Posted on 05/22/2005 8:19:11 AM PDT by SmithL
Why do we need Mother's Day anyway?
Just kidding!
I'm staying away from controversial topics for a while. For starters, I don't have time to read all the responses.
In my last column, I questioned the need for taxpayer-funded libraries, considering that books are readily available at low prices from private sources such as Amazon.com.
You could say the column did not receive overwhelming approval. In fact, for the next 2½ weeks, my computer continually flashed at me: "You have mail!"
It might as well have said: "Another angry librarian!"
Many of the replies were long and detailed. I almost expected to see footnotes. They came from not only the South Suburbs, but also distant lands such as Michigan, Oklahoma, North Dakota and Montana.
One woman was not content to send e-mail. She had to call me at home on that Sunday afternoon. After two minutes of her impassioned, nonstop berating, I started to say gently, "Hey, do I get to say anything here?" But she had hung up.
Here at The Star, I was stopped in the hallway by the able woman who types in letters to the editor and verifies their authenticity. I don't remember the exact words, but the essence of her message was: "Do you think you could find some safer topics? My fingers are getting tired."
Even my fellow conservatives were unimpressed. A thread on my column at FreeRepublic.com attracted 2,286 views and 198 comments, nearly all negative. If you'd like to read it, dial up the Web site and search for "why have libraries." Scroll down two or three screens.
Then there was my dad, a retired special education administrator. He had just five words for me, spoken gravely, slowly, with equal shares of disappointment and morbid curiosity:
"Why did you write that?"
It was as if he were asking: "Why did you get a second mortgage and buy 80,000 lottery tickets?"
(By the way, in case any of you know my family, please be assured they are not right-wing nuts like me. They are good North Side Democrats. I don't know where I went wrong.)
So, in sum, dear dissenters, even if you did not write or call The Star, you can be assured that I got your message.
Some of the replies were amusing. "Amazmanian" wanted to know: "Can we expect a future column on book-burning?"
Several people seized on my reference to the value of the book "An Incomplete Education." Obviously, they said, I need it. Can't complain — I left myself wide open for that one.
Another writer picked up on my reference to "Citizen Kane." I said that after reading "Incomplete Education," I know all I need to know: Rosebud is a sled.
The writer made the point that if I were to visit the library, I could, like, you know, actually watch the movie? Now, there's a concept.
Now, I have written controversial columns before. For example, if you want to make people mad, a good place to start is to question the circumstances under which John Kerry got all those medals in Vietnam. I did this in May 2004 and got a good spanking from Kerry supporters.
Then, if you want to make people madder still, quote some of the Bush-hating nonsense at DemocraticUnderground.com and suggest the writers are "little Ceausescus," as I did this past March 13. I figured I'd get away with that because I didn't think anybody remembered who Ceausescu was. I was wrong. They do.
But now, I know that if you want to make people really, really, really mad, then suggest that their local public library is not a vital necessity.
Who knew people liked their libraries so much?
A large part of my problem was self-inflicted. I didn't really mean to say that all libraries should simply be shut down. I think they should just be privatized. This, I thought, was implicit in the second sentence of that offending column:
"Why do we even need taxpayer-funded libraries?"
The key word there: "taxpayer-funded."
However, I inadvertently negated my own valid point in the last paragraph of the column, when I wrote: "So, a memo to Orland Park: Dump the bookmobile. And maybe dump the whole library too."
Ouch. That was sloppy writing that came back to bite me in the rear.
So please allow me to make a point in my defense. Many people told me access to good books is vital to the mental fitness of the citizenry. Well, true enough.
But then, by that logic, why do we not also have taxpayer-supported gyms?
Juvenalis, the ancient Roman poet, said the human ideal is "mens sana in corpore sano." That's Latin for "sound mind in a sound body."
If I should pay taxes to help you keep your mind sound, then why shouldn't you pay taxes to help me keep my body sound?
I have to pay $312 a year to belong to the Bally's gym across the street. Come on, library supporters, help me defray this cost. Please line up outside The Star at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday with cash or a checkbook.
Once you do, I promise to retract my column from April 24.
Meanwhile, as I said at the start, I am sticking to safe topics from now on. In my next column, I will suggest that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay flushed a holy book down a toilet. Who could get upset about that? Michael Bowers is a copy editor and paginator for The Star. Send e-mail to mbowers@starnewspapers.com.
Bless your heart, honey. I just love your sense of humor!
Heheh it always amazes me the number of people who shun Ebooks on online forums.
Face it the only reason dead-tree media is still produced is because people are resistant to change.
I have yet to hear a valid reason why ebooks are not superior to dead-tree media in our modern society.
Cross between insincerity and damning by faint praise.
And if not, audited periodically. And if you wonder why, try to find out from your local library how they spend your tax money. I had to threaten mine with a lawyer.
Well, there is print on demand, for publishing book, one-at-a-time at comparable cost -- that's how I published a poetry collection.
The problem though with temporary and/or low-cost book-binding, as you suggest, is copyright law. I'm not sure what would be considered fair use in these situations.
On the other hand, there are printers that print things out on two sides. Get some sort of binder from an office supply store -- there are some that don't use three-hole punches -- and keep your material in there.
Point... I have access to a laser printer, which helps.
In this day and age, I just don't think NEW library construction is a wise use of taxpayer money either.
It's funny.... I spent a lot of my childhood reading SF and looking forward to E-books... But now that they're here, I find there is something very pleasant in the huge, untidy stacks of books I have around the house.
