The Bookless Library

You know by now, Dear Readers, that I love to read. I wish I were taller, because I'm up to my you-know-what in books. This is not, of course, a bad thing unless you have to pack them all to move, which I did frequently while I was in the Air Force.

But the technology of reading marches on. Just as cuneiform on clay tablets gave way to papyrus scrolls, which gave way to bound vellum, which eventually ended up as the hardcover and softcover books we know today, all those weighty books are themselves giving way to digital formats that can be "read" on an electronic device. Agnes has her Sony Reader, Andrea has her Nook (in addition to her newer website devoted to reading and book reviews, check it out here), and I've even considered buying such a device to help save weight on our upcoming trip to Germany. I recently stuck my toe into the digital water by taking my daughter's advice and downloading the Kindle app onto my iPhone ... but more about that later.

The electronic book formats are slowly taking over. I didn't realize just how quickly this was happening until I read this Time Magazine article yesterday: Is a Bookless Library Still a Library? The article describes the new Library Learning Terrace at Drexel University, which is a library without a single book ... just rows of computer terminals on which readers can access digital volumes stored in the e-version of what we used to call "the stacks."

But is it reading?

Of course, you say ... you're still "reading" the same information, just presented in a different way. Instead of unrolling a scroll, or pondering icons pressed into clay tablets or leafing through your mass market paperback, you're simply "paging" through the digital equivalent by swiping your finger across a screen or pushing an icon that advances the image of the page.

But is it really reading?

I admit it. I'm a traditionalist. I like the feel, the weight, the smell of a real book. Sitting in front of a fire on a snowy evening with a cup of hot chocolate and a flat-screen electronic reader just doesn't seem the same to me. Yes, I see the advantages ... toting a small, lightweight electronic device rather than a pile of heavy books on a trip is certainly easier on your back and saves packing space. But on a day-to-day basis, give me a real book any day.

I even love books about books. One of life's great pleasures is a read through Alberto Manguel's wonderful book The Library at Night, and Robert Danton had this to say in his recent book titled The Case for Books:

"Consider the book. It has extraordinary staying power. Ever since the invention of the codex sometime close to the birth of Christ, it has proven to be a marvelous machine - great for packaging information, convenient to thumb through, comfortable to curl up with, superb for storage, and remarkably resistant to damage. It does not need to be upgraded or downloaded, accessed or booted, plugged into circuits or extracted from webs. Its design makes it a delight to the eye. Its shape makes it a pleasure to hold in the hand. And its handiness has made it the basic tool of learning for thousands of years, even when it had to be unrolled to be read (in the form of the volumen or scroll rather than the codex, composed of leaves connected to a binding) long before Alexander the Great founded the library of Alexandria in 332 BC."

Yes, there's no substitute - most of the time - for the good old book.

But getting back to my daughter's recommendation to download the Kindle app for my iPhone...

Perhaps I might like it if the screen were larger. Or if I didn't have to worry about running out of power in the middle of a good part of the story. Or if I weren't just a grouchy partial luddite.

There's probably a Kindle or some such device in my future. But that doesn't mean I have to welcome it with open arms ... more with a sigh of resignation.

There's just nothing like a book.

Have a good day. Read something. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

How I Spent My Weekend

1. Took a last load of junk to the landfill. Decided that when I grow up, I want to be the guy who drives the huge front-end loader that picks up the loads of crushed junk and dumps it into the trucks to be taken away.

2. Spent two hours on Saturday being run ragged around a playground under the blazing sun by a hyperkinetic almost-four-year old with an amazing ability to invent games that involve Oma and Opa climbing around and doing things on jungle gyms that 60-year olds really aren't flexible enough to do.

3. During breaks in the frenetic activity described in #2 above, told stories (with sound effects) to the grandchild. Had to go back periodically and re-tell sections of the stories when Leya told me that I was doing it wrong. Had to think very quickly on my feet each time Agnes asked Leya, "Do you know the story of ______? Okay, Opa, tell the story!" ... and I had no clue what she was talking about.

4. Walked Nessa about 350 miles.

5. Finished power-washing the deck.

6. Pulled all the weeds in the front flower beds and the garden that could be seen on Google Earth.

7. Did a load of laundry. Just one. No sense in overdoing things.

8. Shook head in disgust over the behavior of elected reprehensives who are more interested in pandering to their political base than in actually fixing the economy and helping Real People.

9. Wondered why it is that hours on Saturday and Sunday are 65% shorter than equivalent hours on Monday through Friday.

10. Isn't that enough?

That's all for today. I need to get ready to head back to the salt mines for another week ... or may be it's my seat on the galley. It doesn't matter, though, and I'm not complaining - at least I have a job.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Of Smiley Faces and Courtroom Drama

It's just after 5:00 AM as I start to write this. On a Sunday. When I went to bed last night, I made a special point of turning off the alarm so I could sleep late, and I nevertheless found myself wide awake at 4:40 ... having slept exactly 40 minutes later than I would on a normal working day.

