Bye-Bye Books

April 3, 2010, will long be remembered as the day the book died. Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating, just the tiniest bit… (and, I realize that only a total Apple fanboy like myself would assume that a couple generations in the future we’d still be referring to such tablet computers as the iPad, in general, as “iPads” – though I guess that’s what Star Trek predicted with its PADDs – and, hey, how come Trek didn’t get any flak on the feminine hygiene front, huh?). But, I’ve seen and touched the iPad for myself now, after fighting off some vicious crowds at the Freehold Mall Apple Store this past Saturday, and I have to say I was instantly lusting this device. It’s exactly the perfect size – makes the iPhone and iPod Touch seem very small and awkward to use once you’ve held the iPad, but it’s not so big that it just looks like you chopped a notebook computer in half, like some earlier attempts at tablet PCs did. The iBooks feature is just what I’ve been waiting for. I know, there’s the old Kindle with it’s e-ink screen that’s supposed to be better on the eyes. But the iPad is color, and has so much other functionality with web, movies, photos, music, games, etc. Plus, I’d rather have something backlit that I can read upside-down lying on the couch or in bed, than the Kindle which requires an outside light source. I know, backlight is bad for your eyes… we’ll, I already spend most of my day in front of a computer screen, so I don’t think it will make much difference at this point. Whatever the case, the iPad rocks, you’ve just got to check it out, whether you are PC or Mac or Droid or whatever… it’s just about the coolest gadget I’ve ever seen. I think it will really speed up the shift to digital books that Kindle and other e-readers started, just like the iPod mainstreamed digital music, even though mp3 players had been around for a while before it.

So, stash away any current books you have in a safe place – maybe they will be worth something someday as relics of a simpler age…

– Nigel Matrix

Bender At Hogwarts

Time Travelling Robot Eradicates Magical Messenger Birds

Owls: useful couriers or scourge of the year 3000?  Well, the Muggles of New New York certainly have no use for them.  It’s a running joke in the background of Futurama that owls have replaced pigeons as the most common avian pest.  Yet they serve the folk at Hogwarts so well in our time, or whatever timeless time it’s supposed to be in Potterland (technically, there are more Weasleys….shouldn’t it be Weasleyland?  A Weasleyverse? Anyway, there’s a lingering sense that the Potterverse takes place in the 70s or 80s, because there’s just not enough body piercings among the student population to make us believe otherwise.)

Bender, the sarcastic, hard-drinking, fun-loving Planet Express delivery crewman, is send back in time to steal all the precious artifacts in history by a bunch of clothing-optional aliens in Bender’s Big Score.  This leads to multiple copies of said droid arriving at a simultaneous point in the future, creating temporal paradox.  So maybe he stopped by Hogwarts in nineteen-whatever to pick up a Hoarcrux or two, and happened to notice the avian pest infestation along the way.  Poor Errol. Poor Hedwig. Poor Fawkes the Pheonix…I wonder how many times he had to respawn before Bender figured it out?  Probably depends on how much Old Fortran Malt Liquor he brought along…or how many times Bender played that classic 1980s arcade shoot-’em up, you know, the one with the fiery birds from outer space….