Slashdot Mirror
Waterproof Books
Ant sent in a bit about new Water proof books. From the article "The new dunkable books are made not from trees, but from plastic resins and inorganic fibers. Melcher Media, a New York-based publisher, is promoting books that are manufactured using a technology it calls "Durabooks." The books' pages don't absorb water, and they stretch instead of tearing. Other companies make waterproof books with standard wood-based paper that is heavily laminated in the printing process."
Cutting down trees is bad for the environment and all, but trees can be replanted. Wouldn't plastic resins and inorganic fibers be worse?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Let me guess... they'll next be applying this to make magazines more resistant to various bodily fluids!
There are 10 kinds of people in the world; those that understand binary and those that do not.
I'm normally bored of a porn mag by the time the pages are stuck together. So I can't really see the point.
Anyway, not being able to wipe it off just adds character. And it helps to stop other people stealing your porn.
I can see these being used for cookbooks; you can get some that are water/stain/food resistant, but a book made of this stuff would be better.
I print, therefore I am.
- can be produced from cheap (although toxic), non oil-related chemicals
- can (sometimes) be utterly destroyed to basic molecules by a simple (again) chemical spray
- can, often, be reusable.
Crude Oil...
- should have been digged for the start in profit for electricity based motor, and hydrogen cells
- pollutes (No ? Really?)
- Is a boon on some VERY lucrative business that thinks nothing of bribes, destruction or political instabilities to achieve their goals (no direct attacks, they ALL do it), while electricity can be produced almost anywhere on the planet today using green sources.
Plastics, as you know them today, are mostly polymers.
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Why is it that I feel I am the only person that cringes whenever a new plastic product is released? Bear with me here: I'm not a vegetarian, I don't belong to any save-the-whatever clubs (tho maybe I should), and I drink from my share of plastic coke bottles; but I try to recycle them, recycle my shopping bags, etc.
BUT I realize that some day, all this plastic will catch up with us. Take these new Saran (?) cutting sheets. Use them, then just throw them away. I HATE that phrase. It's morally repugnant to me. Use, then RECYCLE!!!! Anybody who can take pride in using something, then "throw[ing] it away" is really, really ignorant. Would you feel right about using something, then throwing it in a pile in your back yard, pretending you'll never have to deal with it? Every time you throw away something made of plastic or metal or anything else non-biodegradable, you are demonstrating your ignorance. I do it, you do it, we all do it sometimes. Asking for a total change is unreasonable and unrealistic. But trying to recycle more and more is the way to go. And new plastic products are inexcusable that are explicitly suggested to just be thrown away, and reprehensible.
is to make a book that can be recycled indefinitely, unlike paper, which can only make it one or two times through the recycling process. See the Slashdot review of the book that started this idea: Cradle to Cradle.
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
I think it's pretty pointless for regular books and all. Also the porn use is just sad, if you can't direct things sufficiently well to avoid that, then well I'm sorry for you.
Manuals may be obsolete. I would never exchange the feel of touching paper when reading a novel with the eye strain of staring at a screen for litterally days.
Bah, I hope you're not really on the X-Box dev team.
Vanderbilt University Library's rare books collection used to have a copy of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 printed on asbestos . I don't know if they still have it as they probably threw it away in the current asbestos hysteria. It was there in 1977 anyway.
Not to mention books for toddlers who haven't yet learned that books are to be cherished, not torn up for the neat noise ripping paper makes.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
About 7 months ago I did a book review for Slashdot of Cradle to Cradle by McDonough and Braungart. I believe it was the first commercially released book in this format by Melcher. (First sentence of the book: "This book is not a tree.")