Book People Archive

Re: Please share this with all colleagues and people you know that may help

bill said:
>    My question is, why are these putative public-service 
>    messages coming to us via the book-people list?

because the iraq war is draining the public treasury
that _could_ be used to digitize our cultural heritage?

in my recent "ok, let's make a budget" thread, i figured
a budget of $250-million would digitize the 10 million
unique volumes in the 5 libraries working with google.

i haven't been able to confirm the figure, but one source
says that we're spending $177 million _every_single_day_
on the war in iraq.   doesn't this waste offend anyone else?
it would be very sad if i'm the only person bothered here...

we don't have to debate the morality of a war that has lasted
several _years_ past its "mission accomplished" date, because
yes, that _would_ be outside the scope of this list, but i'm just
talking about the dollar cost of _two_measly_days_ right now.
(and that doesn't figure the intangible cost of the _lives_ lost.)

call it "off-topic" if you want.   dismiss it as "familiar", i don't care.
you're going to be hearing it more and more often, from more and
more people, as time goes on, and the price of gas goes up and up,
and young people realize their future is going into a bad mortgage.

-bowerbird