hard copy
August 5th, 2009 | Uncategorized
I’ve been subscribing to The Nation for over twenty years. For many of those, I saved the freakin’ back issues—stacks and stacks of these flimsy newsprint magazines with post-its sticking out of them. I only ever actually read maybe two pages of each one, but if I needed to refer to an article, I rested secure in the knowledge that I had it. Or would have it after six or seven hours of crazed, ink-smudged page-flipping.
Eventually they digitized all the back issues to 1776 or something, and made them available online, so with a small twinge of regret, I put my vast personal archive in the recycling bin. (Well, many bins, over many weeks.)
Now I get an email from The Nation asking me if I want to stop receiving paper copies and get the digital edition instead. They made a compelling argument. Why waste the trees and the ever-increasing postage? I was just about to click the button that would remove these familiar, rustling pamphlets from my life forever, when I thought better of it. I only ever read my weekly two pages when I’m at the gym. And much as I love my iPhone, I’m not going to be scrolling its tiny screen while I’m panting on the Stairmaster—not even for Katha Pollitt.
On another nostalgic note, a kind person just alerted me that Word is Out, the groundbreaking 1977 documentary about 26 out gay men and lesbians, is having a showing in Berkeley on August 19th. Members of the Mariposa Film Group, the collective that made the movie, will be present. I have a real soft spot for this movie because the book that was made from it caused me to come out. I wrote about this in my memoir Fun Home. I was idly browsing in a bookstore one day—November 19th, 1979, in fact—when I picked up “Word is Out” and had the sudden epiphany that I was one of these people.
Maybe I should get a Kindle.
120 Responses to “hard copy”
What, no stacks of National Geographic? And no, don’t get a Kindle: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/03/090803fa_fact_baker
I dunno. I’m a true fan of Baker’s work, and I enjoyed his New Yorker article, but I think it sort of missed the point.
I was given a Kindle –I’ll have to admit that I’m not sure I would have shelled out for one– but I’ve been quite happy with it in general.
But I want to be specific about what I mean:
1] I’ve found it very good for reading per se. That is, the kind of book where you start pick up the book, start at line 1 and read through to the end. (More about this below)
I haven’t really downloaded a lot, but I really like the fact that I have two dozen plus “books” in my bag with me whenever I go out. I can always find something there that I want to read.
Also, have a handful of reference books right there is real nice.
2] I still have my stacks of books around the house –by my chair, on the floor beside my bed, etc– but what I find I keep on the Kindle are books that I know I want to read, but which would never make to the top of my day-to-day list.
The kind of thing that come in real handy while sitting, waiting in the grocery store parking lot.
3] Also, I’m the kind of person when I do “casual” reading, I do a lot jumping around; a few pages from this book, a few from that, etc.
I used to do a fair amount of work-related travelling. I would find that no matter which couple of books I took with me, they were always the wrong ones. I think a Kindle would be ideal for something like this.
4] Now, clearly there are a lot of things that books are great at, for which a Kindle would be a disaster.
The most obvious thing are reference books. If I’m reading, say, a commentary on an author (e.g. Shakespeare) what that typically means is that I have the commentary open, a copy of the plays open for reference, and a dictionary in my third hand. And I’m always flipping between the three, and jumping back and forward between the pages.
The Kindle is miserable at this sort of thing.
5] So, I’d have to say –if you can afford it– yeah, a Kindle is pretty darn good at things that it’s good at.
If you’ve got an extra $300, I think a Kindle is fine – I’d imagine it’d be extremely useful for long trips, rather than the carrier bag full of throwaway books I end up hauling.
There’s an article all about Kindle in the last New Yorker but one (or two? bugger it, have to check my archives in the ‘small reading room’… ok, August 3rd, page 24). Among other things, it notes graphics and illustrations have a very hard go of it….
just saying.
Wait a minute-I thought it was on the quad at Oberlin…or is my memory playing tricks with me again?
well, yes, shado, that’s true. I walked out of the bookstore and across the quad, and that’s when it happened.
Hey, check it out! My pal Susan Stinson has a letter to the editor in The New Yorker this week, in response to an article I haven’t read yet but am going to go do right now.
If you haven’t seen it yet, Green Apple Books of San Francisco has a great series of YouTube shorts on why the Kindle won’t replace the book just yet:
http://www.youtube.com/user/GreenAppleBooks
It was _Our Bodies, Ourselves_ that first clued me in about my sexual orientation. Later, I read _Rubyfruit Jungle_ and _Sappho Was A Right on Woman). But it was the first DTWOF book (purchased used at Beebo’s in Louisville, Colorado (long before Boulder had a women’s bookstore) that told me that being queer could also be fun.
About the Kindle (odd choice of words — anyone else think book burning?), I’d hesitate to carry around a $300 piece of technology. Though, come to think of it, I carry around my $300 iTouch.
Besides its price being a drawback, I also like the smell and feel of books, newspapers and magazines. I’m mostly a book person, though I read parts of the The York Times online. I should probably subscribe to the weekend paper version before that disappears forever too.
[…] dykestowatchoutfor.com » Blog Archive » hard copy […]
yeah, some things are better in your hands than in virtual form…
I have to give the indigo girls “swamp ophelia” credit for my awakening, though once awake I spent a week at what i call lesbian camp in portland, OR. It was at a friends sister’s house, who was a vegetarian/earth recycler type,and she had a treasure trove of DTWOF books that i pored over every night. It seemed like some fairytale land to me, being from the south. “Women can live in houses together? I want to belong to a co-op!” It was such a life changing experience for me. There was a world that existed out there, and I was going to find it, and I did.
When I moved to SF in March ’78, Word Is Out was all over the place, and the Adairs (Margo, Peter) were local celebs. Because of that exposure, I went to hear Elsa Gidlow read a few times, an experience I treasure. I also became a life-long fan of Trish Nugent, whose music is sort of the official sound track (Were you there? New Year’s Eve at 15? Pizza cooking, music blaring, card games with my best friend…) Trish was a law student at Boalt Hall, I think, when she and Carol Vendrillo wrote those and other songs which came out on her (sob, only) album, Foxglove Woman, distributed by Olivia in 1977. She’s now a lawyer in Sonoma County, but I swear, I think of one or another line from her songs almost every day:
Each of us has a set of rules that she must live by
That she has gathered as a child, and still along the way
Each lesson, each vision
Leaves buried in her heart and mind
Undiscovered obstacles to freedom
That she must cast away, cast away
And then begin to rise above
The waters which have kept her
Without life-blood until now
A lot of the discussion about the Kindle is typified by the videos from Green Apple Books. But again, I think it misses the point: We’re talking about two different things.
As an exercise, watch the videos but replace “Kindle” with “CDs” or “an iPod”; and replace “book” with “a piano” or “a live string quartet”. It maps pretty closely.
In short, are devices like a Kindle a replacement for a book in all its multifaceted uses? Obviously not. Are there some things it does extremely well (and arguably better than a book)? Clearly yes.
