{"id":7682,"date":"2011-09-27T11:43:26","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T18:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=7682"},"modified":"2011-11-18T08:52:13","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T15:52:13","slug":"tuesday-bag-o-links-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=7682","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Bag o’ Links"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"How’s that Nook e-reader<\/a> I got for my birthday last year working out?\u00a0 Glad you asked.\u00a0 Over the past year my reading has been about 25% Nook, 75% book (I keep a record of the books I’ve read, and I actually counted).\u00a0 That strikes me as about right: e-books cost money and library books are free.\u00a0 Cost doesn’t account for it all, though … I still buy hardcovers from B&N or Amazon, usually new books that aren’t yet available as e-books.<\/p>\n

For most of August and September my Nook gathered dust while I caught up with several back-ordered library books that came in all at once … nearly all of them big and thick and heavy.\u00a0 It hit me as I neared the end of the last library book, a 500-pager on WWII, that reading physical books is kind of a pain.\u00a0 They’re heavy.\u00a0 You need two hands to hold them open and flip pages.\u00a0 If you have a dog in your lap, it’s a juggling act.\u00a0 E-readers weigh almost nothing.\u00a0 You need only one hand … you flip pages with the thumb of the hand you’re holding it with.\u00a0 If you want to sip a cup of coffee or scratch your dog’s ears, you’ve got a hand left over.<\/p>\n

More and more, I appreciate the physical ease of reading e-books, and I expect over the next year my e-book to book ratio will even out.\u00a0 As long as the money holds out, that is.<\/p>\n

One big problem with e-books is the sorry state of e-book editing<\/a>.\u00a0 E-books are cheaper than physical books, but they’re not that much cheaper (I just paid $16.99 for a best-selling e-book from Barnes & Noble), and the damn things are often full of typos and misplaced page breaks.\u00a0 Two or three days ago I downloaded the latest Neal Stephenson science fiction novel, Reamde<\/a>.\u00a0 This morning, I saw this: Neal Stephenson E-Book Yanked from Amazon<\/a>.\u00a0 Apparently so many customers complained about typos and poor editing that they’ve withdrawn the e-version from sale.\u00a0 Now I ordered mine from B&N, but it comes from the same publisher as the one Amazon was selling, and mine’s going to be full of typos too.<\/p>\n

In the past I’ve asked B&N for my money back on messed-up e-books.\u00a0 They haven’t been cooperative.\u00a0 If more of us raise hell, e-book merchants and publishers will start to listen.\u00a0 At the very least, I hope B&N is paying attention to what Amazon just did with this flawed e-book.\u00a0 Perhaps they’ll pay attention to me if I tell them I’m going to starting ordering my e-books from a company that does listen.<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

Speaking of raising hell and paying attention, how about those Occupy Wall Street<\/a> protesters?\u00a0 What, you haven’t heard about them?\u00a0 You must get your news from the mainstream corporate media, who have so far refused to pay attention.\u00a0 Several hundred people close down three blocks on Wall Street for ten days running now, and there’s been nothing about it on NBC, CBS, ABC, or NPR.\u00a0 Well, that’s starting to change.\u00a0 Celebrities are beginning to show up<\/a>.\u00a0 Of course the corporate media would have been all over it from the get-go if the protestors had been teabaggers<\/a>.\u00a0 Liberal media my ass.<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

You know who else<\/em> gets speeding tickets<\/a>?<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

Alabama Town to Offenders: Go to Church or Go to Jail<\/a>.\u00a0 Something tells me this won’t pass constitutional muster, even with the Roberts\/Scalia Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

You want to pray to Jesus?\u00a0 Fine with me.\u00a0 Go to your house of worship and knock yourself out.\u00a0 Roll on the floor, speak in tongues, sing hallelujah.\u00a0 Just keep it off the street and out of my face.\u00a0 Which means: out of the public square, out of the schools, out of civil law.\u00a0 To paraphrase one of your favorite arguments, what is it about the separation of church and state you don’t understand?<\/p>\n

——————–<\/p>\n

Which brings me back to books.\u00a0 As you know, it’s Banned Books Week<\/a>.\u00a0 The mere fact that the American Library Association opposes banning books sends some on the theocratic right into a frenzy, as witness this editorial from a popular conspiracy theory site: Is library association’s ‘Banned Book Week’ really ‘gay’ promotion?<\/a><\/p>\n

I reviewed one of the ALA’s top ten banned books<\/a> of 2010 recently, Lush<\/em> by Natasha Friend.\u00a0 The book was challenged (and subsequently taken off the shelves in several schools) because it ” … deals with drugs, contains offensive language, is sexually explicit, and is unsuited to the age group for which it is intended.”\u00a0 But unlike the protesting parents, I read the book.\u00a0 None of those objections hold water.\u00a0 It’s an anti-drug (alcohol) book, the strongest word is “boobs,” no one in it has sex, and the overall tone is moral: Lush<\/em> is just the sort of book you’d want your own teenager to read.<\/p>\n

I speculated that the real reason people object to the book is that one of the characters (a sympathetic character at that) is gay.\u00a0 Reading the linked article equating Banned Books Week with the promotion of homosexuality, I’m more convinced than ever I have it right.\u00a0 Homosexuality, like race, is at the center of the theocratic culture war going on in our society.<\/p>\n

And get this anti-ALA diatribe, from the linked article:<\/p>\n

\n

Where would they draw the line at the subject matter children read? Is incest okay? Adult-child sex? Parents who abuse kids? Cutting? Sadomasochism? Sorcery practiced by children? How about bomb-making and sedition against America?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I think we can safely ignore the red herrings about incest and adult-child sex.\u00a0 There is none of that in young adult fiction; they’re just saying that stuff to fire up the base.\u00a0 But buried in there is more of the theocratic right’s agenda: not just opposition to homosexuality, but opposition to young adult fiction in general.\u00a0 Holden Caulfield cut school!\u00a0 Harry Potter is a sorcerer!\u00a0 And you can bet your life the American Taliban has a much narrower and focused definition of “sedition” than you do.<\/p>\n

The courts are what stand between us and those who would force religion and a Christian version of sharia law down our throats.\u00a0 But the courts don’t act until the American Civil Liberties Union<\/a> files suit, so in my book, it’s really the ACLU that stands up for the rest of us.\u00a0 Bet you didn’t see a pitch for ACLU membership coming, did you?\u00a0 But I mean it … if you’re not a member you should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How’s that Nook e-reader I got for my birthday last year working out?\u00a0 Glad you asked.\u00a0 Over the past year my reading has been about 25% Nook, 75% book (I keep a record of the books I’ve read, and I actually counted).\u00a0 That strikes me as about right: e-books cost money and library books are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,412,18,250,10,189,16,2,8,30,6],"tags":[290,285,280,118,288,46,133,289,119,287,73,286,180],"class_list":["post-7682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banned-books","category-books-reviews","category-consumerism","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-extremism","category-media","category-personal","category-politics","category-reviews","category-a-series-of-tubes","tag-aclu","tag-amazon","tag-banned-books-week","tag-barnes-noble","tag-book-banning","tag-books","tag-e-books","tag-homosexuality","tag-kindle","tag-mainstream-coporate-media","tag-nook","tag-occupy-wall-street","tag-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7682"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8140,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7682\/revisions\/8140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}