The missing link
November 10, 2005
The big guys are tossing their hats into the e-book ring, which is a very promising development, but there is still something missing, and that is a world-class e-book reader. I am getting along fine with a PalmOne Zire PDA, but a reader a little larger and with better fonts would be nice.
A library at your fingertips | Economist.com
A few years ago, at the height of the dotcom boom, it was widely assumed that a publishing revolution, in which the printed word would be supplanted by the computer screen, was just around the corner. It wasn’t: for many, there is still little to match the joy of cracking the spine of a good book and settling down for an hour or two of reading. But a recent flurry of activity by big technology companies—including Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo!—suggests that the dream of bringing books online is still very much alive.
My own recent experience with e-books (see New trick for an old dog, under Current events) seems to bear out the Economist’s suggestion. Of course, my use of a Palm PDA for a reader is far from state-of-the-art, but if the books online reality is really approaching, better readers cannot be far behind.
Five large book firms are suing Google for violating copyright on material that it has scanned and, although out of print, is still protected by law. Google has said that it will only publish short extracts from material under copyright unless given express permission to publish more, but publishers are unconvinced.
I’ve noted this recently in Google and copyrights, under Current Events. I think that the authors are fighting a losing battle but will come out as the biggest beneficiaries.
The business of parting consumers from their cash for online books may not prove the money-spinner that Amazon and Google hope for. But this round of the battle between the tech giants will have the happy outcome of allowing the study and enjoyment of a vast pool of written material, much of which would otherwise prove hard to access or difficult to find. Though it may not much change our reading habits, its existence will prove a boon.
Well, it’s already changed my reading habits, which I sincerely hope is a Good Thing.
Dave, spending too much time squinting at a small screen.
New trick for an old dog
November 9, 2005
You’ve heard of e-books, no doubt. They are books that your read while curled up with a wee electronic reader, rather than by holding an honest bound book with real paper pages on your lap. This inveterate reader has for years regarded e-books very warily, not quite ever getting to the point of actually trying them.
This recently changed when I traded in my old Palm Pilot for a newer model with color screen and a fast USB2 connection to my computer. I downloaded the BibleReader and eReader programs and primed them with the NETBible, Moby Dick, Pudd’nhead Wilson, The Sea Wolf, and a few other books that I hadn’t yet read. And a good dictionary. Haven’t found a concordance, yet.
The day came to start my Grand Experiment. I opened Moby Dick, all 3,279 tiny pages of it, and started reading.
Here’s what I discovered, much to my surprise.
The little back-lit screen is actually easy on the eyes, crummy font notwithstanding.
I completely forget that I’m not reading from a book. I get sucked into the story and forget my surroundings in the same old way.
I can read and turn pages with one hand while eating a peanut-butter sandwich with the other. Now, that is really an advantage.
It’s easier to have the “book” handy for odd moments reading, like in the doc’s waiting room.
When I’m through reading, I just turn the gadget off. It keeps my place for me.
Dave, wearing his page-flipping thumb out.
The sneaky power of words
November 8, 2005
Reining in Google - Commentary - The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper
And so we find ourselves joining together to fight a $90 billion company bent on unilaterally changing copyright law to their benefit and in turn denying publishers and authors the rights granted to them by the U.S. Constitution.
Internet behemoth Google, plans to launch their Library project in November. It plans to scan the entire contents of the Stanford, Harvard and University of Michigan libraries and make what it calls “snippets” of the works available online, for free.
Words are powerful, and the op-ed piece from the Washington Times gives us a good example to analyze.
Scientific paradigm shift?
November 7, 2005
There seems to be a nasty little fight going on here, with neither side being quite honest about their motives. The intelligent design movement is on trial, and I still haven’t decided which side I’m on. I do better with baseball games.
Closing Arguments Made in Trial on Intelligent Design - New York Times (Registration required.)
The nation’s first trial to test the constitutionality of teaching intelligent design as science ended Friday with a lawyer for the Dover school board pronouncing intelligent design “the next great paradigm shift in science.”
His opponent, a lawyer for the 11 parents suing the school board, dismissed intelligent design as dishonest, unscientific and based entirely on “a meager little analogy that collapses immediately upon inspection.”
Oh, dear. How’s a person to decide? The school board’s lawyer gazes into the future and proclaims a coming scientific “paradigm shift,’ such statment being pretty suspect, coming as it does from a lawyer and not from a scientist.
The lawyer for the group of parents just sniffs and dismisses the very idea of intelligent design, which strikes me as not much of an argument.
The conclusion of the six-week trial in Federal District Court on Friday made it clear that two separate but interconnected entities are actually on trial: the Dover school board and the fledgling intelligent design movement.
Intelligent design just a “movement?”
At the trial, board members repeatedly said they wanted to “encourage critical thinking.” But the parents presented evidence that the board’s purpose was religious and that the intelligent design statement was a compromise that the board settled for after learning it could not teach creationism.
This sounds like a pair of hypocritical statements to me, but I must admit that it makes good melodrama. Stay tuned.
Dave, waiting for the next inning.
Galatians 4:21-27
November 6, 2005
4:21 Tell me, you who want to be under the law, do you not understand the law? 4:22 For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. 4:23 But one, the son by the slave woman, was born by natural descent, while the other, the son by the free woman, was born through the promise. 4:24 These things may be treated as an allegory, for these women represent two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai bearing children for slavery; this is Hagar. 4:25 Now Hagar represents Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 4:26 But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. 4:27 For it is written:
“Rejoice, O barren woman who does not bear children;
break forth and shout, you who have no birth pains,
because the children of the desolate woman are more numerous
than those of the woman who has a husband.”
