Share Stuff Saturday: Texas Textbooks

(Title links to a NYT article about the new standards of education in Texas.  I am opening this one up for discussion.  I am appalled, but what say you?)

Share Stuff Saturday: Math is Important

I was just reading through yesterday's edition of Five Star Friday, and happened across this blog post from Centre of the Universe - The Dreaming.  It breaks down the cost of publishing a book (in Canada).  Just in case any of you (and by "any of you" I mean "me") forgot what it takes to make it in this industry, here's some interesting reading that should jog your memory.  I am definitely never going to complain about retail prices ever again...at least, not in Canada.  I also learned that publishers are pushing more and more for their printers to use "greener" paper stock -- but of course, this insistence to do the world good is still coming at its explosively high price, since a lot of printers don't keep this stock on the floor.  How Catch-22 of everything.  Anyway.  Enjoy.

http://www.cenobyte.ca/words/2009/12/math-lesson-about-books.html

There Are Two Sides...

From what I'm reading, everyone loves their Kindle.  From the first DX model to the second-generation Kindle 2, the e-book reader by Amazon appears sleeker, lighter, more user-friendly, and more versatile than the competing brands by Sony or Barnes & Noble.  You can even use it internationally now.  My personal favorite function of the Kindle 2 (if I had one) would be the built-in dictionary.  I think I would use that for every "page."

The Kindle has been hailed as the "future of reading."  By whom, I'm not sure.  I can't find the exact quote anywhere online.  I'm sure the Amazon marketing people could.

The Kindle is supposed to be the beginning of a brand new culture of book-lovers.  One where we do all of our reading on computerized screens...but we're no longer limited to cords and outlets and CPUs.  We can take our electronic reading devices anywhere, and buy books whenever we want.  I'm not necessarily for that type of culture, exactly, but if that's where the world is headed, I don't know if I'd be unmovable.  I like new ideas, and I've been kind of interested in this whole green technology thing lately.  I mean, it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, would it?  To have books stored in an electronic device rather than on our bookshelves?

Ok, maybe it would be.  Thinking of my house without actual books in it makes me a little shaky and my heart rate goes up.  I also don't think I'd want to take any kind of e-reader to a beach, even though the girl in the Amazon ad portrays that as a completely normal Kindle 2 activity.  What do you do when you get sand in the minuscule cracks where it's put together?  I can't even get sand out of my bathing suit, let alone a Kindle.  And then there's this:

I was sitting in the cafeteria at work today, eating lunch with friends, when one of them brought up something I had never even thought to consider.  Amazon's e-book reader is called the Kindle.  The Kindle.  "Yeah," I said.  "You know...it, like, sparks your imagination.  Ignites education and creativity! [And sales.]"

Wrong.

The Kindle.

According to my friend, it turns out the hottest tech toy of 2009 is actually some well-laid subliminal plot to get all us consumers to ditch paper books forever.  FOREVER.  The Kindle.  Kindling.  Book burning.  The figurative book burning of a culture of readers, to be exact.  My culture.  And it will probably go down in history as the biggest, most successful book burning of all.  Why?  Because I can't even see the Kindle for its own name.  We're so enthralled with the concept, we're missing the consequences.  And its name.

As I stated in a past post, book burning is viewed as a form of violence against a culture; it serves a demonstrative purpose, as a way for an oppressive power to force its influence onto a group of people.  I just bought three CDs from Amazon today.  Am I feeding the fire?  Should Amazon be viewed as a brutal regime, out to quash my appreciation for "real" books? 

Or is Amazon a friend to the forests, and the Kindle just a vehicle for expression?  Is their purpose simply to keep us all up-to-date, current with not only the trends in reading and technology, but in business, and with communication tools, too?

And on top of all of this, to properly sort things out, you then have to ask the question: "What makes a book?"  Is it really the paper and binding?  Or is it the words?  Is it the message?  Or a combination of all of it?  When did reading get this complicated?

So do you have a Kindle, or another e-book reader?  Whose side are you on?  Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

And where are we going now?

Ohio for Libraries!

I have not been feeling well recently, and so did not get out to vote this week...but seeing this article has revived my spirit, if not my physical health:

Library Levy Landslides Make History in Ohio

I'm especially excited for Hamilton County in Cincinnati, which is where I'm originally from.  I hope the favorite "Don't Trash the 'Nati" slogan was appropriately expanded to apply to this campaign.  Whatever they did, it worked.

Let's also keep our hopes up for Paulding County Carnegie Library, who is going through a recount.  Power of bookworms, unite!

These People are Serious

Browsing Google Reader today turned up a post at myliblog, which happened to mention nothing other than a good ol' fashioned, annual Halloween book burning.  Annual.

The North Carolina Baptist church, Amazing Grace, will be hosting a book burning/barbeque (who knew that spiritual cleansing could double as the social event of the season?) on October 31 to destrroy what the congregation believes to be the works of Satan and the perversions of God's Word.  That allows for any religious books or works that are not the old version of the King James Bible...meaning the new version of the King James Bible is gonna be choking on smoke.  The believers will also burn samples of most genres of music, including contemporary Christian and Southern gospel.

