Readers and Reading discussion

Chat here about this and that and everything else!

OK -- what about those hacked emails from the climate scientists? Good to know the world will be making trillion-dollar decisions based on their careful science.... !

JoAnn/QuAppelle wrote: "Chat here about this and that and everything else!"

Michael wrote: "OK -- what about those hacked emails from the climate scientists? Good to know the world will be making trillion-dollar decisions based on their careful science!.."

AMEN

Did you ever see this article?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/mag...

JoAnn, this article just shows that people who are incapable of arguing data and logic resort to ad hominem arguments. What's troubling is that this seems to pass for actual debate nowadays.

My December reading so far is scant. I sent my bifocals, needed most for reading, to have the anti-glare coating removed. Even though I had been careful in cleaning them, in only two years they became so scratched that they caused more problems than they solved. I'm getting by on the old drugstore readers that litter the drawers around the house, but it's a pain in the neck. Thank goodness for my Pod, where I can adjust the size of the font for Riders of the Purple Sage! I'm hoping my glasses come back today.

Libyrinths wrote: "JoAnn, this article just shows that people who are incapable of arguing data and logic resort to ad hominem arguments. What's troubling is that this seems to pass for actual debate nowadays. "

By "people" are you referring to the author of this article, the global warming activists (who accuse Dyson of being a tool of the oil industry), Hansen, or to Dyson?

Or.....all of the above?

JoAnn By "people" are you referring to the author of this article, the global warming activists (who accuse Dyson of being a tool of the oil industry), Hansen, or to Dyson?

I'm referring to anyone who does this, but I've seen this most especially in the global warming debate, although elsewhere too. When a major newspaper columnist equates global warming skeptics with Holocaust deniers, we can see the level of inability to do critical thinking that is rampant. Name-calling and smears aren't an argument, they are the admission of no argument. It's just distressing that people in general put up with this, rather than dismissing anyone who does this.

Libyrinths, I am still confused (a not uncommon occurrence!)

So you are not referring to Dyson, nor to the writer of this specific article from the NYTimes (as making ad hominem arguments)? But rather you are referring to some writers in the global warming debate???

Excuse my confusion, but I thought you were commenting on the article I posted about Dyson.

JoAnn: Excuse my confusion, but I thought you were commenting on the article I posted about Dyson.

I was, and was specifically set off by the first paragraph where the author quoted people calling Dyson names because he questioned the science behind global warming. When Dyson came out with this, this is almost all I heard: namecalling. There was little, if any, response to his scientific assertions. And it is now simply the common practice regarding the topic. And has become so in unrelated topics.

So, pardon me, I was making a generalization about the impoverished level of public discourse, specifically relating to the primary topic discussed in the article (which I only got halfway through before my computer froze, and bookmarked for later finishing) which was global warming, albeit within a profile of Dyson himself. But also how that has become a problem in many areas of public discourse. Sorry if you feel my observation and generalization was off-topic. I'll refrain from any further comments.

Libyrinths wrote: "Sorry if you feel my observation and generalization was off-topic. I'll refrain from any further comments.
.."

I do not feel this way at all and cannot imagine why you would think I did. I just did not want to continue to respond if I was talking about X and you were talking about Z!!!

So un-refrain yourself! Please!

You wrote When Dyson came out with this, this is almost all I heard: namecalling. There was little, if any, response to his scientific assertions. And it is now simply the common practice regarding the topic.

I am really sick of this way of responding to opposing viewpoints. It sure does stop any reasonable discussion. But I guess that is the whole reason why people do this. They are really not interested in discourse, but want to cut it off. GRRR

JoAnn: I just did not want to continue to respond if I was talking about X and you were talking about Z

Sorry I was so touchy, JoAnn. It's been one of those weeks. I understand what you're saying. Consider me un-refrained, LOL!

JoAnn: It sure does stop any reasonable discussion. But I guess that is the whole reason why people do this.

I think that's probably why a lot of people do it, but I think because it's become acceptable, a lot of people now simply do it mindlessly. Either way, I'm with you, I'm tired of it, and would like to see a return to people arguing facts, ideas and issues, and if they can't, then just zip it up.

