How to Destroy the Book

If you love books, you will read this – a transcription of a speech given by Cary Doctorow at the National Reading Summit. The first half is entirely about books and is most excellent. The second half is about copying and the destruction of our freedom in the name of “protecting copyright”. The whole thing is brilliant.

And Speechlessness Ensued…

No one on Slashdot has declared this to be satire, but I really just can’t accept that the article linked to in the above link (yay, meta?) isn’t satire! (Mostly I linked to the /. page rather than the article proper because the comments are encouraging. It’s always nice to see computer geeks standing up for books.)

From the article:

“When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,’’ said James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing and chief promoter of the bookless campus. “This isn’t ‘Fahrenheit 451’ [the 1953 Ray Bradbury novel in which books are banned]. We’re not discouraging students from reading. We see this as a natural way to shape emerging trends and optimize technology.’’

Christians and Cultural Renewal

I found this interesting: CT is asking if Christians overemphasise cultural renewal in light of Tim Challies’ criticisms of Tchividjian’s new book, Unfashionable.

Making Exhibitions of Ourselves

In case you missed it, Dr. Trueman’s latest is up. Insert the monthly raving over how much I enjoy his writing.

This month, though, I do have to say, “Ouch, Dr. Trueman,” for this line: “This time, it was not so much her American level knowledge of geography as her racist abuse of a fellow inmate that landed her in hot water.” Clearly, this survey is going to hound the U.S. for a good long time. (And… apparently they did it again in 2006 and things didn’t get any better.)

Of course, the shoddy geographical knowledge of Americans isn’t Dr. Trueman’s point — exhibition and our culture is, so go forth and read, because it’s well done.

Stopping to Think

Thabiti Anyabwile posted his thoughts on why the Time article on the “new Calvinism” isn’t really a good thing. (HT: Challies.com)