To stumble over the same stone twice is a proverbial disgrace.
Blog Details
Overall rank: 2315271 Number of inbound blogs: 1 Number of incoming links: 1 ATOM: ATOM feed Last update: 2008-03-20 22:43:33 GMT Estimated value: $678
Analytics
Incoming clicks since last reset: 0 Outgoing clicks since last reset: 73
Latest Posts
State bans 'Jesus' from troopers' prayers
Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine is being called on the carpet by a national religious freedom advocacy organization after his administration implemented a new state policy forbidding state police chaplains from using "Jesus Christ" in public prayers, and half a dozen chaplains resigned in protest.
Why have fuel prices nearly doubled since you took control of the House? and other tough questions for Pelosi. It's time for Pelosi to give up her ridiculous book sales and get back to work - the taxpayers are suffering while she and her colleagues vacation!
The Incontrovertible Truth. You Don't Like It? Question Your Decisions!
Amazon: What are you hiding?
Amazon shipped its Kindle e-Book reader way back in November of last year -- since then, the company has tried to paint a picture of runaway success by suggesting that the incredible popularity of the device prevents the company from keeping up with orders. Is the Amazon the Kindle really a secret failure?
. . . 22 Ways To Be A Good Hate-Filled LiberalLIFE'S VALUE1. You have to be against capital punishment, but support abortion on demand up to and including partial birth abortion scissors stuck in a 9 month old baby's skull.GOVERNMENT'S ROLE2. You have to believe that businesses create oppression and governments create prosperity.
Amazon’s Kindle is going to flop. Or at least I hope it does.
"So the Kindle proposition is this: You pay for downloadable books that can’t be printed, can’t be shared, and can’t be displayed on any device other than Amazon’s own $400 reader — and whether they’re readable at all in the future is solely at Amazon’s discretion. That’s no way to build a library."
Why would I pay $400 for a device that will allow me to read a book? Don't I have eyes for that? Secondly, are e-books that much better than books? I certainly don't think so. I don't know about you, but I can only read one book at a time and carrying a stack of paper is just as easy as carrying a 10 ounce device.
1. It's big and ugly - it's no sleek iPhone - 8. Is it the Lynx browser all over again? 3. $399 to have the privilege of then buying books to read on the device?
Oak Park, ILL. - I know technology is leaving me behind. Very soon indeed, my children may find me unfathomable. I love my computer and my cell phone, but don't ask me to text or game. I don't want to.
Until mere weeks ago, though, I was unperturbed by my status as a neo-Luddite. Indeed, I was more likely to boast than be embarrassed, kind of pleased by the paucity of my skills.
Then Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos announced his Next Big Thing, and I found myself rather less sanguine.
It's Book 2.0 – or as Bezos calls it, Kindle, Amazon's new wireless, portable reading device.
The specs are impressive: Kindle uses cell-phone technology, without requiring a contract; it weighs less than a paperback, but holds 200 books; it's wireless, so you can be on the couch trying to recall a great literary passage and, within seconds, be reading it again.
The owner of the planet's biggest bookstore wrote on Amazon's homepage that when he sits down to read the old-fashioned way, "the paper, glue, ink, and stitching that make up the book vanish, and what remains is the author's world."
"Our top design objective," he goes on, "was for Kindle to disappear in your hands – to get out of the way – so that you can enjoy your reading."
If this wasn't Mr. Bezos talking, I'd wonder if the speaker was, in fact, much of a reader. Because here's what Kindle isn't: a book.
Paper, glue, ink, stitching – these things don't vanish. The mind reels at the thought! The physical structure of a book is an indissoluble part of the reading experience, as is the volume's weight in your hands, or the fact that two pages face each other, your eyes on one, a thumb resting idly on the other.
Or bookstores! Just open the door, and your eyes arrive at a veritable carnival of color and texture; you pull one volume down because the font is beautiful, or hold another simply to feel the cover's finish; finally, you make a choice because as you stood in the aisle, barely noticing people squeezing past, you found yourself taken to a new reality, one which came wrapped in Adobe Garamond, or Fairfield, or any of the other lovely typefaces that give the letters of our language a structure and a heft and an artistry of their own.
The new book smell, the creak of a just-opened spine, the discovery of a train ticket used by the last person to read what you're reading – only someone to whom these things are meaningless would think that Kindle, or anything like it, could replace the volumes on my shelves.
When produced and handled with love, books are, unto themselves, things of real beauty.
Heretofore, the technologies I've rejected haven't offered me anything I need, or threatened anything I love. They just point a finger at my "backward" status, and it has been easy to not care very much.
But wireless, portable reading devices? That just won't fly.
I know that Kindle is the future, and that, moreover, it's a good future. Electronic books won't require trees to die in production, or carbon to be outputted in transport. When reading off a screen, you'll never have to wrap Kleenex around a paper cut.
But I'll buy real books until the last printing house shutters its gates. And then I'll close my door, settle in my chair, and start again, from the beginning.
• Emily L. Hauser is freelance writer living outside Chicago.
Zombie: Folsom Street Fair Orgy
Zombie’s new photo essay is now online, for better or worse, with a highly appropriate content warning. Don’t click through to the essay if you aren’t prepared for this one, because it confirms everything you might have heard about the Folsom Street Fair, San Francisco, September 30, 2007 Part 1.
Whoopi Goldberg Suggests Three-Way Sex with Pelosi, Husband on the view
Whoopi implicitly acknowledged, she'd like to do Mr. Pelosi - but she might take his wife while she's at it. "I would do her as well. But we should wait on that because you're still in office, I don't want to cause a problem."
All Bow to Your New Masters(House Voting to Commend Muslims During Ramadan)
Our elected officials in the House of Representatives are voting on an important resolution today. H. RES. 635 Recognizing the commencement of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and spiritual renewal, and commending Muslims in the United States and throughout...
Mocking the bullies of MoveOn.org: Take your cease-and-desist letters...
...and shove ‘em >>....Answering the call to join the MoveOn.org mockers and bait the group’s bully lawyers, readers and bloggers have sent in a bunch of MoveOn.org photoshops. Here’s the first batch. Like I said over the weekend: Go ahead. Suuuuuue.....>>
Burma: Thousands dead in massacre of the monks dumped in the jungle
The hidden side of this story is the Military Regime who is a dictatorial oppressive regime, has killed thousands of them monks who were protesting.Thousands more imprisoned.http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=484903
Miller Lite-approved: Toddlers at the Folsom Street Leather Fair
It’s not just 17-year-olds who were welcome at the Folsom Street Fair leather/bondage orgy.Check out the photos of two-year-old twin toddlers in attendance at the 2005 fair. “Why do (these people) bring kids here? This is a leather fair for god’s sake,” said Bahran Aliassa, who was masturbating in public.
Either the legal department over at Miller Beer does not have any brand protection procedures in place to prevent groups like the Folsom Art Festival from utilizing their log
Catholic Group Boycotts Miller Over 'Anti-Christian' Event
The leader of the Catholic League on Thursday urged more than 200 religious organizations to join his group in refusing to buy products from the Miller Brewing Company because of the company's sponsorship of the Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco this weekend.
TEXAS -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a plan to build fencing along parts of the United States-Mexico border is a "terrible idea" that overlooks local communities. "I have been against the fence, I thought it's a bad idea even when it was just a matter of discussion," said Pelosi, D-California.
In Washington, Baltimore, Atlanta and elsewhere in the US, union organisers are scouring shelters and recruiting homeless people to work their picket lines, paying just above minimum wage and failing to provide health benefits.
