I Bought a Nook Simple Touch

Authors Lock Screen

In my last post, I was contemplating jumping into the world of e-books by getting an e-ink reader.  I have done so. I also posted on my tech-focused blog about my adventures in rooting it.

My experience with the Nook Simple Touch so far has been very good.  I really like the convenience and neatness that e-book readers offer:  no physical books to store or degrade or lug around, customization, instant gratification.

Reading with my Nook

I bought a couple of dead tree books within the last few months that I hadn't gotten to reading yet.  I really wish they were e-books now.  In fact, instead of those, I have started reading a book that I got for 25 cents when the Google Play store was launching, just because it's an e-book.  It's not a bad read, it just illustrates how completely and utterly I wish to abandon paper books in favor of e-books, at least for novels.  I still prefer to read my paper Bible with all the notes I've made in it, and cross-references easily flipped back and forth to.  For heavy reading and research, the paper bound format still has some advantages, but for light, strictly sequential reading, there's no contest.  I went ahead and sold my Harry Potter books on eBay; when I want to read them again, I'll get the e-books.  I might do the same for my Game of Thrones series.

Calibre trumps e-book market fragmentation

I was worried about single-vendor lock-in with the Kindle.  I needn't have been, thanks to Calibre.  Calibre is wonderful.  It's an open-source e-book management app.  With the proper plugins (which were simple to install), DRM and formats are a non-issue.  I already had e-books from Kindle, Kobo, Google Play, and I recently got one from Nook.  All I had to do was download the files and drag them into the interface, and the DRM was stripped away.  I then plugged in my Nook, dragged the books to the icon, and all of the necessary conversions were performed for me.

I have only two issues with Calibre so far:

1. Books with Adobe's Adept DRM (Kobo, Google, etc.) aren't automatically stripped by the Calibre plugin.  Instead, I need to import them into the Adobe Digital Editions application and place them on my Nook from there.  Once they're on the Nook, I can import them into Calibre and strip the DRM (Nook uses a different DRM scheme than other ePub stores).
2. Sometimes when I download a cover for an e-book in Calibre, the cover doesn't display on my Nook.  I'm not sure what the root cause is, but these books' titles tend to begin with "The".  It's not for every "The" book nor dos it only affect "The" books, and I've gotten it to go away by picking a different cover.

Android Home Screen

All in all I'm happy with my choice of Nook.  I got a good price by combining a Foursquare/AMEX deal at Staples with a coupon code purchased on eBay.  I could have done the same with the Kindle, of course, but I also like the back grip and the physical forward and back buttons on the bezel, of which I was initially wary.  I wasn't too happy with the prospect of ads on the screensaver and home screen, or paying just to get rid of them.  What really settled it was the fact that the Nook was rootable.  I installed Goodreads and Ubersocial,  along with a weather widget and some simple games (and some other apps that I convinced myself I might want or need at some point.)

Goodreads Android App

My one complaint is that I wish the Nook would display progress in percent like other readers.  Instead, it assigns page numbers, which supposedly line up with those in an actual, published book somewhere (as if that's relevant)--but only one arbitrary edition of it.  The only use I can think of for this is for a book club discussion group, or if you want to cite it in a paper the old fashioned way.  It makes it so I have to carefully select which particular edition of a book I want to add to my reading list on Goodreads, so the updates will be accurate.

I took some advice and got a case/screen cover/skin package.  It's nice not to have to worry about the screen getting scratched, or the device taking a hard fall, and the skin makes it look pretty.

BundleMonster Leather Case

Thanks to Calibre's ability to strip DRM, convert formats, and collect and organize my e-books, I have felt quite free to shop around at different stores.  Kobo has had some great discount codes lately, and Amazon tends to have lower prices in general.  At some point in the future, when my next e-book reader purchase comes up, I might just opt for a Kindle.  In the meantime, I'm glad I got the Nook.

Also, today there was this piece of news, which is most likely a very good thing for the Nook ecosystem.

Looking for advice on an e-ink e-book reader

I'm thinking of getting an e-ink based touch e-book reader.  Does anyone have any knowledge in this market who would like to share their experience?

I did some research yesterday at Best Buy, and I liked size and feel of the Kobo Touch.  I also liked the Nook Simple Touch, but I'm not sold on the shape.  I could see how having the side buttons and the grip on the back would be nice for turning pages with one hand, but the bezel struck me as ugly and bulky.  They didn't have the Sony Reader, so I didn't get a chance to look at that.  The quality of the displays (at least, for the display models that were functional) were roughly equivalent, and very good.  I'm not interested in paying extra for a 3G data connection.  WiFi is enough.  In a pinch, if I'm on the road and want to download and read something, I can simply do it on my phone.

I'm not too inclined do go with the Kindle, simply because of the single-vender lock-in.  Amazon has intentionally made their Kindle devices incompatible with DRM'd books from other e-book sellers, and they have their own format that excludes other devices from consuming their e-books.  If I were in the market for a color e-book and multimedia tablet device, the Kindle Fire is unquestionably the best quality device currently available in that class, but I already have a smartphone, and I'm planning to get a tablet-style Windows 8 computer at some point to replace my aging laptop.

Amazon's proprietary lock-in does allow them to innovate faster than the rest of the market, but this mostly has benefits for dynamic multimedia content.  I'm interested in reading.  If I want a multimedia experience, other devices are more suited to that purpose.

I already read e-books on my phone, and it has apps for each of the major e-book sellers.  The point of wanting a dedicated reader device is to have an e-ink screen for reading books, which is much easier on the eyes and battery life.  Unfortunately, my choice of device will narrow down where I can shop for books.  I recently started using Calibre to manage my (currently small) e-book collection.  Calibre can convert e-books between different formats and devices.  At least, I know it will do so for ePub e-books, DRM or not.  I'm not sure whether it can take a DRM-protected Kindle book and put it on another device, or put a DRM-protected ePub book on a Kindle.  If it could do that, I would consider getting a Kindle.  Perhaps someone with more experience with Calibre can weigh in on this.

One piece of functionality in the "nice to have" category would be Goodreads integration.  I use Goodreads to share comments and updates on (and sometimes quotes from) what I'm reading.  If one of these devices had built-in support for Goodreads, that would be a plus.  I know the Kobo device has something similar.  I'm reading through the Hunger Games trilogy in the Kobo app on my phone, and it has little achievement pop-ups, similar to video game achievements.  If you connect it to Facebook it will publish those updates (I have avoided doing so).  What I want to share with social networks isn't arbitrary automatic blurbs:  it's my thoughts on what I'm reading.  You know:  something my friends might actually care about and want to engage in.

The purpose of this post is to elicit advice and discussion.  Please tell me about your experience with (or shared interest in) e-book readers!

Book Recommendation: Seven Days That Divide the World

I was too late in formulating my question to be able to ask it at John Lennox's recent lecture at UPC in Seattle.  I was going to ask him whether and to what extent he believed the generally accepted scientific narratives of the history of the universe, the earth, and man were consistent with the Bible. 

I thought it a meaningful and relevant question to ask him because he regularly engages in dialogue and debates with atheist philosophers and scientists, and therefore he is likely to have a well-informed opinion, and one he has put a great deal of thought and criticism into.

Fortunately I was able to speak with him afterwards, and his response was to direct me to his latest book, which I ordered  as soon as I got home (they had sold out of copies there before the lecture ended).

It was a very quick read, and densely packed with information and analysis.  I highly recommend it to anyone who desires to engage in a grown-up discussion of the Genesis creation account and the controversy between creation and evolution.