Ergo, I'm cranky.

I had planned to write a lengthy and - hopefully - coherent and detailed post on the subject of fixing the economy, but I'm sitting here looking at my notes and nothing is coming together in my head except the vague notion that I really want to go back to sleep.

Thus, I'm tossing my original idea for today's post in exchange for some more rambling on different topics related to the 10th of July.

Today is the birthday of the man who invented one of the most widely-recognized symbols ever devised. Harvey Ball was a commercial artist working for a public relations firm who was asked in 1963 to devise a program to ease tensions in a pair of insurance companies which had just gone through a difficult and hostile merger. He developed a "friendliness campaign" which featured its own logo ... the now-ubiquitous "smiley face" -

The smiley face has spawned countless variations, including the frowny face ...

And the inventive "Mr Yuck" symbol distributed by poison control centers to warn small children away from things they shouldn't drink ...

Mr Ball was paid $45 for his design, which he never tried to copyright. He later declared the first Friday in October to be World Smile Day (motto: "Do an act of kindness. Help one person smile"), and when he died in 2001 the World Smile Foundation was established in his name to honor Mr Ball's memory and promote good works.

It was also on this date in 1925 that the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial" began in Dayton, Tennessee. It pitted legal giants William Jennings Bryan (for the prosecution) against Clarence Darrow (for the defense) in a case accusing schoolteacher John T. Scopes of violating a Tennessee state law that made it an offense to "teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation as taught by the Bible and to teach instead that man was descended from a lower order of animals." The dramatic trial pitted religious fundamentalists who believed in the literal truth of the Bible against those who believed that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was scientifically correct and consistent with religious beliefs. In the end, Mr Scopes was convicted and fined $100. The court decision was later overturned on a technicality, and the case was never retried. The case was dramatized in the wonderful play Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (no, not the Confederate general), which was turned into the 1960 film starring Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (the character based on Clarence Darrow) and Fredric March as Matthew Harrison Brady (representing William Jennings Bryan).

Of course, the Creationism - vs - Evolution controversy continues to this day.

And now it's 6:15, and I'll try to go back to bed.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

And another week slides by into history ...

Former First Lady Betty Ford has passed away at age 93; a man in Wyoming is under arrest after killing three of his children and another person and wounding a fourth; tabloid newspaper News of the World has collapsed (and threatened to take the UK government with it) after revelations that its reporters hacked into the cell phones of crime vicitims and others; an Australian man has been killed and several others injured during the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain; and House Democrats are learning from House Republicans - where the Republicans absolutely refuse to even think about discussing taxes, Democrats are now refusing to discuss cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

Congress may play reckless chicken with your future, but you can always count on Cartoon Saturday to help you grin and bear it.

Following up on yesterday's post about Little Green Men, we lead off with a pair of cartoons about aliens ...

And ...

The linguist in me bubbled to the surface when I saw these three clever cartoons riffing on the symbols we use every day ...

And ...

And this one ...

And then we have the ultimate result of too much use of on-screen symbols (or emoticons) ...

Here's your terrible pun of the week ...

Thinking back to her last guest post, Nessa wanted me to include this one (which, at the rate the economy is going, isn't really all that far-fetched) ...

This one goes out to my favorite 14th-century lady, Craziequeen ...

And finally for this week, a nod to our elected reprehensives in Congress, without whom us would-be comedians would have much, much less to talk about ...

It looks as if it will be another hot and steamy weekend here in Northern Virginia. We'll be visiting our local grandchildren later this morning, after I take one more load of junk to the landfill, and we'll spend the rest of the weekend doing the usual set of quasi-relaxing chores. Maybe I'll even have a chance to relax on The Swing From Hell ...

Stranger things have happened...

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Little Green Men

Continuing our series of bizarre events that happened today in history...

It was on this date in 1947 that the Roswell (New Mexico) Daily Record newspaper reported that a flying saucer had crashed near the local Army base. In the coming days, a local rancher found pieces of a strange, lightweight metal scattered over the local hills, and an Army public information officer put out a statement claiming that the Army had recovered the wreckage of a "flying disc" - a statement later contradicted by an Air Force spokesman who claimed the recovered wreckage was that of a weather balloon.

Over the years, the Roswell flying saucer story has grown and morphed with added details: that the bodies of the alien crew were recovered and are in storage at (insert "CIA headquarters" or your military facility of choice), that the Air Force reverse-engineered the wrecked flying saucer and has a "ghost squadron" of such vehicles waiting to prevail in a future war, that one or more of the alien crew survived and is being kept in a secret facility as an advisor to the Department of Defense. Earlier this year, in her book titled Area 51, author Annie Jacobsen claimed that the bodies recovered at the crash site were the results of a joint attempt by Joseph Stalin and Nazi doctor Josef Mengele to produce a race of child-sized warriors to crew miniature warplanes.

