These folks are all in an uproar about The Elements of Style by Strunk and White which has been a mainstay for writers and students for many decades in many colleges and writers’ studios and lawyers’ offices and high schools and elementary schools where lots of people have made their first adventuresome forays into writing and take me for example who can never remember the definition of an adverb and can never understand a past participle or what the heck a conjunctive phrase is so you see I actually need a book like The Elements of Style very badly and cannot really understand why anyone would have such hard feelings about such a small book I mean after all it does contain some pretty useful little references about the english language that can be quite helpful when you are in a grammar jam and the authors of the little tome were perfectly willing to admit that sometimes rules can be broken or stretched or ignored altogether and even rejected out of hand I guess.
Monthly Archives: May 2009
Is Apple Ready to Burn Amazon’s Kindle?
This image is floating around the internet along with rumors that Apple is ready to unveil a much larger version of its iPod Touch that might be called MediaPad. Apparently, it has a 6-inch HD touchscreen and will have cellular wireless connectivity. So people are writing about this thing as a Kindle-killer. Apple is also rumored to be preparing an ebook reader application that will allow book purchases through the iTunes store.
I think this has been coming for a while and I am almost certain that Steve Jobs will implement the first serious major competition for Amazon.
Remix: Lawrence Lessig’s Book for Free Download
Some of the most interesting writing about copyright and remix culture comes from attorney Lawrence Lessig. His latest book, Remix, is available as a Creative Commons licensed download. In a world where kids can download everything for free, how do you make commerce thrive and how do you avoid criminalizing an entire generation? These are the primary questions Lessig asks in this book. If you make a baby video that happens to have Prince playing on the radio in the background and you upload it to YouTube, have you broken a copyright law? Prince thinks you have. But Prince is an idiot with a guitar. I seriously doubt that the guy can even read. Lessig is much smarter than Prince. Read his book with Prince playing on the stereo in your room. Film yourself. Then upload to YouTube. That will make Prince go insane.
I found this book via BoingBoing.
And by the way, you have our permission to film yourself with our audio playing on your stereo in the background. We’re much smarter than Prince too!