In a town like London there are always plenty of not quite certifiable lunatics walking the streets, and they tend to gravitate towards bookshops, because a bookshop is one of the few places where you can hang about for a long time without spending any money.
George Orwell
This morning my mind was wandering and wondering about the great mass of worthless TED talks out on Youtube: speculations baseless and wild, intellectual parlor tricks, minor factoids contrived so as to appear to have some deep significance, and many, many other equally meaningless categories of seminars as side show.
That’s when I thought of a recent visitor to Jersey City Free Books — who quite clearly never got any closer to Cairo than Hoboken. This Miss claimed in all seriousness to have learned to speak Arabic by reading that language at age 12. And she’s not alone! There’ve been many others here with equally agitated imaginations.
Jersey City Free Books plans to launch the NQC (Not Quite Certifiable) Talks. At the very least, the time that the participants spend preparing and delivering lectures will keep them off of the streets. And just maybe someone looking out from an unusual vantage point might be able to spot something that others don’t see. And anyhow, no matter how worthless or ridiculous anything that comes out of this project turns out to be, it can’t be any worse than most TED Talks.
A crowd-sourcing platform will be announced soon. YOU can help make the NQC Talks a reality!
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Jersey City Free Books at 297 Griffith St. is a community book store that provides something to read without charge, obligation, registration or indoctrination. Jersey City Free Books serves seniors, students, the unemployed and working families. Thousands of books are available. Everyone is welcome to take any number of books for their reasonable, personal use. Jersey City Free Books is eager to assist local charities by providing quantities of books. More information — including the current schedule — is available at the Web Site.
JerseyCityFreeBooks.com
The Facebook Page is https://www.facebook.com/JerseyCityFreeBooks