NLC, 2, do you mean it’s handy to have professional reference books on the Kindle but not so useful for reference books that you would use while reading other books? You seem to say that it’s both good and bad for reference books.
Is it possible to back up your Kindle? If you had a lot of reference books on it that you needed for your work, it would become a single point of failure that would cause a lot of trouble when it died/got lost/got stolen. This would be very inconvenient even if you only had entertainment on it. With a backup, if you needed it for work you’d still need to order another Kindle overnight.
Alison’s post emphasizes a serious problem with electronic books: the impossibility, or at least difficulty, of browsing.
One problem Baker mentions that would be important to me: the difficulty of reading endnotes. I read a lot of nonfiction, and I do flip back and forth.
Ellen O also makes a good point: I don’t need another piece of expensive, losable/stealable consumer electronics to drag around with me. Even if you carry around your $300 Ipod, a Kindle doubles your exposure. Do you really want a Kindle in your gym bag?
I first saw “Word is Out” in 1981, when I was 17 and a senior at Essex Junction High School. I was dating a Harvard freshman and it was featured as part of their GL student week, along with Micki Dickoff’s “Monday Morning Pronouns”. It was transformative for me, as well.
Years later I found the novelization in a used bookstore in Philadelphia. A couple years ago I attended “Freddy”s 60th birthday. We had been friends for a few years before I connected his “I was dating a filmmaker in the 70s and was part of a band, Buena Vista” story with this book I had on my bookshelf.
There is something so organic and delicious about the actual bound and printed word (and oh, the smell). I’ve loved books as long as I’ve loved anything, and can’t imagine giving them up for the electronic version.
I have a Sony Reader (I have objections to the Kindle) and I am madly, passionately fond of it. Mostly because when I travel I can just take it–and not a giant stack of books. The e-readers are great for fiction, so-so for non-fiction (depends on how well the book has been formatted/organized) and pretty miserable so far as I can tell for magazines and newspapers. And as NLC says, not too good if you want to be skipping all over in a book.
But there are still 6000+ books in the house, and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon!
(Dana in CA #11):
Wait a minute, wait a minute… you mean there are women who really live like the characters in DTWOF? Wow! And here I always thought that Mo’s life was like a dream, a beautiful dream. It’s as if somebody just told me there really is a Captain Kathryn Janeway! 🙂
(Ellen O #8) When I think of the name “Kindle”, I’m reminded of Plutarch (“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.”)
NLC, I think you have a good point about Kindle being good for certain reading purposes. At this moment, I’m clinging to my haughty disdain of everything Amazon, though (just a personal thing), and won’t plan to buy one any time soon.
I’m actually surprised nobody’s raised the whole stink about Amazon wiping out the (supposedly pirated) e-copies of 1984 from Kindles without prior notification (how deliciously appropriate is THAT? Truth is truly stranger than fiction).
In terms of coming out, yeah, another vote for the Indigo Girls. I actually got to go see them on tour right after they signed with Epic. And became a mini groupie. Ah, good times.
To add a bit more to the item about Amazon removing copies of 1984:
The critical bit here, as grrljock(19) mentions, is that these were apparently pirated copies. The “publisher” had issued –and more importantly sold— the book in violation of copyright.
(As a further note, the one story I read on this reported that the buyer’s accounts were credited for the cost of the removed book.)
In short this was stolen merchandise. I’m afraid I’m going to need some convincing that Amazon’s action was a bad thing.
I’m going to miss print magazines. At times, I’ve subscribed to a dozen or more titles at a time, and kept boxes of back issues of Jane, Esquire, and The Advocate in my closet for posterity. Eventually, though, I cut my subscriptions down to the essential and junked the archives. (Moving four or five times during college helped break my addiction–all those changes of address and lugging heavy boxes!)
Now, I read most magazines online or at the library, subscribe to a few, and donate or sell the back issues. If I really want to re-read or share something, it’s pretty easy to look up later. Or so I tell myself, to tame the archivist impulse.
But I will never get a Kindle, because I don’t like to read off a screen. I don’t mind it for short articles. But the idea of reading a full-length book or magazine issue off a mini computer screen kinda makes my retinas hurt.
I got a Kindle as a gift and read 8 books the first two weeks I had the damn thing. 8 books is usually a good summer’s worth of reading for me, so I was pretty impressed.
It looked to me like Nicholson Baker (bless his heart and all) deliberately made a poor case against electronic reading devices. Or perhaps he showed a poor understanding of what an electronic reading device is for.
For me, it’s at its best when I use it to unload possessions. A Kindle is one object. Each book is one object. The Kindle can hold something like 1,500 books. My house can hold something like 800 (but I’m winnowing that number down every time I read a book electronically that I don’t have to store in the living room, sun porch, bedroom, bathroom, and whatnot).
Books are lovely and the ones I love will never get winnowed out. On the other hand, it felt nice to give away The Lovely Bones and Hotel World.
I’m supposed to be a personal organizer, so I have to keep my house tidy and uncluttered, otherwise how can I help other people? I recognize not everyone feels the way I do about books as possessions.
Thanks Michelle Gruben for the good idea to donate my magazine back issues! My possession load will get lighter because of you.
“Word is Out” will soon be available on DVD. Story here: http://bit.ly/Sy0tg
WRT Amazon and 1984… Amazon sold books it did not have a right to, so Amazon did a naughty there; and then instead of sending out notifications to the people who had bought the books along the lines of “Oopsy, we messed up, sorry, gotta rescind that sale, here’s your money back,” they just removed the books from people’s Kindles in the middle of the night (and it must be admitted also gave them their money back). I think people were upset by the secrecy, the inpermanence of their supposedly permanent purchases (and the purchasers had done nothing wrong) and the fact that Amazon could monitor and control what was on their supposedly personal devices.
JLJ #22 – I think Nicholson Baker prefers an electronic reading device to display books as close to their print versions as possible, hence his recommendation for reading on the iPod touch vs Kindle.
Bookbird #24 – what you said. I’d be upset too if a book that I bought just disappears, regardless of a refund and legality of said book.
I didn’t take Baker’s article as a denunciation of electronic reading devices per se, since he liked reading on his iPod better than the Kindle, and compared different ERDs, noticing the advantages of each. He even found the Kindle app on the iPod Touch to be a better reading experience than the Kindle itself. What I thought he was doing was criticizing the Kindle’s specific implementation of the device, and I thought he made some interesting points.
I think it’s interesting that so many people react to such criticism as total rejection of ERDs; it seems to be a common pattern. (For example, I say, “The US should not have invaded Iraq,” and you say, “Why do you think that America is responsible for everything bad in the world?”)
I don’t see myself getting a Kindle or other ERD anytime soon, though I did look for more information on the iPod Touch after reading Baker’s article, and I’m thinking about getting one, though not very definitely yet. The Orwell incident should be a wakeup call to a lot of people who are too uncritical of the Kindle, because it reinforces some of the concerns I have about it. I don’t really own the copies I’ve downloaded to the device. I can’t, as I understand it, lend an e-book to someone else (except by lending them the Kindle itself); I can’t sell used copies or even donate them to the library. Nor do I like the idea of paying again for a book I already own a physical copy of (and I have a lot of physical books).
