I spotted this the other day in the New York Times. When you think of it, it is astonishing:

“Amazon.com, one of the nation’s largest booksellers, announced Monday that for the last three months, sales of books for its e-reader, the Kindle, outnumbered sales of hardcover books.

In that time, Amazon said, it sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition.

The pace of change is quickening, too, Amazon said. In the last four weeks sales rose to 180 digital books for every 100 hardcover copies. Amazon has 630,000 Kindle books, a small fraction of the millions of books sold on the site.

Book lovers mourning the demise of hardcover books with their heft and their musty smell need a reality check, said Mike Shatzkin, founder and chief executive of the Idea Logical Company, which advises book publishers on digital change. “This was a day that was going to come, a day that had to come,” he said. He predicts that within a decade, fewer than 25 percent of all books sold will be print versions.

The shift at Amazon is “astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months,” the chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, said in a statement.“

The gamble that book retailers took – namely, slashing the cost of digital books, as well as the devices upon which we read them – has clearly paid off.  People are reading e-books in record numbers.  I’m one of them: as I wrote months ago, I now read more than ever before – and I’m doing all that reading on an eReader or an iPad.  (And yesterday, I bought my daughter a Kobo at Chapters for $150.)

All of this enthusiasm for books is not without its risks, however.  As with record stores, one can easily see a day when bookstores go the way of the do do bird. And, maybe, when book shelves become a thing for antique collectors – and even libraries start to close, too.

I’m personally torn about all this.  On the one hand, the loss of books you can hold in your hand has Orwelliam 1984-ish overtones: if books no longer exist, can’t history also be changed by revisionists, with a tap of a keyboard key?  On the other hand, as my former journalism prof Roger Bird once said to us (when asked about the death of certain words, and continual churning of language): “You can’t stop it.”

What do you think? More being books being read is a good thing.  But is it a good thing when the books are reduced to some bits of digitized data, imprisoned on a flickering screen, with no permanence?

Comments – digital comments – are open.

Comments (38)

Crisis now passed, I can reveal I spent all of last night on a chair in Emerg at KGH.  Watched the sun come up over the lake, afterwards, so things must have worked out okay.  Brought home a rock, which I’m going to paint.  Long story.

As I tore through the night along that goddamned highway – that infernal strip of asphalt – I heard this tune again on XM.  These guys are from Denmark or something.  Their name is a stinker, but the tune is a killer.  Certainly keeps you up, when you’re heading East at about 3:00 a.m.  Recommended.

Comments (9)

“Kinsella will be more confused than usual, methinks.”

Saw it. I liked the fact that the producers assumed that I possessed the intelligence to understand a very complex plot.

Unfortunately, they were wrong in this assumption.

Comments (11)

Rotten says “Sex Pistols” was a lousy name. He means it, maaaan.

I say bollocks.  I wore one of my many [one of 2,000 he owns – ed.] Sex Pistols Bollocks T-shirts on Friday, on the way up to the cottage, and it got a postive response everywhere.  A grandfatherly type came up to me at a gas station on Kingston Road and said he bought that album “simply because of the name.”  So there, Johnny.

Band names are crucially important – more important than your actual songs, in my experience.  Some of the names of bands I have been in: Hot Nasties (taken from a porn film), Social Blemishes (because we were), Sick Dick and the Volkswagens (from a Pynchon novel), Nemesis Goosehabit and the Jesus Beatles (dreamt up whilst I was a telephone solicitor at Calgary’s World of Cleaning Services), Chicken Realistic and the Fabulous Kevins (featuring my friend James Muretich on lead screams, R.I.P.), and – of course – Shit From Hell, now SFH.

Speaking of which:

Comments (6)

Tonight, I received this email:

Warren:

RE: Census.  You didn’t – I DID get charged by StatsCan and am on trial.

Finished presentation of evidence on March 16th. It was very clear that the Crown cannot win the case.  And is in serious breach of Charter Rights, using the coercion of jail and a fine to force people to hand over a ‘biographical core of personal information.’  It is possible that the Govt’s move to make the long form voluntary was to try and get them off the hook.  The Judge is scheduled to hear the arguments in my trial on Sept 9th.

I refused to cooperate with the census because of the out-sourcing of census work to Lockheed Martin Corp (American military).

Appended is part of an email I circulated recently.  You may be interested.

Sandra Finley, Saskatoon

So I went online and found coverage of Sandra’s trial here and here and here and here and here.

What say you, now, long-form census enthusiasts?  In my case, I objected to the highly-personal stuff I was being told to hand over (eg. the racial composition of my family, income, mortgage payments, etc.) – and, additionally, being told to hand over such personal stuff to governments, who I know from personal experience are really sloppy with pretty much all of the information that comes into their possession.  But at least I wasn’t prosecuted (although there are no shortage of [anonymous] federal Liberals now calling for me to be kicked out of the party for my insolence).

