Gloom and Doom

I am getting very tired of all the doomsayers. Newspapers are dying. Life as we know it is going to end. Good grief. Can they be any more annoying?
Instead of insisting that kids don't read anything, maybe they should stop by a library or a bookstore and see what kids are reading. Instead of lamenting that all information will be electronically transmitted, why don't they check out a real book? Or buy one?
If these folks who see the end of the printed world spent more time reading printed material and less time kvetching about it, maybe the printed word would last longer.
So, I'll cut this short and let the kvetchers get on with real reading.

Happiness is a warm gun

One of the reasons John Lennon's "Happiness is a Warm Gun" works is the juxtaposition against Charles Schultz's "Happiness is a warm puppy." The other reasons is that we are a gun-crazy culture, but I'll deal with that in a later blog. Puppies are soft and cuddly and always warm. Guns are only warm when they have recently been fired. Sort of like the difference between a book and a Kindle. Amazon recently introduced a new, updated version of the kindle, but it's still solid and hard and you can't cuddle up to it. Even if reading from a screen doesn't give you an Excedrin headache, it seems awkward. You can hold a book in a wing chair, curled up on a corner of a couch, on the beach. Books are made to be comfortable with. I can't see someone comfortable with a kindle. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I think it will be a long time before books printed on dead trees are totally replaced by books on a kindle. Because happiness is warm and cuddly.

Typhoid Perry

So here at the Daily Planet, Editor Perry White (picture the late Lane Smith in the Lois and Clark TV series) assigns the medical desk to research the possible impending pandemic.
Of course, we don't know how serious this swine flu is going to be. So far, it looks like the precautions are a little over-the-top, but I'm not sure I want to get on an airplane right now.
That's the thing, really, when it comes down to our own safety and that of the people we love, we are willing to look a little silly in the name of safety. When we see other people doing it on the television news, we snicker. Human nature.
Is the press exaggerating the epidemic? Quite possibly. There is a certain adreniline rush that comes with a story like this. Does that sound maudlin? Of course it does. Nobody is surprised when the press is callous and unfeeling, cares more about the story than the people injured. But there is a difference between getting a jolt about a story and making the story bigger than it is. Today, there are too many news outlets tripping over each other to tell the story.