I do like the idea of an ERD for travel, but I guess I’ll be waiting until a better implementation comes along.
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonya Sotomayor has been confirmed by a 68-to-31 vote of the United States Senate; the vote results were just announced by Senator Al Franken of Minnesota, who was presiding over the Senate in place of Vice-President Biden.
To clarify a point:
Amazon did not sell the book, per se.
That is, virtually anyone can “publish” a book in the Kindle format and put it on the Amazon site. (All you need is the software to do this. There are lots of books like this available for the Kindle, many are in the public domain.)
In this case it was one of these “third party” vendors who created the bootleg version and made it available on the Amazon site.
So, to be accurate, Amazon was the “seller” in this case, only in the sense that EBay is the “seller” if I buy a bootleg DVD from “Joe’s Videos” on EBay.
I agree that a “Here’s-what-we’re-doing” letter would have been nice. But, to my mind, retracting the stolen items was still the right course of action.
Kindle. Ick.
Doesn’t it seem that we’re somehow losing more and more as we gain more and more?
I like the feel of a book in my hands. I like the texture of living a life with a lot of books stuck on shelves and jammed into corners.
A friend’s step-father recently died, and I noticed something: everyone sends condolences through Facebook. More texture disappearing.
Soon we’ll all be nice and flat and one-dimensional …
Michelle Gruben (21) spoke about reading off a screen.
I was concerned about this as well. But I have to say that I don’t find this a problem reading on the Kindle.
For one thing, the Kindle does not use a backlit screen, which are notoriously hard on your eyes.
Rather it is a significantly different technology (called eInk, among other things). It really is surprisingly, –and pleasantly– like reading regular hardcopy. (For that matter, you have to have an external light source –like a lamp.) And the screen is nicely matte, so I’ve not found reflection/glare to be an issue.
Second, font-size is adjustable. Too small, too hard to read? Just crank it up.
Here is the official statement on the confirmation of Associate Justice Sotomayor:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/32318745#32318745
Can s/o tell me whether you can back up these machines? If you’ve bought and stored hundreds of books, and the thing is lost or stolen or breaks, can you get it all back from a backup? If not, ie if they have some un-copyable (sp?) proprietary format, I’m not buying. You only need to lose one hard drive to know never to have just one copy of data. I’ve had two portable hard drives die this year – the last one had a whole year’s worth of my students’ work on. I’d _nearly_ got it all copied…
Whitey was always my favorite. (Word is Out) I thought I saw her once in San Francisco, but was too shy to talk to her.
To answer some questions from Andrew B(14) and Pam I(32):
1] Reference books:
Again here I think the issue is how you want to use the References.
I think it works pretty well if you’re using what you might call a “direct” or “single-lookup” reference; i.e. when you want to look up specific item.
Say, a dictionary (the Kindle comes equipped with one –you can buy others). Or “searchable” references –say, I want to lookup up which Shaxepere sonnet refers to “Remembrance of Things Past”. Here it works pretty well. (In particular, I sure wish there was a good Greek dictionary available, so I could stop dragging mine around.)
Having all those handy, in one teeny package, is one of my favorite things about my Kindle.
Much less so if you need a “browsable” reference; something you need to flip around in. (A good example for me is, say, if I’m doing a programming task, and I don’t really know what I’m looking for and I just to just sort of thumb through the chapter on “User Interface Controls” looking for ideas.)
Again, this comes back to the notion that the Kindle is lousy for browsing. Can’t beat a real book from just flipping through pages.
2] Back ups:
The quick answer is “yes”.
The issue here is that the Kindle doesn’t use (for example) the iPod model; i.e. simply download it to your machine once and for all.
Rather, when you buy a book, its installed on your Kindle, but you basically have a record back on the Amazon server and can re-download in the future. (Amazon points to this a feature by which you can “keep your book” if you change machines.)
Moreover, they also claim that if you max out your storage you can delete a current book to make room, and re-install it as you need. (I’ve never used this, but I did accidentally delete a book once, and got it back almost instantaneously.)
3] Browsing:
Yes, the Kindle sucks at this. No question.
But again, it’s a question of what you want. If I’m reading “Persuasion”, browsing is a non-issue.
4] Footnotes:
A properly formatted Kindle book supports foot/end-notes.
That is, the “footnote number” appears on the page, and you can click on it and go to the note. (Think of it as sort of hyper-text link on a webpage.)
But, once again to be precise, this depends on what you are using the notes for. If its a “single-shot” foot note, this works fine. OTOH if this is a situation in which it’s helpful to have the page of end-notes handy so that you can skim around them, we’re back to the bad-browsing issue.
(And, to be clear, the book needs to be properly formatted. Most of the footnoted books that I have –which have been done by the primary publishers– work fine. On the other hand, if the “publisher” has done a slapdash job, it can be pretty bad.)
5] Do I want it in my gym bag.
No, but in my brief case, or in my suitcase for a night in a motel while on a trip, sure.
And a couple features not asked about:
6] Images:
Very poor. 16-shades of gray. Hard to move around. (Reading, say, “Fun Home” would be pretty dismal.)
7] Browser:
The Kindle also has a slightly-stripped down browser built in. Using it is a bit icky because of the thumb-keyboard, but it is nice for those spur of the moment for Google/IMDB/Wikipedia look-ups when your away from a real machine.
(Also, having GoogleMaps available has really saved my bacon more than once.
Pam I–
I don’t know about the Kindle, but I can back-up the books on my Reader. As with the Kindle, there’s a record at the store where I bought books, so I can re-download them as much as I want, but I also have copies on my computer and a hard drive, just in case the stores go out of business.
As long as Amazon can go onto MY machine and delete MY files, I want nothing to do with it.
NLC, thanks for the answers. I was only trying to ask you about reference books, but thanks for the rest of the info too, especially backups. “Gym bag” was a reference to Alison wanting something she could read at the gym.
I had to google what a ‘Kindle’ was. I feel so provincial and British. Maybe they haven’t made it over the Atlantic; maybe they have and I didn’t notice.
This month, for the first time in my life I’ve been getting rid of books. I never throw away books but the necessities of a downsize to a one-bed flat has meant they have to go. I feel a strange mix of sadness and lightness but I’m working on the premise that I’ll forget what books I ever owned by the end of August.
Or I’ll mourn them forever.
Or I’ll buy a Kindle – if they even exist.
OK, they do exist in the UK, I’m just oblivious. Someone wrote quite a lovely rubbishing of the Kindle in the Guardian.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2007/nov/21/thekindledoesntlightmyfir
Juliet
Ok I’ve now done a bit of reading it up – on screen. @Juliet, they are only on sale in the USA. There are people selling them to get round Amazon’s block, but buying e-books here must be tricky.
I like the option of voice synthesis, so print becomes easily available to blind people, and you can switch to Listen when driving etc.
The e-books are expensive – no 3-for-2 deals, and no getting them for 1p secondhand. You are locked into Amazon’s system. No thanks, for me. But as I have spent hours this summer building more and more bookshelves and still can’t cross the room, I can see the temptation. But (2) at least half of my books are non-fiction, mostly bigger picture books that I can’t see myself giving up this side of 90.
Hey, Alison, thanks for linking to my letter. I was just was in NYC and gave myself the thrill of buying that issue of The New Yorker at a newsstand at Penn Station. Me, I think I’m always going to be a paper fetishist. Recently, I was moved to chew on the pages of a new book of essays by Rebecca Brown that I really loved (American Romances — I was reviewing it for Lambda Book Report), and to ruffle them against my lips. (Activities thematically related to some of the essays, in addition to being, if you’re me, good fun.) Try that with a Kindle.
Speaking of the New Yorker, did you read the recent article by Nicholson Baker about the Kindle? He said that tons of graphics and some text are lost.
Here’s a link:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/03/090803fa_fact_baker
Hey Susan,
I’m also a big fan of Rebecca Brown’s latest book, American Romances. (Full disclosure, she’s also a friend of mine.) In it, she writes pointedly about faith, home, and famous lesbians staying closeted. Also plays with footnotes in provocative ways.
I also liked your letter to the editor in the New Yorker (I too was in NYC earlier this week.) The billion dollar diet industry, coupled with gyms and with magazines who run diet ads, make me distrust anything out there about eating and nutrition.
The article you responded to doesn’t say much about the car culture and how American’s suburbs, rural areas, also with many cities, discourage walking with poor sidewalks, wide streets, lack of safe crosswalks, and general non-car access.
Since the early 1980’s, the media has hyped a culture of fear about children walking to school, which has cut out a huge opportunity for routine exercise. Meanwhile, how many people are within walking distance of a shopping center? With buses and trains reduced greatly from 70 years ago, many of us don’t even have the opportunity to walk to a bus stop or train station for our commute.
Fortunately, I am within 6 blocks of two bus routes. Walking those extra 12 blocks most work days (even if I do nothing else) relieves stress, helped me knock off a few pounds, and helps me sleep better at night.
Blog hijack: a college lecturer here (in UK) is being threatened with dismissal for showing, or possibly just referring to, the work of Del LaGrace Volcano. I don’t know the details but I have to defend the right of a teacher to make his own professional judgement about what to show in class. The emails in question are on my blog via my name link here. Will update if I get more info.
@Pam I #43: It’s an interesting issue. Of course, the college is being narrow-minded, etc, but I wondered whether in the present culture, whether it’s actually “considered appropriate” in education for an adult to show nude or partially nude photographs to 16/17 year olds?
Mind you, as you say, they were recommended to students. And just how did the college authorities hear about the recommendation? I sense a complaining parent in the background …
(Juliet #38) You feel so provincial and British? There, there, I’m Kansan and I never let that stop me! And that phrase you used in #39… a “lovely rubbishing”! I’m in love! 🙂
I KNEW that I was leaving something out of that last post! Hey, I -uh- got distracted! The kindle and like electronic format book-readers remind me of something from Star Trek. In the Federation universe, most written material was conveyed on “PADS” which displayed printed material electronically, and which could be endlessly reloaded with new material. Also, as long as the PAD was on board a StarFleet vessel or inside a Federation building, they were constantly recharged by induction.
“Humanity’s future lies in space; Kate L is already there!”
…and another thing. On Star Trek: The Next Generation, Captain Jon Luc Picard* had an interest in archeology and antiquities, and would relax by reading classic books in which the words were printed on paper and bound between covers! It was something of an indulgence on the character’s part.
*-Played by actor Patrick Stewart.
Re my post #43 about the threatened lecturer – I’ve pulled my blog post as they are trying to let things die down a bit – the original email was never intended to be circulated publicly and it is at the point where it is harming Simon’s case rather than helping it.
Will update as and when.
@ Ian #44 – I don’t know what pics were shown. I’d not hesitate to show Del’s portrait work to my 16-y-old students, when I grab those chances to talk about gender isses. Obviously I would not flash up from nowhere Del’s intersexed nudes – but if someone was doing a project on these issues, I would give them the reference, and would fight to the point of resigning, my right to do so.
There have been some very odd things happening with the Kindle, particularly in the world of digital rights management. Some people swear by them, but I’m waiting on it myself.
You might be interested in this article: http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/drm/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218900333
Anna (49):
There are several references to this issue in the comments above, which include some additional data omitted from this article.
Ellen, American Romances completely blew my mind. It’s so, so, so good. And, yes, I’m all for withdrawing from car culture, at least a little, it’s so hard to do in so many places and circumstances, I know — huge environmental, emotional, physical and time-bending benefits can come from that. Although I come from a family of passionate drivers, and fully get both the practical benefits and the love of the road, I haven’t owned a car in a long time — I get around by trike.
To the individual whose two messages have just been “unapproved” (and a gentle reminder to us all):
There are many things said here with which we will disagree, sometimes vigorously.
Expression of dissenting opinions or contrarian content will always be welcome on this list. However, all postings will remain civil and be respectful of others. Period.
If you wish to rephrase your message in a more appropriate tone and repost them, please feel free to do so.
Wow. I step away from the computer to recharge my brain with caffeine, and I missed the two posts. Damn.
As for DRM (Digital Rights Management as called by its proponents, Digital Restrictions Management as called by the Electronic Frontier Foundation), I refuse to buy anything that requires or promotes DRM. It’s not because I am interested in pirating material, or because I am against creative works artists from collecting their royalties. Neither of those two scenarios are true. It’s because the laws and technology governing DRM-protected material deny me rights as a consumer that I have with hard copy media such as books, and physical media such as CDs and DVDs.
There is something called the first-sale doctrine as applied to copyright laws. The short non-lawyer explanation of this is best illustrated by example. If I buy a copy of a hard copy book, say Essential DTWOF, I can give it away, loan it to someone, or resell it, all legally. I cannot legally do the same things with a DRM-protected version of Essential DTWOF.
If I read a great book and want to loan it to a friend, who would return it to me after she finished reading it, I can do that. If I read the same great book on a Kindle and want to loan it to a friend, I can’t. S/he has to buy a copy to download to her/his own Kindle. If I want to donate the book to a women’s shelter or school library, no problem. I can’t do that with a DRM-protected version.
What’s worse, as ironically illustrated with the deletion of Orwell’s “1984” from the Kindles of unsuspecting users, is that I have no control over my own purchased content. With a DRM-protected file, you don’t OWN the file, you have a revocable license to use the file in the ways specified by the entity controlling the DRM and distribution. The controlling entity can change, revise, or revoke the license and its terms at any time, and there’s no guarantee that your media will be usable in the future.
For example, people who downloaded DRM-protected music from the now-defunct Microsoft music service have discovered that they can no longer get the license keys for their legally purchased DRM-protected music. The DRM-protected license key is coded for a specific device (e.g. a specific PC). If the person buys a new computer and wants to transfer the files to the new system, s/he needs new license keys. Without the keys, the music cannot be played.
It’s not just e-books and music media that have DRM issues. A colleague purchased a technical standards document from an engineering standards-setting organization about three years ago. It was an Adobe Acrobat PDF file with some kind of DRM protection and encryption that he downloaded to his laptop. He’s transferred the file to two subsequent laptops as our IT department has issued new ones. A few months ago he needed to refer to this legally-purchased document, and couldn’t open it, because the license key was for the original PC on which it was downloaded. The document was not cheap (a few hundred dollars). He had to dig through a blizzard of purchase orders from several years back to find the one for this document purchase. He contacted the standards org and told them he had the file on a new PC, here’s the original purchase order, please send me a new key. They told him tough luck, buy it again. He fought it, and they finally gave him a new license key to access the file.
Most people would have given up and would have bought another copy of the document, especially if they were under time pressure to get the information (the whole affair took him over a week to get the new license key).
So don’t count on your Kindle download list or Amazon’s benevolence or whatever to protect your media purchases. You could easily find yourself SOL. Ditto for iTunes. DRM is more 1984 that you realize.
I’ll have to put the URLs for the relevant Wikis on first sale doctrine and DRM in separate posts so I don’t feed the “two URL” content filter monster.
Here’s the Wiki on first sale doctrine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
Here’s the Wiki on DRM:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management
Interesting GOP news… Florida GOP Sen. Mel Martinez, who previously announced that he would retire at the end of his term in 2010, has announced that he will step down much earlier, likely this month. Hmmm… I wonder what skeleton in his closet is about to hit the fan?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124965915123014707.html
In other GOP scandal news, SC Gov. Sanford’s wife and kids have moved out of the official residence.
Lastly, if you’re a fan of Doonesbury, you’re no doubt enjoying this week’s strips all about the Christian conservative townhouse at 133 C St that is the DC home to Sens. Ensign, Coburn, et al. (and formerly the DC home of Gov. Sanford when he was a Senator). The house itself is registered as a church, so they pay practically no property tax. The cabal who run the place are conservative Christian political flacks operating as a Christian fellowship, informally known as “The Family.” Trudeau has really done his homework on this series of strips.
Wow, what I wrote was pretty m?ld and gently wr?tten, albe?t m?ldly cr?t?cal. I w?ll try aga?n;
There are per?od?cals I read to understand what ?shappen?ng ?n the world. NYT, FT, Econom?st, trade publ?cat?ons l?ke Platt,s Energy. And then there are publ?cat?ons I read for ?dle amusemnt, merely to wonder at the ?gnorance and zealotry of poeple. The Nat?on ?s one such publ?cat?on. And the?r personnel are not always very n?ce people. Wr?tre Mark Ames once threatened me and my w?fe, wh?ch ?n Moscow 12 years ago was a more ser?ous matter than, say, at an UWS Manhattan d?nner party (1). Dav?d Cole supported my expuls?on from law school for hav?ng mocked Chr?st?ans ?n an op-ed, because I also mocked l?berals as well (2). I once has Robert Dr?nan expla?n to me that Srebren?ca was maybe a NATO hoax (3). Naom? Wolf and Naom? Kle?n are shock?ngly d?shonest (4). And Katr?na vanden Heuvel ?s a bad parody of a l?mous?me l?beral (5). And Katha Poll?t really ?s a dreary old fool.
S?nce you have no d?ea what I am talk?ng about, some explanat?on:
(1) darl?g of Nat?on ed?tors, who ?n Moscow had recrod of assault?ng people he d?sagreed w?th, and who publ?shed once notor?ous f?rst person account of rap?ng g?rl and how cool ?t was
(2) GULC law prof and Nat?on column?st who gets weepy over censnorsh?p but approves of ?t ?n h?s own ?nst?tut?on
(3) GULC prof, human r?ghts advocate and Nat?on ?con, Srebren?ca was massacre of 7000 men and boys ?n forests of Bosn?a
(4) I can ema?l you deta?led account, ?t?s s?cken?ng what fabr?cat?ons people can get away w?th
(5) I can assure you that wh?le Katr?na gets weepy over the poor people etc she ?s not ?nv?t?ng them to any of *her* d?nner part?es
And just what ?s an appropr?ate ‘tone’? If Ith?nk Plool?t ?s a fool, must I say rather that I th?nk ‘she errs w?th respect to fact and ?nterpretat?on,’ or ?s that even ?nsuff?c?ently deferent?al?
@55: Thanks, H-O-H, I’m really liking Doonesbuey this week. It really rings true, and I was wondering just how much of it he made up. Best wishes.
@ 38: Juliet: I know how hard it is to get rid of books, too. Seems like losing old friends, sometimes. But unless you’re tossing them into the dumpster/dustbin (please don’t!) it means that someone else gets to read them next! You’re sharing! Most of mine go to my local Catholic Church “garage sale”, which they hold twice a week. Also where I *get* a great many books, and I’ve found such wonderful bargains there, at 25/50 cents each, that it’s quite hard sometimes not to come back with more than I give them. Best wishes.
@Timmytee (#57)
Trudeau didn’t make up any of it, except the main protagonist Senator X who’s trying to figure out how to deal with the husband of his mistress. Even the references to the list of heroes which includes Hitler and Mao is accurate.
Rachel Maddow did two segments on “The Family” in July. It’s much easier reading than the Wiki. The “two-URL” content filter monster will eat this post if I put them both here, so I’ll onesy-twosey the links to the transcripts.
Here’s Dr. Maddow’s 7/9/09 show transcript:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31848702/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/
Here’s the link to Dr. Maddow’s 7/10/09 show transcript with the rest of the story on the C Street fellowship:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31890176/ns/msnbc_tv-rachel_maddow_show/
Here’s the link to the “The Family” Wiki (N.B. URLs with parentheses in them seem to get truncated as a clickable link, so you’ll have to copy/paste the whole thing into your browser URL bar to make it work):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_(Christian_political_organization)
I read, or skimmed, Word is Out in the stacks of Mudd Library at Oberlin, probably in 1985.
The book that was my turning point, however, was Genet’s “White Paper,” complete with erotic drawings. Though I’ve since come to view Genet’s power dynamics in relationships (strong dom/sub elements) as personally problematic, I was enchanted by his beautiful blend of poetry, romance and sexual desire.
I understand the challenge of choosing hard copy vs. digital. The New Yorker’s recent article on Kindle helped me believe we’ll never replace books entirely (just as TV and film will never “kill off” live theatre, dance and opera). I’ve since started reading Wilde’s “De profundis” on my iPhone, as kind of a lark. (BTW, the book was given a glowing review by a cute straight guy 19 years younger than me, so I felt compelled and shamed into reading it). I’d planned to check the book out of the library, which is across the street from my apartment building, but found I could down load it FREE through the Gutenberg Project. I’ve read about 50% of it on my morning and evening subway rides.
