textbook—and the 50-pound bookbag"

by

Ellen Lee

July 6th, 2013

USA TODAY

The Department of Justice and Apple are battling in court over e-book pricing, but that's not the only high-stakes brawl that's brewing in the publishing industry.

The multi-billion dollar textbook industry is also being shaken up by a slew of forces, from the publishers to tech startups, education non-profits, the government, university professors and, of course, Apple.

Textbook sales, for both higher education and K-12, will reach an estimated $13.7 billion in the U.S. this year, according to Outsell, a research firm. The overall market is expected to increase over the next few years as the student population is growing, according to Kate Worlock, an analyst at Outsell.

Just as with e-books, the shift comes as students turn to their tablets and smartphones for digital textbooks. Just take college student Clayton Brown, who carries an iPad to his biology class at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va.

If his professor asks the students to follow along in the textbook, he taps his iPad, opens a digital copy and quickly lands at the right place without thumbing through any pages.

"Instead of carrying around a bunch of books, you have one device with everything on it," said the 23-year-old student. He also uses the digital textbook's added tools like flash cards and an online journal that keeps track of the material he's highlighted. "It's just much more efficient."

The price is also much more palatable. Instead of more than $200 for a used textbook at the bookstore, Brown said he paid $80 for his digital copy from Kno, an education software start-up in Silicon Valley.

The late Steve Jobs had his eye on textbooks, calling the industry "ripe for digital destruction" in Walter Isaacson's biography. The Department of Justice case only focuses on trade e-books, and whether, say, $10 or $12 is a reasonable price reached fairly by all parties. But its outcome could also potentially influence the pricing of textbooks, where a college student can spend on average $1,200 a year, according to the College Board.

Slowly, but surely, more and more teachers and students like Brown are switching from traditional printed textbooks to digital ones. In what could be a tipping point this year, local schools around the U.S. have started experimenting with digital textbooks and resources.

"Textbooks are going to remain a key part of learning. They just need to go digital, become more interactive and they need more analytics," said Osman Rashid, co-founder and CEO of Kno, which has received $65 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Intel Capital, Goldman Sachs and others. It's incremental innovation that will lead to change in education, he said.

Previously, Rashid co-founded Chegg, the textbook rental company, which, faced with the digitalization of textbooks, has since expanded to be an online network for college students.

Kno and Inkling, another startup, are producing interactive textbooks, taking what was once static words and illustrations and adding features such as videos, audio, self-assessment quizzes and the ability to share notes with friends. A partnership among several major higher-education publishers led to the launch of CourseSmart, which also offers digital textbooks and resources.

A survey released last year by the Pearson Foundation found that 63% of college students and 69% of high school students believe that traditional textbooks will be phased out in the next five years. Slightly more than half of college students also said they preferred reading digital textbooks over printed ones for class.

The publishers, attuned to the digital wave, are also experimenting with new business models and launching new products, such as developing more personalized tools that can be tailored for individual students.

Pearson, for instance, no longer considers itself a textbook publisher, instead calling itself a "digital learning and services company." It launched in February an incubator to foster education start-ups. In November, it announced a pilot program, "Project Blue Sky," which lets professors mix and match both Pearson-owned and free online materials to create custom textbooks.

Such innovations, however, don't directly address one of the chief complaints about textbooks: the cost. Apple has argued that its move into e-books and textbooks should help lower the price and create a more competitive marketplace—something that the Department of Justice is hotly contesting in court. In the case of textbooks, disruptors say that even more could be done to make textbooks more affordable.

Soaring costs in education have spurred the state of California to invest $5 million to develop open-source college textbooks, tapping the masses of experts, researchers and faculty to produce cheaper, if not free, digital textbooks.

More states such as Illinois and Virginia are also considering similar legislation, and Washington is among the states that already make some texts available online for free.

"It's amazing how higher-education costs have spiraled out of control, especially textbook costs," said Dean Florez, president and CEO of Twenty Million Minds, the nonprofit in California that has been spearheading the open-source textbook effort. "The students don't have a choice at all."

Twenty Million Minds aims to produce digital textbooks for introductory college courses and has already released a free, faculty peer-reviewed statistics book. It plans to offer five more digital textbooks by the fall, also for free.

It isn't enough, Florez said, for publishers to sell interactive digital textbooks at a slight discount to their printed ones. "It needs to be more disruptive than that," he said.

Professors see disruptive opportunity in the digital age to free themselves from the hold of the entrenched publishers, too.

Anne Marie Knott, a professor of strategy at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, is applying the lessons that she has learned studying business disruption as an academic subject to her own book publishing experience.

Knott digitally self-published her most recent textbook, "Venture Design," after having worked with two publishers, who she thought did poorer jobs of design and marketing than she could do on her own.

"Faculty should be all over digital textbooks!" Knott wrote in an email.

She explained that if they go through publishers they make 15% of wholesale (which is 75% of retail), so for a $100 book they would make $11.25. If they self-publish, they can get 75% of retail ($75).

"Textbook sales are incredible, you only have to get to one faculty member to adopt your book to get sales of 100 books per year for many years (faculty don't like creating all new material to match a new text)," Knott wrote in an email.

The Washington University professor believes there is a simple reason why higher education faculty should seek to self-publish: Publishers, while keeping a much larger share of the revenue, don't necessarily do a better job of designing, editing and marketing their books.

Publishers do two forms of marketing. They create and maintain lists of who teaches what, which they use to send free copies of new books, but Knott said faculty can rent member mailing lists from faculty associations for a few cents per name.

Publishers also hire direct sales people who visit campuses. Knott said she has never bought a book based on a campus visit, but she does review the "desk copies" of new books that are sent, and "if an academic I respect writes a new book, I seriously consider it."

Knott said the growing niche is professors such as herself who have small audiences. Since they actually already know each other and their reputations, they don't need the publishing world's marketing apparatus.

"My guess is faculty will catch on, the way musicians did. The advantage we have over musicians is we actually know our customers!—we hang out with them at conferences. That's less true in music—the publishers still have access to important things that generate sales: stations, venues, etc.," Knott wrote.

Ultimately, said Mark Edwards, the school superintendent in Mooresville, N.C., the shift to digital is meant to help students learn better. Mooresville schools have become a digital role model after the entire district adopted laptops for its fourth through 12th grade students.

There, teachers use a combination of digital resources, including free math tutorials from the Khan Academy, a pioneer in the MOOC online learning world, and digital textbooks and software from Pearson.

Since the conversion to digital, which began in 2007, graduation rates have increased from 64% to 90%. Test scores and attendance have also improved.

"The whole community is more engaged. Students see the connection of what they're doing in school to their future," Edwards said. "We're just on the cusp of discovering how powerful this can be."

Who will ultimately wield the power to profit from this powerful education publishing tool, though, isn't front and center for the business titans and federal prosecutors currently getting all the attention.