[gweekly] PT1a Weekly Project Gutenberg Newsletter
Michael Hart
hart at pglaf.org
Wed Jan 4 09:39:41 PST 2006
pt1a4.d05
Weekly_January_04.txt
**The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter For Wednesday, January 4, 2006 PT1**
*******eBooks Readable By Both Humans And Computers Since July 4, 1971********
PT1A
Due to our weekly Wednesday to Wednesday schedule, this is our LAST Weekly PG
Newsletter of 2005, and January 11 will mark our FIRST 2006 Weekly Newsletter
>I'm thinking of moving everything one week earlier when in 2007. Comments?<
*
[Several hot messages immediately below]
In a joint issue Project Gutenberg (http://gutenberg.org/) and Project
Gutenberg of Australia (http://gutenberg.net.au) are commemorating the
400th anniversary of the beginning of Australia~Rs documented history,
with the release of "The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of
Australia 1606-1765" by J E Heeres.
In 1606 Willem Janszoon (aka Jansz.) charted some of the west coast of
Cape York Peninsula and made the first authenticated landing on
Australian soil. A number of events are being organised to commemorate
the occasion by "Australia on the Map: 1606-2006"
(http://www.australiaonthemap.org.au/).
Heeres book was published in 1899 to commemorate the twenty-fifth
anniversary of the establishment of the Royal Geographical Society of the
Netherlands. Heeres notes in the introduction to the book that the object
of publication was "once more to throw the most decided and fullest
possible light on achievements of our forefathers in the 17th and 18th
century, in a form that would appeal to foreigners no less than to native
readers. An act of homage to our ancestors, therefore, a modest one
certainly, but one inspired by the same feeling which in 1892 led Italy
and the Iberian Peninsula to celebrate the memory of the discoverer of
America, and in 1898 prompted the Portuguese to do homage to the
navigator who first showed the world the sea-route to India."
Herres work is now difficult to access and it is fitting that we are
able, with the release of this ebook, to once more to "throw the most
decided and fullest possible light on achievements" of the Dutch in
commemorating the first authenticated landing on Australian soil by
Willem Janszoon.
Heeres notes in the introduction to the book that "the documents, here
either republished or printed for the first time, are all of them
preserved in the State Archives at the Hague, unless otherwise indicated.
They have been arranged under the heads of the consecutive expeditions,
which in their turn figure in chronological order. This seemed to me the
best way to enable readers to obtain a clear view of the results of the
exploratory voyages made along the coasts of Australia by the
Netherlanders of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries." All have been
translated into English and the English and Dutch text appears side by
side on each page.
The ebooks may be found at Project Gutenberg of Australia at
http://gutenberg.net.au/plusfifty.html#heeres
and at Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17450
Another important book relating to the early discovery of Australia is
'The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea' by George Collingridge
This ebook was a joint release to celebrate the issue of the 500th ebook
by Project Gutenberg of Australia and may also be found at both Project
Gutenberg and Project Gutenberg of Australia.
*
A BIT ABOUT PROJECT RUNEBERG
Project Runeberg was the first Project Gutenberg spin off, starting on
December 13, 1992, when Project Gutenberg was just coming up on having
50 freely downloadable eBooks.
The following has been excerpted from an email I received from
Lars Aronsson, founder of Project Runeberg, on December 24, 2005.
[My own comments are in brackets]
***
It is now thirteen years and two weeks since I started Project
Runeberg, the Scandinavian online literature archive. The name
comes from Finland's most hailed poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg
(1804-1877), but is also a play on the name of my rolemodel,
Project Gutenberg. Despite the ambition to cover all Scandinavian
countries, Project Runeberg is dominated by Swedish literature.
[About 1,500 eBooks at about 175 pages per book, as of January 1, 2005]
On January 1, 2005, Project Runeberg's collections contained 260,000
pages scanned in digital facsimile, corresponding to 13 linear metres
of shelving. That day we should have scanned 494 pages (0.19 percent
of 260.000), but instead we scanned 1200 pages. For the whole of
January, we should have scanned 15,755 pages (0.78 metres), but in
reality we only scanned 12,384 (0.61 metres).
In 1996 we finished typing the Swedish text of the Bible.
In 2003 we finished scanning a classic 38 volume Swedish encyclopedia.
We currently have 376,900 scanned pages online in addition to
our early e-texts, corresponding to 18.8 metres of shelving.
One third (125,000 pages) were added in the last 12 months.
[About 2,150 eBooks at about 175 pages per book, as of January 1, 2005]
[An increase of about 650 books at 175 pages each, in 2005]
[The 175 pages is just an estimate I made]
*
[The following was simply too cute not to include, no connection to me or PG]
See Gutenberg! The Musical!
Jermyn Street Theatre presents the world premiere of
Gutenberg! The Musical!
written and performed by Anthony King and Scott Brown
Michael Roulston at the piano
Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450,
so Bud Davenport and Doug Simon wrote a musical about him.
Now they're bringing it to the West End. They don't have a cast,
a budget, or a producer - but they have a dream, and they're
crossing an ocean to bring it to you.
"One of the most clever performances in the city." (New York Metro)
It's the "true" story of Gutenberg, his buxom wench Helvetica,
and an evil Monk, hell-bent on keeping the masses illiterate.
"Gutenberg! The Musical! is ostensibly a backers' audition to get
Doug and Bud's damaged brainchild to the Great White Way. In reality,
though, it's a savvy satire by Anthony King and Scott Brown, who send
up the musical genre with ... affection, scorn and wonderfully bad
songs," (Time Out New York)
Gutenberg! The Musical! celebrates the monstrous success of
Bud and Doug's idiocy. It is a tuneful, tactless triumph,
with a big bleeding heart where its head should be - perfect
entertainment for all the family, even if some of them are illiterate.
6 to 28 January 2006
Mon to Sat at 7.30pm
Wed & Sat matinees at 3.30pm
Previews: 6 & 7 Jan at 7.30pm only
Press Night: Mon 9 Jan at 7.30pm
Box Office: 020 7287 2875
Tickets: #16 (#12 concs/previews)
Jermyn Street Theatre, 020 7287 2875
16b Jermyn Street, SW1Y 6ST
www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk
Nearest tube: Piccadilly Circus
London, England
**
Portugal Has New Project Gutenberg Mirror
http://eremita.di.uminho.pt/gutenberg
or
ftp://eremita.di.uminho.pt/pub/gutenberg/
Offical data:
Continent: Europe
Nation: Portugal
Location: Braga
Provider: Universidade do Minho
Computer Science Dept
Brainchild of:
Alberto Simoes <albie at alfarrabio.di.uminho.pt>
***
Editor's comments appear in [brackets].
Newsletter editors needed! Please email hart at pobox.com or gbnewby at pglaf.org
Anyone who would care to get advance editions: please email hart at pobox.com
*
WANTED!
>>> !!!People who can help with PR for our 35th Anniversary!!! <<<
>>> !!!People to help us collect ALL public domain eBooks!!! <<<
*
Wanted: People who are involved in conversations on Slashdot, Salon, etc.
*
TABLE OF CONTENTS
[Search for "*eBook" or "*Intro". . .to jump to that section, etc.]
*eBook Milestones
*Introduction
*Hot Requests, New Sites and Announcements
*Continuing Requests and Announcements
*Progress Report
*Distributed Proofreaders Collection Report
*Project Gutenberg Consortia Center Report
*Permanent Requests For Assistance:
*Donation Information
*Access To The Project Gutenberg Collections
*Mirror Site Information
*Instant Access To Our Latest eBooks
*Have We Given Away A Trillion Yet?
*Flashback
*Weekly eBook update:
This is now in PT2 of the Weekly Newsletter
Also collected in the Monthly Newsletter
Corrections in separate section
2 New From PG Australia [Australian, Canadian Copyright Etc.]
40 New Public Domain eBooks Under US Copyright
*Headline News from Edupage, etc.
*Information About the Project Gutenberg Mailing Lists
***
*eBook Milestones*
***519 eBooks Averaged Per Year Since July 4, 1971***
17,926 eBooks As Of Today!!!
[Includes Australian eBooks]
We Are ~90% of the Way to 20,000!!!
14,864 New eBooks Since The Start Of 2001
That's ~248 eBooks per Month for ~60 Months
We Produced 2970 eBooks in 2005!!!
2,074 to go to 20,000!!!
