Books that make you dumb

Usually I find it's the self-help books that knock down the old IQ, but according to this chart, booksthatmakeyoudumb, the book that'll make you the dumbest is "Zane." I can only conclude that the author of this chart has been reading quite a bit of "Zane" because "Zane" is an author, not a book. According to the same chart, the book that makes you the least dumb is Lolita. I read it a few years ago, but I'm not sure it made me any smarter. It did make me feel awfully uncomfortable while reading it on public transit: I was afraid that someone would read over my shoulder and think that I had something in common with old Humbert Humbert.

I've read a lot of books... Two degrees in literature plus 35 hours a week spent in a library will do that to you, but the book that made me the smartest was 1984. I read 1984 at the particularly impressionable age of 17, and its exploration of power, discourse, socialization and surveillance have been issues that have interested me ever since. Put another way, 1984 made me smarter because it catalyzed my interest which encouraged me to read further.

It would be interesting to take a bunch of really smart individuals and ask them what book made them the smartest...

Print-on-Demand. It's Here.

Insofar as publishing is "the activity of making information available for public view," the internet has been democratizing publishing for some time now. These days, in Canada at least, anyone can go to a public library, access the Internet, and start a blog at Blogger, all for free. Put another way, with the World Wide Web the barrier to entry for publishing is almost nonexistent, requiring only basic computer skills.

Conversely, up until recently there's been a significant barrier to entry when it comes to good old fashioned ink on paper, especially in book form. Usually an author has to convince a publisher that a sufficient number of his or her books will sell to turn a profit, or failing at this an author could opt for so called vanity publishing, fronting the money to publish a run of their own book.

This is no longer the case. As this article suggests, print on demand technology is here:

New printing technologies are making published authors of legions of aspiring writers, a population that once toiled for years on tomes that might not see the light of day. The vast majority of today's instant authors may sell only a few dozen copies of their books, but on-demand publishing is letting thousands realize the ambitions of generations of would-be writers.

With this technology the economics of scale cease to apply: if all you want is one book, you can have it printed for you; if you have orders for 25 books the next day, you can have them printed... There's no limit and no significant price difference for volume.

The above quoted article links to three sites that offer print-on-demand:

• Lulu
  
• Blurb
• CreateSpace

Cross-posted to the Alcuin Blog.

Christmas

Christmas was a success. I've always been told that it's extra exciting with kids, and it's true.

Here are the pictures: