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Benjamin Myers

Why your teenager can't use a hammer - 0 views

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    Finally (and what will appear first), all this talk about digital technology and web design pulls up an equal impulse in me to talk about other skill sets that get undervalued in an information economy. I read this a bit ago and enjoyed it. There also seems to be a trend currently that is leading us toward a sort of steam punk utopia where we will have a mixture of high and low technology. For more on the philosophical argument being put forward in this article, I highly recommend Shop Class as Soulcraft and The Mind at Work. To see some indications of the trend I'm talking about watch How It's Made (which tends to skew toward human components of the production process and is based in a tactile fetish of understanding modes of production since you do not learn how to make things ... or really how things are made) and check out all the books on craft skills, cooking, and carpentry that are exploding all over Amazon with noticeably nostalgic titles. Speaking of which, did the knitting craze end or am I just not around 50 people that have recently taken up knitting anymore?
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    Oh! Also add to the "evidence" list farming/gardening and the back to earth books ... and psychologically the zombie and (to a lesser extent) virus craze in movies, books, games, etc.
Bonnie Thibodeau

An Erotic Novel, '50 Shades of Grey,' Goes Viral With Women - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • The problem has been finding it.
  • distribution in print has been limited and sluggish, leaving bookstores deprived of copies.
  • more than 250,000 copies
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  • has come from ever-discreet e-book downloads, which have propelled “Fifty Shades of Grey” to No. 1 on the New York Times e-book fiction best-seller list
  • No. 3 position on Amazon’s best-seller list.
  • “We’re making a statement that this is bigger than one genre,”
  • “The people who are reading this are not only people who read romance. It’s gone much broader than that.”
  • “It’s taboo for women to admit that they watch pornography, but for some reason it’s O.K. to admit that they’re reading this book.”
  • habit of printing lengthy contracts and e-mail exchanges between characters in the text.
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    What strikes me as especially interesting about this book review is that it emphasizes and leads with the buzz surrounding its predominantly digital publication instead of the controversy about the popularity of hardcore erotic literature for women.
Rachel Henderson

The Daily Tar Heel :: Students living in a paperless world - 0 views

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  • paper products make up the largest share of solid waste in the United States. This country is also the largest paper consumer in the world, with one person going through an average of 663 pounds each year.
  • the past several years have seen such improvements in electronic readers and other eco-friendly technologies that a paperless world is now possible
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  • some publications have shifted toward online-only content
  • It’s now possible to purchase and read many required textbooks online.
  • the course pack, should simply be banned
  • In cases in which copyright issues arise, course packs should be made available for purchase as e-books.
  • reduce the amount of money allocated to students for printing
  • encourage professors to require that homework be submitted online
  • The money formerly used for paper could be transferred to something more environmentally friendly, like purchasing eReaders that can be checked out in the library.
  • the main objection to eReaders – that the energy required to make and use one exceeds the carbon impact of making a book – is largely invalid: The carbon emitted in the life cycle of an Amazon Kindle is fully offset after one year of us
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    Argument (with some decent solutions/suggestions) for making the transition from paper to electronic publications.
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