Sandra Finley wasn’t so lucky. How about a left-leaning woman being hauled into a court by the Harper government because she objects to government’s commercial interest in gathering data it uses the law to compel millions of people to provide?  How about that?

It’s Summertime, so I reckon about 70 per cent of the sound and fury surrounding the long form census controversy is seasonal.  You know, it’s silly season, etc.  So I am trying not to get too worked up about the whole thing.

But Sandra Finley’s case – and the dozens of other cases like it – certainly tests my resolve.

Comments are open.  Oh, and fill your boots, angry Grits: explain to me, please, why the Harper government is right to prosecute a 60-year-old peace activist, would you?

Comments (64)

Below, the Legendary Stardust Cowboy playing ‘Paralyzed’ on Laugh In. He got mad when they started making fun of him, and he stormed out.

This man, The Ledge, inspired us in the 1970s and beyond.  He didn’t just invent psychobilly, he arguably invented punk rock.

‘Paralyzed’ is one of the greatest songs ever committed to vinyl. If you don’t see that, I don’t want to hear from you.

Comments (7)

That global warming stuff sure is a load of hooey, isn’t it?

Darn tootin’.

Comments (17)

Tories poised to announced controversial, sole sourced $16B jet purchase
Source: The Canadian Press
Jul 16, 2010 4:09

OTTAWA – The Harper government was expected to announce today one of the biggest military equipment purchases in history – a controversial, non-competitive $16-billion contract to build a new generation of fighter jets.

Three cabinet ministers, led by Defence Minister Peter MacKay, were scheduled to make a major military procurement announcement in Ottawa, where it was expected they would confirm the long-anticipated plan to buy the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter from Lockheed Martin.

The jet purchase and the accompanying long-term maintenance plan have drawn criticism from the Liberal opposition and former senior public servants who say the massive outlay of public cash lacks transparency because it was not subjected to other competitive bids.

The total value of the contract is expect to rival the total amount spent by the Conservatives four years ago, when they rolled out a series of high-profile military purchases of transport planes, helicopters and armoured trucks.

The 65 new jets would replace the Air Force’s aging fleet of CF-18s that recently underwent a $2.6 billion upgrade.

MacKay has assured Parliament there would be a competitive process for the selection of new planes, but the Harper cabinet has reportedly decided to go with an untendered contract.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says he would put the deal on hold if he were elected prime minister.

Comments (78)

One of the nice fellows from The Mark came and interviewed me again yesterday. Topic du jour: the shocking scandal surrounding the Census Long Form thing!

Get ready for the election campaign on this crucial, critical issue: it’ll make the Free Trade election of 1988 look positively trivial in comparison!  It’s the issue everyone is talking about!

UPDATE: Some Lib friends have genially disagreed with me, saying they don’t understand what I’m so worried about.  Fair enough. A sampling, found here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here.  I could go on. Other Grits may favour the Conservative government collecting and disseminating highly personal information about them; this one doesn’t.  Just as I don’t trust Facebook to protect private data, I don’t trust sloppy bureaucracies, either.

Comments (78)

“Care to watch some Flintstones reruns, little guy?”

Angus Reid provides us with the funnest poll of the Summer so far!

ORIGIN OF HUMANS
Americans are Creationists; Britons and Canadians Side with Evolution
Half of Americans in the Midwest and South say God created human beings in their present form.

[NEW YORK – Jul. 15, 2010] – While a majority of people in Britain and Canada agree with the theory of evolution, almost half of Americans are in tune with creationism, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found.

The online survey of representative samples of 1,002 Americans, 1,009 Canadians and 2,011 Britons asked respondents whether their own point of view is closest to the notion that human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years, or the idea that God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years.

In Britain, two-thirds of respondents (68%) side with evolution while less than one-in-five (16%) choose creationism. At least seven-in-ten respondents in the South of England (70%) and Scotland (75%) believe human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years.

In Canada, three-in-five respondents (61%) select evolution from the two options provided, while one-in- four (24%) pick creationism. Quebec (66%) and British Columbia (64%) hold the highest proportion of respondents who believe human beings evolved, while three-in-ten Albertans (31%) think God created human beings in their present form.

In the United States, almost half of respondents (47%) believe that God created human beings in their present form within the last 10,000 years, while one-third (35%) think human beings evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years.  Half of people in the Midwest (49%) and the South (51%) agree with creationism, while those in the Northeast are more likely to side with evolution (43%).

Comments (58)