- This could be interesting: apparently Redbox is looking to install DVD rental kiosks at libraries. As a librarian at the link above writes:
Unfortunately I think Redbox will only target libraries in large cities and wouldn’t bother with a small town like mine. It would be a great service to the community, but probably not enough profit to make it interesting for them.
Where it could do some good — that is, by generating foot traffic and providing DVDs to libraries that couldn’t otherwise afford them — Redbox likely won’t be interested, but will instead focus on locations where they might actually do some harm — by charging for what are now free rentals, and by sharing only a tiny percentage of that charge with the libraries. If nothing else, though, I think it suggests that Redbox understands the precariousness of its existence; as online streaming becomes the dominant industry model, it will need to seek out more and new rental locations to survive.
- There are two ways to look at this: the first, “Obama cancels moon mission,” makes for a quick and easy soundbite. But the second, “Obama scraps Bush’s wildly empty promise and redirects funding to more important areas” is probably more accurate. Still, it’s a shame we’re not going back to the moon any time in the near future.
- I’m not sure all of the titles on the Oddest Book Title of the Year award longlist are really that odd, but what library would be complete without Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes, Map-based Comparative Genomics in Legumes, or Planet Asthma: Art and Acitivty Book?
- An interesting article by A.O. Scott on Smoking in ‘Avatar’ and the Limits of Boundaries on Ratings.
- And finally, there have got to be easier ways to get around New York [via]:
various
Tuesday various
- Anybody wanna chip in together and buy Miramax?
- I mean, I’d be happy to write Errol Morris another letter like this if you think it would help. (I love how Weinstein asks Morris for casting suggestions to play himself.)
- Well that’s just weird: Barack Obama and Scott Brown are cousins. [via]
- Texas bans a children’s book because they thought it was written by a Marxist. Not only is that pretty dumb, they were also wrong. [via]
- And finally, are there aliens already among us? Inside us?
Frank Drake, who conducted the first organized search for alien radio signals in 1960, said that the Earth — which used to pump out a loud tangle of radio waves, television signals and other radiation — has been steadily getting quieter as its communications technology improves.
Drake cited the switch from analogue to digital television — which uses a far weaker signal — and the fact that much more communications traffic is now relayed by satellites and fiber optic cables, limiting its leakage into outer space.
“Very soon we will become very undetectable,” he said. If similar changes are taking place in other technologically advanced societies, then the search for them “will be much more difficult than we imagined.” [via]
Thursday various
- I was sad to see that J.D. Salinger had passed away. I think John Hodgman said it best: “I prefer to think JD Salinger has just decided to become extra reclusive.”
- I’m much more sad to hear the terrible news about Kage Baker, who has apparently lost her battle with cancer and has only a few weeks to live. I haven’t read a lot of Baker’s books — just the first two in her Company series — but she’s a real gifted talent taken much too soon.
- Today in banning: first, a Wisconsin jail bans Dungeons & Dragons:
Singer was told by prison officials that he could not keep the materials because Dungeons & Dragons “promotes fantasy role playing, competitive hostility, violence, addictive escape behaviors, and possible gambling,” according to the ruling. The prison later developed a more comprehensive policy against all types of fantasy games, the court said. [via]
And a California school district bans the dictionary. [via]
- In much happier news, a story of a Haitian man rescued from beaneath the rubble 11 days after the earthquake — “and hours after the government declared search and rescue operations to be officially over.”
- And finally, Zack Handlen watches the horror movie Orphan so the rest of us don’t have to:
…just playing creepy music and panning over a room isn’t creating mood, it’s giving the production designer a clip reel…
Wednesday various
- A whole lot of talk today has been about Apple’s new iPad. (You shouldn’t have any trouble finding plenty of links on your own.) Almost despite myself, I’m guardedly optimistic about its future and genuinely interested in its application — in a way, I should add, that I generally wasn’t interested in the iPhone. I think I’m going to wait a little before I try to justify buying one for myself, at least until a few more in-depth reviews are in. As Brad Stone notes in the New York Times, “Nothing ages faster than the future when you get it in your hands.”
- Rachel Swirsky: “Genre is a tool. It’s not a prophecy.“
- Here’s a fascinating article on confessions of a book pirate:
TM: Do you have a sense of where these books are coming from and who is putting them online?
[TRC:] I assume they are primarily produced by individuals like me – bibliophiles who want to share their favorite books with others. They likely own hundreds of books, and when asked what their favorite book is look at you like you are crazy before rattling of 10-15 authors, and then emailing you later with several more. The next time you see them, they have a bag of 5-10 books for you to borrow.
I’m sure that there are others – the compulsive collectors who download and re-share without ever reading one, the habitual pirates who want to be the first to upload a new release, and people with some other weird agenda that only they understand. [via]
- Meanwhile, the world’s largest book — it’s five feet tall by six feet wide, and it takes six people to lift it — will be displayed with its pages open for the first time. I like how the Guardian calls it “almost absurdly huge.” How big does a book have to be before they’d drop that “almost”? [via]
- And finally, a movie made by chimpanzees. All the obvious jokes aside, I wonder if this is really as impressive as it may at first sound — since, as the BBC notes:
The apes are unlikely to have actively tried to film any particular subject, or understand that by carrying Chimpcam around, they were making a film.
This seems less like a film from the chimps’ perspective than footage they accidentally shot. Still, the study as a whole does sound intriguing. [via]
Tuesday various
- Boy, when Mark Twain called you an idiot, he didn’t fool around. “…scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link” indeed!
- New York woman falls, rips Picasso painting. Well that’s embarrassing! Gawker [via] has more.
- The Chinese have re-named a mountain “Avatar Hallelujah Mountain,” after the James Cameron movie. Because of course they have.
- S.C. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer Compares Helping Poor to Feeding Stray Animals. They sure do know how to pick ’em in South Carolina, don’t they? [[via]
- And finally, a lovely quote from China Miéville:
The truth is different. Chrononauts litter no less than any other tourists. The past is a dump, each epoch a tip of its futures’ rubbish. There are no police: only overworked binwomen and binmen endlessly shovelling junk into timefills. They slog uninterrupted: the detritus is all over the place, and unnoticed by us natives. We stub our toes every day on things discarded from times to come.