Sharon, I was browsing the Teaching Co. Web site and they have an offering on 38 Ways to Win an Argument from Arthur Schopenhauer's The Art of Controversy.
Seems as if a lot of people have taken this to heart. :(


1. Carry your opponent's proposition beyond its natural limits; exaggerate it. The more general your opponent's statement becomes, the more objections you can find against it. The more restricted and narrow your own propositions remain, the easier they are to defend.

2. Use different meanings of your opponent's words to refute his argument.
Example: Person A says, "You do not understand the mysteries of Kant's philosophy." Person B replies, "Oh, if it's mysteries you're talking about, I'll have nothing to do with them."

3. Ignore your opponent's proposition, which was intended to refer to some particular thing. Rather, understand it in some quite different sense, and then refute it. Attack something different than what was asserted.

4. Hide your conclusion from your opponent until the end. Mingle your premises here and there in your talk. Get your opponent to agree to them in no definite order. By this circuitous route you conceal your goal until you have reached all the admissions necessary to reach your goal.

5. Use your opponent's beliefs against him. If your opponent refuses to accept your premises, use his own premises to your advantage.
Example: If the opponent is a member of an organization or a religious sect to which you do not belong, you may employ the declared opinions of this group against the opponent.

6. Confuse the issue by changing your opponent's words or what he or she seeks to prove.
Example: Call something by a different name: "good repute" instead of "honor," "virtue" instead of "virginity," "red-blooded" instead of "vertebrates."

7. State your proposition and show the truth of it by asking the opponent many questions. By asking many wide-reaching questions at once, you may hide what you want to get admitted. Then you quickly propound the argument resulting from the opponent's admissions.

8. Make your opponent angry. An angry person is less capable of using judgment or perceiving where his or her advantage lies.

9. Use your opponent's answers to your questions to reach different or even opposite conclusions.

10. If your opponent answers all your questions negatively and refuses to grant you any points, ask him or her to concede the opposite of your premises. This may confuse the opponent as to which point you actually seek him to concede.

11. If the opponent grants you the truth of some of your premises, refrain from asking him or her to agree to your conclusion. Later, introduce your conclusion as a settled and admitted fact. Your opponent and others in attendance may come to believe that your conclusion was admitted.

12. If the argument turns upon general ideas with no particular names, you must use language or a metaphor that is favorable to your proposition.
Example: What an impartial person would call "public worship" or a "system of religion" is described by an adherent as "piety" or "godliness" and by an opponent as "bigotry" or "superstition." In other words, inset what you intend to prove into the definition of the idea.

13. To make your opponent accept a proposition, you must give him an opposite, counter-proposition as well. If the contrast is glaring, the opponent will accept your proposition to avoid being paradoxical.
Example: If you want him to admit that a boy must do everything that his father tells him to do, ask him, "whether in all things we must obey or disobey our parents." Or, if a thing is said to occur "often," ask whether you are to understand "often" to mean few or many times, the opponent will say "many." It is as though you were to put gray next to black and call it white, or gray next to white and call it black.

14. Try to bluff your opponent. If he or she has answered several of your questions without the answers turning out in favor of your conclusion, advance your conclusion triumphantly, even if it does not follow. If your opponent is shy or stupid, and you yourself possess a great deal of impudence and a good voice, the technique may succeed.

15. If you wish to advance a proposition that is difficult to prove, put it aside for the moment. Instead, submit for your opponent's acceptance or rejection some true proposition, as though you wished to draw your proof from it. Should the opponent reject it because he suspects a trick, you can obtain your triumph by showing how absurd the opponent is to reject an obviously true proposition. Should the opponent accept it, you now have reason on your side for the moment. You can either try to prove your original proposition, as in #14, or maintain that your original proposition is proved by what your opponent accepted. For this an extreme degree of impudence is required, but experience shows cases of it succeeding.

Cont.

16. When your opponent puts forth a proposition, find it inconsistent with his or her other statements, beliefs, actions or lack of action.
Example: Should your opponent defend suicide, you may at once exclaim, "Why don't you hang yourself?" Should the opponent maintain that his city is an unpleasant place to live, you may say, "Why don't you leave on the first plane?"

17. If your opponent presses you with a counter-proof, you will often be able to save yourself by advancing some subtle distinction. Try to find a second meaning or an ambiguous sense for your opponent's idea.

18. If your opponent has taken up a line of argument that will end in your defeat, you must not allow him to carry it to its conclusion. Interrupt the dispute, break it off altogether, or lead the opponent to a different subject.