Don’t need to check it our or return it to the library– it’s on my iPhone as long as I want it to be– I can make digital annotations, which are easier to read than my handwriting– it doesn’t use up any of the precious shelf space in my small 1 bedroom apartment– Yes, digital books are EXTREMELY convenient!
If young gay folks today can download Word is Out, or hundreds of LBGTQ books and videos online, I’m guessing they’ll have a different coming out experience from Alison and me. Not necessarily better or easier, just different.
@Brooklyn Phil (#62)
The reason you could download that book from Project Gutenberg to your iPhone is because the print copyright has expired and there were no ideas about possible derivative works in alternate media in the then-existing copyright laws.
Fast-forward to today and the laws are much different. Even if the print copyright expires, the derivative works made with DRM technology are still protected.
Your Project Gutenberg file is a great example of electronic media behaving exactly like hard copy form. You can read it on the device you choose (PC, Mac, iPhone, or any device capable of reading a flat text ASCII file), you can loan it or give it away, all easily and legally.
None of that is possible with DRM-protected media, which are often locked into specific devices (e.g. DRM-protected AAC format music locked into iPods, Kindle files locked into Kindles, etc.). And if the device, manufacturer, or service which provided the DRM-protected material ceases operation, your DRM-protected media becomes unusable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act
This has major implications for libraries. Hard copy and microfilm are the lowest common denominator in terms of future retrievability and access. If your library had recordings on 8-track tape, do you think they’d be able to get equipment to access them today? Also, the lifespan of common digital media such as burned CDs and DVDs is only estimated at 10 to 15 years, depending on quality of the media and the storage conditions.
One look at my technology graveyard makes me think about all the information that will likely become unaccessible in the near future… know anyone who still has a Bernoulli Box? Floppy drives of any size? Zip drives?
@Mentor
Now THAT’S interesting… I just posted a long-ish reply to Brooklyn Phil about DRM and the DMCA, and it’s in blog purgatory. Only one link, to the Wiki about the DMCA.
I wonder what set off the content nanny filter?
Oh, I can relate, I’m cryin’ because I have to send my years’ long collection of MOJO and COMICS JOURNAL magazines to the dump — the ultimatum came down — I’d spend entire sleepless nights just rereading the things and revisiting old information, and now to have to part with ’em is like losing a hard drive patched into my brain.
I justify the trees for a few periodicals by knowing I wouldn’t read them at all on line, though I do get most of my news there now. But given the margins, the choice will be taken out of our hands eventually. And it probably is good for the planet. I hope I have better reading technology by then…
I wouldn’t get the kindle, if I were you. Sure, you can get all kinds of things in e-book format but it’s never going to be the same. Case in point, I can find alot of DTWOF archived on this very site for free. But I still pay for the books.
Speaking of online. I realize I’m going to catch some “Now you’re just being silly” flak, but here goes.
In a society where a lot of people can be tricked into believing that having the government provide access to medical care for everyone is somehow the same thing as having involuntary euthanasia become the law of the land, isn’t it horrifically dangerous to attempt to put everything online like this?
In the late 1970s, Reagan did an interview with a magazine in which he spoke about how we were in the End Times. Jesus was coming, etc. He talked a lot about that back before he became president and professional handlers stepped in. All the woo-woo stuff.
Imagine what happens if all that sort of idiocy stops being recorded in formats that age over time. “Sure, a Kindle screen shows a paragraph in which Reagan says X. But we have no way of being sure that X is what he actually said. Maybe a computer hacker sent out a virus to corrupt everyone’s copy of the paragraph. Fox News just showed us a copy of the same article in which Reagan’s quote is him talking about puppies and warm woolen mittens.”
And you know the people backing Reagan would use it to muddy the waters sufficiently to say, “See? Just another example of the liberal media being unfair. Fox tells the truth and everyone gangs up.”
I’ll stick with my print magazines.
Alex the Bold, #68: We have ALWAYS been at war with Oceania, because they refuse to wear warm woolen mittens. (grin) I agree.
The technology world is driven by profit, and planned obsolescence is key to constant growth. The stuff I have on disk from only 15 years ago is now very difficult for me to access. These companies are not going to save information for us, they are going to keep coming up with new things we have to buy in order to access essential information.
I love Nicholson Baker. And I say that as a librarian. One perception of librarians is that we come in two strains: the ones who embrace all space saving technology in favor of discarding paper sources which are in fact very expensive to house, and the ones who favor keeping everything, just because. The truth is that most librarians are smart enough to know that sometimes you need to keep something, and sometimes you need to dump it. Being a professional means having an understanding of the many issues involved in order to make informed decisions. But anyway…my favorite part of Baker’s article was this:
“[The Kindle is] earth-friendly, too, supposedly. Yes, it’s made of exotic materials that are shipped all over the world’s oceans; yes, it requires electricity to operate and air-conditioned server farms to feed it; yes, it’s fragile and it duplicates what other machines do; yes, it’s difficult to recycle; yes, it will probably take a last boat ride to a Nigerian landfill in five years. But no tree farms are harvested to make a Kindle book; no ten-ton presses turn, no ink is spilled.”
I think people overlook these issues when discussing the pros and cons of technological innovations. I think, if pressed, and having never used one, I would have to come down on the side of being mostly anti-kindle, if for no other reason than I think that everything that comes out of Amazon is evil.
ok, that being said, are any of you all from western massachusetts? on monday, August 31, we are having a book discussion of the book “That’s Revolting” as the first discussion in the Queer Radicalism Book Group. 7:00, Shelburne Falls, Boswell’s Books. stop by if you are looking for a good time!
http://www.mattildabernsteinsycamore.com/thatsrevolting.html
Around 1990 I gave away about a thousand comic books to a Shriner’s children’s hospital. None of them were worth anything at the time, but since then, a few of the writers and artists from the long-since-defunct publishers like Eclipse and Comico have become big names. Their early works are now worth bucks.
More importantly, I’m now in a position where people occasionally pay me to write about comic books. Sometimes I go into my library to look something up, and suddenly remember “Oh yeah, I gave that one to the sick kids.”
Damn sick kids; as if THEY could appreciate the subtleties of Space Lemmings vs. the Avacado Overlord.
@Dr. E: You can’t take it with you. (Ref: 1930s comedy of the same name about how an eccentric U.S. family survived the Great Depression.)
Dr. E: yep, a number of the comix I just gave away might turn a couple bucks on eBay, but you know, it’s just stuff to me. If somebody gets a nice payday out of the complete run of Ronin I gave away, good on ’em! I’d prefer they read the books though.
Here’s a link to a comic strip by Tom Tommorrow (probably not his real name) concerning birthers* and associated right-wing activists who think that starting a universal health care system for the first time in the United States is socialism, and who believe that socialism would be a bad thing. (Note: Glenn Beck is the latest on-air personality on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel in the United States.)
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2009/08/11/tomo/
*- birthers believe that President Obama is an illegal alien (!)
