http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11798317
Stumping for a BBC special about visualizing data and numbers.
Visualizing numbers
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Essay
From the Guardian
http://www.badscience.net/2010/10/degrees-of-consent/
A look at the way science is done, with scientists taking advantage of the indigent and those without health insurance or access to doctors (mostly by the doctors offering some health monitoring in exchange for becoming guinea pigs.)
Hat tip Brenda Wallace
Connecting with e-migos
Joe Posnanski coined a term, e-migo, to describe Internet based acquaintances and friendships. I will present blogs from 2 e-migos here.
Jeff Kirvin and Mike Cane have been blogging about mobile technology, content production, and content consumption for some time. They interested me to begin with because they concentrated on ebooks and writing, even before 2000. Kirvin started a Yahoo and then later Google group called “Writing on Your Palm”, ostensibly to discuss technologies for writing. Before Kindle, Nook, iPhone, and Kobo, Kirvin and other enthusiasts have been reading on our Palm Pilots* for over a decade. We used to get our books from Peanut Press in a DRM’ed container format originally designed for PalmOS. Peanut Press later became eReader, which in turn was acquired by Fictionwise. Barnes and Noble bought Fictionwise, took the technology and ported it to the Nook.
* In this history is the main reason for why I just can’t get into e-ink readers (like the Kindle and Nook). I started reading on my Handspring Visor, which was a Palm Pilot knockoff. The screen was black on green, and it looked worse than it sounds. The contrast was low, and there was only so much one can fiddle with to improve the visual quality. Regardless, my point here is that e-ink still does not provide enough contrast for me. As soon as I could, I upgraded to color screens with increasing resolution, from my Visor. I’ve never looked back; I love reading black text on a true white background. The drop-off in readability when I go outdoors is something I can live with and can be ameliorated by cranking up screen brightness. The e-ink screens are still too low contrast for my tastes.
Kirvin has since moved on to a new domain space. He is a writer of fiction and tech; he also blogs a fair bit about the writing process. Part of it seems painful, trying to shape his vision to match his vision. He has a few insights into technology and writing on mobile platforms, which, luckily, isn’t impaired by whatever ails him in terms of publishing fiction.
He noted a recent appearance by Rob Dickins, former head of Warner Records in the UK, who suggested that lowering prices can be a tool to combat piracy. Industry insiders are appalled at the very idea of selling digital content cheap. Like a music album for $2 cheap. Paul Quirk noted that Dickins is making this suggesting after making his money during the halcyon days of $20 CDs. Jonathan Shalit noted that the cheapness of the container will in turn devalue the contents within. That is, selling an album for $2 will give the perception that the music isn’t worth anything more than pocket change. Thus the art is no longer art, but something disposable. Dickins responded in a comment on Music Week (hat tip: Nate Anderson):
Unfortunately Paul is reacting to headlines and rather than serious debate, is speaking in sound bites My point addressed online albums of which we all know has around 80% piracy and by bringing the price down to a ‘non-decision’ payment, I believe piracy could be countered to a degree but more importantly it would bring in the enormous peripheral buys This would allow physical albums to be developed to really give the fans something special at a much higher price points as illustrated by Nine Inch Nails ‘Ghosts I-IV which would make the retail experience much more interesting to the consumer and the retail outlook more positive My worry is that we are seeing an erosion of prices rather than radical decisions……erosion is a passive way to fade out whilst radical thinking is a way to actively build an exciting industry for the future rather than clinging on to business models which are failing us Music has billions of consumers and I for one want to see albums selling tens if not hundreds of millions on a regular basis
My sympathies are with Kirvin, Dickins, and author Joe Konrath, who made a similar argument as Dickins for lower ebook prices. I think Shalit’s analogy is weak, but I think the fact that some people think it makes it something one needs to address and not ignored. In part because these people will need convincing before they release their content. I know each successive generation will lead to a gradual push along the lines of cheap and open ‘content’, but there are backlists I want access to, and before I die, thank you very much.
My snide comment is this. What if the elitist snobs truly think that art will be devalued with the advent of cheap prices? What if they realize that, assuming the $1 book or movie or music album comes, not all artists will get a boost? How depressing would it be if the bump in sales resulted in more units sold of schlock fiction and not, oh dear, literary fiction? What a blow to egos. </snide>
I would love to see the relative sales numbers from iTunes, to compare the distribution of sales across artists. It would also be lovely to see how that compared to the distribution of CD sales of the same artists (and I suppose Amazon would be in a great position to make this analysis.)
Another e-migo, from Palm Pilot days, is Mike Cane. He is a… passionate advocate of technology as a tool of consumers, not producers. Under the cruft, he wishes for easy access to authors’ works because, you know, he wants to read them. He also wants to make things simpler for writers to publish. Having a publisher dictate to a consumer where, when, and how he should read is obnoxious.
On a final note: I detest how authors, publishers, and critics contribute to the schism of literary and genre fiction. I think that’ is why the argument about devaluation of a books metaphysical worth based upon it’s cheapening monetary value irks me. To me, the point of being an artist, more so than any manufacturer, is to bring a work to market. We will always need food, cloth, nails, hammers, screws, bricks, and wood. Books, music, movies, TV shows, paintings, and sculptures are luxury items. They provide respite, no matter how temporary, from the difficulties of our lives. But we do not need them.
That is why Oprah Winfrey’s first go around with Jonathan Franzen struck such a wrong note with me. If Franzen is a true artist, he would want his works disseminated. It is strange for his clique of snobs – and that is what these authors, publishers, and critics are – to try an limit access to literary works. Just be glad the Winfrey gave you press and made your books approachable. If an artist has something worthwhile to say, he would want as large an audience as possible.
Forget about monetary gain; I had thought that the satisfaction of creating ideas and having people attend to them is the ideal. What does it matter if Winfrey is the one who led her audience to the work? If writers were snobs, I would argue that gives them all the more reason to suffer Winfrey’s attention. She would mediate the writer’s experience with the proles, and he will have a soapbox to help (I would go so far as to say teach) readers understand the themes in his works better.
Posnanski writes about Nolan Ryan and Ichiro Suzuki
My life (I am an American male) does not revolve around sports. I do follow the Boston Bruins, but they are never must-see TV for me – even when they are in the playoffs. Sorry, I prefer reading, making sure my house is in order, and spending time with family and friends.
My interest in sports run along mathematical lines; I am more interested in statistical analysis and model building than in the games (and especially for baseball.) That and drinking beer while watching games.
So it is strange that I read just about everything Joe Posnanski writes. He writes about baseball, and without exception I read his pieces about living and long-dead ball players whom I have (mostly) never seen.
This piece is particularly good. The way I would approach describe Posnanski is that he is about nuance. Nick Hornby isn’t the first to notice that males tend to love ranking things. Bill Simmons and Chuck Klostermann have also made similar points, in their own entertaining ways. Posnanski, in addition to offering his own rankings, a number of observations that tempers the ranking. In other words, the separation between 2 players may not be as large as the gulf implied by, for example, a “first” and “second” ranking. This is interesting and somewhat in contrast to the approach of most sports columnists.
At any rate, here’s the nuance: Ryan and Suzuki are the best at what they do, but they don’t rank among the best baseball players ever. I won’t repeat Posnanski’s arguments here, but he’s not out to trash either guy. He’s simply trying to work through and present an informed opinion and analysis. The pair, Ryan and Suzuki, can be considered exceptional players along one-dimension. Ryan threw more strikeouts than anyone; Suzuki is a hit machine. But because of other inefficiencies in their game, they actually do not help their teams as much as one might think (in terms of preventing runs for Ryan and driving the offense for Suzuki.)
The greater point is this: I think Posnanski is among the best writers in explaining numbers to an audience. In all seriousness, I want that talent in describing science to non-scientists. When Posnanski gets rolling on presenting statistical arguments for baseball excellence, I applaud the effort because he is able to note all the ways in which these “binary answers” have many shades of gray. When Posnanski talks numbers, I don’t see a difference between him and a scientist who is trying to explain ideas to laymen. And of course his writing talent makes you want more. Or at least it makes me want to read more.
The Accidental Billionaires, or, The Social Network
I was both disappointed and heartened by the Ben Mezrich book. I had seen The Social Network over the weekend, before starting to read the book. I was surprised by how closely the movie followed the book. The chapters are short scenes, perfectly adaptable to the big screen. I have pointed out before, in an essay on Bringing Down the House, that I’m unsure as to Mezrich’s source work. I’m not accusing him of fabricating the story, but this book, like his previous books on MIT gamblers that I have read, is a narrative history that focuses on the tale, not necessarily the history, of Facebook.
