An Eclectic Mind

Doing my part to preserve history and get out-of-copyright books into digital format.

About a month ago, before I left home for the summer, I stumbled upon the Distributed Proofreaders Web site. The best way to describe the site is to echo the text on its home page under Site Concept:

Distributed Proofreaders provides a web-based method to ease the conversion of Public Domain books into e-books. By dividing the workload into individual pages, many volunteers can work on a book at the same time, which significantly speeds up the creation process.

Here’s how it works. Someone, somewhere scans printed book pages into a computer as images. OCR software is applied to translate the text into machine-readable text characters. Then volunteer proofreaders step in and compare the original scanned pages to the editable text. Proofreaders follow a set of proofing guidelines to ensure consistency as they modify the translated text. Each page passes through a series of steps that eventually turns all of a book’s pages into a single text document. That document is then released as a free ebook in a variety of formats via Project Gutenberg.

I became a volunteer. So far, I’ve proofed 14 pages. I know that doesn’t seem like a lot — and it’s not — but if 100 people each proofed 14 pages a week, 1,400 pages a week would be proofed. That’s what the “distributed” in Distributed Proofreading is all about.

The good part about being a proofreader — other that warm, fuzzy feeling you get from helping to make the world a better place — is that you get to read lots of old books about topics that interest you. The day I joined, I proofread two pages of a New York newspaper account of World War I. It was fascinating. Today, I proofread 12 pages of a biography of Benjamin Franklin, who I believe is the greatest American who ever lived. (There is a lot to be learned from Franklin’s life and writings.)

Why am I blogging about this? Well, I’m hoping that other folks will embrace this project and donate an hour or two a week (or a month) to proofreading pages. The more folks who work on this project, the more quickly these great old books and other pieces of literature will get into free digital format for readers and students to enjoy.

Want to help ebooks thrive? Give distributed proofreading a try.

Deep Thoughts, In Books books, copyright, ebooks, public domain

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Big is an understatement. It’s huge.

I’m a big fan of pulp fiction — the hard-boiled detective kind. I’ve read just about everything I can get my hands on by the big names of the genre — Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and James M. Cain — and lots by the lesser known names that, frankly, I can’t even remember. There’s something about the language used in these stories from the 20s, 30s, and 40s that I find pleasing. It’s the slang, mostly, and the quick sentences and sharp dialog. The rough characters who are described by their actions, rather than a bunch of author-injected descriptive prose. The stories that suck you in in true page-turner style. The morals, which are somehow questionable and right at the same time.

I thought I was relatively alone in my taste for this kind of writing until the other day, when a Twitter friend, @MikeTRose, sent a few photos to TwitPic of a friend’s pulp fiction collection. This made me feel that liking pulp fiction wasn’t something to be ashamed (for lack of a better word) about. I could come out of the closet and greet other pulp fiction lovers who might drop by and visit my blog.

A while back, I treated myself to The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, edited by Otto Penzler. This huge, 1,168-page volume has dozens of classic pulp fiction stories. It’s sitting on my bedside table and each night, before I go to sleep, I treat myself to some murder and mayhem where the good guys might spill a little blood, but always do the right thing.

Each story begins with a half-page introduction that tells you more about the story’s author and how he — and yes, they’re just about all men — got his start as a writer. A remarkable number of these authors had their books and short stories made into movies — I guess the movie industry could really churn them out in the days when plot, dialog, and acting was more important than special effects.

The mix of authors is amazing. One author might have good, tight prose and dynamic, slang-filled dialog. Another author might be long and rambling, as if he knew he were being paid by the word and wanted to stretch it out. The stories range from basic get-the-bad-guy plots where you know what the bad guy has done and follow along as the good guy gets him to plots that are true mysteries, right up to the end.

I recommend this book to anyone interested in pulp fiction who wants a compendium of stories that cover the entire range of the mystery/detective part of the genre. Although it’s not the kind of book you’d want to lug around on vacation or bring to the beach, it makes a good addition to your bedside table or reading chair.

Anyone else out there enjoy pulp fiction? Use the comments link or form to share your favorite authors, stories, or compilations.

In Books books, fiction

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You know — the old fashioned printed kind.

A while back, while reading through the previous night’s incoming Twitter tweets, I came upon a tweet by Miraz, my co-author on our WordPress 2 book, that linked to a blog post titled “I hate books.” I clicked the link to check it out. In the post, Miraz outlined what she hates about printed books and her frustrations about not being able to buy certain books as ebooks or MP3s.