The idea that there are other worlds out there, inhabited by creatures that do not necessarily have our best interests at heart, is a staple of science fiction. H.G. Wells' famous novel The War of the Worlds is one of the classics of alien invasion literature, and has been filmed several times - in 1953 and again in the 2005 special effects extravaganza starring Tom Cruise. Another classic of the genre was The Day the Earth Stood Still, first filmed in 1951, and later remade (poorly, in my opinion) in 2008. Better than both of those films was the original novella on which both movies were based - Farewell to the Master, by Harry Bates. There was also the 1996 blockbuster Independence Day, which featured this scene beloved of modern-day Republicans:

Today, of course, the real threat of alien invasion comes not from outer space, but from other places here on earth ... but that's another story.

Have a good day. Watch out for flying saucers. Come back tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday.

Bilbo

Thursday Odds and Ends

First of all, thanks to all of you who sent wishes for my recovery from the miserable summer cold I've had the last few days. I'm still not hitting on all cylinders, but am feeling considerably better today ... well enough, unfortunately, to go to work, where I can feel yucky AND clean out my in-box. How much better does life get?

I'm still not completely back to normal (or whatever passes for it in my case), so today I'll just offer a few odds and ends that you may find interesting...

If you've ever described something as "the greatest thing since sliced bread," you may be interested to know that it was on this date in 1928 that sliced bread first went on sale at a bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri, courtesy of the invention of the Rohwedder Bread Slicer by an Iowa jeweler named - oddly enough - Otto Frederick Rohwedder. You can read the entire history of sliced bread here. This is what the original Rohwedder Bread Sliver looked like:

We've all had the experience of dealing with things which drive us to distraction because they are poorly designed. Naturally, there's a website dedicated to such things ... it's called Bad Designs, and includes a long list of examples of poor design, sorted by category and including design suggestions that would have made the devices more useful, less confusing, and generally better. It's an interesting place to visit.

Need to find everything you ever wanted to know about flirting? Here it is: The Social Issues Research Center (SIRC) Guide to Flirting. It's a very useful website that includes general topic headings such as "Where to Flirt," "Who to Flirt With," "Nonverbal Flirting," and "Verbal Flirting." I wish I'd had this handy guide years ago, instead of routinely embarrassing myself over the years while I learned by trial and error. Thanks to my good friend and fellow dancer and shameless flirter Joy for bringing this to my attention.

And Minnesota is still closed.

That's all for now. I need to conserve my energy for another day of work.

Have a good day. Flirt well. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

"The Mother of All No-Brainers"

I'm not feeling well today, so this will be a short post. Just deal with it.

My old friend Kerrie posted a link to this article on her Facebook page yesterday and asked for comments from "those of you with hands-on business experience" - The Mother of All No-Brainers, by David Brooks. I thought the article was a brilliant summary of why and how the Republican party has failed the country in general and fundamentally conservative people like me in particular, and said so in a comment (although I have no "hands-on business experience"). Other commenters dismissed him as a "one of the NY Times elitist class," probably for daring to point out that the emperor has no intellectual or economic clothes.

Read the article and let me know what you think. I'm going back to bed.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Happy Birthday to SPAM

We had a wonderful visit yesterday with our local grandchildren (positive), in the course of which I had a rather depressing political discussion with my daughter (negative). She has a very downbeat view of the country's future for many reasons - all of which I share - and while I enjoyed the discussion, it did put a bit of a damper on an otherwise great day and left me poised to write an equally downbeat post today.

But I've gotten over it, at least temporarily, because I've been distracted by the intellectual equivalent of a bright and shiny object ...

Today is the birthday of SPAM.

Yes, dear Readers, it was on this date in 1937 that Hormel Foods introduced its low-cost meat product that came in a can, jiggled unpleasantly when removed from the can because of its coating of aspic, and was a staple of wartime (World War II, that is) military dining. We ate quite a bit of SPAM while I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, because it was cheap and we hadn't yet developed the epicurean tendencies that would let us recognize that it was edible, but not especially of gourmet caliber. No one quite knows what "SPAM" means, although some suggestions over the years have included "Something Posing As Meat" and "Spare Parts Animal Menu."

Hormel originally called it "Hormel Spiced Ham," but the search for a more catchy name led to a contest won by a fellow who received a prize of $100 for suggesting "SPAM." And yes, Hormel Foods does want it spelled in all capital letters. You can read an interactive history of SPAM here.

