Easy reading?

I read a lot of articles online for my work – usually in the pdf form.  It’s why I’m waiting for the Kindle DX to be introduced next year, instead of splashing out for a Kindle now.

However, here’s a problem that I’d like to see a solution to, whatever electronic thingy I happen to read with: Display two non-consecutive pages at once.  From what I understand, I can’t do this in Acrobat Reader, or on a Kindle.  The reason?  I read articles and books that have notes – usually endnotes.  To be able to read the text, and read the notes with out tiresome flicking between the two, it would be handy to display both pages at once.  If anyone has a solution to this, I would love to know it.  Until then, it seems that electronic media, in this instance, is less sophisticated than a plain, printed, document.

Filed under: books , Adobe Acrobat query, Australian Kindle, e-books, Electronic reading, Kindle DX, PDF documents

Primitive babies

I don’t really want to post on babies all the time, but I just thought I’d make one observation.  In baby literature – I mean all the guide books you read when you’re a new or expecting parent – there are frequent references to evolution.  Not that I’ve got a problem with evolution.  But when someone tells me that my tiny son’s arm or hand reflexes are from when primitive babies had to cling on to fur on their mother’s back, I have to raise a skeptical eyebrow.  How on earth could that be known?

And thanks – now I have the image of my wife with fur on her back…

Filed under: Family, books , baby books, baby reflexes, evolutionary arguments

Book work

When I was thinking about the terrible amount of work people put into resting sometimes (I mean doing physically strenuous things as a form of relaxation), I may have given some the impression that work that is not physically demanding is somehow not really work in its fullest sense.

Perhaps this plays on a nagging fear that those of us who have some kind paper-pushing job are somehow employed in a situation that is inauthentic, that we are wasting ours and other’s time.  To suggest that someone’s work is not really work is to cast aspersions on the completeness of their identity.  Take Hugh Grant’s character in About a Boy – he is, somehow, incomplete, by being somebody who does not work.

But, and – I’m not just defending my own occupation here (postgraduate student) – I want to underline that book-work is real work.  Some of you may read books or write for relaxation, in the same way that some of us pursue physically intense exercise for relaxation.  But if you read books non-stop for a working week, it really is labour.  The Hebrew wisdom book of Ecclesiastes puts it like this:  “Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.”  I take it to mean that book-work is real work – but also that it is no cure-all for work either.  No philosophy will ever shortcut the need for work, and to suggest that it is possible is an illusion.

Filed under: books, wisdom, work , leisure, study, work, work/life battle