Blog Entries for rhughes

The problem with the interweb: It's stupid

rhughes

The Internet is a lowest common denominator medium. Unlike newspapers, books, and magazines, there's no editorial staff, no advertisers to please, and no style guides, standards, or traditions to uphold. It's a Tower of Babel mishmash filled with junk. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog, a 15 year old pimple-faced kid, or just an idiot. Why does this matter? Because one person's opinions are not just as valid as another's, if that other has absolutely no background, s [...]

The Chelm Effect

rhughes

Chelm is the mythical town of fools in Jewish folklore. (There is actually a town named Chelm in Poland, but the stories have little to do with the actual town.) A tradition of Jewish children's literature exists that takes place in Chelm, where the well-meaning townspeople have foolish solutions to real-life problems.

In one classic tale the "wise men" of Chelm (as they're often called) decide to build a library. It had occurred to them that Poland's capital, Wars [...]

Public Domain Books, Ready for Your iPod

rhughes

Thought that this was pretty neat:

Kara Shallenberg and her 10-year-old son, Henry, exhausted the audiobook collection at their library in Oceanside, Calif., five years ago. With Henry’s appetite for listening still strong, Ms. Shallenberg began to record herself reading his favorite books. Eventually she upgraded from a using a tape deck to burning CD’s on her laptop computer. Last fall she took her hobby to a wider audience.