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Cheap but Impressive Books

Ever bought an unreadable book just to impress?
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Neither have I... but apparantly it's going on everywhere!

The only problem with buying a book just to impress your friends.. or the people opposite you on the train... is that impressive books are usually hardbacks - and extremely expensive ones... (ever seen an impressive looking paperback?)...

The idea is to just sell the hard cover of these books... as well as a load of appropriately many blank pages... which you would only need to buy three sets of at most (for different book sizes)...

It's not just impressing your peers...! Maybe you wish to conceal what you're really reading?... or maybe you just want your present company to leave you be... pick up the book and suddenly find yourself untouchable!

For the latter you would only need two books to cover all audiences... pick the one at the time that is most likely to repulse them... Harry Potter, and Binary Coding for IBM Mainframes...

Ossalisc, Feb 23 2004

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       Hey, this is a great idea -- I could have used this instead of getting Wolfram's New Kind Of Science!+
theircompetitor, Feb 23 2004
  

       Wolfram?... ever tried Mathematica?... I downloaded the tiral, and had a go at tricking it into giving a nonsense answer... I couldn't!... a story...   

       First I thought - right, series!... (infinite would be no good - anything reasonably complex would take me too long to calculate the answer myself)... so I wrote a few random scribblings and imprisioned them within a series... - it gave me the correct answer... (nothing special about that...)... then I removed the uper limit for the series and clicked Shift+Enter (or whatever you press... forgotten now)... and to my shock and joint delight... it gave me a formula in terms of x (instead of a number I had used x for the upper limit)... ... ...   

       Amazing!...   

       I thought "A New Kind Of Science" was just about Fractals tho?...
Ossalisc, Feb 25 2004
  

       A New Kind Of Science is about how everything is simply a function.   

       I've only gotten through the cover, hence the idea's appeal :)
theircompetitor, Feb 25 2004
  

       Why not just buy the dust cover of the "impressive" book and stick it over a book of an appropriate size that you already have. Why do you need fake pages?
squeak, Feb 26 2004
  

       That assumes a) they sell the cover separately or b) you're willing to steal it and c) you have another book of the appropriate size
theircompetitor, Feb 26 2004
  

       [TC] Well, if you're the kind of person who habitually buys impressive books, you'll probably have a few of varying sizes already lying around. [Ossalisc]'s post relies on some company being willing to sell just the hardcovers separately (with dust covers too, presumably) and bound, blank pages. With my solution, all you need is someone to print off a few more dust covers and sell 'em. A lot simpler, I think.
squeak, Feb 26 2004
  

       Oh the humorous possibilities as young [Ossalisc] moves through exalted circles with a copy of "Advanced Nuclear Engineering" under his arm. The fun and japes as a desperate nuclear reactor owner rushes up saying "My power station's about to go critical! Please help me!" Chuckle heartily as [Ossalisc] rushes into the control room, presses lots of buttons, and saves the day in the nick of time.   

       Or was that an episode of The Simpsons?
kropotkin, Feb 26 2004
  

       There are two kinds of books: The ones you want to read, and the ones you want to have read.   

       This is a great substitute for the second type.   

       Now if this had only been around back in the day it could've put those Transcendentalists out of business. And then the Existentialists. In fact, fake hardcovers can probably rid the world of all the its "ists."
TerranFury, Feb 26 2004
  

       // Oh the humorous possibilities as young [Ossalisc] moves through exalted circles with a copy of "Advanced Nuclear Engineering" under his arm. //   

       Doesn't this imply that there's a beginner's pocket book called "Teach Yourself Nuclear Fission in 5 minutes!"... brilliant!
Ossalisc, Feb 26 2004
  
      
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