At the risk of being stoned to death by the rest of you folks, I’m rather old fashioned and like traditional paper books. There’s something about a book that I find appealing. Maybe it’s the feel of the cover and pages, the ability to easily flip back and forth, the use of scrap paper or postcards as bookmarks.

When I read, my brain somehow records where on the page I read something interesting, so I can later flip back through the pages with the thought “lower left page” and zero in on the text I’m looking for.

I have beautiful illustrated editions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and wouldn’t give them up for anything — I’ve read each of them at least twice now (and their cheap paperback predecessors three times).

There’s always at least one book beside my bed, one under the seat in my helicopter, one in my camper, and one in our vacation cabin. My office is lined with bookshelves holding the books I need to consult to get my writing or computer or aviation work done. I simply get out of my chair, pull down a book, consult its index or TOC, and find the content I need. I also have an entire shelf unit dedicated to the books I’ve written; it gives me pleasure to look at it once in a while and remember that all those words came out of me.

And let’s face it: real books don’t need batteries or a special device — that could break when dropped — to operate.

When I’m finished with my books, I donate them to my local library, so they live on and on for others to enjoy. Since I tend to have more liberal reading tastes than the folks who buy for the library, I help round out their collections. Lately, I’ve been selling them on Amazon.com, just to generate some cash to help support my book-buying habit. I very rarely throw a book away — or recycle it as paper.

I’ve tried to cut back on my book buying, but can’t always turn down a good book I want to read.

I should mention here that I do carry ebook editions of several classics in my Palm Treo smartphone. After all, I can’t carry a paper book everywhere I go and I absolutely hate being stuck somewhere without something to do or read. I’ve recently read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Swiss Family Robinson, and Doctor Dolittle on my Treo and am currently working through The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (again).

But when I sit down to read, I want to read words printed on paper. I guess I’m just old fashioned. Or maybe I’m just not satisfied with the ebook solutions that have come out of publishers and device makers.

What do you think?

In Books books, ebooks

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Don’t waste your money.

I am an idiot. Throughout the past ten years or so, I’ve been conned by at least a half dozen “best-selling” diet books. I thought I’d learned my lesson. But when I picked up The Flat Belly Diet book at a Borders bookstore last week, I said “this is the last diet book I’ll ever buy.”

I should have quit with the previous one.

Another “Breakthrough Diet Plan”

The Flat Belly Diet is yet another attempt — apparently successful — to sell America’s overweight women on an easy way to lose weight. Trouble is, there’s there’s not much that’s either easy or effective about it.

Every “breakthrough” diet has a gimmick. This one has three:

• The Four-Day Anti-Bloat Jumpstart. This is a mind game, pure and simple. You follow a strict and not exactly convenient diet plan and keep a journal of your thoughts, feelings, and challenges for four days. The goal? Lose your water weight. Up to 7 pounds of it! Well, that’s what one person on the plan lost, anyway. I’m not stupid enough to confuse water weight and bloating gas with fat.
• MUFAs. This is the biggie. MUFA (pronounced MOO-fah) stands for monounsaturated fat. It’s the “good” fat and The Flat Belly Diet presents one example after another to prove why MUFAs are healthful foods. (Okay, I get it already.) But this is a gimmick with real punch for women — after all, dark chocolate is a MUFA! Yes, ladies, this diet lets you eat chocolate. How can you resist?
• Get a flat belly without doing “crunches.” Yes, like most diet books, this one promises again and again that you can flatten your belly without exercise. But then it includes an exercise program — if you want better results. Better results than a 6-pound loss in 32 days? What the hell do you think?

Of course, the book is only part of a huge marketing machine. There are already add-on pocket guides and cookbooks. There’s also a Web site, which is offered on a free “trial” basis to book readers. After that, you have to pay. And pay, and pay. After all, isn’t that what “breakthrough diet plans” are all about? Creating a money-making machine to separate desperately overweight people from their money?

When will we see MUFA-fortified “snack packs” on supermarket shelves in yellow in pink packaging? Give them a month or so — they’re probably in production now.

Reality Check

Here’s the reality of dieting and weight control for middle-aged women. You put on fat when you consume more calories — the energy in your food — than you burn in your daily life. As you age and your hormone situation changes, your metabolism slows down and you burn fewer calories. You start fattening up.

If you want to lose weight, you need to take in fewer calories than you burn. You can do this three ways:

• Eat less of the same stuff. Let’s face it: portion control in this country is a joke. We often choose restaurants based on portion size for the money spent rather than quality or flavor. It’s the American Way of eating. Next time you sit down at a restaurant with a typical portion in front of you, cut it in half and take half home for tomorrow. At home, simply make less food. Use smaller plates. There are many things you can do to eat less. Stop making excuses and just do it.
• Eat smarter food. Yes, a bag of potato chips is a wonderful-tasting snack. And yes, it seems to “satisfy” your hunger better than a handful of carrot sticks. But guess which one has fewer calories? Duh. Read the damn labels on the food you eat — choose foods with fewer calories per serving. Eat more unprocessed foods, like salads and fresh vegetables and fruits.
• Get more exercise. Take a walk around the block at lunchtime. Walk to do your errands. Walk your dog. Take a hike with your spouse or kids or grandkids. Take the stairs at the mall. Park on the far end of the parking lot rather than in the closest space. These little bits of exercise can make a huge change in your metabolism if you simply keep moving.

The thing that got me to buy The Flat Belly Diet was the fact that it mentioned calories. (So many diet plans don’t — they lead you to believe that you can eat as much as you like of certain types of food — the hell with balanced diets!) Its diet plan is pretty simple (after the first four days): four meals a day, 400 calories per meal, 1 MUFA per meal. Do you really need a book to tell you that? Of course not. I just did.

But I’ll tell you this, too: 1600-calories a day might not be the right number for you. I know it’s not the right number for me. I don’t lose weight until I drop down to 1000-1200 calories a day. This is probably why so many people on The Flat Belly Diet only lost 5 or 6 pounds after 32 days of dieting. I can lose 5 or 6 pounds in a week and not even feel it — that’s normal body weight fluctuation for me.

In defense of The Flat Belly Diet, they’re trying to convince you that following their plan helps you make a lifestyle change. 1600 calories a day is doable, they argue. It won’t hurt. Is that true for you? I know it’s not for me. When I want to lose weight, I quickly get frustrated when I hit a plateau and stop losing. I know 1600 calories a day won’t do it for me — not unless I take up jogging.

And here’s another thing: I’ve looked at the book’s recipes and menus and portion sizes and guess what? They cover the first two points of my Reality Check list above. This is common sense stuff, ladies! This is the same thing you’d learn in Weight Watchers or by consulting a dietician. Eat less, eat smarter. Toss in one or two good, brisk walks a day and you’ll be able to lose weight without yet another fad diet guiding your meal plans.

What will I be doing with my copy of The Flat Belly Diet? Donating it to my local library. Hopefully, I can save some of my neighbors a few bucks.

In Books books, diet, fat, food, health, NPR

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Another book review.

Those who know me well, know that I am not a religious person. In fact, I’m about as unreligious as they come.

In general, however, I’ve never been against any religion. I see it as a way that people fulfill social, idealistic, and spiritual needs in their lives. If they want to believe that the earth was created as it is today in seven days by a supernatural being seven thousand years ago — or any of the other ideas and themes of their religion — that’s fine with me. (Just don’t teach these religion-based ideas in public schools with my tax money.)

Sam Harris’s Letter

Lately, seeing what’s going on in the world and the political influence of America’s religious conservatives, I’ve begun to doubt whether there’s a positive value to religion in society. No book has helped fuel my doubts more than Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris. This tiny, 96-page book was written as a letter to devout Christians, pointing out the inconsistencies in Christian beliefs and how some of these beliefs negatively impact today’s world.

The main gist of Harris’s book is the fact that some policies promoted by Christian politicians and their backers are causing far more harm in good. He cites many examples. The ones that stands out in my mind are those related to sex education and their affect on the population, both home and abroad.

Consider, for instance, the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV is now the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States. The virus infects over half the American population and causes nearly five thousand women to die each year from cervical cancer; the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that more than two hundred thousand die worldwide. We now have a vaccine for HPV that appears to be both safe and effective. The vaccine produced 100 percent immunity in the six thousand women who received it as part of a clinical trial. And yet, Christian conservatives in our government have resisted a vaccination program on the grounds that HPV is a valuable impediment to premarital sex. These pious men and women want to preserve cervical cancer as an incentive toward abstinence, even if it sacrifices the lives of thousands of women each year.

He follows this up with some statistics from studies that show how the “abstinence-only” approach to sex education in 30% of American sex education programs simply does not work. American teens may be participating in “virginity pledges” for eighteen months or more, but they’re having oral and anal sex instead. American teenage girls are also four to five times more likely to become pregnant or contract a sexually transmitted disease than teens in the rest of the developed world. Why? Could it be because they weren’t taught about condoms? Or worse yet, because were taught that birth control is “sinful”?

