Super Volatile

The adult dystopia extrapolates from aspects of the present to show readers how terrible things will become if our deplorable behavior continues unchecked. The more utterly the protagonist is crushed, the more urgent and forceful the message. Because authors of children’s fiction are “reluctant to depict the extinction of hope within their stories,” Sambell writes, they equivocate when it comes to delivering a moral. Yes, our errors and delusions may lead to catastrophe, but if—as usually happens in dystopian novels for children—a new, better way of life can be assembled from the ruins would the apocalypse really be such a bad thing?

The piece is devoid of actual review of Hunger Games, but nonetheless offers interesting commentary on today's teenage novels.

I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.

Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am writing this letter to let you know how real I am.

Kurt Vonnegut writes to a man who burned Vonnegut's books.

Surrender, on the other hand, is the realization that you do not have time for everything that would be worth the time you invested in it if you had the time, and that this fact doesn't have to threaten your sense that you are well-read. Surrender is the moment when you say, "I bet every single one of those 1,000 books I'm supposed to read before I die is very, very good, but I cannot read them all, and they will have to go on the list of things I didn't get to.

You're NOT going to be well read. Don't worry, that's OK.

Suddenly the entire world of informal and non commercial culture -- from home movies that provide a wonderful lens into the private life of an era, to essays, posters, locally produced teaching materials -- was swept into copyright. And kept there for the life of the author plus 70 years. The effects were culturally catastrophic. Copyright went from covering very little culture, and only covering it for a 28 year period during which it was commercially available, to covering all of culture, regardless of whether it was available -- often for over a century. Unlike Fahrenheit 451, the vast majority of the culture swept into this 20th century black hole was not commercially available and, in most cases, the authors are unknown. The works are locked up -- with no benefit to anyone -- and no one has the key that would unlock them. We have cut ourselves off from our own culture, left it to molder -- and in the case of nitrate film, literally disintegrate -- with no benefit to anyone

A must-read on the consequences of ridiculous copyright law.

Each person needs to find the reading balance that makes them healthy and happy. I tend to read a lot of technical literature in my own discipline. Academics are pone to this imbalance. One of my challenges is to read enough other kinds of things to maintain a balanced intellectual life. It turns out that reading outside my discipline can make me a better computer scientist, because it gives me more kinds of ideas to use. But the real reason to read more broadly is to have a balanced mind and life.

On the importance of having a diversified reading diet. Nothing spectacularly revealing there.

Everything about Mr. Ferriss’s book declares: This is not your auntie’s self-help book. No muffled “I’m OK — You’re OK” tone here. The vibe is: I’m Superbad, bro, and I have dimples. You’re a mole person who, if you become an angel investor in my books, might someday touch the hem of my Speedo.

Hilarious review of recent book by Timothy Ferriss of “4-Day Work Week” fame. The review is as much about the author as about the book itself.

As KUOW reports today, it seems a Native American student who was required to read the book took issue with the its depiction of native people. The girl's mom, Sarah Sense-Wilson, agreed and wrote the school to have it removed from the curriculum, writing:

"(The book has a) high volume of racially offensive derogatory language and misinformation on Native Americans. In addition to the inaccurate imagery, and stereotype views, the text lacks literary value which is relevant to today's contemporary multicultural society."

The woman in question apparently has even read the book. Yet it's beyond me how is it possible to get it wrong so much.

Now, with a terrible sense of foreboding, I slowly turn to look again at my bookshelf. There they all are, “Perjury” and “Kavalier & Clay” and those other books that I have read and of which I remember so little. And I have to ask myself, Would it have made no difference if I had never read any of them? Could I just as well have spent my time watching golf?

But this cannot be. Those books must have reshaped my brain in ways that affect how I think, and they must have left deposits of information with some sort of property — a kind of mental radiation — that continues to affect me even if I can’t detect it. Mustn’t they have?

Is it worth to reading book if we forget most of their content?

Of the 3,015 papers delivered at the 2007 meeting of the American Sociological Association, the authors say, few "needed to be written." As for one of the most prestigious universities in the world, "the mediocrity of Harvard undergraduate teaching is an open secret of the Ivy League." Much of the research for scholarly articles and lectures is "just compost to bulk up résumés.

Review of a book giving harsh critique to American system of higher education. Apparently, a lot of points seem to apply to other countries as well.