Reading the book

I read my phone, my fire, my paperwhite, and my books. The more platforms the better, right? But there really is no substitute for a good old-fashioned bound and printed book.

...while digital devices may be fine for reading that we don’t intend to muse over or reread, text that requires what’s been called "deep reading" is nearly always better done in print... Digital reading also encourages distraction and invites multitasking. Among American and Japanese subjects, 92 percent reported it was easiest to concentrate when reading in hard copy. (The figure for Germany was 98 percent.) In this country, 26 percent indicated they were likely to multitask while reading in print, compared with 85 percent when reading on-screen. Imagine wrestling with Finnegan’s Wake while simultaneously juggling Facebook and booking a vacation flight. You get the point...

But will you get and read the book?

How E-Reading Threatens Learning in the Humanities - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Mark Twain @MarkTwainQuote · Aug 18

A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.

Roger Ebert, philosopher

“I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.” 

“We are put on this planet only once, and to limit ourselves to the familiar is a crime against our minds.” 

“Socrates told us, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I think he's calling for curiosity, more than knowledge. In every human society at all times and at all levels, the curious are at the leading edge.” 

“What I believe is that all clear-minded people should remain two things throughout their lifetimes: Curious and teachable.” 

“An honest bookstore would post the following sign above its 'self-help' section: 'For true self-help, please visit our philosophy, literature, history and science sections, find yourself a good book, read it, and think about it.”  I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie

“Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”  Life Itself

“All I require of a religion is that it be tolerant of those who do not agree with it.” 

“Because we are human, because we are bound by gravity and the limitations of our bodies, because we live in a world where the news is often bad and the prospects disturbing, there is a need for another world somewhere, a world where Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers live.”  The Great Movies III

“Life always has an unhappy ending, but you can have a lot of fun along the way, and everything doesn't have to be dripping in deep significance.” 

“There are no guarantees. But there is also nothing to fear. We come from oblivion when we are born. We return to oblivion when we die. The astonishing thing is this period of in-between.” 

Goodreads

Land of the free

To get into the 9/11 Memorial Museum, you have to pass through a world-class security arrangement—a conveyor belt for shoes, belt buckles, cell phones; a three-second hands-above-your-head body scan—overseen by a notably grim private-security corps. “Stand there!” uniformed guards shout at those in line moseying ahead. “Don’t advance.” A terrorist planning to commit an atrocity at a museum devoted to the horrors of terrorist atrocities might seem unduly biddable to his enemy’s purpose, but then perhaps the security apparatus is itself a museum installation. At the other end, as you exit, toward West Street, another uniformed man is obliged to spend his day telling kids not to stand on the benches in the memorial park. “You, there! Down.” It doesn’t occur to the kids that standing on the granite plinths could be an offense, and they wonder at first whom the guard could be addressing. They look bewildered—you mean us?—and then descend. The idea that we celebrate the renewal of our freedom by deploying uniformed guards to prevent children from playing in an outdoor park is not just bizarre in itself but participates in a culture of fear that the rest of the city, having tested, long ago discarded...

...The "last night" letter of the terrorists is posted on a wall, but without any English translation. And so the deeper truth that religious fanaticism was the whole of their horrible cause--that, in the last-night letter God is cited a hundred and twenty-one times--is elided... They did not hate us for our freedom, they hated us for our lack of [their form of] faith... Their godliness does not exhaust the meanings of religion, any more than Pol Pot's atheism exhausts the meanings of doubt. But is is a central fact of the occasion, not illuminated by being ignored.

 Adam Gopnik: Visiting the 9/11 Memorial and Museum : The New Yorker