Just you wait until the lights go out

and then we will see how smart you are.

Via Instapundit I learned this morning that 

[a]fter 244 years, the Encyclopaedia Britannica is going out of print.

The New York Times story includes this quote:

“It’s a rite of passage in this new era,” Jorge Cauz, the president of Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., a company based in Chicago, said in an interview. “Some people will feel sad about it and nostalgic about it. But we have a better tool now. The Web site is continuously updated, it’s much more expansive and it has multimedia.”

Instapundit's notice includes this:

But reader Daniel McAfee sees a marketing opportunity: “They should market the current printed version as ‘The Sunflare Edition’ … Wikipedia’s not much use after the power goes out, now is it?”

I am way ahead of Mr. McAfee! My crappy old edition of Encyclopedia Britannica was copyright in 1962, and so does not include entries on global warming or the human genome project as the last edition (2010) does. But nevertheless, when the lights go out, I'll still be able to learn about Warren G. Harding.