Vote in Amazon.com's Best Magazine Covers

If you're a magazine person like I am (a reader, editor, writer, publisher, and somewhat collector), then you might want to take a look at the survey at Amazon.com, which asks you to rate the best designed covers in a variety of categories.

It's only a fun survey, and of course Amazon's doing it to try to feed into its magazine subscription service. I don't care about that; it's just fun to look at good magazine designs. In almost all of the categories, I thought all of the nominees were quite good and a strong case could be made for selecting almost any cover. But the ones I chose were picked because I thought they were well composed, would jump off the newsstand, were provocative without being offensive, and showed creativity.

My selections:

What are your choices? The survey is here (you'll need to log in to your Amazon account to vote).

Think TV's One Big Wasteland? Get Aaron Barnhart's Tasteland

If you think television is one big terrible zone of reality TV awfulness and lowest-common-denominator drivel (i.e., reality TV awfulness), well, you're correct. But, it's a whole lot more, and Kansas City Star TV critic Aaron Barnhart has written a book that will show you what's really happening on -- in Harlan Ellison's words -- the glass teat.

 I've known Aaron for more than two decades, even before he started his cult-favorite e-mail newsletter focused on late-night television. That e-newsletter grew into the TV Barn web site (for which I wrote a weekly science fiction column for a year or two a decade ago) and eventually led to his perch at the KC Star. Fun fact: Aaron actually owned an Apple Newton.

I won't even pretend to be unbiased in this book-buying recommendation. Aaron's smart and talented and a good guy. But even biased people are sometimes correct, and this is one of those cases.

Hie thee to Amazon and buy a copy of Aaron Barnhart's Tasteland. I've already ordered mine.

A Kindle Book: Now You Have It, Now You Don't

Over at Slate.com, Farhad Manjoo writes about Amazon's demonstrated ability to delete books from users' Kindle digital book holding thingies. The company reportedly went into people's Kindles, without permission, and removed the book files.

Now, if they were deleting the book files of everyone who bought a copy of Glenn Beck's Commons Sense or The Secret, then no one would really complain and, in fact, they'd be doing the world a service. But they were deleting books by George Orwell and Ayn Rand.

"The worst thing about this story isn't Amazon's conduct; it's the company's technical capabilities," Manjoo writes. Whether or not Amazon promises not to do it again, the point is that the company can; I think, with the various security and protocol breaches that take place all across the internet on a daily basis, you should figure that if Amazon doesn't do it to your hand-held electronic fake book, someone else will, sooner or later. The Justice Department, your prospective employer, any of a number of crackpot groups, publishers, your parents, your kids, that annoying person you dissed at the coffee shop. Whoever. It'll happen.

Maybe it's time to invest in a hard copy paper version of every "book" you put on Kindle. It's the only way to make sure you have it forever. (Until you lose it in a flood, of course ...)

You, too, Can Play Police State!

Amazon.com's customers provide a refreshing reminder of the power of outspoken black humor, as they write scathing reviews of a Playmobil airport security check point.