The Apostle Paul doesn’t very often use allegory as a teaching method, but his letter to the Galatians was written to Jewish Christians who knew their Scripture well. They would readily see that the story of Sarah and Hagar represents two different ways that God deals with his people. The birth of Ishmael to Hagar resulted from lack of belief and produced a disobedient people. The later birth of Isaac to Saray came from belief and produced the line from which Jesus Christ was born.
Paul likens these outcomes arising from belief and lack of belief to two covenants between God and man, one producing freedom and the other slavery. The Galatian Christians needed to know that they were part of the covenant of freedom. And so are we. -sdg-
WSJ: FCC gets it (mostly) right
November 5, 2005
It’s almost comical. When Judge Greene and the Justice Department forced Ma Bell to divest itself of its seven operating companies in 1983, a lot of unintended consequences followed, some good and some bad. With apparently no sense of irony, the FCC has approved a pair of gigantic mergers that arguably turn the clock back 22 years.
The Wall Street Journal sees this as mostly a good thing.
WSJ.com - FCC Gets It (Mostly) Right
The Federal Communications Commission made the right call this week in unanimously approving the acquisitions of AT&T and MCI by SBC and Verizon, respectively. We’re not thrilled by the anticompetitive conditions imposed by regulators, but they’re relatively minor.
Except for the suspicion that a new train of unintended consequences may have left the station, I tend to agree.
Still, the good news is that the mergers are one more step in reversing two decades of wrongheaded telecom policy initiated by the forced breakup of Ma Bell. In 1984, the local and long-distance sectors of the phone industry were separated, only to have new technologies eventually render the distinction obsolete.
This is the reason that just about any meddling with market processes involving technological change is playing with fire. We should have learned by now that technology is a rapidly moving target and very hard to regulate, or at least to regulate with positive results.
Dave, proud to have been part of a few technological surprises himself.
Taxing words
November 4, 2005
Why, oh why, do we not get up in arms about the horrible mess that is the federal tax code? Can any of us even conceive of the mischief and inequities that those multi-millions of words about paying taxes can wreak?
I think not, and that is the problem. (Are you going to read it?)
So, just how long is the U.S. tax code? Long enough that it’s hard to answer that question. These columns have recently used two different numbers — nine million and 2.8 million words — in two different editorials, prompting alert readers to ask which number is correct.
(Pause to let those numbers sink in.)
The larger point here is that, whichever number you pick, the tax code is monstrous. The 1986 Reagan tax reform cut the code in half, according to the National Taxpayers Union, but since then it has grown back like jungle brush, thicker than ever. A complicated tax code leads to wasted time and money as taxpayers and their advisers comply with its myriad rules. As President Bush’s tax reform panel winds up its business today, we assume that reducing complexity will be high on its to-do list.
Probably a bad assumption. I’m fighting back the urge to turn this into a rant, because that would mean I should read it. Sorry, but life’s just too short to be a good citizen on this subject. If any of you have a solution to this dilemma, please let me know.
Dave, giving up the battle with a whimper.
New generation
November 3, 2005
Perhaps this should be filed under The Deep category, because the entry into the human race of Yet Another Baby, at least if she happens to be a new wee twig on this writer’s family tree, is an awesome event and a mystery to boot.
You, dear reader, may be responding with a “ho-hum,” but the young man in the picture below is displaying quite another response.
May I be permitted a little great-grandfatherly bragging? No? Well, how about a silly grin? I confess that somehow I had never pictured Tyler as a father, but will you look at him now! Ty and Anne, it’s a brand new ballgame for you guys, and you will do pretty well at this parenting stuff, I have no doubt.
Great-grandpa Dave, thanking God for babies and families.
In Osama bin Laden’s words
November 2, 2005
Thanks to Larry for spotting this one. Anyone wondering what that Osama bin Laden guy is really up to should read it. Author Bruce Lawrence’s view of how the West is responding to bin Laden’s screeds is especially interesting.
The Chronicle: 11/4/2005: In Bin Laden’s Words
If I have learned one enduring lesson from months of reflection on the words of Osama bin Laden, it is that the best defense against World War III is neither censoring nor silencing him but reading what he has actually written and countering his arguments with better ones. He has left a sufficient record that can, and should, be attacked for its deficiencies, its lapses, its contradictions, and, above all, its hopelessness.
The Christian worldview, based as it is on future hope, should be an effective answer to this message of hopelessness, but I see little evidence that this is recognized by Christian leaders. The reason, I suppose, is the difficulty in finding what bin Laden has actually said, as Lawrence discovered when he went looking for a written record. But this article shows that the search would be worth the effort.
Dave, thinking eschatologically today.
Intelligent Design - Here we go again!
November 1, 2005
Ah, those Kansans. They are bound and determined to teach evolution as a theory, not established fact (probably a good idea) and offer up intelligent design as an alternate scientific theory (dumb idea).
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization “dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association.” For me, any international non-profit organization is automatically suspect, because most of them have a particular axe to grind.
“AAAS is extremely concerned that the proposed standards misrepresent both the content and the standing of evolution as a scientific organizing principle,” said Alan I. Leshner, the association’s chief executive officer.
An introduction to the standards document singles out evolution as being controversial, indicates there are legitimate scientific concerns about the theory and overstates the number of scientists who disagree with the theory. The introduction also refers to “intelligent design,” the dogma that some biological structures are irreducibly complex and could only be the result of intervention by an intelligent agent, as simply a “scientific disagreement” with evolution. It leaves open the option of teaching the non-scientific concept of intelligent design in science classrooms, a step scientists vigorously oppose.
The article leaves me wondering why we can’t simply trust the teacher-student relationship to work. A teacher will no doubt teach according to his or her own presuppositions, and students are usually smarter than we give them credit for. Educational “standards” may have little to do with actual learning.
Dave, still undoing some of the stuff I was taught.
