Creditor-Media Matrix Manifesto

There will be no radical changes in the personnel of the present efficient staff. Mr. Charles R. Miller, who has so ably for many years presided over the editorial pages, will continue to be the editor; nor will there be a departure from the general tone and character and policies pursued with relation to public questions that have distinguished The New-York Times as a non-partisan newspaper — unless it be, if possible, to intensify its devotion to the cause of sound money and tariff reform, opposition to wastefulness and peculation in administering public affairs, and in its advocacy of the lowest tax consistent with good government, and no more government than is absolutely necessary to protect society, maintain individual and vested rights, and assure the free exercise of a sound conscience.

Adolph Ochs, upon purchasing the New York Times in 1896 - via A Tiny Revolution.

Beta Sprint toward enclosed open system?

Cambridge, MA — The Digital Public Library "of America"(DPLA) Steering Committee is delighted to announce today a Beta Sprint that aims to surface innovations that could play a part in the building of a digital public library. [air quotes added]

• Digital Public Library "of America": Data Sprint.
• Brief intro by John Palfrey.
• Concept Note.
• Intellectual Property Policy

Predictable comment: Why "of America"? Why not, in the spirit of truly open systems, drop the nationalizing, the proprietization, geographication, localization, domination? Why not The Digital Library, tout court?

Indeed.

On Father’s Day three years ago, biologist Jonathan Eisen decided he’d like to republish all his father’s papers. His father, Howard Eisen, a biologist and a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, had published 40-some-odd papers by the time that he died by suicide at age 45. That had been in Febuary 1987, while Jonathan, a sophomore at college, was on the verge of discovering his own love of biology. At the time, virtually all scientific papers were just on paper. Now, of course, everything happens online, and Jonathan, who in addition to researching and teaching also serves as an editor for the open-access, online-only journal PLoS Biology, knows this well. So three years ago, Jonathan decided to reclaim his father’s papers from print limbo and make them freely available online. He wanted to make them part of the scientific record. He also wanted, he says, “to leave a more positive presence” — to ensure his father had a public legacy first and foremost as a scientist.

How hard could it be?

More -

See also Jonathan Eisen's blog.

h/t Alan Herrell.

For writers, not tweeters

you have to be unafraid of solitude. Not solitude as in no mate or pet or relatives, but that other solitude; the one that makes you retreat from the path your own thoughts want to take because you don't see anybody else already there. Kia.

(This replaces the same post from a day ago which somehow took its own solitary path during the Blogger Black-Out)