Hard copy book lover

Can we get rid of books made up of paper?

Honestly, I do not know, I reckon that is something really linked to your personal flavor.

Many technological solutions address the problem to store and retrieve information easily, reliably,

permanently and at low cost. Indeed one of the goals for the next years onwards is to reduce the amount of documents that are made up of papers, the so called "dematerialization" of the documents. A document in electronic format, let's say a "pdf document" has many nifty advantages over a document of paper:

• portable. You just need a usb flash drive to store and bring it everywhere you want without wasting space!
• deliverable. You can buy and get it within a few minutes, you can also pass it out by attaching to an email.
• money saving. You don't need to take a car or bus to get to the library-> fuel not wasted. Additionally, It is not a hard copy made of papers,
• time and energy saving. You just add it to your virtual chart with a click, you can attach it to your email and sending it to your friends without planning an appointment,
• green. You do not increase your ecological footprint because you do not need to take a car or whatsoever to reach the bookshop. Additionally , cut the number of trees hacked up.
• usable. You can write on it with "add comments" command of your pdf reader and change it over and over easier than using a pencil
• copyable, if you hold the proper grant you can copy the text from the it to your document (the well known copy and paste) it 's quicker than typing.
• safety. Less paper in your house harder it blazes :)
• cleanness. You do not have shelfs and books to dust off :)

Despite all these advantages (some of them are really quirky e.g. cleanness but I think it makes sense in somehow) I still do believe that books of paper are far away from disappearing.

I consider myself "a true hard-copy book lover", I need to touch them, to sniff at them, to flip through them, to see them, to blend the upright side corner for reminding me the most relevant pages, to pile up them on my bedside table ... in a nutshell I cannot image a world with no hard copy books..

Are you a hard-copy book lover?

Marriage vs PhD

From http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php

Dealing with the damned prepositions: "talk to" or "talk with"

What preposition follows the verb "to talk" when it means to speak, to communicate?
I was pretty convinced that the correct preposition was "to", therefore "talk to "is allowed and "talk with" is frowned upon... Now, I step back after discovering that on BBC they use "talk with"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8583589.stm

The copy and paste people

I was sitting on my barber's armchair, we were making small talks, interleaving them with a serious reflection, then a laugh and again this cycle.

All of sudden, he asked me, you have been working at university for some weeks, is it a good job?

I rolled my eyes around, thought for a while trying to answer in the best way avoiding bothering him with unpleasant grievances.

Finally, I manged to summed up what I had in my mind and I said to him:

"Currently I'm a PhD student, it means that the university is offering me the last educational stack.

Indeed I attend other courses like an ordinary student does, additionally I'm learning how to do, lead and present researches. After three years (that is the complete course) I'll be granted a PhD title and I'm prepared to work as a researcher.

Then the barber added: you'll be a sort of scientist...

Regrettably, in Italy the State does by no mean support the research!

In the past, every two-three years, Government called researchers for a national competition, the winners could get a full time position as researchers. Recently, some laws have been changed and it's not possible to hire a researcher for a permanent position, but only for three years. After these three years your contract might be renewed for other three years and then you are finished."

My hairdresser: it doesn't sound really good for your future. You are destined to a precarious condition.

Then I replied: it's not me, but the research is destined to an uncertain future and in long haul to disappear!

In the future other students will not be pushed to keep on studying, it's not worth doing or payoff (if you are not really animated by a strong passion and you were born with a tea spoon in your mouth).

My hairdresser: "What will it happen to Italy?"

me: maybe Italy is going to become an executive arm, just an arm without a brain to master it. Presumably, we will become the "copy and paste people" ... you know. when you do some researches and just copy someone's results/ideas and sell as yours...

How many passwords do you have to remember?

Mine:

• 4 Bank accounts
• 3 emails
  
• 4 social networks
• 2 computers
• 1 internet connection
  

On the whole 14!!! it freaks out