#74 Kate L.: I’ve been following Tom T. off and on for about 11 years. His strips also appear in Funny Times,a subscription newsprint monthly that specializes in political and indy comics. DTWOF used to appear in these truly funny pages.** Dave Barry,Linda Barry,Carol Lay,Lenore Skenazy and a host of other syndicated satirists supply sufficient snickers to keep us smiling.
**My maternal grandmother used to refer to Sunday newspaper comics as the funny pages,a common term in her generation.
Funny papers, the ice box*, the victrola**, supper… My mom used to say things like that. She was the daughter of immigrants to south Texas, and picked cotton as a kid.
*Ice Box: A home refrigerator. Earliest versions produced cooling from an actual block of ice.
**Victrola: an early electronic device for reproducing music and other sounds recorded as analog wave forms on the surface of vinyl disks called “records”.
I remember my mother’s stories about the ice house filled with huge blocks of ice cut from the nearby MN lake, kept cold with sawdust, and the time it burned down. She also talked about as the ice box she and my dad had in their small second story post-WWII apartment in Pittsburgh. Apparently the pan underneath it,which collected the melted ice, had to be emptied regularly;sometimes they forgot,and the water dripped down into the landlord’s apartment. She said they cooked on a 2 burner stove then,and the windows had no screens,so the silt from the steel plants filtered in,covering everything with a fine grit. It was impossible to keep the place clean in those days before air pollution control.
I have written earlier about the 1910s portable Victorola (made by R.C.Victor) my cousins,sister and I played during summer visits to our grandma in northwest MN. We played “Kitty from Kansas City” and “Hum and Strum (I’m a Little Ukelele)” over and over,singing along and giggling.
Incidentally, Brooklyn Phil #62: Jean Genet did not write “The White Paper”; Jean Cocteau wrote it.
More Eccentric English Cats (TM) News:
Cat saves neighbour from burning bungalow in Berkshire …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/8195156.stm
I posted this one previously on the Pride page:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0MxsQnWRX0
don’t know if anyone saw it, it was in response to Maggie’s comment about U-hauls.
I just watched the youtube u-haul video. That was great! Thanks for the link.
Has anybody posted a link to the story about the pranksters who fooled the Birthers with a fake Kenyan birth certificate?
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/images/2009-09-06-birth-certificate-youve-been-punkd.jpg
That’s the photo and here’s the link:
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/the-birthers-got-punkd-with-fake-certificate.php?ref=dc1
@khatgirl….#81
you will really like this one, too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqUjZp21bxo&feature=related
@ReneeS (80/84): Those 2 vids were great. I really appreciated the wearing of a dreamcatcher instead of a big clock in the Uhaul video.
Loved the U-Haul video. Loved explaining it to the 11 year old girl attracted by the music and clothes. “That’s my kind of style.”
From the Wall Street Journal… Dissention in the ranks of LGBT orgs in California over when to schedule a new referendum to legalize same sex marriage:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125011186288927033.html
Thanks Renee, now I’ve got “Here kitty kitty kitty kitty KAT PHONE!” running through my head. Non. Stop. Great videos, though! Ian, the best part about that story is that if you click on the video part, the volume control goes to 11. Who knew the Beeb could be that hip?
I’ve thought very briefly about buying a Kindle, so I especially appreciated Dr. E, Duncan, and Pam’s points. I’ll stick to books for now – I can’t help but think of (independent) bookstores going out of business because of the damn things. Now I need to go check out American Romances before buying it at Women & Children First…
Oh wait: I read the article that Susan’s letter referred to – I don’t think it stressed the rise of computer use enough as a reason for all our weight gain. My new neighborhood has much more within walking distance; as I haven’t used my car for over a week, I plan on selling it soon. Well, that, and the 250 bucks a month it’s costing me in monthly parking (the street parking here is unbelievably tight). *sigh* So much for good intentions – once again, it came down to the almighty dollar. I stand guilty.
Congressman Dennis Moore, the only Democrat in the Kansas congressional delegation, has decided not to hold town hall meetings with constituents this month because he is receiving death threats due to his support for starting a national health plan for the United States. Those of us who lived in America during the 1960’s know where the verbal violence used by opponents of health care reform can lead, and that was the subect of a segment of Rachel Maddow’s program on MSNBC last night:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#32395893
@Kate L (#89)
Info on who’s behind the money and organization of the town hall protests… insurance companies. DUH. I’m shocked. Oh so shocked.
Here’s a good synopsis from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, with supporting links to Roll Call, The Hill, et al.:
http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2009/August/13/Potter.aspx
“… mine goes up to 11 …”
Spinal Tap, the electric guitar, and all the modern music recording techniques we take for granted would not be possible without Les Paul, who died today at age 94.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125017956924129499.html
Many years ago a friend and I stopped in a local jazz club in Mahwah NJ to catch Bucky Pizzarelli playing. Les Paul was in the audience. Gave me goosebumps. Alas, he didn’t do a guest sit-in. Reportedly his arthritic hands affected his playing.
@Kate L (#74)
Doonesbury has been covering the “birthers” in this week’s strips. Check ’em out at:
http://www.doonesbury.com/
Have been reading bemusedly about the disinformation about Britain’s NHS being put out by the health insurance companies. I’m also shocked that the simple issue of universal healthcare should have violent mobs at Town Hall meetings and death threats against its supporters. That the mobs are funded and organised by big business isn’t a surprise – I mean look at United Fruit and Coco-cola’s actions in Central America.
Our healthcare system has its faults but some of the stories finding their way over here are very bizarre. I was shocked to find out that we have ‘death panels’ for instance … *rolls eyes*.
This is a bit off-topic to this post, perhaps, but it relates to Alison’s work and to topics that have been discussed here before. I found the new edition of Samuel Delany’s The Jewel-Hinged Jaw at the library today, and checked it out to decide whether to buy it or just stick with my old paperback copy from the 70s. In one piece, a statement Delany prepared for a Symposium on “Women in Science Fiction” in 1975 or so, he described some rules he’d compiled with his then-wife, the poet Marilyn Hacker, on how to improve the depiction of women characters in fiction. Here’s rule number two:
“Women characters must have central-to-the-plot, strong, developing positive relations with other women characters. … I would pause here to state, from thirteen years’ distance, that any novel that does not, in this day and age, have a strong, central, positive relation between women can be dismissed as sexist (no matter the sex of the author) from the start. The reason for this is contained in the third point:
“Despite whatever romantic interest there is in the plot, it is necessary that all the central characters, women and men, have some central, non-romantic problem which they must exert their efforts to solve.”
Sound familiar? Me, I think I feel a blog post coming on myself….
@Duncan: But what if you’re writing a romantic novel? Are they automatically sexist?
I don’t think so, Ian. Even in a romantic novel, you can have and should have central, non-romantic problems for the characters to solve, and other matters come into play as well. Even in a romantic novel, women (and men) can have central-to-the-plot, strong, developing relations with other women characters. (One romance writer who does do this, to my mind, is Jennifer Crusie.) Delany wrote that the considerations he outlined aren’t all there is to sexism, and of course it’s not all that easy to implement these conditions anyway.
