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David Brin’s THROUGH STRANGER EYES

This is one of the better days in the history of Nimble Books. Today we have reached a final agreement with Hugo and Nebula-award winning science fiction author, futurist, and commentator David Brin, and we will be publishing his THROUGH STRANGER EYES, a collection of “Reviews, Introductions, Tributes & Iconoclastic Essays” in the U.S. and U.K. We will be working in partnership with Robert Stephenson of the fine SF publisher Altair Australia who be publishing a simultaneous edition for his markets. THROUGH STRANGER EYES will include essays on figures as diverse as J.R.R. Tolkien, John Brunner, George Orwell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Charles Sheffield, Richard Feynman, and Ayn Rand.

David Brin

More to come …

Hillary Mathematically Out of It

Hillary’s Math Problem | Newsweek Politics: Campaign 2008 | Newsweek.com

Hillary Clinton may be poised for a big night tonight, with wins in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. Clinton aides say this will be the beginning of her comeback against Barack Obama. There’s only one problem with this analysis: they can’t count.

I’m no good at math either, but with the help of Slate’s Delegate Calculator I’ve scoped out the rest of the primaries, and even if you assume huge Hillary wins from here on out, the numbers don’t look good for Clinton. In order to show how deep a hole she’s in, I’ve given her the benefit of the doubt every week for the rest of the primaries.

I love definitive articles like this one. Tip of the hat to Jonathan Alter.

Photo Matt says Splogs are OK?

Photo Matt » Percentage of Splogs

As for percentage of the total blogosphere, reported by Technorati as north of 100 million, which are splogs, I’d say the number is much higher – probably 80%. This isn’t as bad as it sounds, I just think spammers are very effective at creating hundreds of thousands to millions of blogs, they tend to stick around, and I feel like Technorati’s number doesn’t doesn’t adequately scrub these out.While I’m making data-less estimates, I’d say there are about 25-30 million non-spam blogs, and about 8-14 million of those are active in terms of getting traffic or new posts. You could cover a meaningful portion of the blogosphere by just indexing 4 or 5 million blogs.

Splogs and blogger attrition are two problems no one really talks about, but that’s okay because I don’t think either is hindering anyone’s growth as measured by metrics that matter, like pageviews or uniques.

Nonsense. Splogs are a significant burden on search quality. They waste a lot of everyone’s time.

STAR DRAGON by Mike Brotherton (Tor)

Rating: 4
Review of: Star dragon by Brotherton, Mike

I started reading this once and stopped part way through because I thought the idea of a dragon living inside a star was too silly for belief. I came back to this book after reading the author's second book, SPIDER STAR, and made it all the way through this time. It was worth it. There was a satisfying science fictional explanation for everything.

The one weak spot that still remains is the premise that a corporation would send a hunting party to capture a “star dragon” and start casting nets and firing off photon torpedoes right away. It seems a lot more likely that super smart people in the 26th Century would start the same way we would start today, i.e. with a couple of years of careful, passive observation. After all, they flew 250 light years to find this thing, what's the hurry?

Google Pittsburgh open for business, Google Ann Arbor still has nothing but call center jobs

Official Google Blog: Hello, Pittsburgh

On Tuesday, March 4, the Google Pittsburgh office will open its doors to the technical community for a special evening. We’ll kick things off with some mingling over beer, wine and snacks, and then transition into a tech talk with one of our local engineers, Pat Stephenson.

Pat will discuss the implementation of Dapper, a low-overhead system for monitoring the performance of large, distributed applications at Google, and the tools his team has built to analyze the data in a talk titled “Dapper: It’s 11 p.m. and do you know where your RPC is?”

This is annoying because Google’s Ann Arbor office has been open for a year now and still has nothing but call center jobs. Yuk, what a disappointment.

Famous Assassinations in Today’s Emergency Room

BillingsGazette.com :: Famous assassinations: Who could doctors save today?

Would Julius Caesar or John F. Kennedy have survived if they were attacked in Billings today?

Dr. Terry Housinger, a general surgeon at the Billings Clinic, tackled the topic of famous assassinations at a meeting of the History of Medicine Club, offering his audience of medical students and doctors a chance to reflect on the evolution of trauma care.