My disappointment was in Aaron Sorkin. I had attributed the pacing, dialogue, and structure of the movie to his writing. I remain a fan of Sorkin’s Studio 60, so I know that he’s a good writer. I was just disappointed here that I couldn’t attribute the quality of the screenplay entirely to Sorkin.
I was also heartened, because when movie producers desire, they can actually capture the complexity of a book onto screen. It helps that Mezrich writes in movie style. His writing focuses a lot on the characters and atmosphere – again, this idea of scene building, less on what happened (if he did that, Accidental Billionaires would have lasted about 20 pages.) The book is also without frills, the details that add to the richness of the novel. I would have expected a true history of Facebook to focus on the similarities of Harvard Connection and TheFaceBook and whether Mark Zuckerberg intentionally held back Harvard Connection so TheFaceBook would be available first. It might also merit a comparison to how other companies like PayPal, Google, and eBay began. But, Mezrich focused simply on the sex, money, genius, and betrayal.
In this case, I would recommend either the movie or the book. One difference between the two is that the movie is more sympathetic to Eduardo Saverin than Mark Zuckerberg. The book played out a bit more evenly; even Sean Parker isn’t quite the Pied Piper that the movie made him out to be. What Mark, Sean, and Eduardo did all seemed reasonable, even if not rational. Also, some of the scenes are slightly reorganized, but reading or seeing the one is probably enough.
The Book Thief
This is a story narrated by an overworked angel of death, during World War II. It is the story of a good German family – foster parents and a foster child – who hides a Jew in their basement. The father is kind hearted, and ironically, it may have been a thoughtless kind act that compelled Max, the Jew the family was hiding, to run. The father, Hans, had watched Jews being marched through the town of Molching. He was compelled to hand a piece of bread to a prisoner. He and the prisoner were flogged, and thereafter he awaited his punishment.
This small example from the novel highlights the theme: while we lack control over world events and even our own circumstances, it is worthwhile to do the best we can. There are no answers as to why we should, not even from the angel of death. He’s simply a worker, like the air raid clean up crew; he takes souls as they depart from their bodies. He talks about his master: not God, but the abstract death. Just the events that cause human bodies to expire. There is little comfort in an afterlife: it isn’t mentioned at all. The carrier of souls here doesn’t choose between good and bad souls. There is no judgment (well it comes out at one point – he pities the Germans who hide in bomb shelters less than the prisoners being exterminated in death camps), but he doesn’t talk about a destination for the souls. No mention of heaven or hell. He simply takes. So why should we do good, then, without the fear of explicit eternal punishment or reward?
I think Zusak’s answer is the following. Liesel is the book thief of the title. She stole her first book on the way to her foster parents. Her brother dies on the way, and when the grave diggers came to bury him, a grave digger’s manul fell out. That was her first. She later rescued books from book burnings. And finally, the mayor’s wife took pity on her and left a window open – so Liesel can sneak into the library and “steal” her books. Liesel learns to read. The pay off comes when Max, the Jew hiding in her basement, pens a story about Hitler and Liesel. The story is heartbreaking because it describes the hate sown by Hitler, and the only remedy isn’t to use words to vanquish evil, but to provide a path out of evil. And only two people follow the path.
Zusak doesn’t bother with an easy parable, but he clearly wishes to inspire people to do good. This book provides a path, through a forest of evil. The reasons to be good? One is, because you’ll never know what the true consequences are. For example, Liesel’s neighbors took a stand. The parents refused the SS to draft their son. The father, Alex, was punished by being drafted. But the son, Rudy, didn’t have to die at the front. Instead, later, a stray bombing by the Allies destroyed the street Liesel and Rudy lived on. Including Alex’s family. Actual, dramatic irony. But here’s another example: Liesel survived that same bombing, because she was in the basement, writing her life’s story. She had been inspired by the gifts of those around her (the mayor’s wife for giving her a blank book, Max for writing her story, her foster parents’ kindness.)
Rudy, Liesel’s friend in the novel, because he was bullied and loved Liesel, wanted to show his worth. He became an excellent runner and excelled at school. He became, in fact, the perfect Aryan boy. All because he wanted to impress Liesel. Would it have been worth it to be ignored instead? Why not achieve? Liesel did appreciate Rudy; both of them did make right choices. Rudy, for example, was also inspired by Hans’s example of handing bread to a Jewish prisoner. He roped Liesel into tossing bread to Jewish prisoners as they were marched through time. They were chased, but this time, they escaped punishment. Still later, because Max had left Liesel’s house to avoid being a burden to her family, he was caught and eventually was marched through town. Liesel then took strength from the fact that her father had stood his ground; she called out to Max, gave him what little comfort she could by acknowledging his wonderful gift to her, and was whipped. Rudy, in his own kindness, kept Liesel from being hurt any worse.