7,880 from Distributed Proofreaders
Since October, 2000 [Details in PT1B]
519 from Project Gutenberg of Australia
210 from Project Gutenberg of Europe
Average 10.33 Per Month For 2005
[We will start including these in 2006]
[Apology for previously mixed numbers!]
We Averaged ~339 eBooks Per Month In 2004
We Averaged ~248 eBooks Per Month In 2005
[This change is due to the opening of Project Gutenberg
sites other than the original one at www.gutenberg.org]
This Site Averaged ~57 eBooks Per Week This Year
42 This Week
It took ~32 years, from 1971 to 2003 to do our 1st 10,000 eBooks
It took ~32 months, from 2002 to 2005 for our last 10,000 eBooks
It took ~10 years from 1993 to 2003 to grow from 100 eBooks to 10,100
It took ~2.00 years from Oct. 2003 to Nov. 2005 from 10,000 to 17,500
*
***Introduction
[The Newsletter is now being sent in two sections, so you can directly
go to the portions you find most interesting: 1. Founder's Comments,
News, Notes & Queries, and 2. Weekly eBook Update Listing. Note bene
that PT1 is now being sent as PT1A and PT1B.
[Since we are between Newsletter editors, these 2 parts may undergo a
few changes while we are finding a new Newsletter editor. Email us:
hart at pobox.com and gbnewby at pglaf.org if you would like to volunteer.]
This is Michael Hart's "Founder's Comments" section of the Newsletter
*Headline News from Edupage
[PG Editor's Comments In Brackets]
Edupage has been on vacation from Dec 21 to today.
You have been reading excerpts from Edupage:
If you have questions or comments about Edupage,
send e-mail to: edupage at educause.edu
To SUBSCRIBE to Edupage, send a message to
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SUBSCRIBE Edupage YourFirstName YourLastName
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To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your settings,
or access the Edupage archive, visit
http://www.educause.edu/Edupage/639
***
News From Other Sources
A European Commission study has revealed that giving
more copyrights means less publications.
[Do a search on
"european commission" copyright database
for multiple stories]
*
James Risen says that the US pressured international
phone companies to route more of international calls
through the US to help out with the wiretap efforts.
[Much too much to relate here. See book "State of War"
and CNN's story "The Book Behind the Bombshell"]
*HEADLINE NEWS AVOIDED BY MOST OF THE MAJOR U.S. MEDIA
[As requested adding sources, etc., when possible.
Remember, the subject is not the article's subject,
the subject is the manipulation of the world news.]
U.S. House Resolutions 635, 636, and 637 are not
being mentioned.
*
Argentina and Pay Brazil Pay Off and Tell Off IMF
[International Monetary Fund]
IMF spokesmen refused to comment, but it was all the
big news in much of the world when both Argentina and
Brazil paid off about $10 and $15 billion respectively
in the last few days, saying that this freed them from
the unusually harsh restrictions and controls of the IMF.
[See the book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"]
The IMF had been withholding approval of economic policies.
Reuters termed the stormy relationship to the IMF as
"years of bitter clashes."
This news, along with the recent news of a major oil strike
for Brazil, could mean that next major places to watch in
the world economy will be Brazil and Argentina, along with
other major changes in South America.
*
GENIE Global Nuclear from "Energy Daily" recycles nuclear fuel,
and drastically reduce the amount of nuclear waste that would
have to be stored deep underground for hundreds of thousands
of years or even millions of years.
[I couldn't find the exact reference "GENIE" but did find
articles from the New York Times and Scientific Amercian,
with a search on:
nuclear recyling breeder ]
*DOUBLESPEAK OF THE WEEK
Various comments about how much, or how little, former
House leader Tom Delay's wife and daughter were paid,
for what, and by whom, by opposing sides on this issue.
*PREDICTIONS OF THE WEEK
This could be the biggest year of political scandals
in the US for over a century.
Also see: "K Street Project"
[K Street is to lobbyists in Washington, D.C.
as Madison Avenue is to advertizers in New York]
*STRANGE QUOTES OF THE WEEK
See Doublespeak
[Not going to actually repeat these slings and arrows]
*ODD STATISTICS OF THE WEEK
When CNN/USA Today/Gallup pollsters asked in a telephone
survey whether President Bush is a "uniter" or a "divider"
49 percent said a uniter and 49 percent said a divider.