Mr. Harris drives the point home with this statement:

The problem is that Christians like yourself are not principally concerned about teen pregnancy and the spread of disease. That is, you are not worried about the suffering caused by sex; you are worried about sex. As if this fact needed further corroboration, Reginald Finger, an Evangelical member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, recently announced that he would consider opposing an HIV vaccine — thereby condemning millions of men and women to die unnecessarily from AIDS each year — because such a vaccine would encourage premarital sex by making it less risky. This is one of many points on which your religious beliefs become genuinely lethal.

I’ve done some research into this statement about Reginald Finger and, unfortunately, can’t find the New Yorker article where it was made. But you can learn more about his views on this issue on Bionity.com, Wikipedia, Time Magazine, and Dr. Finger’s Web site. It’s clear from these sources that Dr. Finger is very interested in abstinence education, but whether he would oppose an HIV vaccine, as Mr. Harris claims, is extremely difficult to believe. Surely no one would go to that extreme in efforts to stop people from having sex.

More Than Just Sex

Of course, the book isn’t just about the sex education issue. Mr. Harris goes into great detail on a number of other issues, including the Bible as the word of God, morals as defined by the Bible, and the clash between science and religion, including the conflict between evolution and intelligent design. He also writes a bit about atheism and the Christian view that atheists are “evil.”

Mr. Harris presents all of his arguments calmly, with many examples and quotes from the Bible. At no time does he become offensive — he remains quite reasonable throughout. Still, I know that what he has to say will trouble most devout Christians who read it. So although I think he hopes to reach these people, I doubt that he will succeed. Instead, he may reach the more moderate Christians who can look objectively at their beliefs and see how they might cause problems in today’s world.

My Thoughts on Extremists

I agree with much of what Mr. Harris says, but not all of it. He makes some very strong statements near the end of the book about Muslims that I find difficult to believe:

The idea that Islam is a “peaceful religion hijacked by extremists” is a fantasy, and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge…most Muslims are utterly deranged by their religious faith…

Maybe I’m naive, but I still like to think that most people want to live their lives in peace. So, unlike Mr. Harris, I cannot generalize like this about Muslims — or Christians, for that matter.

I see parallels between members of the Christian and Muslims faiths. Just as there are Christians who make God and the trappings of their religion part of their lives, I believe there are Muslims who do the same with Allah and the trappings of their religion.

Both religions have extremists. In America, we use the politically correct terms “Conservative Christians” or “Evangelical Christians” to describe these people. We also use the term “Radical Muslim” to refer to Muslim extremists. (Funny how we drop political correctness for the Muslims, isn’t it?)

But do these people control either religion? Do they speak for all of their fellow believers? I’d like to think they don’t — that there are reasonable members of both faith that know which parts of the Bible or Koran shouldn’t be taken literally in this modern world.

I Recommend It!

I recommend this book for anyone who is alarmed by the growing power of the religious right in America. It will help arm you with the facts and background information you need to:

• argue in favor of sex education programs that include birth control information, thus reducing unwanted pregnancies (and their social and economic impacts), abortions, and sexually transmitted disease
• fight back against the proposed teaching of intelligent design in public schools
• allow vaccinations to protect your daughter from HPV and, possibly, cervical cancer
• enable government funding to continue efforts to find cures for AIDS and other diseases — yes, even through the use of stem cells

If you are a true believer, I urge you to consider Mr. Harris’s arguments — and the arguments made by others like him — and look objectively at how your beliefs affect America and the rest of the world. While neither Mr. Harris nor I am saying that you should give up your belief in God and the values of your religion, you need to understand that some of your religious beliefs and values cannot be imposed on others without drastic consequences for all.

Got Something to Add?

I’ll leave the comments open for this post — at least until things start getting out of control. Remember three basic rules:

• No stating “facts” unless they are facts that can be backed up. (You can link to articles.)
• No nasty comments directed at me or other commenters. If you think we’re stupid or we’ll rot in hell, keep it to yourself. Just state your case without getting personal.
• Remember, what you say here really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. So don’t let the discussion get your blood pressure up. It ain’t worth it.

I will delete comments that don’t follow these rules. If you have a problem with this, read my Comment Policy to learn why.

Related Posts:

• The Rise of Idiot America
• Born Again into a Living Hope?
• Some Thoughts on Religion
• Congressman Says He Doesn’t Believe in God
• “Kingdom Coming”
• Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays?
• Reason Triumphs

Deep Thoughts, In Books athiesm, books, God, religion, review

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