No easy answers here. Making the right choices does not guarantee a happy outcome. The important point seems to be that the soul is enriched by positive choices, in the present. Liesel found a father and came to acknowledge that her foster mother is also a good person. A bit crusty, but good-souled. She gained a friend in the mayor’s wife and in Rudy. She learned the meaning of courage, of making a stand. She learned to read. She gained a friend in Max. These moments enrich the soul and makes one happy in the present. This too is another reason to do good; it is another way of feeling good.
Interestingly, we see Nazis in the context of their every day life; we do not see gross acts of violence and depravity. Instead, there are always a segment of the population who are true believers. They try a little harder to please the Fuehrer. They snap their salutes a little straighter, their “Heil Hitlers” a little louder. It is easy for them to be so brave, marching starved prisoners behind the front. The one soldier we do see has returned from Stalingrad, bearing bad news to his mother. His brother had died in Russia. The solider eventually could not bear the guilt of survival and hangs himself. So the disgust with the war is translated into a desire to escape, not to live. That is the opposite reaction of the citizenry, so happy to condemn Hans and Liesel for showing compassion to fellow humans.
I am not sure when I would let my boys read this novel. It has harsh lessons, but the novel remains gentle. It teaches about death and consequences. It shows a way to live, to focus on positive experiences. I suppose they ought to read it when they are tweeners (Liesel’s and Rudy’s age), but with lots of parental input, helping them tie in the scenes in the book with the theme.
Again, this is simply a story of kids and adults doing the right things and suffering for it and yet continuing on the quiet path of courage. The punishment lasts a moment and is painful, but the reader knows the punishment is wrong and unjust. The novel is about the moments in between, and although it isn’t always a happy time, at least the characters can live with themselves, if not their neighbors.
Update: I reformatted the text so that the text was separated into paragraphs. Not sure why it didn’t do that to begin with.
Imperial Bedrooms
Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Wow. The book is graphic; I am unsure as to the grand purpose behind the book. Ellis doesn’t write a sympathetic character. He writes about broken people who suffer further humiliation of spirit. They then choose to ignore the outrage or to perpetrate them. Clay, the antihero of Less Than Zero and Imperial Bedrooms, responds by taking as much as he can.
I had supposed Less Than Zero to be about kids who suffer from a shallow culture and a lack of mature guidance. Rather than understanding that maturity is a state of mind, the neglected children in Zero do adult-like things. They drink, they fuck, they drive around, they snort, and they spend.
None of these kids actually had to learn to survive; as if navigating the currents of upper class ennui prepares one for life. No, these children have family money and lack for nothing. None of them will ever need to think about how to earn enough to keep him fed, clothed and sheltered. Instead, they only learn how to manage their coke habit.
If the book is simply about having too much money, too soon, without guidance, then it would have been trivial. What Ellis did was to amplify despondency by sexing up the story. It mirrors the state of the characters in the book. Just as the outrageous loses shock value over time, so must the kids seek ever more grotesque modes of enjoyment. There really is nowhere else to go but down. In this context, Less Than Zero plays out like a cry for help.
A reasonable adult would simply want them to stop abasing themselves. But what could be done? Take away their money? That will simply cause them to spiral down the drain faster. It will force the children into whoring themselves that much sooner. The regulator against self abuse is a healthy concept of human dignity, which Ellis has taken pains to show doesn’t exist for Clay. While some the characters avoid doing evil, it is out of fear rather than value for another person. One point is that there is so little one can do; we must live with these monsters. We conclude that when one has everything, he has very little to lose.
In the early 80’s, I suppose to read about 13 to 19 year olds experimenting with drugs and homosexuality was a kick to the head. But the book quickly leaves conventional outrage behind. Clay moves from an inability to relate to people to observing acts of evil. We see Clay happen upon a snuff film (but is it? After all, these kids’ parents all seem to work in film. Perhaps it is fake? Somehow, Ellis presents that alternative as a straw man.) Clay walks in on a gang rape. He doesn’t join, but remained indifferent.