After describing the circumstances surrounding each famous assassination, Housinger offered his opinion on whether modern medicine could have saved those high-profile victims if the attack had occurred in Billings today.

A terrific article by Donna Healy of the Billings Gazette. Must read if you are a history buff.

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About Cool Maps of France’s Overseas Territories and Departments

Dear readers,

I am fond of  Cool Maps of France’s Overseas Territories and Departments because I love exotic places.  This is a sort of companion volume to

  Cool Maps of France: Paris and Beyond

I say "sort of" because the business case for doing this book was pretty tenuous compared to the case for Cool Maps of France.  France is one of the most heavily touristed (sic?) countries in the world, and a quick Amazon search reveals that books on "France maps" sell well.  I can’t say the same about "maps of St. Pierre and Miquelon" or any of the 20+ other French overseas territories illustrated in this book.   Nevertheless, I felt impelled to do this book, simply because I think the places shown in it are cool.

This book includes the following 48 figures and tables:


Figure 1.  France’s
overseas territories and departments


Table 1. Status and population


Table 2.  Uninhabited
islands


Figure 2. Martinique 1632 (Library of Congress)



Figure 3.  Martinique
(Central Intelligence Agency 2006)



Figure 4. Fort-de-France 1984 
(U.S. State Department)


Figure 5.  French Guiana
shaded relief 1992 (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 6.  French Guiana
political 1992 (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 7.  French Guiana
vegetation 1972 (Central Intelligence Agency) 
The territory is mostly rainforest.


Figure 8.  French Guiana
economic activity 1972 (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 9. French Polynesia 1989 (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 10. Guadeloupe (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 11.  Île
Saint-Barthélemy (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 12. Île Saint-Martin (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 13. Mayotte 
(Central Intelligence Agency). The Comoros Islands are to the west.


Figure 14. Location of Mayotte (WikiMedia Commons, 2008)


Figure 15.  New
Caledonia (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 16.  Réunion
(Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 17. Réunion – the day after the volcano erupted,
January 16, 2002 (NASA).  Red, indicating
patches of active lava, is just barely visible at the volcanic cone on the
southwestern  island.


Figure 18.  Île
Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 19. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (NASA)


Figure 20. Îles Wallis and Iles de Horne (Central Intelligence
Agency)


Figure 23.  Île Alofi,
to the southeast of Futuna (NASA).


Figure 22.  Futuna
Island (NASA)


Figure 21.  Uvea, one of
the Wallis Islands (NASA).




Figure 24. Île Amsterdam (WikiMedia Commons)


Figure 25. Île St. Paul (WikiMedia Commons)


Figure 26.  Bassas da
India  (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 27. Bassas da India from space (NASA)


Figure 28.  Clipperton
Island (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 29. Clipperton Island from space (NASA)


Figure 30.  Crozet
Islands (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 31. Crozet Islands eastern group (NASA)


Figure 32. Ile Europa (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 33. Île Europa land use (WikiMedia Commons)


Figure 34. Île Europa (NASA)


Figure 35. French Antarctic and Southern Lands (Central
Intelligence Agency)


Figure 36.  Îles
Glorieuses (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 37.  Îles
Glorieuses (NASA)


Figure 38.  Île Juan de
Nova (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 39.  Île Juan de
Nova (NASA).


Figure 40. Île Kerguelen (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 41. Île Kerguelen (NASA)


Figure 42. Landsat infrared image of Kerguelen (NASA)


Figure 43.  Baie du
Morbihan, Kerguelen Islands (NASA)


Figure 44. Map of Kerguelen drawn during the expedition of
Captain James Cook (WikiMedia Commons)


Figure 45. Île Tromelin (Central Intelligence Agency)


Figure 46. Île Tromelin (NASA)

If you are like me, you will love flipping through these beautifully printed color maps of some of the world’s most isolated and unusual places.

Enjoy!

Cordially,

Fred Zimmerman
Publisher, Nimble Books LLC

P.S. Check out the other books in the Cool Maps series: