Monday’s Link Roundup.

More gems in this Monday’s Link Roundup. As someone who lived and worked in Ghana for two years, I was drawn to this article, In Africa, the Art of Listening.  I highly recommend it. Another story that touches close to home is Mourning in a Digital Age. How do we find new mourning rituals in a world that is increasingly secular? And for those of you looking for online time tracking, take a serious look at Paymo. I did and was impressed.

• The 10 Most Expensive Books in the World. “To help you brush up on your knowledge of the very old and very valuable, we’ve compiled a list of the ten most expensive books ever sold — no white gloves necessary. Click through for an overview, and then head upstairs to check your attics for any forgotten dusty tomes — you could be a millionaire and not even know it.”

• Supreme Court rules Congress can re-copyright public domain works. “Congress may take books, musical compositions and other works out of the public domain, where they can be freely used and adapted, and grant them copyright status again, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. In a 6-2 ruling, the court ruled that just because material enters the public domain, it is not “territory that works may never exit.”

• How Film Was Made: A Kodak Nostalgia Moment. “Before pixels there were silver halide crystals, and before memory cards, film. Little yellow boxes cluttered the lives of photographers everywhere, and the Eastman Kodak Company was virtually synonymous with photography…To indulge this nostalgia–and perhaps learn something new about an old technology–we offer a fascinating 1958 documentary from Kodak entitled How Film is Made.”

• Paymo.  “I thought you might like to know about a software package that has really changed the way we keep track of our time and bill our clients. I have no affiliation whatsoever with this company, but it has made such a difference in our organizational habits that I think it would be great for other personal historians…Before Paymo, … trying to keep track of how we spent our time was a nightmare…Now we have a Paymo widget on our desktop computer (Mac and PC), in which we can click on the project we are working on, hit the Start button, and go…The report functionality is amazing – you can look at your data from almost any conceivable angle and get a clear picture of how you are spending your time and how much money you are making.” [Thanks to Alison Armstrong Taylor of pictures and stories for suggesting this item.]

• The story of the self. “Our ability to remember forms the basis of who we are and is a psychological trick that fascinates cognitive scientists. But how reliable are our memories?”

• In Africa, the Art of Listening. “What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats — and they in turn can listen to ours. Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening. So if I am right that we are storytelling creatures, and as long as we permit ourselves to be quiet for a while now and then, the eternal narrative will continue.” [Thanks to April Bell of Tree of Life Legacies  for alerting me to this item.]

• Mourning in a Digital Age. “Grieving has been largely guided by religious communities, … Today, with religiosity in decline, families dispersed and the pace of life feeling quickened, these elaborate, carefully staged mourning rituals are less and less common. Old customs no longer apply, yet new ones have yet to materialize.”

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