Radosh.net

If reading Rapture Ready – or at least the chapter that appeared in The New Yorker – has left you with an interest in all things Bible-publishing related, you'll want to check out this article by Chris Faraone in the Boston Phoenix on how many of the innovations in e-reading on the iPhone are coming from Bible aps.

If you want to see what a 21st century reading experience should look like — one that enables you to bookmark, notate, listen to, and share passages instantly on Facebook and Twitter — the marketplace you're looking for is e-Bibles. ... [O]ne version with a social-networking component even allows believers to search for other folks who want to chat about specific chapters. More so, it can tap a smart phone's GPS to locate local prayer groups with similar affinities.

And it is e-Bibles that have helped push technology forward, by allowing users to seamlessly flip between scanning on an iPhone and reading on a laptop (without losing their page). Ditto the ability to switch, mid-stream, between Standard English and dozens of translations, or jump to an audio-book version, while keeping place to the sentence. Learned readers can even teleport from one particular chapter/verse in the King James Version to the same place in the New International Version. The future is now.

Is it? The first set of features would translate well to other books – the ability to bookmark and annotate is already common on e-readers – and might even improve the quality of my Twitter feed. (New York magazine book critic Sam Anderson, is already tweeting the best sentence he reads each day, though presumably he has to type all 144 characters himself.) But would anyone really use their GPS to find a book club nearby that's discussing the latest Dan Brown or Elizabeth Gilbert opus? Or toggle between a half-dozen translations of Homer or Tolstoy? Even Faraone recognizes that some of these extras may only be useful for the Bible:

Still, the Bible's greatest asset for e-book adaptation is its age-old annotation, and e-Bible developers have been inspired by operability. Users can switch between languages and translations because the Bible has been parsed the same way forever. (Trying to accomplish the same thing with, say, the unabridged James Patterson collection would be considerably more labor intensive.)

But why would anyone would try that with Patterson's novels? Isn't the plain text enough? Yes, some non-fiction could use the extras – I'd probably be getting a lot more out of Alex Ross' The Rest Is Noise if I had the companion media from his website more readily available – but most books, both fiction and non-fiction, are written to be read as is. And while we may start to see collectors' edition e-books full of DVD-type extras – deleted chapters, early drafts, editors' comments, author interviews – the way most of us do the majority or our reading will not change simply because the form of the book is now digital.

Which is fine. E-readers, like iPods, will change the way we buy, carry, and store books. [This is a potential boon for those of us who find our apartments overwhelmed with hardcovers and paperbacks, though some folks are upset that we won't know how smart they are unless we see Poe and Artaud on their shelves. Linda Holmes thinks we should rely on "rely on behavior and conversation for that," but that's far too much work.] But the way we read will probably stay the same. The E-Bibles succeed not because they transform the particular way we read the Bible, but because they match it. E-readers will succeed based on how well they do the same for the rest of literature.

7:46 PM :: Comments (2)

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon.

Rules & Tips

For al in la's unofficial results and comments go here.

5:23 AM :: Comments (170)

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon.

•Last week's results. •Rules and tips.

First Place:
"OK, I brought you to Rome. Now blow me." -- Anonymous

Second Place:
"Wait a minute, the Coliseum is in a densely populated area with many buildings surrounding it, this doesn't make any sense." -- Dave W

Third Place:
"Oh good, we're at VIVIIIIXXXI Street. It's the next left." -- Rose Fox

Honorable Mention:
"Really? This is the shit they're giving us to work with this week?" -- Stephan Cox

"Because VII VIII IX! Ha ha ha ha!" -- Glenn

"What did I tell you? Isn't that tree spectacular?" -- Richard H

"I can't stop! There's no zero!" -- glimester

The "Sucking Up to the Judge" Award (actually some competition this week):
"The powers here were Byzantine." -- CRC

2:09 AM :: Comments (137)

Picture this: The year is 1960, and you're an advertising executive. You've been given the campaign for a movie produced by Mike Todd Jr., in a new process called Smell-o-Vision. In this amazing new cinematic wonder, various odors will waft through the movie theater, keyed in to visuals on the screen in Scent of Mystery: a load of bread, flowers, a pipe, etc.*

It's a groundbreaking idea--a true milestone.

So you sit down at your desk, determined to compare Smell-o-Vision to earlier breakthroughs: The first moving pictures. And the dawn of sound, of course.

Suddenly, it all comes together, and you've got the most amazing ad line ever:

FIRST They Moved

THEN They Talked

NOW They Smell

*Since Mike Todd Jr. is not John Waters and this is not Polyester, there is no dog poop.

(Via the Mobius Home Video Forum, where I nabbed the image.)

1:32 PM :: Comments (3)

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon.

Rules & Tips

WINNER
"At least 5 of us are going to need you to provide us with your best oral presentation skills, if you know what I mean." -- Glenn
SECOND PLACE
"You're here early." -- Francis
HONORABLE MENTION
"For a second there I thought I'd walked in on the proceedings of the SEC." -- Lugar

For more Honorable Mentions and a Judge's Comment for each, visit al in la's blog

1:48 AM :: Comments (154)

There's been plenty of discussion on this blog regarding how the contortions involved in media self-censorship often transform what would otherwise be a simple report involving the use of foul or abusive language into an impenetrable thicket of euphemisms that leaves the reader at a loss to understand what the hell actually happened and who would supposedly be offended.

Of course, sometimes the meaning is perfectly clear, as in this example from – you guessed it – The New York Times:

Otherwise it may take a practiced eye and ear to realize that a popular Anglo-Saxon expletive is acceptable in a PG-13 movie as long as it is only heard once and does not refer to a sexual act.

Short of rendering the word in question as f--k, its hard to see how A. O. Scott – or, more likely, his editors – could have been clearer about the word in question while still keeping the article suitable for a family paper. Well, unless he just wrote out fuck, since, as he just noted, even as prudish a body as the MPAA is okay with 13-year-olds hearing the word in a non-sexual context, and it's not like anyone under 13 (or 30) is going to read this article. [The one part of Scott's phrase that doesn't help to clarify anything is his reference to an "Anglo-Saxon expletive." Pace anyone who still says "pardon my French," all of the popular expletives come from the Germanic side of the language.]

But Scott does give us a clue as to why newspapers still engage in this charade:

It is easy to scoff at that rating only if you have never received angry letters from parents or grandparents appalled by profanity.

So journalists, like movie producers, keep their language clean not because they're worried about what children might hear or read, but because they're concerned about what adults might worry about what children might hear or read. Which means that until the members of a profession that claim to stand up to presidents and CEOs show their willingness to stand up to Grandpa Simpson, it looks like I'll have plenty of things to post here.

12:05 AM :: Comments (6)

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon.

•Last week's results. •Rules and tips.

First Place:
"I guess you're wondering why I called you all here today." -- Alan Weld

Second Place:
"Lordy, but I'm proud'a today's haul. Bagged and stuffed myself a squirrel, a coon, a porcupine, 'n' a cowboy. Gurgle." -- Daniel

Third Place:
"I'm cornered." -- mypalmike

Honorable Mention:

"Which one of you shit behind my desk?" -- Austin D

"Gol-durng it, somehow I gots to get all four of you into town, and I can't leave the porcupine alone with the baby, the raccoon alone with the porcupine, or the squirrel alone with the raccoon." -- Trout Almondine

"Which of you rootin' tootin' cowpokes has been stealing the post-it notes?" -- TG GIbbon

Yay references!:

"On the telegraph, nobody knows you're a squirrel, raccoon, porcupine or baby." -- Richard H

"The raccoons here are obese." -- jf

4:01 AM :: Comments (195)

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon. (Limit 25 words per cap, five caps per person.)

Rules & Tips

WINNER
Caption: Can you ask the CFO to come in here with a mop, please?
Anti-Caption: "Ms. Wagner, I seem to have a nasty stomach bug....I just soiled my chair and the floor through my overalls. Can you ask the CFO to come in here with a mop, please?"-- m ham rant

HONORABLE MENTION
No Mr. Bond, I expect him to try. The bastard is standing there like a statue.--CRC

SUPER BOWL BONUS: al in la has left a comment for every Anti-Caption submitted last week. Click here to see for yourself!

11:08 AM :: Comments (122)

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon.

•Last week's results. •Rules and tips.

Note: I will not be enforcing the 25 word limit, but if your caption is excessively long, I may just not read it. 5 entries per person.

First Place:
"Here's the shopping list...I'm late for work. Gimme a kiss -- And GET YOUR BARE ASS OFF THE COUNTER TOP -- we cook food there! Jeez..." -- m hartman

Second Place:

"Here's that sample of the wall color you asked for...oh and you have cancer" -- The shark

Third Place:
"Doof deeef ffeexxil plexil booot glepglop feemie" -- Those Fuckers

Honorable Mention:
"You have a benign tumor on your occipital lobe. We're planning a non-invasive laser procedure that will shrink the tumor and return your eyes to normal." -- Beth

"Your transgender process is almost complete, Pat. however, since most of your chart is gone, remind me which direction we're going again." -- LV

"Take me to your litre of urine." -- Rob

"I cheated on my MCATs" -- Gretchen

"Now Mr. Jones, if you could just get down from the table and put on your pants, we can get started with your dental checkup." -- Snooki N. Tish

"I understand it seems a bit odd for census-taking, but may I please have a sample of your stool?" -- Tim H

"What the fuck is wrong with your face??" -- johnnyo

The "I'm a regular here, see!?!" award:

"No Mr. Bond, I expect you to have a stye."

"The homo sapiens here are not what they seem."

"Facsimile, you crazy bastard. How are you?" --NAMBY

9:25 AM :: Comments (130)

Friends, it has come to this.

Eight months ago, as radosh.net began to creak into senescence, I explained why I'd do my best to keep it alive rather than pull the plug and make the leap to Twitter.

While that explanation reflected the best information available to me at the time, the statement, as they say, is no longer operative. Among the many ways in which my personal situation has changed since then, I now have even less time than before for blog-length posts, and, perhaps more importantly, I have a new outlet for the kinds of things I used to blog about.

All of which is to say you can now find me on Twitter under the handle @danielradosh. (Some Czech guy with the first name Rados is squatting on @radosh, though I hope to wheedle it away from him eventually).

That doesn't mean I'm shutting down radosh.net. I'll leave the lights on here as long as al in la wants to keep running the anti-caption contest -- and every now and then my new co-bloggers and I may weigh in on something or other. For the most part, though, Twitter will be my new home for Huckapoo, self-censorship and Why Not Bill Keane updates, as well as anything else that can be squeezed into 140 characters.

I'd like to figure out a way to feed a Twitter group of radosh.net approved folks to this site, if only so it doesn't feel too empty here -- like when New York City painted colorful curtains and flowerpots on the boards they used to cover the windows in abandoned buildings. If anyone with time on their hands wants to help me do that (and maybe some other blog housekeeping) I'd be happy to hear from you.

Be seeing you.

10:34 AM :: Comments (13)

Submit the worst possible caption for this New Yorker cartoon. (Maximum five entrys per person, 25 words per caption.)

Rules & Tips
WINNERS

FIRST PLACE
"Hi, wanna see my confetti impression?"-- TG Gibbon