Now, I am not writing this post to criticize these people's beliefs (although I really do have to openly and respectfully disagree with their position.  I don't believe burning the offensive material is really accomplishing anything, especially in 2009, when probably 3,000,000 more copies of the "perversions" have already been distributed by the time you've dug the fire pit.  But, I guess it's the principle of the thing).  I was really just sort of surprised that people are still out there burning books.  Like really, truly, burning them.  I mean, who does that?  I've never been to any kind of burning, not even a bra burning.  Should I have met people like this by this point in my life?  So I'm more intrigued by the idea of book burnings and the history behind them.  It's very Farhenheit 451.  Time to consult my dear friend Wikipedia.  And Google, too.  There's always room for you, Google.

Amazing Grace claims their tradition is just that -- a Christian tradition.  They quote Acts 19:18-20 as their basis.  Wikipedia says:

Book burning (a category of biblioclasm, or book destruction) is the practice of destroying, often ceremoniously, one or more copies of a book or other written material. In modern times, other forms of media, such as phonograph records, video tapes, and CDs have also been ceremoniously burned, torched, or shredded. The practice, usually carried out in public, is generally motivated by moral, religious, or political objections to the material.

(Really, I can't stand it with the hyper-hyperlinking.  Why did we ever give up on books?  I long for a simpler time.)

Apparently there have been a great many traumatic book burnings throughout history.  Wikipedia cites several major book burnings that have happened over the course of centuries, the most famous probably being the Nazi book burnings (these were carried out by chapters of the German Student Association, which I did not realize).  All citations refer to book burnings as horrific acts of war, as forms of violence against a people and culture, and "emblematic of a harsh and oppressive regime."  They are efforts to suppress a viewpoint that challenges the prevailing order.

The earliest reference Wikipedia has to a book burning is from 367 AD, commissioned by the bishop of Alexandria.  How many years ago was that?  And we're still lighting matches.

Anthony Comstock founded The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1873, and boasted the destruction of "15 tons of books, 284,000 pounds of plates for printing such 'objectionable' books, and nearly 4,000,000 pictures."  His reasoning?  They were lewd.

In 1842, early books coded with braille were burned in Paris, France.  At the city's school for the blind.  

In 2001, a church in New Mexico invited its congregation to a book burning party.  The guest of honor?  Harry Potter.  And God.  The pastor hadn't read even one of J.K. Rowling's books.


What is it that gives books such power that we are so motivated to destroy them?  They have to have power, because power is what makes us feel threatened.  And what makes us so eager to blame the books?  Why are the books the first thing we seek out when we're looking to quash ideas?  I personally think it's because they are the physical manifestation of a person's opinions, theories, and maybe sometimes facts.  Pieces of knowledge we don't agree with.  And a book burning has got to be the easiest way to hurt and humiliate an author.  Even today, it's not enough for people to just speak their minds.  Humans are a species of action.  We have to get as close as we can to destroying our perversions at their source.

But I guess author burning would be illegal.

REVIEW: 'The Forever War,' by Dexter Filkins

When my good friend left for the war in Iraq, I hadn’t really done any reading about the situation over there. I did not know what to expect when he left, what the climate was across the sea, or even how to approach him without making a joke. Dexter Filkins’s book, The Forever War, has finally given me some small perspective on the war…and especially on the people who live through it every day. As Filkins mentions at the end of his book, I now know enough to realize I will never be able to truly understand the war unless I have been to Iraq or Afghanistan. But Filkins’ writing has at least paved the way for a tiny beam of essential illumination.

It is still hard for me to believe that some of these things are going on in 2009. I feel like the American government has done a tremendous job of keeping the war distant from us civilians at home. Filkins’s narrative changes all of that. His reporting is honest and for the most part unbiased. Most of the narrative is taken from his published articles, but is rewritten in a different form for the book. The most enlightening realization for me seems to be that the war isn't between just American and Iraqi anymore. It's American vs. Iraqi vs. Iraqi vs. Palestinian vs...everyone. There are a thousand smaller wars, civil wars, going on over there. We just umbrella them under "The Iraq War."

Filkins is a correspondent for The New York Times, and his reports of the people are what impacted me most. The divisiveness of everyone, American and Iraqi, Iraqi and Iraqi, American and American, was astounding. In a kind of Tim O'Brien-turned-reporter style, Filkins excellently documents the sentiment of everyone he interviews. And everyone’s sentiment is so different. From the American corporal who refuses to throw Iraqis in the Tigris river; to the woman who spits at Filkins, “I voted in order to prevent my country from being destroyed by its enemies...you”; to the woman who cried, “I love you, I love you,” as she fled Baghdad; to the American soldiers who make decisions between letting women and children live, or killing the insurgents who attack them every day; to the officers who will do anything you could think of to protect their fellow soldiers from the media; to the soldiers who die playing a part in helping the media tell their story; this book is one large contradiction. But it’s not supposed to make sense. My professor, the Hemingway scholar, would say (as I believe did another soldier from the book): “It’s war.” What are you supposed to do?

Filkins made me realize that nothing is black and white, no matter how much you think it should be, or could be if we tried to make it that way. Nothing is black and white. Especially in wartime. I appreciated his recording both the stories of the American soldiers, and the Iraqi civilians, soldiers, and government officials. It certainly helped highlight the theme.

I got to see my soldier friend and his wife today before I came home. He is home for 10 days before he goes back overseas. We got to eat at Skyline, and ride in a Volkswagen. I thought about this book while I was talking to him, and whether I should bring it up or not. Maybe I’ll mention it in my next letter to him. I’m sure that any spare time he gets for reading he likes to dedicate to the letters from his family and friends anyway. He doesn’t need the book, he’s living The Forever War. But we do. We need it to remind us. And maybe to teach us something, too.

Next up: Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee