(Notice the very informative headline? Well, given that anyone worth their salt nowadays uses an RSS reader, I figured it's time for me to go with the flow. How can I get you to read the whole article if all you see is my subject lines and they're unintelligible? Or worse, completely intelligible?)
Vigilantes, sez you? Well, you’re welcome to this, sez I. http://www.jimmenick.com/images/vigilantes.pdf It’s in the traditional NFL style of overview, readings and argument ideas. I won’t have many Sailors taking the law into their own hands, as it turns out; we have only the CatNats qualifier and Districts on this resolution, and the latter becomes less and less likely for any serious consideration as there is, apparently, a history regents exam dead in the middle of NatNats. Quelle surprise, as they don’t say in France. So maybe only SuperSquirrel will ever debate vigilantes. So it goes. Our other CFL Grands qualifier endeavor is the creation of the greatest PF team ever, which we are working on in the top-secret Sailor laboratory, ever hopeful that we can somehow snag a slot that seems so available, yet somehow so distant. (I will not review the sad history of the Sailors at last year’s Pffft-fest, except to point out that pfffft is too good a word for it. Don’t tell anyone, but here’s the 3 simple secrets to winning PF rounds:
1. Research
2. Research
3. Research
In the past, Sailors have attempted to get by mostly on their native charm. Not the best idea, eh?)
If you haven’t already done so, mosey over to modestnovice.org and help us figure out the wording of next year’s novice resolution. The more input we get, the better. My daughter was having problems posting a comment; let me know if you also have problems, so we can complain to CP (I haven’t complained to him about anything for hours now).
You can’t imagine how much I’m looking forward to my upcoming non-debate weekend in NYC. We’ve got ducats for this and that, and plans for the other as well. A nice dose of culture, popular and un-. All we need is the weather not to be too dreadful (always an issue in mid-February).
Like everyone else with an internet connection, I’ve been gazing at the Kindle 2, and I have to admit, for the first time I’m actually beginning to think nice thoughts. Kindle 1 was okay—I did get my hands on one for a while—and this improves on some of my complaints (especially page-change speed). I could really see getting one of these suckers if it didn’t cost the proverbial A and an L. (That’s an arm and a leg to you cliché-deprived types.) I’m also beginning to get intrigued about how this thing can play into the DJ, given that I am, after all, in traditional publishing. Is traditional publishing going the way of the buggy whip? An article I read this morning compared ebooks to talkies, and publishers to silent film producers. Maybe, but if I’m not mistaken, the cost of talkies, for patrons, was the same as the cost of silents. As long as there’s the heavy initial hardware buy-in, I can’t see ebooks jumping past early adapters and techies. At the same time, I don’t really see books really working in big numbers on the sort of competing iPhone/Touch platform (even though every now and then I do go back to “Leaves of Grass,” which is one of the books I’ve been toting around with me on my Touch, and one that responds well enough to the occasional glance). The screen is just too small, even though it’s perfectly sharp. I mean, I was raised on those old Penguin classics, with type so small I had to get a new prescription on my eyeglasses every time I finished reading one of them, but the Touch size is just not working for me. The Kindle size, on the other hand, is about just right. Maybe it boils down to whoever makes the $50 ebook reader is the ultimate winner. I don’t know. I have nothing against the concept per se, but at the moment, I do have something against paying all that money for it. I’m not betting against it, though. I’m hedging. I think I’ll sit on my chips for awhile before making any commitment. In the meanwhile, good-old-fashioned books on paper, despite all the economic turmoil in the publishing business (and everywhere else) still looks like a reasonable bet, at least for the short term.
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