2014 — 25 June: Wednesday
My current (and largely successful) pollen-avoidance tactics will be put on 'hold' for a few hours later today1 but a chap needs his fresh air'n'exercise, come what may. I shall, however, be stepping up my tick-avoidance tactics.
Who ever suspected...
... that a mere bookseller (long since not the whole story, of course) could / would come to have such a profound effect?
There is no evidence that high retail book prices today discourage reading. The problem is the opposite: because of the digital revolution, the price of information has collapsed in a
very short time. Free news, stories, YouTube videos, games, and other content generated by users but enabled by online aggregators and pirates have undermined the leverage of authors and
publishers who depend on copyright protection to make a living.
This is the setting in which Amazon is now moving to upend for its own benefit the traditional pricing system in book publishing.
And still the theorists carry right on theorising:
In a Taiwanese study led by Szu-Yuan Sun, the results suggested that reading linear texts in the manner of traditional paper books was "better for middle-aged readers' literal text comprehension" but reading on computers with hyperlinks "is beneficial to their inferential text comprehension". In other words, the joined-up environment of the web encourages people to make connections and work things out, while straightforward reading encourages them to take in what's on the page in front of them. Hence the prevalence of hyperlinks and multiple windows on computers could be seen as creating either unwelcome distraction or more opportunities for active learning.
Sometimes I sit and read, and sometimes I, well, erm, sit and read! Mercy me. Sometimes I sit and write, too. I still recall the mutual shock Christa and I felt, on viewing the first house we bought in Old Windsor in 1976, to find not a single book visible anywhere in it. And this was a household that had by then been established for 25 years and contained three generations. Incredible.
There was a TV, however :-)
Our fragrant...
... Home Secretary is clearly one of those multi-talented individuals (like the Red Queen in "Alice") who can hold mutually-contradictory thoughts and opinions without the inconvenience of any visible evidence of cognitive dissonance:
What a useful talent for a politician. "Life and death", heh? Not "Life or death". Pity the citizen / subject whose State apparatus distrusts him or her. Regardless of a presumption of innocence, of course. Recall that lovely (and surprisingly ancient [12th-century Persian, apparently]) joke:
The story of the sheep who try to leave the country, explaining to the border guards that they want to get out because the secret police have received orders to arrest all elephants. 'But you're not elephants.' 'Try telling that to the secret police.'
[Pause] Breakfast beckons. Better eat so I have something to throw up.
Our (PAC)man in Washington
I'd been wondering what a "Super PAC" was since first hearing the term bandied around on "House of Cards". I grasped it had something to do with the various ways people buy political influence legally. (Bribe is such an ugly word.) This clarifies the matter. This further clarifies the matter.
Final score...
... following careful scrutiny, post-shower? Tick bites:0 Horsefly bites:2
A chap whose books have sold 280,000,000 copies here and there (although not to me) is giving some money to independent bookshops to assist in the 'fight' against ebooks and Amazon. And a payday lender has been found to have been threatening its customers by cooking up fake legal letters. (But the 'interim' boss has apologised unreservedly.) If I heard the news bite correctly, some customers will receive compensation equivalent to 8% whereas the business manages to charge slightly more than that... 1% per day, simple interest!
£150 borrowed for 18 days requires £183-49 to be repaid. I do wonder why people use them.
My evening...
... entertainment for the last two nights (it's a long film) has been the marvellous "Blue is the warmest colour" that I picked up back in March. It's sans doute the best French-language film I've seen since "Untouchable".