I adore computer technology for making books more accessible and cheaper to print.... But I'm finding dead trees are much more aesthetically comfortable.
There are a few niggling advantages to dead tree: You don't have to worry about the batteries running out on a paperback. You can right marginalia in a dead-tree form.
In the long run, however, I think there's one basic problem. To replace a previous technology, a new technology generally has to have significantly better results and/or a significantly lower price. I'm not sure E-books do either.
Luddite Patent Counsel wrote:Actually, providing guns to the citizenry is one of the few things that Congress is actually authorized to do by Aritcle I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution.
So, if we have taxpayer-funded libraries in furtherance of the First Amendment, we should also have taxpayer-funded guns distributed to any citizen who wants one in furtherance of the Second Amendment. How many of those who support the former would support the latter, do you suppose?
Isn't that the truth. Or read from it while sitting in a traffic jam. :)
I've seen PDAs go for as little as 69.00 and dial up is just fine for downloading books it takes more time for your comp to view a big pic on FR than it does to download the average novel onto a PDA. it is just text after all.
My Palm cost me $125.00 and to date I have downloading over 600 great books for free and read most of them.
Stuff like Ben Franklin's Autobiography and Sun Tzu's Art of War, the Bible, War and Peace, Anthem etc. all for free.
Want to share a great Free Ebook with a friend who has a PDA like yours, just Beam it to him via the built in infrared data transfer system. No wires needed just set them down close to each other and hit the button.
My PDA is my constant companion I can store 30 Ebooks on it at a time, keep my grocery list on there all my contact info. I can even store pictures to show folks how my daughter has grown. Also have several games on it .(If I am not in the mood to read) to entertain myself when waiting at the doc office or dentist or wherever one wastes time waiting.
That is really cool. My Mom and my Aunt always give me money for Christmas. I know what I will be buying myself for Christmas. :)
They are obviously not using the library facilities other than the rest rooms and the heated space in winter, by they can not be kicked out. They make it impossible for taxpaying citizens to use the library.
These are two of the three reasons I can think of why I stopped using the "public library" when my daughter was six and started devouring books at an alarming pace. That was in 1977.
I have many more responses to wade through in this thread, but the trend is clear: there are widely divergent differences of opinion based on unconscious provincialism, of which most of us are unaware. The dichotomy between the "red" and the "blue" areas. It's like different universes, as wide as the chasm between muslims and civilized people.
I grew up in San Francisco, California, and if libraries today were like the libraries then, this whole discussion would not be necessary.
The difference is that libraries today, in the bluest of states have degenerated into politically correct and pervert indoctrination centers. There is no other way to say it. But that almost certainly is not true of libraries in other areas of the country, hence the seemingly snseless contradictions in opinion. Both sides are right (including the author of the original column) depending on their geographical location. To be specific...
In the old days, libraries presented knowlege in book form to satisfy every level of need. If individuals limited their scope of knowlege the first time, they always had the option of a second chance at learning or a third, simply by returning to the same library.
Then Libraries devolved to catering to the least common denominator over time, made worse by activism driving what was suitable or desireable, sliding into the bottomless pit of perversion and decay: Heather has two Mommies, Perversion is good for you, or Bush planned and executed 911.
Ecology and environmentalism as the new religion became the standard for what needed to be known and learned. Mind you, books of opposing views were published, too, but it was not deemed necessary to include them among the new knowlege palace. They simple were not there; the ex-dope-smokers-turned-librarians simply did not approve.
Whereas, before, one could find the complete technical plans for the construction of the Panama Canal, afterwards it was considered too obscure and "unpopular" to cater to that segment of knowlege, so it was erased as an option forever. Same with all the sciences: mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, physics, biology, thermodynamics, Engineering, transportation. Same with facts: History, culture, religion, philosophy. All are now the exclusive venue of formal education. Outside of universities, forget it.
But you can find dozens of volumes on aromatherapy, candles and hallucinogens.
My last four attempts at visiting the library for useful, real world information in book form were a dismal failure. Zero for four. The message was clear: you need crap? Go to the public library. You need real-world useful knowlege? Buy your own freakin' books!
Having the taxpayers pay out millions, as the result of a "bookmobile" accident, is a whole other topic that can best be dealt with under "catering to losers" and "bottom feeders"
Most PDAs use rechargeable batteries (Can be charged in your car just like that cell phone everyone lugs around)
Ahh all the ebook programs I have allow you to make notes that are elinked to the page or passage you wish and stored with your book for later reference. Also automatically bookmarks where you quit reading.
I got 600 Free ebooks most are still in print though the copyrights are now public domain.
Yet if you want to buy them in dead-tree media form the best I have seen them new is 5.95 used 1.00. and I got to either drive to get them or have them shipped to me which costs money.
Also which costs more to make? Cutting down trees and using all that energy and manpower to turn the author's story into a paper book. Or the author sitting down at his comp writing his story and compiling it into an electronic ebook on the very same comp and uploading it onto the ebook store site.
Dead-tree media is dead. There is just alot of folks right now who make lots of money off of it and that is the only thing prolonging the life of hard copy books. However there is a bunch of up and coming authors who are bypassing the publishing houses and going direct to ebooks and they are gaining in popularity. And the Publishing houses are trying to gain control of the format because they know the jig is up and they are in danger of becoming extinct.
It takes a lot of nerve to post a statement in favor of tax supported wastes like public libraries while quoting Ayn Rand in your tagline.
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