It is unclear how much of that was ingrained or learned. And perhaps it doesn’t matter. No parents are seen in the book. And when Clay’s 13 year old sister is talking about the quality of sex and coke, it seems besides the point to ask whether nature or nurture was at fault. The book again emphasizes what little we can do.
In Imperial Bedrooms, we find the characters older, but no deeper, than in Less Than Zero. Clay is a screenwriter. He has left a girl friend behind in New York to come back to LA. He enjoys the physical delights of the casting couch. Clay withdraws into ever more depraved activities. There is really only two ways for the sequel to go: either Clay works towards redeemimg himself or becomes a monster.
Because we see Clay being outmaneuvered in this novel, the despair that was apparent in the first book is transformed into exhibitionism. In Imperial Bedrooms, we are simply seeing predators fighting. But before the end, we see an amoral Clay, from Less Than Zero, transgressing into immorality. I suppose the difference is that Clay either watched others be harmed or harmed himself in the first book but now harms others. We see him use men and women alike, just to exert power over others. As my 5 year old said of his 2 year brother: ‘He wants what he wants. He’s the king of the babies.’
And then the book ends. Clay is simply led away by a more brutal monster, losing his territory to a more ruthless predator.
At some point, one might ask if Ellis is writing satire. I don’t think there is enough of Clay engaging with society or other personalities. We remain within Clay, locked into his limited point of view (animal sees food, takes food, animal sees pleasure, gets pleasure.) There is one toss away line, about how snuff films are now released on the Internet. I don’t think this single point elevates Imperial Bedrooms to an absurdist look at society.
Imperial Bedrooms, like Less Than Zero, is narrated in the first person. But we never know what Clay thinks. We see him act. Ellis’s style tends to reinforce the feeling that this book is like an animal documentary. We infer Clay’s mental state by his responses to his environment. The readers have to anthropomorphize Clay.
Because Ellis offers very little in the providing his thoughts for how to engage against Clay and his ilk, I can see how his book can be perceived as pornography. It lets depravity titillate the reader while not offering any comment. Well, that’s not true; the fact that one needs a second predator to clean house says a lot. That is the nature of the world. Play victim or to play aggressor.
While Less Than Zero had similar elements, the end of that novel was moderate. Clay’s problem was that he couldn’t treat other people as individuals. That meant Clay had a chance to snap out of it, giving the reader a small measure of hope. He could grow up. In Imperial Bedrooms, the trajectory is aimed downwards. We are only left wondering how steep is Clay’s descent. And there is little we can do to help the characters, or ourselves, if heaven forbid we have something they want.
Almost Dead
Almost Dead: A Novel by Assaf Gavron
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I thought that this book should have switched titles with Super Sad True Love Story.
An Israeli citizen named Eitan Einoch survives three suicide bombings. He becomes a national celebrity as shell shock overwhelms him. For a short while, it seems he find happiness; from the first suicide bombing, a fellow rider with a premonition asks Einoch to deliver a message to his girlfriend. Einoch plays it off. After he disembarks the minibus, the bomber struck. Einoch deals with his survival by trying to deliver the message. He falls in love with the girl.
There is a parallel story, told from Fahmi Sabih’s point of view. We learn that he is a Palestian refugee, lying in a hospital room. He’s in a coma; it doesn’t take much to realize that his story will converge with Einoch’s.
I haven’t had much exposure to fiction from the Middle East, and only from a historical perspective (Orman Pamuk’s My Name is Red.) As a disinterested third party, I feel that Gavron was delicate in portraying the plight and character of Palestinians – including the suicide bombers. One gets a sense of the complexities that any inhabitant must juggle. Loyalty to family, to one’s tribe, to society, and even to oneself – exemplified by the need to seek a better life. Not everyone succumbs to hate. Not everyone can rise to forgive. Some parents wish their sons to join the fight; others wish them to flee and just live.
Gavron brings a light touch, I think. Nothing is too heavy handed; I thought it was masterful the way he portrayed Einoch’s numbness has he survives attack after attack. I have no idea how I would react, nor do I know how one usually responds, but I can appreciate that some people may not run screaming – at least not right away. Instead, he lets Einoch’s problems develop; rather than dramatic confrontations, Einoch loses efficiency and concentration.
Another device Gavron uses well is coincidence. Not the fact that Einoch suffers several bombings and has his fate intertwined with Fahmi, but the simple interactions with other characters. The encounters do not seem forced; Gavron gives his characters space. Just because two of them appear on the same stage doesn’t mean that it will lead to anything. This light touch helps to create an impression of life, of simply being.
