Talk:Dead tree edition
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Was this phrase not first coined by Phllip Greenspun? (I'm not saying it is, I asking.)
Maybe this page should be redirected to book ?
I've heard the term more commonly used to refer to magazines and newspapers, not books. For example, "The New York Times web site reported that ... but that story didn't appear in the dead tree edition." --LDC
Indeed, a book isn't necessary on paper, and a dead-tree edition isn't necessarily a book. The distinction is one of paper versus electronic distribution. However, I would heartily recommend hyphenating it. --Brion
Folks, this is an article about a piece of nerd slang. It is not the recycling article. --FOo 14:40, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Chemico-political rant excised as follows. It may have a place somewhere near recycling:
However, the usual process of paper manufacture from wood does involve toxic chemicals, whose release into the environment is considered harmful. Paper re-cycling also damages the environment: carbon dioxide is produced by the vehicles which collect discarded paper from recycling centres, and powerful chemicals are used to remove pigments and inks from used paper. The main evidence that re-cycling may not be as beneficial as many people believe is, of course, that re-cycled paper is more expensive than new paper, implying that the re-cycling process in more resource-intensive. See the New York Times Magazine article Recycling Is Garbage, published in 1996, for an informative and provocative discussion of garbage recycling. --FOo 14:47, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)
Something to think about (which I realized in the shower ...) -- The fact that product X (say, "recycled paper") is more expensive more than product Y (say, "virgin paper") doesn't prove that the process that makes Y is more marginally efficient. It could be that process Y has negative externalities; that it presents a less expensive product to the consumer by foisting its costs onto others. So although the conclusion of the paragraph above may be true (I certainly don't deny it!), its reasoning contains a fallacy.
Since negative externalities, namely the costs of pollution and waste management, are precisely what advocates of recycling purport to reduce, critics of recycling need to find "main evidence" better than "virgin paper is cheaper to the consumer" to demonstrate that the total process of producing, consuming, and disposing of virgin paper is more efficient. --FOo 15:41, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)
