Who owns your books?

Is anyone else appalled byAmazon’s electronic retrieval and removal of customers’ Kindle ebook purchases? I own yellowed, paperback copies of the texts in questions: Animal Farm, 1984, and Atlas Shrugged. Talk about irony. I didn’t have to sign an agreement statement when I made my purchases. With electronic texts, apparently the retail company views its texts as a “service.” (Read about how Apple checks IPhone applications. )

The bookselling giant had its reasons. Well enough. But those of us who have indeed read Orwell and Rand smell a e-rat or at least yet another potential means for invasion of liberty, monitoring of reading material being a telling starting point with totalitarian regimes.

Here’s the article  from Slate, where you can also find a link to info.  on the book by Harvard law professor, Jonathan Zittrain, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It.

Agnostic editor makes case for the Bible, but not God

Slate’s David Plotz read every word of the Bible and lived to write about it in  Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible,

He tells about how fascinating are the stories, the etymologies (shibboleth),  the frequently used allusions. And how cruel the slayings, judgments, and punishments.

Plotz says he began the reading project as an unconcerned agnostic and ended as an angry agnostic. The Bible, it seems, turned him further against God. Yet he admits the value of such a study and wonders why, given the Bible’s significance, more of it isn’t required reading in college and high school.

We know the answer to that.

Who reads the Bible today? We  might “cherry pick” our favorite texts or the easier reads. Or we have determined which parts are just “in there” but not particularly relevant or were cultural manifestations and not applicable. In previous centuries in the West, a working knowledge of the Bible was a given. Today, in teaching, the many biblical allusions are lost on most students. And I’m talking S0lomon-level references.

So ket us hear the end of the matter. The Bible is for many The Word of God. For others, like Plotz, an interesting and important text. Others don’t have a position on it any more than they do on The Grapes of Wrath: it doesn’t figure into anything.

 

http://www.slate.com/id/2212616/pagenum/all/#p2

Online readers aren’t “lazy” necessarily

There is value, thrift in the various decoding skills one brings to the web as he begins to read. Michael Agger has written an excellent article for Slate on how we read (or don’t) online. He calls us lazy because of research trends that indicate that we “informavores” only scan and seek out certain identifiers. We like short sentences and fragments, bold fonts, links, lists, bullets, and single-idea paragraphs — very short.

Agger’s piece models all of the features of “good” Internet writing. There are also tips for making reading easier on the eyes and more.  It’s witty and informative even though the researcher doesn’t value blogs — he does approve single-topic sites of expertise since it saves a researcher time.

Plastic playgrounds are just sad

Slate Magazine contributor Tom Vanderbilt has an article  ”Lawn Pox” which made several amenable points. First Vanderbilt decries the sprawl of huge, plastic, primary-colored “play sets” that clutter suburban lawns.  They’re ugly and usually vacant and therefore are a needless eyesore. Beyond that he suggests that the “toys” are indicative of significant sociological trends.

You should read about some of the companies that make these deluxe implements of “kiddie clutter” and what they get for a “6-in-1 Town Center!” Lucky kid!

Vanderbilt blames fear for the plastic jungle and disappearance of the community playground– fear of injury and predators. One parent boasted that there were no “splinters” in her kid’s smooth, plastic set. And then there’s parental guilt: get them a big, impressive toy to substitute for  . . .  you know.

One reader offered a feeble defense of the toys if you’re interested.

I’m not really pro-lawn, but I am anti-toy — not all toys, just the drossy kind. Giant toys for little children is just sad. The monoliths are as ugly as those green, plastic mail boxes and dog houses molded in the same vein. All of it’s headed for the yard sale.

My fondest memories are from gramdparents’ homes and the home of a second cousin. At the grandparents’ we ran through woods and built pine straw forts with sticks and sometimes broke garbage bottles on giant rocks (Milk of Magnesia was bright blue!) and pretended the shards were jewelry. Yea, it was dangerous if you were stupid.

At the cousin’s we had no “lawn,” so we played under a railroad track bridge with a creek running under it. There were probably snakes where we waded barefoot in murky water waiting for a train and the noise and terrific shaking. Good times.

And those woods? Leprechauns everywhere! We saw them! Promise.