Is Reading Becoming Another Scoring Opportunity?

Readers for Seniors - well, it's now officially time to buy us older folks an e-reader. A researcher at the appropriately-named Johannes Gutenberg University has recently found that over 60s can follow text better on one than on any other digital device.

My overseas brother, all of two years younger than I, believes me a techno-peasant. To help me get out of that rut, he generously proposed an internet radio for my Christmas. Knowing that I already own three of those, my wife whispered that I'd better come up with another idea fast. As an avid reader and recently at a seminar on borrowing library e-books, I realized that now could be the time to take the plunge into e-reading. After some toing-and-froing around the fact that a Kindle wouldn't be right because its Amazon mother ship hasn't yet got a library deal in Canada, a Kobo postmarked from Britain duly arrived under our tree .

I soon found that a snag I hadn't expected is that an e-reader works very hard to be as much like a book as possible. As a result it doesn't work like the computer laptops and tablets I've taken years to master.  I'm also finding trouble grasping that any e-books I buy are mine for as long as the reader functions. No exchanging an e-book at a used bookstore, or donating it to a thrift shop once I am done. New e-books can be as pricey as the real thing, plus library e-lending periods are shorter, so there's some angst involved in tanking up the device, not to mention trying to remember which in its library will time-destruct, versus be for keeps.

Nevertheless I must admit an e-reader is a handy little thing to have. No losing your place because the bookmark fell out, and so easy to slip in a pocket for those read-over-coffee interludes between the day's commitments. You can even create linked comments about what you read totally free of the guilt that comes from scribbling over a printed page. Your e-reader confirms for you the sum of the pages you have read plus scores for you exactly just how much or little of each book you've so far got through.  Mine even awards you 'points' for being a heavy reader.

Space in my home isn't an issue so I have a large library. It's a proper one with bookshelves all the way up the walls. In addition, books and physical media line two other rooms. The concept of one day having all my books on a hand-held gizmo is a long way from the joy of possession to be got from shelf upon shelf of spines and covers.

I am also starting to wonder if my new e-gadget could end up turning reading time into another of life's route marches. All those old-fashioned shelves might actually prove to save me from a totally quantified leisure life. Although I can't always recall when, or even which, of  my book collection I've actually read, having them on open view seems so comforting. They work for me in the same way that my LP collection affirms my devotion to our culture's richness. This a nondescript little MP3 player can never do. Every time now that I set eyes on my many books, discs or tapes, I see confirmation of my diligent attention to the life of the mind. And, mercifully, they have no scorecards!

Custodial Blues

"It is perfectly clear that France has intervened because American policy in Mali has failed dismally. The U.S. counter-terrorism training mission in Mali made the stupefying mistake of choosing three of four northern unit commanders to train who were Tuareg. These three Tuareg commanders defected to the rebels, bringing soldiers, vehicles, ammunition and more to the anti-government side. France has better connections in its former African colonies than the U.S. ever will. The French seem to be approaching this in the vintage manner of suppressing a rebellion – something they did frequently in their old empire – rather than counterinsurgency in the current 'Petraeusian' understanding. It bears noting that the French, crushing rebellions every few years back in the old days, built far more durable local institutions than anything the U.S. has managed to pull off anywhere since 2001. So "leading from behind" with no boots on the ground (provide intelligence and logistic support and diplomacy to facilitate collaboration and authority), that is where the world’s greatest power should take the lead. When outside ground force from a major power is required, it should come from a nation with historic roots in the host country."
From a British reader of the N.Y.T.

We Europeans who were brought up through the sunset of empires can ask to be excused for  scratching our heads at the intervention strategies of today's Great Power in the affairs of post-colonial countries. The White Man's Burden of our imperial youth has been replaced by a made-in-USA concept of Custodian of the World's Democracy.  While a few times France, Belgium and Britain have gone back into former colonies to forestall invasion or civil war, the politically non-U label of Former Colonial Power makes the current French-led invasion of Northern Mali remarkably rare.  The humiliating rush to exit empire that characterized my younger years in Europe left many potential Malis and Syrias on the world map. Too bad we weren't granted the time by Roosevelt (for whom the new world order couldn't arrive fast enough) and his successors to figure out a peaceful way for the inhabitants of soon-to-be former colonies to decide how they wanted their new international boundaries to look.

Rigging the Jury Online

My eye was caught today by one of those curiosity news items that seem to speak to matters beyond their limited immediate interest - swarming Amazon book reviews.

We live in an age when the proverbial Common Man can comment online on anything that takes his fancy. Virtually every review or newsy website and most of those that sell you something let you 'Comment' on their content. Sometimes these are monitored before posting but, as the Amazon piece illustrates, there are all too often ways of 'gaming' that process to slip by it. The process of policing is often erratic, presumably largely because it involves a lot of on-the-fly decision making on the part of the owners of a well-read site. 

I occasionally submit comment on my morning paper's online articles. It helps 'keep my hand in' as a blogger plus allows me to vent or educate about things I care a lot about. Writing Letters to the Editor rarely proves worth the time spent but an online comment will get published most of the time. When it doesn't, it can be hard to fathom why. While news outlets publish some form of comment policy, recently I had a couple of submitted comments disallowed as 'abusive' when they contained content very similar to some previous posts in this blog.

That said, I do feel something is quite off-kilter about the torrent of selective comment that an open web seems compelled to accept. Local restaurant rating websites are one example of this. They let you and I rant but provide no considered comment of their own. Yet shouldn't one assume that the publishers of these sites have some special knowledge that readers would like to benefit from? To be a ratings app maker does not seem to require much subject expertise; just the ability to produce the right software. When the inexpert reader is the only arbiter how much real new knowledge can other readers expect to gain?

Getting into Sight and in Mind.

Two years ago this appeared in a UK newspaper:- "Until the deaths of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, probably almost no-one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops are deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will bury its dead, just as the rest of the world, as always will forget its sacrifice, just as it always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does. It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again. That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American continent with the United States, and for being a selfless friend of Britain in two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in two different directions: It seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never fully got the gratitude it deserved. Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy.

Minority Language Angst

This year Quebec is introducing world-leading improvements to how doctors deal with patients in end-of-life situations. But at the same time they are having their language police bully local authorities with less than 50% English-speaking taxpayers to force them to drop all English communication. That's Quebec for you - the Good, Bad and Ugly province. Quebec is the country of Je Me Reviens and Maitre Chez Nous. Yet I'm very fond of it. Over 40 odd years of regular travel there I've hardly ever had a bad time.

Its a place where the majority francophones have the most stable society, the highest per capita income and the best quality of life of all French speaking territories globally.  A civil society wherever in it you travel. A fun-loving place, probably the best in our Dominion to have a good time in. With gorgeous scenery, great food and fabulous sporting options. The region where ice hockey was invented. A jurisdiction with its indigenous people nowadays calmer than in just about anywhere else in North America.

How to explain the dichotomy of its suppression of the English minority's right to live in their own language at a time when Quebec's treatment of other minorities is as good as anywhere?  And how does one explain the government there thinking up ever newer ways to prevent both new immigrants and locally-born French from getting an English education? Quebec's official printed English is deteriorating to worse than you will see in Western Europe or Asia. This at a time when English is firmly in place as the global lingua franca.