Bookageddon Is Nigh!!

       Reading has changed. Major bookstore chains such as Borders and Joseph Beth are closing down stores and filing for bankruptcy, newspaper and magazine sales are dropping faster than a priest's pants at a choir boy convention, kindle and nook online stores are selling record numbers of books, and book traditionalists have started claiming that the end of the printed book is upon us!! I'm not sure that I'm drinking that kool aid just yet.
       I recently bought an e-book reader, the Nook Color, for school use and have been enjoying it ever since (although recently plants vs zombies has been taking more of my time). Recently I went on vacation, the best time for book nerds to read, and I noticed some interesting habits about how I choose to read now.
       In the morning we would wake and ride our bikes to one of the local coffee places for breakfast and I would download the paper almost every morning onto my nook before we left. I loved the variety of papers I could get and it becomes much simpler to read the articles and find the sections you want rather than having to flip to the back to finish an article; then flip back to the front again to keep looking, all the while covering up your entire coffee table with the clutter that comes with digging out a specific section of the paper. I think that the time of the newspaper is at an end as people become more eco-conscious of the amount of paper wasted, the rise of internet journalism, and the technology becomes cheaper and more widespread. The bigger papers (NYT, Wall Street, even The Onion) have already started making the change as its time to adapt or die.
       Books are an entirely different story. If you have ever seen my bookshelf you would know that I have always been a reader. For the past few years though, I haven't really had much time for pleasure reading. School kinda took the fun out of it honestly, but I still try to read a new book or two a year. I look at my bookshelf and I see some copies that are old and worn from the numerous reads and can smell the age on the paper. Some look almost new. Some are paperbacks, and some are textbooks. Each one is different however, and for me the tactile sensations of reading a book are something invaluable that a computer screen can't compare with. I don't know why it is that books are so important to have in their physical form compared to say dvds, which I recently sold most of my collection of after backing up their digital copies, but I think that it is something worth never losing.
       The one area I think that could have the best improvement from a switch to electronic format are textbooks. Everyone that has been to college has had the experience of purchasing a 175 dollar textbook and being told that they can't sell it back at the end of the semester because a 'new edition' is coming out or else you'll get 20 bucks for it and they'll wrap it in plastic and sell if for 120. College textbook shops know they have you by the balls and they aren't afraid to twist. From what I understand, most textbook manufacturers are afraid to make the jump to digital right now as they don't understand the technology and are worried about how much profit they will lose from the re-buying cheap and selling high scheme they have going. The advantages of an electronic textbook are that other media (video, sound, games, etc.) could be integrated into the lesson plan and books could be leased out for a rental fee for a set period of time and automatically retrieved when the payment ends. I recently found out that my old high school will be getting rid of their textbook fee and switching to an ipad fee which students will be allowed to use to access their books. I think this is an interesting idea but that seems a little young for it to be of real use yet. Judging from how I used the school computers, there will probably be more pocket tanks being played than studying going on.

Cost: Your firstborn child

       I did download an amazing book, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, to the kindle app on my nook over vacation and didn't complain a single time, often spending hours reading . Having an entire (and relatively cheap) library at your fingertips is an amazing achievement and technically the things is a marvel. A quick finger flick replaces stuck together pages. Autosave replaces the bookmark. I am able to search for additional information about anything I highlight at any time. When I finished Outliers, I immediately went to the island Barnes and Noble to get my hands on the weight of a book and eventually came away with a leather bound edition of the entire Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series. Added bonus, ribbon bookmark built in. 

       I'll still be downloading books, pdfs, and I'm especially excited to hear about DC comics new online strategy coming with the series' reboots this fall, but I'll take an old well read paper book in my hand any day.








Have a favorite book or story? What do you think about electronic vs paper debate? Do you think it could be more useful in some situations than others? Is it a stupid idea to give 16 years olds ipads and expect them to use them responsibly? Sound off in the comment like you got a pair!

The final frontier

    I am an enormous space nerd. As a kid, I loved to look up at the sky at night, and I would want to know everything about how the Universe worked and the way it could make you feel so small. I'm no expert, but what I would call an armchair astronomer. I've read Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, could tell you about string theory, love me some Neil Degrasse Tyson, and can (mostly) find the big dipper and orion's belt.
   
      With the success of the Mars Rover and recent headlines of asteroids, I got to thinking about our countries space program. A guy I know at work was telling me about how he and his wife got into an argument because he couldn't understand why [NASA] kept going to the moon. He thought that if we're going to go, why not go big and go beyond the Moon and Mars. He wanted big results and mostly all NASA comes back with is important but boring data. I know about the dangers of space and the enormous time effort and calculations that have to go into each launch, but I think when we will see the big leap forward in space travel is when the technology becomes cheap enough for large companies to start producing their own rockets. Think about it, when have you ever trusted the government to be creative and innovative or bold with their choices? They're reliable and mostly stable, the way governments are supposed to be run. Healthy competition urges innovation and takes the big risks that allow for those big results.
   
      A British billionaire has already sold tickets for his first commercial flight and among the ticket holders is Paris Hilton. If the shuttle doesn't crash, yet seven of our best and brightest engineers and scientists do then I claim it as evidence for an uncaring universe. If the launch is successful, then this could prove a start for what could become the new space race but among private corporations and interests instead of global superpowers. I realize I will probably never see this happen in my lifetime, but its exciting to see the first steps being taken to make this come true.
   
      We are going to have to move off this planet one day if we want our species to survive, we're overcrowded and we left the gas on on the stove of Earth and its only a matter of time before ourselves, a, match, or nature does it for us. There is something humbling about the thought of space that it makes distinctions such as country and race seem very small by comparison. When Neil Armstrong took that historic first step on the moon he didn't say "This is one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for AMERICA baby!", he said for mankind.
   
     We already have the International Space Station as proof of this idea. Just look at who all worked together building it, the most interesting being the US and Russia, once bitter enemies in the very project they are now collaborating on. More importantly than superpowers teaming up however, is the connection between the increasingly disparate developed and developing nations. You need only watch a Vice documentary or turn on the TV to see civil wars, human rights abuses, and exploitation of humans across the planet.  Only some 500 people have ever gazed down at earth from any great distance.

          This video features one of my favorite quotes of all time, in this clip from the immortal Carl Sagan's 'Pale Blue Dot', which was written after viewing an image taken from the ship Explorer 1.