*
The average household about $10,000 on credit cards.
New regulations are doubling the minimum payments,
as previous minimums would end up with people paying
for possible decades totalling more interest than
the money they borrowed.
The average credit card user has seven credit cards.
35 million credit card users only pay the minimum.
Source: ABC World News Tonight
*
1/3 of our crops are pollinated by honeybees
PBS
*
100 Dunkin Donuts franchises got 9/11 Small Business Assn loans.
*
Tropical Storm Zeta was the 27th named storm of 2005,
and tied the record for the latest storm of the year.
2005 saw the most storms in a year and most category 5
storms, since such records were started in 1851,
and extended 2005's record breaking year
in terms of total number of tropical storms.
First time over the 21 letters used for names,
these used 6 letters of the Greek Alphabet.
Before last month, only four December hurricanes
had formed in 153 years of record keeping, and we
got two last month.
Records set in 2005
Most Powerful Hurricane [Wilma]
Most Hurricanes
Most Hurricanes to Strike US
Most Tropical Storms
Most December Tropical Storms
Latest Hurricane [Tied]
Most Category 5 Hurricanes
[Katrina, Rita, Wilma]
Source:
www.weather.com/newscenter/tropical/?from=wxcenter_news
*
Still hoping for more statistical updates and additional entries.
"If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely
100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same,
it would look something like the following. There would be:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South America
8 Africans
52 would be female
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth
and all 6 would be from the United States
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
1 would own a computer [I think this is now much greater]
1 would be 79 years old or more.
Of those born today, the life expectancy is only 63 years,
but no country any longer issues copyrights that are sure
to expire within that 63 year period.
I would like to bring some of these figures more up to date,
as obviously if only 1% of 6 billion people owned a computer
then there would be only 60 million people in the world who
owned a computer, yet we hear that 3/4 + of the United States
households have computers, out of over 100 million households.
Thus obviously that is over 1% of the world population, just in
the United States.
I just called our local reference librarian and got the number
of US households from the 2004-5 U.S. Statistical Abstract at:
111,278,000 as per data from 2003 U.S Census Bureau reports.
If we presume the saturation level of U.S. computer households
is now around 6/7, or 86%, that is a total of 95.4 million,
and that's counting just one computer per household, and not
counting households with more than one, schools, businesses, etc.
I also found some figures that might challenge the literacy rate
given above, and would like some help researching these and other
such figures, if anyone is interested.
BTW, while I was doing this research, I came across a statistic
that said only 10% of the world's population is 60+ years old.
This means that basically 90% of the world's population would
never benefit from Social Security, even if the wealthy nations
offered it to them free of charge. Then I realized that the US
population has the same kind of age disparity, in which the rich
live so much longer than the poor, the whites live so much longer
than the non-whites. Thus Social Security is paid by all, but is
distributed more to the upper class whites, not just because they
can receive more per year, but because they will live more years
to receive Social Security. The average poor non-white may never
receive a dime of Social Security, no matter how much they pay in.
*
POEM OF THE WEEK
Angles
he hasn't told me anything new lately
all I remember were meaningless sounds
coming from the throat of a tired hawk
screening my front lawn; all the preys had been
put to sleep the night before. nature's TLC
spelled euthanasia
the skies stretch far, beyond my comprehension
all I can feel is the future rain
ducked behind a white cloud
in the land of millions of shapeless purple-grayish
thunder-friendly apparitions
haunting my sight
the chill air and the coldness inside switch places
at times
my body becomes a windy universe in which
nothings stays put. Shivering and wanderings
define my skin, my flesh
the eyes strain to grasp the tornadolike rebellion
of every cell
But then, in the middle of silence, a faint sound
begins to grow.
A voice in the mist proclaiming that
every pair of eyes is prone to misinterpretations
That things are seen from the inside out, and not
the other way around like my mind had always taught me
That to put order in one's soul
it takes for one to be awakened
on a chill, misty morning
by the crying of a hawk whose prey had forsaken him
A white cloud in the shape of a guitar pours down
sweet music of raindrops that my hearing has so longed for.
A harmonic announcement
letting the eyes know that the heart was wrong
Copyright 2006 by Simona Sumanaru and Michael S. Hart
Please send comments to: simona_s75 AT yahoo.com & hart AT pobox.com
***
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