Obsolete Technology News: It's a Week Old

Like I did in yesterday's book news, today I am playing catch up with a little tech news.  Here we go.

Fox, the TV station not the animal, delayed presenting its programming on Hulu for 8 days causing a massive spike in piracy of those shows.  Let it be known that if the nerds can not pay for their digital entertainment through affordable means, they will just take it.  Torrentfreak via boingboing (real sources, I swear)

When presenting their case that they were not ripping off the iPad with their Galaxy tablet, Samsung used the "it was in a movie" defense.  The movie in question "2001: A Space Odyssey" does indeed have tablet devices as well as a computer that freaking kills people!  WSJ via Geekologie

The Videogame History Museum is running a drive on Kickstarter to save/fund their project. The museum can be seen as an important item in the further expansion of humans to waste time dicking around without using their actual dicks.  Mostly.  Kickstarter via Kotaku.

Catching Up, Last Week's Book News: I Was Busy

So sue me, I missed out on a lot of news this week.  So here's the weekend wrapup, all the stuff I forgot to get to involving books and book related news!  Enjoy!

President Obama went on a vacation and bought some books.  Some made up bullshit controversy came up when he seemed to read a lot of male authors.  Holy shit, that bastard.  Let's forget that he seems to be promoting some literacy and not out on the ranch pretending to be the Marlboro Man and focus on a trival details like "taste," "preference" and "give the guy a break he's the president not the messiah." reuters

NASA has plans to publish a science fiction series.  Yup.  Guess that whole "space flight" thing was something they did as a day job while they came up with a kickass space marine idea. mnn

SF Gateway, one of the largest libraries of science fiction, is offering out of print scifi books as ebooks coming soon.  Guess what website NASA is waiting on? planetpdf

U.S. Venture donates school supplies and over 1,800 books to school children.  I don't have a joke here.  Sometimes big business marketing is not so bad.  prnewswire

New juvenile book "Maggie Goes on a Diet" shamed for being dangerous and against body type issues.  "Debbie Goes on a Run and Eats Healthy" deamed un-American.  "Frank Goes Outside" Book Burning to be held on Tuesday. desderetnews

New Jersey school district pulled a book about lesbians for "inappropriate language."  Cast of Jersey Shore responds, "That's a fuckin' disgrace.  I like lesbians and hope their language get a fair shake, ya know?" foxnews

"To Train Up a Child," a "Christian" book about raising your child through the "spare the rod, spoil the child method" and already associated with at least one child death, is being censored throughout the world.  I will not stand for book censorship, so let's just kill all the motherfuckers who beat or tell others to beat their children.  stuff.co.nz

The school board in Missouri that banned Slaughterhouse Five is pretending to take a look at the merits of the books because the nation is pissed off at them.  It is also no coincidence that Kevin Bacon was seen in the area encouraging children to dance.  chron.com

HarperCollins and Fox News Band Together to Create Ground Zero Book

You read that headline right, kids.  Fox News and HarperCollins have forged an unholy alliance to tug at your heartstrings by creating an "enhanced" ebook about the rebuilding of Ground Zero just in time for the 10 year anniversary of 9/11.  Titled "Rise of Freedom: The New World Trade Center," the ebook will contain text, photographs and video from Fox News anchor Shepard Smith.  [insert joke about how it will honor Bush and only be allowed to be checked out 26 times here]

I have a couple of problems with this gross exploitation that is being called an "enhanced ebook."  First, fuck anyone who tries to make money off a national tragedy this close to the anniversary.  All that information, epecially public broadcasts, should already be released for free or at least proceeds should go to a charity.  Second, the title is retarded.  "New World Trade Center" says that they are creating a new building to serve as a world trade center.  That just ain't true and taints the memory of the buildings.  Finally, this rebuilding is on-going.  To put the book up now, before completed just smacks of an incomplete venture that they will use to make more cash as they update later.

Does it matter that Fox News and HarperCollins are the figures in this story?  Outside of easy jokes, no.  This is a gross example of the exploitation we will see in the coming weeks.

huffingtonpost

Books Might Have Sex Too, Duh Magazine Reports

Here's the first couple sentences from a recent Fox News report:

Television, movies and video games aimed at kids and teens get lots of attention for their portrayals of violence and sex. But a new study finds that popular teen books, too, can be surprisingly sexual, meaning that reading may not always be the wholesome activity that parents expect. [FoxNews]

 Crack.  That is the sound of my brain attempting to beat itself to death from within my skull.

Really?  Holy shit!  Books have sex too!  I thought sex was only invented when Mary Kay and Johnny started sleeping in the same bed and the stork put a baby in her!  Who would write that down?  These are books, nobody does anything bad in books.  Oh, why is this happening?  Why are the satanists going after our young?  Let's see what the Bible has to say:

"Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts are like clusters of fruit.  I said, "I will climb that palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit." May your breasts be like clusters of the vine, the fragrance of your breath like apples." Song of Solomon 7:7-8

Ahhhhhh! The demons are in my eye holes making me see the sin!  I shall go now into the darkness and kill!

Does 'Parks and Recreation' Stereotype Librarians?

Usually when I do a search in the morning for news on libraries and librarians, I find the usual "Blah Library is Having a Bake Sale" and "Librarian Fired for Eating Child's Hotdog" etc, etc.  Today, it seems all Google News wants to let me in on is the scoop about a "crazy" librarian played by Megan Mullally on "Parks and Recreation."  I am not here to discuss the show.  I have seen a few episodes and found them delightful and worthy of the banner NBC has built for itself.  I just have nothing else to write about today except an alien book thing, but it is on Fox News so who gives a shit.  Seriously, it could be the lost sea scroll that tells Jesus was an alien, the same immortal alien that built the pyramids and I would be all, pshhh Fox News.  So I why don't we talk about this TV show.

Honestly, I am not even here to discuss whether or not 'P&R' hates librarians.  I know they are attempting to make a comedy show about city government and part of that is mocking or characterizing every department therein.  I do not blame them.  What I do blame them for is pushing the stereotype of librarians as drunken sex-crazed deviants who want to do nothing but steal children's hot dogs.  That happened once and I the librarian involved only had a small mention in a local paper.  Why can't we be known as the quiet, conservative people we are, locked away in our shells of oppression?  I miss the days when I could see my co-worker Brenda in Reference wearing a stylish bun and cardigan, not the mini-skirts, thigh-high boots and a low-cut tops that society expects, nay demands, librarians to wear.

Shame on you "P&R."  We are librarians and we demand respect.

Check out a real review by someone who watches the show here.