Kindle Controversy: It's All About DRM In The End

Amazon's Kindle 2 has a new feature that's caused a bit of a commotion: it can read to you out loud. Upon learning this, the Authors Guild and publishing companies demanded that Amazon disable this feature on their books. Amazon has said that they will comply with the request, but maintains that what they are enabling is perfectly legal, and that they're only disabling it in order to be nice. Wil Wheaton recently posted on his blog his thoughts on the text-to-speech controversy from an author's perspective. Wil's point is that a computer converting text to speech isn't realistically going to compete with a person performing a reading (even in the future), and therefore it's in an author's best interest to not oppose the value-added feature that the Kindle provides for e-books. It's a purely pragmatic take on the discussion, but there are links there to a larger discussion, mostly coming from a legal perspective as well. The crux of the matter is that when you buy an audio book, you are paying for a copy of a performance of a work, and when you buy a text book you are paying for a copy of the work, not a performance, but that the whole point of having that copy is generate as many private, transient performances as you want (either in your head or out loud) by reading it. Even if reading silently doesn't count, the right to read aloud is still undeniable. Using a machine to read it, therefore, does not violate the copyright. The value added by an audio book over a text version is that, in addition to containing the creativity of the author embedded in the text, it also provides a rendition of the book by a skilled performer. Machine generated audio does not add any creative input, though it may add convenience, but convenience that used to be provided by a person and is now provided by technology is called "progress", not "copyright infringement". If Amazon were providing a service whereby they would read books to you, they would be selling a performance based on a copyrighted work, which would violate the author's copyright. They're not doing this though. What they're doing is selling a performer. This performer is owned by the people who want e-books read to them, therefore the reading of the book occurs completely within the control and ownership of the consumer, and is not fundamentally different from the other way the Kindle interprets the data that constitutes an e-book: displaying the words. If copyright were being violated in this situation (which it's not), it would be the consumer who initiated the text-to-speech event and owns the device and was therefore guilty, not the seller of the technology (which has significant non-infringing uses) that enabled it to happen. An audio book can be captured to text with software, just as a voice recording can be made from a text copy of a book. If a human does either one of these for private consumption, it is not a violation of copyright. The problem that the Author's Guild has is that they can (currently) charge more for an audio book than an e-book, and they don't want e-books to become a replacement product for audio books, thus lowering the demand for audio books. They see that text-to-speech, while not terribly impressive at the moment, will only get better as time passes and the technology is developed, and they don't want there to be a precedent stating that people are allowed to use machines to create an audio version of a book for their own use without the authors' permission. The copyright issue gets a little more complicated with digitally-delivered goods that have no physical component. If you buy a book, or a CD, or a piece of string with knots on it at irregular intervals, you can sell that physical object, and the copyright holder has no right to control the transfer of his work once he's sold it to you. This is known as the first-sale doctrine. The first-sale doctrine, however, does not apply to licensing. When you buy an e-book with your Kindle, Amazon doesn't transfer any goods to you. They don't, at least not technically, "sell" you anything. They "license" it to you, granting you the contractual right to maintain a digital copy, and use it only according to the rights specifically granted you by that license, but no more. Amazon has been granted the right to grant its customers these rights, but you don't have the right to grant them to anyone else, even if you try to transfer them to another person like you would an old book. If you owned a physical embodiment of the work, you could sell it as a used copy or give it to the person sitting next to you on a plane when you were done with it without permission of the author. With non-physical goods, there is no "sale" per se, only the granting of a license, and license terms can stipulate that they allow certain uses and forbid others. They can, for example, forbid iTunes music from being used as a ring-tone unless you paid for it again (this actually happened, until the public backlash caused a PR problem for Apple and they re-negotiated with the record companies). They can also, just as easily, forbid you from processing the digital copy of the book licensed to you in any way except to display it as text on a screen. The question of whether or not the particular license granted to Amazon's Kindle customers permits or disallows the use of text-to-speech software is therefore not the point, since if they really wanted to, publishers could refuse to license e-book sales through Amazon until Amazon was willing to change the terms imposed on readers to their liking. Therefore I think this all boils down to the issue of the marketing of purely digital goods. As consumers, we need to make sure that licenses are broad enough to guarantee that the usage rights that we reasonably expect to have with a physical copy are not curtailed simply to perpetuate the outdated revenue streams that the publishing companies currently rely on. The best way to ensure this is to refuse to buy digital goods with DRM. DRM allows the content producers to be the judge, jury, and executioners in the question of what we get to do with the digital goods we paid for. Without DRM, it is the courts, not the content controllers, that get to decide whether or not it is fair use for me to have a machine read me my book, or to rip a CD into MP3 format, or trigger the playing of a song clip on a phone such that it occurs simultaneous to an incoming call. This is as it should be. It shouldn't be DRM that stops me from breaking copyright law, it should be the fact that it would be illegal to do so. The fact that consumers have abused the freedom that comes with DRM-free media does not make me any more inclined to become the customer of a company which will abuse DRM to prevent me from doing legal things, and treat me like a criminal in the process. Rejecting DRM is, in my humble opinion, the best way for consumers to make sure that licensing a digital download grants consumers the same rights as would the sale of physical media. DRM is, at best, a rental model, and should be viewed as such by those who think they are making purchases.

Goodness

"Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger--according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted the wrong way." ~C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity) Some friends from BSF and I are doing a book study on Mere Christianity. In addition to generally discussing the ideas that the book brings up, we are attempting to compare what Lewis says with what the Bible says, and make a note of where in the Bible the scriptural principles that he mentions and utilizes are.

Harry Potter

This is one of those comments to someone else's blog that got out of hand, and so I decided to post it here too. For context, please see the original post at The IBEX Scribe's blog. I also want to stress that I completely respect the opinions of others who have looked at the same things and come to different conclusions. My sister talked me into reading the first Harry Potter book, and I was instantly hooked. What was it that hooked me? Was it some giddy excitement and curiosity about witchcraft? No. [In fact, the Harry Potter books don't ever come close to discussion or description (much less glorification) of real witchcraft. There are no seances, no offering of one's self to spirits, no spirit guides or familiars, no psychotropic drugs or gnostic "secret knowledge" that one attains to. It's just candyland fantasy magic: no different from A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mary Poppins, and Peter Pan. I think it's the word "witch" that gets it into so much trouble, but "wizardess" doesn't roll off the tongue so well.]⁰ The Harry Potter books are not about witchcraft or magic at all. Those are merely the backdrop. They allow the author to engage in creativity constructing the universe of the books, but ultimately that universe is made of the same moral fiber as our own. Magic is not the point, it is means to an end. The point of the books is that in this fantastical world, these kids are thrown into surprisingly recognizable moral dilemmas and forced to make decisions. The kind of decisions that, on a smaller scale, we are all forced to make each day. Love vs. power; who are my friends and how do I treat them? How do I treat people who don't matter to my social group? What do I want to do with my life? What is worth living for? What is worth dying for? The Harry Potter books, amid all the broomsticks, potions, wands, and snogging, are about righteousness, and it is righteousness that is upheld through the force of Professor Dumbledore's character, and the lessons that Harry is in the process of learning. That process, just like in real life, is a messy one. Neat, tidy moral lessons are not for children: they are for cowards. Why do you think the book of Judges exists? No, they are not for children who cannot distinguish fantasy from reality. This distinction is not strictly one of age, but of temperament and maturity. Yes, that's right: children have unique personalities.¹ One thing that makes the books appealing is that they treat children as people, not things. When I was little, I always considered myself a rational being. I did not like being talked down to. I did not like it when books portrayed children in one dimension. I was not a paper doll: I was a person, and I was alive, and it was refreshing to find a world in which my little life, or one like it, was taken seriously. Harry Potter provides an opportunity for children to realize that their decisions, even though they are "just a kid" are no less important than the ones made by everyone else. It matters to God: it should matter.

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⁰ This paragraph was not in the original comment ¹ I added the words "and maturity" to this paragraph.

Books

Finished Cagebird.

I wouldn't recommend it, although I appreciated its art. The first two were much more... palatable. Like the previous two books her storytelling was artfully delivered, but not with as much inventiveness plot-wise, almost as if Lowachee got trapped by the arc or her own story, and all she could think to do was tie up the loose ends. There were seriously zero surprises. Here's hoping that didn't happen to George Lucas.

That leaves me with 1 1/4 books left in my "stack." If I drag my feet, it might last me until Half-Bood Prince comes out. I took a break in Lewis' Studies In Words to read this one. I intend to finish it up next.

Wandering Thoughts

This thought started here, but it was getting too long for a comment, and it was mostly about me. Beck's blog is not about me.

I think I burned myself out reading Dave Hunt's book. I started reading it again, and realized that the reason I had lost the will to continue reading was that it had gotten inane, and so I cut my losses, returned the book to its owner, and tore through a good Science Fiction novel.

I hate quitting halfway through something, but it had to be done, and I'm not sorry. I'm not sorry that I started reading it, and I'm not sorry that I stopped when I did.

Good books are a great way to get my mind in a thinking mood. I think this is mostly because I like the kind of books that make you think, and so I consider them good. I hope at least that I am not alone in this.

When I read the article that beck linked to, I thought about Ephesians 4:14, where those who do not mature are tossed about by every wind of doctrine. I've actually been thinking a lot about Eph 4:11-16 ever since my trip to Canada, and more recently it came up when we went through Ephesians in BSF, but even further back to a missions conference I went to in San Jose, and a talk that a friend of mine gave at a youth camp.

I've heard a lot of well-meaning teachers say, especially to young people, that they need to be out preaching the gospel to everyone they meet, because that's how you fulfill the "Great Commission" (Matthew 28:18-20). It has led to some good, but for many of those young people I think they were doing it out of guilt, and not love. Guilt is fear. There is no fear in love.

Jesus commands us to go and "make disciples of all the nations," but does that just mean preach at them until they convert? Preaching is good, but if that's all we do, we will have lots of very shallow Christians, who will fall easy prey to the next fad: Gnosticism, Humanism, Yoga, Atkins, Islam, whatever. My point is that that's not all that Jesus said to do, in fact, it's just the beginning, referred to as evangelism or 'planting.' He also said, "teaching them to observe all that I commanded you." Plants need to be watered. Making diciples goes far beyond "fire insurance" salvation. Diciples are Mini-Me's of Christ. Little copies. Exactly like Him in every way: one eighth His size (except for that last part).

We are fulfilling the great commission when we are encouraging one another to increasingly imitate Christ. This is why Ephesians 4 declares emphatically that the spiritual gifts ("Lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age.") are all for the express purpose of building up every single believer to complete maturity and perfect knowledge⁰ of the Son of God. I'm not trying to minimize the role of evangelists, I am simply reminding us that there are other, equally important, roles that should not be ignored. A growing church is one in which each member is personally growing in their faith. Do not mistake the effect this will have for the other kind of "growing" church, the kind that merely increases in numbers.

There's a Bible conference this weekend, and I've had this issue nagging me for a while now, so I thought I had better formulate my thoughts a little bit before then. I have this sneaking feeling that since my dad couldn't make it, they would make up for it by asking me to speak. Not that they have, mind you. If they were going to do that (and they weren't sadists) they would have warned me by now. However, I wouldn't put it past them to give me a sing talk or the Sunday School lesson. Don't tell them (and you know who I mean by "them," those of you whom I am addressing) I'm preparing anything, but I will be prepared. The last talk I gave I had twenty minutes notice. Thanks, Todd :-Þ

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⁰ "Knowledge" meaning intimate acquaintance: to know someone, rather than something. "I know Joe Blow" vs. "I know about Joe Blow."

Where Does My Time Go?

I just got a book that I ordered a while ago: Cagebird. It's the third in a trilogy of science fiction novels, and it just came out. When I went to put it in my room I realized that I have a stack of books that I'm planning on reading and it's six inches high. Maybe it's a good thing athena is RAM-less for a week or two.

You may be wondering what you get out of all of this, because, well, you're very selfish. And I support that. Why should you, random person who likely doesn't see me very often (if at all), care that I have a stack of books that I am resolved to spend more time reading?

The answer is that when I read, my mind gets into a more--if you can imagine such a thing--analytical mode; I "think better," if you will. Besides the increase in analiticality⁰, I also have more material, and more time to process, plus a greater desire to share my ponderings on this my pulpit of pontification.

So: I resolve to read this week. I've been a bit bogged down in Dave Hunt's ramblings, but I think if I get through him, I can get to some Orson Scott Card. I fugure it's a good idea to alternate between theological works and science fiction so as to keep my fantasy bug happy, and get to study intriguing and practical issues concerning the most important matter in the universe.

Speaking of bogging down, I'm going to go to bed now so as not to bog you down and to get a good night's rest before work tomorrow. Maybe I'll even crack open a book afterwards.

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⁰ It's a word if I say it's a word! Seriously. English is delightfully extemsible.

I Am Ender Wiggin

I have this to say to 6 Foot, Judge Judy, Maximus, and Don Efrain: j00 4|2 pWN3D!⁰

So if you're wondering who Ender¹ is and how it's possible for me to have such l337 5NYp|2 5|<!11Z², you need to read a book by Orson Scott Card entitled Ender's Game. It's about a kid genius who gets sent to a battle school in orbit along with various other child prodigies. The purpose of the battle school is to produce battle commanders capable of defeating a race of insectoid hive beings who tried to wipe out the humans seventy years ago. A large part of their training in battle tactics involves a game best described as zero-gravity laser tag. Orson Scott Card is a great author and if you're at all interested in science fiction I recommend reading this book. There are two tracks of sequels to Ender's Game: one that follows Ender's interplanetary (and very long, due to time dilation) travels, and one that follows his battle school friends' exploits as they influence global politics. One of the purposes of all (good) science fiction is to construct an artificial relaity and use it to examine real-world political/social/personal/philisophical/whatever issues and how they work themselves out in a projected future.

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⁰ l337 Translation: "You are owned!"

¹ Tonight I played laser tag for the first time ever with the Tacoma YP. I chose the alias "Ender." We played two rounds. The second round I got 2nd place. It seems the guy who got first place spends his life there (he wasn't part of our group). Anyway, I, a total n00b, pwn3d everyone else.

² l337[gamer slang: "elite"] sniper skills

I finished reading that book

Note: if you click above on the title, you will be linked to the closest thing I could find (it appears to be a different edition (I read the third edition), and from the looks of it, it's been adapted to better fit the market on this side of the pond, but that's probably mostly just the cover art talking) on amazon.⁰

I finished my book about English. I enjoyed reading it very much, although I must admit the parts concerning events over a hundred years ago were a lot more comfortable for me to read than the more recent sections. The reason being, that along with all of the usual interesting nuances and developments, it was charged with controversy of interpretation. Where our language is going next, and how it will get there, is a political, economic, social, and cultural battle being waged by forces beyond the control af any one person or group of people. Will English decay into mutually unintelligible dialects, but still be preserved in its dead form as a lingua franca for diplomacy and trade? Will an international standard be enforced through legislation, only to stifle its further evolution, rendering it unfit for the task of expressing new innovations in culture, and technology? Meh!¹

Writing in the 80's the authors had no idea what the Internet would do for English. The closest they came was describing an age of "satellites and telefax." The state of linguistics in the 80's (what with the newfangled tape recorders) was fascinated with oral communication. For now, at least, the state of technology seems optimized for written communication. I predict that in the future the Internet will become more and more of a multimedia experience, but I am unable to say to what extent text will remain its primary venue (with corporations and a few individuals supplying the bulk multimedia content), thus retaining written language the primary means of actual individual expression, or even begin to describe the rate at which this will happen. Not that the whole internet is in English. I'm very glad it's not, or I wouldn't get to practice any of my Spanish in this God-forsaken cauldron of assimilation known as the state of Washington. Come to think of it, I haven't been to a Spanish website in forever.

*Sigh* I still do listen to my Spanish CDs, but I haven't added to the collection since I've been up here. There aren't any good stations, and so I never hear any new songs that I like. I should start listening to Spanish pop music streams on my computer. */Sigh*²

If you stepped into a time machine³ and got out in the 1980's, I think you would be able to readily explain that "blog" is a term that will be coined around the turn of the century, and that it means a diary transmitted over a computer network, hence its etymology ("web-log"), but would have great difficulty explaining the context of blog, given that today's Internet is nothing like anything ever thought of before⁴.

I also can't predict cataclysmic cultural upheavals, which play a big role in linguistics. War has fallen out of fashion as a means of spreading language culture, at least in the conventional ways of annihilation, conquest, colonialism, imperialism, and--oh, that's right: now we've graduated to "nation-building."

Writing, in whatever language or dialect, will I think never lose its importance. It is no longer necessary for communicating over time, but it is the simplest way to deliberately compose. ⁵Other compositions (besides oral composition--which doesn't work too well if your brain leaks like a seive) are usually made first in writing, tried out, edited, and then presented as a whole. Plus, all you really need is a semi-flat surface and a marking implement.

⁰My apologies for nested parentheses to those of you who don't write code for a living.
¹Even now I contribute to the inevitable decay. w00t!
²Not a typo.
³one that travels backwards (these are a bit harder to make than the forward kind)
⁴to corroborate or debunk this claim, consult science fiction archives over 10 years old
⁵for example, this entry has taken over an hour to compose (which is why I wish the "Time and Date" field at the bottom was dynamic--it's pretty simple to implement in JavaScript) during which time I have added footnotes, inserted and re-ordered paragraphs, and in general formed the chaos resultant from hacking my mind into the beautifully crystallized, perfect, and coherent work of literature you see here. (I will not accept the Pulitzer, but please feel free to make all the cash donations you wish).