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Frostbitten Pelicans. E-Books. Mark McGwire.

I did not want to make a dedicated post about electronic books, so I’ve decided to make a sandwich.

Over at the Delaware News Journal there’s a fun article about frostbitten pelicans .  What’s nice about the article is the pictures along the right side–especially the one bird that is getting a throat massage.   There is really not much news in this piece that really would set a typical reader into dumping their wallets into the wildlife fund–but there are some gems. For example:

Sometimes the frostbite is too severe for the pelicans to survive. They can lose their toes or wingtips, or their bills become too damaged to use for scooping up fish — the only thing they eat.

The only thing that pelicans eat is fish.  I find that hard to believe. I thought they ate the beach trash that accidently flew out of our beach bags.  Maybe the article is correct about the pelican diet, I just find that hard to believe for some reason.

I like pelicans, and most birds–and I think it is nice of those people to defrost those po’ critters. I’d surely like that treatment if I were frostbitten.

From the department of apparent trends comes this gem that discusses the popularity of the electronic book.  You can also google news search “e-book” and get a brazillian ( a unit of measure (gwbushism?)) like articles.

The E-book, writ large, is a very contentious area of debate, especially in academia.  Some say yea. Some say nay.  I happen to like this article found in a student run e-publication entitled “E-book on the rise: Digital texts cost effective.”

Why? FUN!

For example, in regard to e-texts:   The bookstore also offers an electronic reading service called CafeScribe, where students can purchase an e-book, highlight, annotate and save their notes inside the program.

My regular book does that too. I can highlight, annotate, and interestingly enough save my notes inside the book, either on post-it notes or index cards or napkins or on the inside cover.

Also,

“You can create groups based on your classes and the book that you have, and you can interact with fellow students and faculty members,” Dwyer said.

That’s neat. With my regular book, I can go into  a classroom and interact with fellow students. If I’m feeling edgy I can even go to a faculty member’s office, interrupt their microwave lunch break, and ask a question about a text.   “So, what do you think about that part of the novel where the protagonist wipes his ass with a piece of newspaper?  Isn’t that so sticking it to the man!”

Also (and im going to take this out of context perhaps):

“Well, why can’t we have everything available for electronic download?’”

I’d like a grilled chicken sandwich, a side salad and some of that uh, what’s it, uh, iced tea colored water.

Seriously, you really want everything available for electronic download.  There’s something exciting about waiting for something through interlibrary loan.  Either the sheer anticipation of the material, or the fact that the library might mess something up and you get to complain about bureaucracy.

During the counterargument portion of the piece there is another fun line:

“I wouldn’t want my students to read beautiful pieces of literature, that are meant to be treasured…explicitly online,” he said. “I would rather them read them, and buy them and build a library of great works.”

What I think he really means is the intoxicating book smell is what you really should be after. So maybe they can rig up a kindle reader with a atomizer that sprays out various book smells.  Like, antique book, freshly printed book, smoker’s book, really mildewy and spicy dust-covered book.

The idea about building up a library of great works is a good point, but why not carry the Western Canon on your external hard drive next to your episodes of  Top Chef?

The main point of the article is that E-books are cheaper. But are they? If it caught on, wouldn’t the price rise anyway?  I’m no economist, yet I think there would still be quite a cost to make an e-text (especially when getting copyright clearances for anthologies,etc.)

Pshew!

Apparently, Baseball is American pastime (Overtaking reading sometime in the early years of the…HEY HERB, WHEN DID THE BASEBALL OVERTAKE THAT READING THING…oh nevermind).  Today, Mark McGwire adimitted he used the roids, it would be funnier if he came out saying he had a case of the roids, but that wouldn’t be newsworthy–unless they happened to be frostbitten.  Anyway, I think we can all sleep better tonight knowing that news.  Better yet, we can get back to discussing serious issues like education reform.

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Source: My Pet Walrus