A World Without Electronics


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11 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

Oh, and I LOOOOVE them escalators that don't go up on them airports.  I was in an airport that didn't have it (was it Denver, @NeuroTypical?) and I audibly groaned...

THREE DEMOCRATS TAKEN TO CITY HOSPITAL IN CRITICAL CONDITION
Suffering from dehydration after five days stuck on broken escalator
Rescuers:  "It's a miracle they're alive"

 

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49 minutes ago, Vort said:
1 hour ago, anatess2 said:

 He got honked at by an old woman and that embarrassed him enough that he never forgot again.  Hah hah.

A perfect example of how technology cripples us. A driver not checking behind him because he expects his car to do so? Very, very not good. That's one reason I'm suspicious of backing-up cameras on cars.

That's nothing.  My car has a feature to help you not lock your keys in your car.  If the door is open and the key is in the ignition, the door won't lock.  You switch the lock switch, but the manual lock post thing pops back up.

So, of course, me in my brilliance:
- Left keys in ignition.
- Tried to lock open door on my way out of the car.
- Got annoyed when I noticed the door wouldn't lock, so I just pushed the lock post thing down manually.
- Actually figured out what I had done before the door was fully closed, but was so taken with annoyance for myself, I was unable to stop the door from closing. 

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5 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

I don't think you watched the video.  Where on earth did you get that he was tearing the book apart?

It is a technique to break in the book such that it lasts LONGER than randomly opening the book.  The process essentially spreads the stress along the spine in a fairly homogenous pattern to decrease point stresses that tend to cause the spine to crack.  With more distributed stresses, the spine lasts longer.  The binding lasts longer.

This technique was quite common back in your school days.  I'm surprised you never used it yourself.

In my experience, it's not possible to read a modern 900 page paperback fantasy novel without breaking the spine - they print too close to the spine, and the book is just too big.  But otherwise, yeah, one should go to extremes to protect their books.

those-monsters-206623.png

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36 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

I don't think you watched the video.  Where on earth did you get that he was tearing the book apart?

It is a technique to break in the book such that it lasts LONGER than randomly opening the book.  The process essentially spreads the stress along the spine in a fairly homogenous pattern to decrease point stresses that tend to cause the spine to crack.  With more distributed stresses, the spine lasts longer.  The binding lasts longer.

This technique was quite common back in your school days.  I'm surprised you never used it yourself.

I've seen people do it, but as I don't crack the spine at all (part of the group that knows how to read books without ever cracking the spine) it does far more damage than how I and some others read paperbacks. 

Cracking the spine in anyway weakens the glue/binding on it.  Sewn bindings tend to be made for this and won't be destroyed (but their spines won't crack either) and the pages are made so that they can be resewn when they eventually wear away.  High quality hardbacks (and LDS scriptures in many cases) have this.  Paperbacks being more glue than thread, are weakened by a break in the bindings in any fashion.  This method distributes the cracking towards the edge of the book rather than the center, but it just means that eventually the pages fall out in a different place rather than haphazardly with the normal spine breakage people do.

Of course, back in my school days, we didn't really use paperbacks at all.  There were the dime books which were paperbacks, but most of those that we used in school and found in the libraries were all hardbacks and normally higher quality than what you find today.  Most were sewn rather than glued.  The irony is, I think 95% of all those books no longer exist.  They probably went to dumps or were burned in incinerators because I have not seen many of them for decades.  We had many children's books and series books that even adults these days do not remember.  Makes one wonder about all the books that have been written but lost to the tides of history as no one remembers them today.  Only a select few chosen by literature professors, or book publishers seem to wade the currents of the years to still exist, but most of the childhood books from my past are gone with no one the wiser for their passing.

Even those that did exist and still do (hardy boys, tom swift) are different than the original incarnations that I read as a boy.  Irony that they had quality printings but that did them no good anyways.  It is probable a low quality paperback printing of the hobbit (bound with glue rather than sewn) exists longer than those that were made to withstand the years for a longer period.

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47 minutes ago, JohnsonJones said:

I've seen people do it, but as I don't crack the spine at all (part of the group that knows how to read books without ever cracking the spine) it does far more damage than how I and some others read paperbacks. 

Cracking the spine in anyway weakens the glue/binding on it.  Sewn bindings tend to be made for this and won't be destroyed (but their spines won't crack either) and the pages are made so that they can be resewn when they eventually wear away.  High quality hardbacks (and LDS scriptures in many cases) have this.  Paperbacks being more glue than thread, are weakened by a break in the bindings in any fashion.  This method distributes the cracking towards the edge of the book rather than the center, but it just means that eventually the pages fall out in a different place rather than haphazardly with the normal spine breakage people do.

First, "cracking" the spine does not "tear it apart."  That was a bit dramatic to call it so.