Gavron, I think, brings a bit of sympathy in his portrayal of life and death in Israel. He can’t fault the hard-liners too much, and I think he wishes the best for the citizens who wish to ignore the conflict and just live. But there are too many fingers pointing; every combatant has an easy time claiming vengeance for a previous injustice or violence. It brings to mind George Carlin’s rant on “Peace without honor” – one mustn’t let pride be valued over life. In most cases, pride means to get one’s way. The reciprocal recriminations sound like the argument that it’s turtles all the way down, with no true foundation in sight.
Marginalia
Lev Raphael recently wrote of an advantage possessed by paper books: marginalia can comprise both responses to what was read as well as a diary of sorts. It is a physical manifestation of memory, thought processes, and perhaps emotional state. Specifically, this piece was pitched as a counterpoint to the idea that books are simply containers, delivering the content within, with Stephen King making a recent comment to this effect.
I agree with both points and have this to offer.
I still think these lists of pros and cons of e-books or paper books miss the point. The main competitor to paper books isn’t e-books, but every other form of diversion and entertainment. I would say that shunting customers to some “container” is the least of the publishing industry’s worries. I see the e-book/paper book debate as pointless. A true reader wouldn’t care how he is reading, so long as he is reading.
Also, keep in mind that I love reading. I can’t get enough of it. I prefer to fill all my spare time reading. The most efficient way, at my disposal, is to use a software ebook reader installed on my Motorola Droid phone. Before that, I read on my iPod Touch, my Treo phone, my Palm Tungsten 5, my iPaq, a Handspring Prism (the color screen version) and a monochrome black-on-dark-green screen of the Handspring Visor. A tech geek will realize that there is a clear progression: I’ve listed in reverse order the quality of the screens of the machines. So I suffered through some god-awful visual experience, just because I was so enamored of carrying a huge library of books with me, and of reading these books at every opportunity.
And before I had a machine that can contain my bookshelf, I would pack multiple paper books for trips, long or short. This includes packing 2 or 3 books for a subway ride. I feared finishing a book and not have another book to start. Sure, it’s neurotic; I read quickly, but not that quickly. I did not always divide my reading time among several books, so I agree it is doubly strange to always pack so many books. On long trips, I have been known to pack 8 books; now, when I fly, I can trim that to two so I can read during take-off and landing. It isn’t realistic for me to pack so many books, as I know I can’t read or finish them all. But I can’t help myself. In my book bag that I take to lab, at this moment, I have 3 books.
My point is that I distinguish between reading and other activities, as opposed to reading on a machine versus reading on paper. I still head to the library (it’s the beautiful, recently renovated Cambridge Public Library) once every few weeks to load up on even more books. I peruse bookstores for fun; I eagerly await new releases from the bn.com/ebooks and FictionWise sites. I see it as a boon that I can add to my electronic bookshelf without my wife noting the amount of space it takes up in our condo.
Enough credentializing. My only point is to say that I have noticed that although the content is the same, I read differently depending on the technology I use. As Raphael noted, writing notes on the margins is easy to do in a book. Coming from a background in which my work requires me to read science articles, I have not found a better way to annotate articles than to write all over the paper. I have tried writing notes in a separate notebook, I have tried writing notes on a sheet of paper and stapling it to the article, I have tried downloading the PDF version of the article and making comments, and I have tried archiving the web version in Evernote and making annotations there.
I have also tried the analogous operations on books. Nothing is more convenient, to me, than to write on the document. Part of it is the immediacy, writing next to the passage is quick. It does get unwieldy, since I don’t underline but insist on writing down as complete thought as possible. Try holding onto a book and a Moleskin, and writing while exposing as much of the text as possible.
I would also point out that, some of us are fortunate enough to have some form of location awareness and tactile memory when reading an actual, physical document. For example, even if I cannot remember the precise text, I can generally remember where I found the words.
Another problem with e-book annotations is that not all e-book readers have a way to export the notes one makes. The readers I use won’t let me do that, and so I find myself suffering through an unwieldy software interface to access my notes, individually. It would be faster to go through notes made in the margins of text. So when I read an e-book, I write fewer, but longer notes. I take the risk of forgetting some points before I write the note; after all, one of my reasons in writing marginalia is to help me remember something in the first place.