But y’know, I posted this quotation for quite other reasons. 🙂
Duncan —
Because it sounds like the AB Movie-Going principle?
I’m thinking that Julie and Julia may fit the bill. I haven’t seen it yet.
I just remember Delany getting round gender problems by having characters who (which?) are not (entirely) human. Somewhere in my memory word-pile is a spaceship pilot that was mostly cat-based, who could do amusing things with their tail….
As long as we’re going off topic, may I hark back to the earlier column about Sarah Waters? Thanks to your raves, I read “Tipping the Velvet” and enjoyed it very much, but I have to say that I found her description of female ejaculation at orgasm laughable. I’m 64 years old and have never known anyone who experienced it. I admit I’ve accidentally peed during sex (full bladder & heavy alcohol intake to blame), but I have never had anything like the squirting that Waters describes.
Have you?
Ellen — yes. Which shows that great minds think alike, maybe.
Pam, I don’t recall Delany specifically getting around gender problems by having characters who are not entirely human — that could be a common sf strategy. But it doesn’t work per se. You can (and many sf writers do) have alien / ET characters who are built around popular sex stereotypes. Think of Heinlein’s Mother Thing, for example.
@Julie & Julia: I’m pretty sure that the female characters talk to each other about food most of the time (I saw it and am trying to remember if that is all they talk about), which would pass the test. I think they also talk about their jobs quite a bit.
@bored: Yep, experienced it and and seen it experienced. You should read “Bonk” if you are interested in a laypersons guide to sex.
@Duncan
I think this would make a great question for the MAT (Miller Analogies Test):
Newton:Leibniz::Delany:
a) Bechdel
b) Guisewite
c) Rosen
d) Signoret
Kindle books are readable on iPhones, just in case you ever need a book that has only very recently been published, can’t get to a library or bookstore, and can’t wait for it to be delivered. It has saved my students’ lives (well, their grades) more than once when they procrastinated in buying a book and an assignment was due on Monday and they emailed me whining on Sunday night.
Several companies are about to bring out devices that can read Kindle books, so one does not need Kindle. My favorite part of electronic books on Project Gutenberg or wherever is when I want to find a particular passage and have forgotten all but two words (or just one significant word) of the quote. The search takes me right to it.
This is why I enjoy Bartleby and the King James Bible there–it only takes a few seconds to find the quote about the widow’s mite, for example, if one searches for “mites.” (It’s Luke 21, by the way.) Reference books in which one needs to find something when one can only remember a tiny significant passage are far better when electronic.
That being said, I try to never give books away. I find spots under sofas and inside ottomans and in the backs of cabinets and under beds. I have even gotten those ceiling storage units that attach to rafters and hang over one’s head (no earthquakes around here). But, when I do have to pare down, I remember that libraries are always there if I ever need to hold the book again. I love ILL.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was a panelist on NBC’s Meet the Press television program this Sunday morning. Here she is questioning Dick Armey, former Republican congressman from Texas, about agitation in the recent town hall debates. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/16/maddow-battles-dick-armey_n_260549.html
Wow, it would be hard to overstate what a condescending ass Dick Armey shows himself to be in this clip. (#104)
#101: I saw Julie & Julia today; the female characters talk with one another about food, writing, money, friendship… It–especially the Julia parts– left me inspired to create more joy in my life, and that’s got to be good, even if it’s not part of the AB rule.
Totally off-topic, but it does seem to be the obbligato around here…
As I was wandering around the cheese section of Whole Paycheck this evening, I picked up an interesting-looking hunk of cheddar.
“What are those dark reddish things in the cheese?” I wondered. “Sun-dried tomato?”
Nope. The label read “Bacon cheddar.”
I dropped the hunk of cheese back in the bin. Definitely not for me, but there are plenty of folks on this blog who would probably enjoy it.
@ hairball
Whole Paycheck! too funny! love it!
@Renee (#108)
Whole Paycheck is a pretty common sobriquet for Whole Foods. I can’t take any credit for it at all. It’s even been mentioned in a number of mainstream articles about the company, most recent mention I recall was last week in the Wall Street Journal.
There was also a wonderful pseudo-ad for Whole Paycheck in the “Daily Distress” contest that AB ran on this blog. Of course, that ad never made the final cut, can’t be too blatant when parodying real companies, might make someone squirm.
Gotta find the link to the contest entries…
HOH – Thanks for letting us know about the bacon cheddar! Yum!
🙂
Ah, here’s the page with the DD pseudo-ads, including Andrea Davis’ Whole Paycheck entry:
http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/ads-for-tabloid
HOH, 109, Alison and anyone who publishes her work have established that they’re willing to parody real companies blatantly and risk making people squirm.
@boredtoteard (#99):
Yes.
tearS.
Note to self – the preview button only works if you use it.
#108 and 109 re: Whole Paycheck
I first heard this marvelous satiric take on the corporatization of the natural foods biz around 2003; don’t know where I read it. Locally,Nature’s,an indy co-op, became Nature’s Northwest,which Wild Oats later bought out. Then W.P.gobbled up Wild Oats,and perhaps other similar stores. I refuse to shop there,as their mark up has been listed as 25%.
Here’s where I shop: Fred Meyer,a NW unionized chain with a huge array of healthy & organic food,as well as the usual clothing,household furnishings,gardening supplies,and occasional frosted fruit bat;farmers markets in season;and occasionally Trader Joe’s.
And if you need another reason not to shop at Whole Paycheck, read its Chief Libertarian’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204251404574342170072865070.html
Feminista,
I was just in Seattle, and discovered an organic market called PCC (Puget something cooperative, or cooperative something?) and I was in love….sooo wish that we had that here in the Bay Area. Yes we’ve got Berkeley Bowl, but the experience there is pretty unpleasant (products are great, but I’ve had my foot run over by a yuppy mommy pushing a cart every single time I’ve ever gone in! Or nearly every time…)
No! Don’t get a Kindle!
Don’t support Amazon’s shady business practices (device only reads their specific format, can only buy their specific format if you have their device or an iphone, they can take back your rightfully purchased media whenever they feel like it, you can’t load books from other sources unless you ‘illegally” break codes and convert).
There are alternative devices out there – look at the new Sony PRS-600.
Beth @118 writes:
they can take back your rightfully purchased media whenever they feel like it
While this may be technically true that this could happen, a more accurate description of what has happened the only time this has been enforced is to retract what was, for all intents, stolen goods (that is, material that was distributed illegally, in violation of copyright).
Or stated more shortly, the media was not “rightfully purchased”.
Speaking of “The Nation” magazine, I recently saw Katha Politt being interviwed on C-SPAN’s Book TV channel. They shot a segment from her apartment on Manhattan’s upper west side.
On another note, wasn’t veteran feminist Phyllis Chesler a columnist for The Nation? I believe she belonged to the passel of second wave feminists back in the 60s and authored the ground breaking book entitled, “Women And Madness”.