Over time, SPAM came to be associated with things of low quality and extreme ubiquity ... like the unwanted bulk e-mail that clogs our electronic in-boxes. How a low-cost meat product came to be associated with junk e-mail is a matter of some debate, although the famous Monty Python sketch in which a diner is relentlessly bombarded with the fact that SPAM is just about the only thing on the menu has been blamed for it.

Unwanted, or spam e-mail, is such a problem that Congress - back when Congress actually did things - passed the "Controlling the Assault of Non-solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM)" Act of 2003 in an attempt to exert some control over the flood of annoying and often pornographic junk e-mail. It may have helped a little bit, but not all that much (at least as reflected by a glance at my in-box on a daily basis). The Federal Trade Commission (at least, until the Republicans manage to dismantle it as a useless and unconstitutional restriction on business activity) has published a Compliance Guide for Businesses to help them comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.

And at the risk of being accused of spamming you with useless information, I'll just drop the subject for the time being.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Happy Fourth of July!

Yes, Dear Readers, today is Independence Day here in the good old US of A. A day for picnics and barbecues, parades, fireworks, and finishing the assembly of swings. It's the traditional high point of summer, located at the beginning of the dog days, and it begins the long slide to autumn and winter.

It's the day for hyperconservative wingnuts to wear silly tricorn hats, wave flags, and misquote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, neither of which they have probably ever actually read and understood.

July 4th is not the day the Declaration of Independence was signed ... that was July 2nd ... but it was the day it was formally adopted and published by the Continental Congress. Founder and second President John Adams always thought that July 2nd should have been the date of celebration, but in 1870 Congress designated the fourth as the national holiday. That was back when Congress could occasionally actually do something.

July 4th is also the date in 1802 on which the US Military Academy at West Point (commonly known simply as "West Point") was opened. The early leaders of the country had originally resisted instituting a military academy, believing that it was one of the trappings of European-style aristocracy that the Revolutionary War had been fought to erase.

And this is also the date on which American poet Walt Whitman published his classic collection titled Leaves of Grass. This extract from the preface of is worth reading on this national holiday ...

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

Have a safe and happy Fourth of July! More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Finally Here...

Those of you who went looking for today's post early this morning (or at the equivalent time in Brisbane, the UK, or other locations) were no doubt distressed to find nothing new in this space. I'm sorry. For once, I managed to sleep late, and once I got up I embarked on The Day of the Endless Chores and - sadly - missed my usual posting time.

You'll forgive me, won't you?

Most of today was taken up with hauling a large load of junk to the landfill (nothing like having a son-in-law with a borrowable truck!), power-washing the siding and the deck behind the house, and constructing The Swing From Hell.

Agnes has been salivating for some months now over a large, canopied swing she'd spotted at Costco that she thought would be just right for our deck. Yesterday, she finally succeeded in getting me to borrow Vin's (our son-in-law) truck and getting the swing for her.

And then the fun began...

The swing came unassembled (of course) in a box about 47 feet long, weighing eight tons and requiring a Bucyrus Erie crane to get it onto the truck. It features all steel construction (except for the cushions, of course), is held together by 17,682,957 screws, bolts, nuts, washers, spacers, and grommets, and comes complete with 97 pages of assembly instructions translated from the original Urdu into English by a native speaker of Xhosa.

The unwritten laws governing the construction of large objects out of many small parts on a deck apparently specify that a certain percentage of the small parts (generally those most crucial to the eventual safe operation of the object) will roll off the deck and disappear into the dense underbrush behind the house. I am in full compliance with those laws.

The swing is not yet finished. The frame is up ... twice ... (because I put it together backwards the first time), and I was trying to figure out the instructions on how to assemble the canopy when it started to rain. Thus, I get to look forward to part deux of the assembly of the Swing From Hell tomorrow.

I can hardly wait. I'll post a picture once it's done ... assuming it looks something like the picture on that 47-foot, 8 ton box.

Turning to other topics, today is the anniversary of the birthday (in 1883) of novelist Franz Kafka, whose stories of ordinary people caught up in bizarre and nightmarish situations (The Trial and The Metamorphosis are two of his most famous works) have given us the adjective kafkaesque - referring to situations characterized by a nighmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality. Republican economic policies, for instance.

Today also marks the day on which the Battle of Gettysburg ended in 1863. It may have been the largest military engagement ever fought in North America, involving more than 160,000 combatants, of whom some 8,000 were killed, along with more than 3,000 horses. Michael Shaara's novel The Killer Angels remains one of the best works of historical fiction dealing with the battle.

And now it's 10:15 PM, and time to try to coax Nessa out for a last walk before bed. This usually doesn't require any coaxing, but because every ass clown in Northern Virginia with a box of fireworks is shooting them off in preparation for tomorrow's Independence Day celebrations, she's cowering under the desk.

Have a good evening. More thoughts coming tomorrow. Happy Fourth of July!

Bilbo