Last week, the New York Times brought to our attention the outrageous fact that Amazon’s popular e-reader, the Kindle, is unable to pronounce the name of our president. Today, the paper of record warns us that Kindle-waving Internet pirates (see photo illustration) are destroying the publishing industry! And while this is surely true — and likely to be made more true by the fact that the new Kindle DX will accept unprotected PDF files for the first time (a point glossed over in Motoko Rich’s article) — what’s up with all the Kindle hate? Is the Times really worried the purportedly newspaper-saving DX will be so successful that they’ll eventually be forced to cede all control over their distribution to Jeff Bezos? If so, to ensure their own survival, they’ll probably need to ratchet up the Kindle-fear a lot more than this. To help out, Vulture has brainstormed a few angles for their next article on the dangers of e-readers. (Update: Commenters point out the Times third recent anti-Kindle story, which we totally wrote a post on two weeks ago.)
Story ideas (none of these have been fact-checked):
• Children who eschew heavy textbooks for Kindles may have better posture — but they’ll also lose important upper-body strength.
• Holding a Kindle in the general vicinity of your crotch may dramatically lower your sperm count.
• True fact: Kindle’s text-to-speech software cannot sing like Susan Boyle.
• Having an author sign the digital screen of a Kindle in permanent ink will not increase its value, like it would a real book.
• Science has not yet disproved a link between Kindle use and swine flu.
• Even though this has never actually happened, don’t Kindles sort of look like they might spontaneously explode into flames for no reason?
• If eaten, the Kindle DX can take up to a month to pass.
Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web [NYT]
Earlier: Giant, Newspaper-Saving Kindle Can’t Pronounce President’s Name
Related: Stephen King Is Too Rich to Care About People Stealing His Books