Second, the method I was taught did not go to the extreme that this method did.  We didn't SHOVE A SOLID OBJECT into the crack between pages and flatten it out as he did.  We were taught to gently take a few pages at a time until it met minor resistance in a manner that did not "crack", but rather "stretched" each portion of the spine to distribute the movement along the entirety of the spine.  I've never seen it done for paperbacks.  I don't really see the point in doing it to paperbacks.  But the other versions on youtube that did it on hardback books had presenters that were really difficult to listen to.  So, I did not want to subject the forum to that.

Third, we were also taught to do a shortened version of the process ... each time we opened the book.

So, maybe, in a way I'd agree with you.  But I'd hardly call it tearing it apart.

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1 hour ago, zil said:

In my experience, it's not possible to read a modern 900 page paperback fantasy novel without breaking the spine - they print too close to the spine, and the book is just too big.  But otherwise, yeah, one should go to extremes to protect their books.

I don't know why anyone would want to use any special methods to preserve a paperback book.  That's the whole point of a paperback (IMO).  It's disposable.  If it survives, great.  If not, then get a new one if you ever want to read it again.

It is the hardback books that need the opening process.

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3 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

I don't know why anyone would want to use any special methods to preserve a paperback book.  That's the whole point of a paperback (IMO).  It's disposable.  If it survives, great.  If not, then get a new one if you ever want to read it again.

It is the hardback books that need the opening process.

Money? Paperbacks are not disposable to me.  And you can"t always just get a new one - they go out of print.

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3 minutes ago, zil said:

Money? Paperbacks are not disposable to me.  And you can"t always just get a new one - they go out of print.

If you plan on keeping something that long, then get a hardback.  Get it used and it's as cheap as a new paperback.

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1 minute ago, Carborendum said:

If you plan on keeping something that long, then get a hardback.  Get it used and it's as cheap as a new paperback.

If I were to replace all my paperbacks with hardbacks, it would cost me way more than I'm willing to spend - probably take a year's worth of money - and I will have no problem keeping all my paperbacks in usable condition until I die.  After that, I don't care who does what with them.  Likely, someone will throw them all in a trash can. :(

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I don't have a complaint about the ways we can use technology these days.  I use it enough myself.  My complaint is that it has taken away a lot of the interaction we used to have with people.  When I take a break at one of my jobs in our break room, I am the ONLY one not staring at my phone.  No one talks to each other.   I work in the fabric department so I cut fabric for people.  There are times I have to interrupt their phone conversations to ask a question or to verify an amount they want.  I get looks like, "How dare you interrupt my conversation."  It's made people so much ruder.

Even at family gatherings everyone is glued to their phone.  We seem to have lost some of the ability to have conversations.  All of the apps on the phones have taken that away or at least seem to be of more importance.

 

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  • pam featured this topic
On 5/7/2018 at 1:23 AM, Carborendum said:

Take away our electronics and we're done for as a nation.

No doubt the enemies of the US have come to the same conclusion and possibly have well developed strategies in place to quickly achieve this precise purpose.

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40 minutes ago, askandanswer said:

No doubt the enemies of the US have come to the same conclusion and possibly have well developed strategies in place to quickly achieve this precise purpose.

It would be a very difficult task.  And if we ever get the transparent aluminum thing going, then it will be nigh impossible.

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Teach children to use books & teach them how to use technology. No need to cherry pick just one or the other.

You might be surprised or maybe not how many missionaries seem to lack navigational skills without a gps. You also might be surprised how many are technologically illiterate (from places with an abundance of technology). Spend some time going with the local ones, it makes for an interesting case study about their upbringing and some of the very things being talked about here and the downfalls from it. (assuming it's a device mission)

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On ‎5‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 12:36 PM, zil said:

In my experience, it's not possible to read a modern 900 page paperback fantasy novel without breaking the spine - they print too close to the spine, and the book is just too big.  But otherwise, yeah, one should go to extremes to protect their books.

those-monsters-206623.png

I haven't read a book with actual pages since I got my Kindle around eight years ago.

The twentieth century is over.......................

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Guest MormonGator
Just now, mrmarklin said:

I haven't read a book with actual pages since I got my Kindle around eight years ago.

The twentieth century is over.......................

So true. I read before bed every night and then when I wake up in the morning, and I only read my Kindle too. The only paper books I read are comics. 

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1 minute ago, mrmarklin said:

I haven't read a book with actual pages since I got my Kindle around eight years ago.

The twentieth century is over.......................

I can't help it if you've forgotten the smell of a fresh paperback.  For fiction, give me paper.  For learning / reference, give me electronic.

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On ‎5‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 11:37 AM, Vort said:

A perfect example of how technology cripples us. A driver not checking behind him because he expects his car to do so? Very, very not good. That's one reason I'm suspicious of backing-up cameras on cars.

The real problem with rear view cameras and detection is that one gets used to them and ignores all the beeps.  I backed out of a parking spot and into a car waiting for a red light.  Totally embarrassing.:sorry:

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Guest MormonGator
1 minute ago, askandanswer said:

...... for older readers

My reading tastes are truly bizarre. I'll go to Daredevil comics to Elizabethan plays to transgressive fiction to suspense novels to pulp to 1920's modernist poetry. See @askandanswer? That's what a BA in English gets you. 

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