What one does with the notes after writing them down is a separate matter. I see marginalia as placeholders until I can collect my thoughts elsewhere. Yes, that elsewhere has been on the computer (until recently, Evernote. Now I just write on this blog.) Despite the convenience of digital manipulations, I still find it easier to thumb through a book and read a few notes or passages to gather my thoughts on a book. Until the notes-interface improves on my e-book readers, this is yet another advantage for paper books.
I think in dealing with technology, noting advantages and disadvantages is fine, but I don’t think these lists really help one decide on its worth. Given the list of pros and cons I made, I don’t see any one format winning out. That is good, because I think each has different things to offer a reader. I do not see myself ignoring paper books, nor do I envision myself reading off my phone or computer screen all the time. Not only is there a time and place for each, but economic and technological advances can limit or expand our options. There may come a time when I find that multimedia and ads have infected e-books to such an extent that I can no longer read them. Or that we may find that paper book costs increase due to demand for wood. Or that print is only reserved as luxury products. Rather than being wedded to one form of technology (whether it’s Gutenberg’s, or Bezos’s, or Jobs’s), it makes more sense to know that what works for you can change in the future.
A blog about antiquity
Andreas Kluth is a reporter for The Economist who wrote Hannibal and Me, to be published in 2011. I stumbled on his blog, The Hannibal Blog, through this post (well, the post was featured on the Freshly Pressed page on WordPress.) He is interested in “triumph and disaster in life” and how the great men and women overcome or are overwhelmed by these events.
Kluth sounds like a kindred spirit; he is focusing on people who do great things and in a set of essays on his blog, uses some literary archetypes to explore the theme. He is focused on this epoch, and he writes about Fabius, Scipio Africanus, and Hannibal, three actors who shaped this era (ca. 200 BCE), in Hannibal and Me.
***
I must get the following story off my chest. During high-school, I chose a “classical” education for myself. In addition to the standard set of classes, I took as electives Latin, (classical) piano, and European history. The only thing that was missing was fencing, and I remedied that during college. I demonstrated an ability in Latin for three years: I scored the highest average, among my peers I translated quickly and correctly, and could decline nouns and conjugate verbs without trouble. One regret was that I did not cultivate this interest further (I do wonder what kind of historian I would have made.)
One problem was that I dropped Latin in my senior year, missing out on the Latin Prize (given to the student who has the highest grade.) I had an extremely good shot; I had the highest grade in my junior year, and the way this was achieved made me certain that I was going to do the same in my senior year. I am only writing this to show that, for this high-school Latin class, I exhibited an aptitude. This is so I can say the following and not sound like sour grapes.
The real point of the story is why I refused to take Latin in my senior year, despite my interest and relative skill: I was disgusted, at an intellectual level, with the travesty of how this class was taught.
For the first two years, the Latin teacher engaged the language as a real entity. She taught vocabulary and had us translate the language – as if it were still alive. On tests, she actually constructed new sentences and had us translate (from Latin to English and English to Latin.) In my third year, the instructor gave up on this. She saw no point in teaching it as a real language. In fact, she kept telling us it was silly to do so; it is a dead language, after all. So she babysat us, basically.
During class, we simply organized into groups and translated the lessons. Mostly, students copied from me. The honest ones asked me for help. There were some other good students who worked alone. We would then correct the translations. Preparing for the test, she would then simply go through our translations, telling us which sentences will be on the test. It was simply a matter of rote memorization. I balked; my challenge to myself was to ignore the test preview and translate everything during the test. It was in this context that I still received the highest marks.
But I just couldn’t take this class for a second year, and so I missed out on translating Cicero and Ovid. This marked the only time that I lost such respect for an instructor that I could not follow through with a course of learning. I don’t regret the prizes and honors; it was only a meaningless high school award. I do regret how this one instructor just beat down my interest in Latin.
Yes, I am fully aware that I could have simply done independent study. My only point here is to highlight the one time I could not overcome an intellectually stultifying atmosphere. I hope I’ve since grown in confidence and can pursue and drive learning and discourse in a manner that interests me. In general, I don’t think teachers teach so much as inspire. That is, they make you care about the subject enough to do the work. And in the cases where I faced inadequate teachers, I can generally make pursue the subject just because I am interested in the subject. However, this one time, in Latin class, I found the instructor incompetent and I was unable to deal with that. So much so that I couldn’t make myself care any more about translating a dead language.
No Time to Read 