Effort at regular blogging # 496

I've said it before, but now I have no excuse. I am no longer in school (whoa) and right now I'm only technically employed (no shifts). I've started thinking in blog entries again, which is a little bit odd, but anything that gets me thinking and writing is worthwhile. More productive, certainly, than thinking in Facebook status updates, which I also do.

I've had so many ideas to write about that getting started has become unnecessarily daunting, so I'm going to start small. In the initial entry of what will become a regular exercise, I will deal with a couple of things that I encountered on the internet this morning as I leisurely consumed my lifeforces (coffee and eggs).

Let's get the dumbest one out of the way first. I didn't want to dignify this ridiculous business with any sort of acknowledgement, but at the risk of a messy verbal explosion at an inconvenient time, here it is. Celebrity gossip is absolutely silly, but this Jessica Simpson thing is getting out of hand. My issue is not with the amount that it's been discussed - apparently Barack Obama commented? I don't want to know - but that it's so ludicrous to begin with. I've seen the pictures that spawned the whole damn thing, and the woman is not overweight!! This is fucking nuts. I know that our culture has a horribly skewed sense of health and beauty, but this has reached a new low. She has hips and tits. She does not look unhealthy, and would not turn heads as plump if she wasn't being compared to images of her former skeletal self. The fact that she had to give in to that pressure to become successful in the first place is upsetting, but she is to be commended on now portraying how a woman is supposed to be shaped. From everything else I've heard about Jessica Simpson, she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but good on her for this. Now she'll not be famous, of course, and won't make as powerful an example. Fucking hell.

The rest of this post will be less angry, promise.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/05/ebooks-ethical-living

This article was the best defense of these gadgets that I've heard. I appreciated it because the author began by expressing sentiments that I share, especially that "the mere presence of a large number of books induces a profound sense of wellbeing." Absolutely. My living space would have no soul without my stuffed bookcase.
Despite our similarities in views of physical books, I can't get on board with her. She claims to love the tactile experience of reading a book, yet can so easily move to holding a single piece of technology, virtually turning pages and marking notes in the margins with a stylus. Perhaps this is just my aversion to technology. As much as I depend on it, I hate it. It's complex, and goes apeshit at crucial times. I spend money on newspapers because I find reading them online infuriating. I will read every last word in a printed paper, just to extend the activity, where I give up on virtual ones within about ten minutes. Computers are too sterile, too cold. There's no soul in a computer. Yes, the words are the same, but the words are not the whole deal. When I have finished reading a book once, it looks like it has been through battle. I'm talking creased or broken spine, beat up and dog-eared corners, coffee stains, etc. Not to mention brackets, stars, and notes. After several reads, the book becomes even more beautiful because all of these things have been repeated.
From a book design perspective, the fact that the words are the same holds little weight. The presentation of text is of the utmost importance. I think a lot of people would take issue with her assertion that it doesn't matter.
That being said, I think she presented a good argument. She acknowledges that there is an environmental impact from this technology as well as from paper books, something I think has been largely ignored in this debate. I just don't want to give up my books.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/feb/05/michael-rosen-english

I stumbled upon this and it struck me. Anyone who knows me is aware that for someone who never wants to procreate, I have some pretty strong opinions on parenting. I am continually amazed at how little people read, because they've never developed the habit. The entire time I was growing up, I had my head in a book. Before I could read, I memorized from my parents' reading. Despite the failures of my education system, reading is how I managed to develop any grasp of the English language. Kids need to read. Giving grammar lessons when the concepts are not being understood on an active level is pointless. Michael Rosen claims that the issue is that kids are being taught to read, but not to enjoy, books. I think that in a lot of cases they're not being taught either, but I also think that the two go hand in hand. If kids are exposed to reading, and are put in positions where they have to, they will learn to enjoy. If for no other reason than they'll actually know what's going on.