19. Should your opponent expressly challenge you to produce any objection to some definite point in his argument, and you have nothing to say, try to make the argument less specific.
Example: If you are asked why a particular hypothesis cannot be accepted, you may speak of the fallibility of human knowledge, and give various illustrations of it.

20. If your opponent has admitted to all or most of your premises, do not ask him or her directly to accept your conclusion. Rather, draw the conclusion yourself as if it too had been admitted.

21. When your opponent uses an argument that is superficial and you see the falsehood, you can refute it by setting forth its superficial character. But it is better to meet the opponent with a counter-argument that is just as superficial, and so dispose of him. For it is with victory that you are concerned, not with truth.
Example: If the opponent appeals to prejudice or emotion, or attacks you personally, return the attack in the same manner.

22. If your opponent asks you to admit something from which the point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so, declaring that it begs the question.

23. Contradiction and contention irritate a person into exaggerating his statements. By contradicting your opponent you may drive him into extending the statement beyond its natural limit. When you then contradict the exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had refuted the original statement. Contrarily, if your opponent tries to extend your own statement further than you intended, redefine your statement's limits and say, "That is what I said, no more."

24. State a false syllogism. Your opponent makes a proposition, and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you force from the proposition other propositions that are not intended and that appear absurd. It then appears that your opponent's proposition gave rise to these inconsistencies, and so it appears to be indirectly refuted.

25. If your opponent is making a generalization, find an instance to the contrary. Only one valid contradiction is needed to overthrow the opponent's proposition.
Example: "All ruminants are horned," is a generalization that may be upset by the single instance of the camel.

26. A brilliant move is to turn the tables and use your opponent's arguments against himself.
Example: Your opponent declares, "So and so is a child, you must make an allowance for him." You retort, "Just because he is a child, I must correct him; otherwise he will persist in his bad habits."

27. Should your opponent surprise you by becoming particularly angry at an argument, you must urge it with all the more zeal. No only will this make your opponent angry, but it will appear that you have put your finger on the weak side of his case, and your opponent is more open to attack on this point than you expected.

28. When the audience consists of individuals (or a person) who are not experts on a subject, you make an invalid objection to your opponent who seems to be defeated in the eyes of the audience. This strategy is particularly effective if your objection makes your opponent look ridiculous or if the audience laughs. If your opponent must make a long, winded and complicated explanation to correct you, the audience will not be disposed to listen to him.

29. If you find that you are being beaten, you can create a diversion-that is, you can suddenly begin to talk of something else, as though it had a bearing on the matter in dispute. This may be done without presumption that the diversion has some general bearing on the matter.

30. Make an appeal to authority rather than reason. If your opponent respects an authority or an expert, quote that authority to further your case. If needed, quote what the authority said in some other sense or circumstance. Authorities that your opponent fails to understand are those which he generally admires the most. You may also, should it be necessary, not only twist your authorities, but actually falsify them, or quote something that you have entirely invented yourself.

31. If you know that you have no reply to the arguments that your opponent advances, you by a fine stroke of irony declare yourself to be an incompetent judge.
Example: "What you say passes my poor powers of comprehension; it may well be all very true, but I can't understand it, and I refrain from any expression of opinion on it." In this way you insinuate to the audience, with whom you are in good repute, that what your opponent says is nonsense. This technique may be used only when you are quite sure that the audience thinks much better of you than your opponent.

32. A quick way of getting rid of an opponent's assertion, or of throwing suspicion on it, is by putting it into some odious category.
Example: You can say, "That is fascism" or "atheism" or "superstition." In making an objection of this kind you take for granted:
1. That the assertion or question is identical with, or at least contained in, the category cited; and
2. The system referred to has been entirely refuted.

33. You admit your opponent's premises but deny the conclusion.
Example: "That's all very well in theory, but it won't work in practice."

34. When you state a question or an argument, and your opponent gives you no direct answer, or evades it with a counter-question, or tries to change the subject, it is sure sign you have touched a weak spot, sometimes without intending to do so. You have, as it were, reduced your opponent to silence. You must, therefore, urge the point all the more, and not let your opponent evade it, even when you do not know where the weakness that you have hit upon really lies.

35. Instead of working on an opponent's intellect or the rigor of his arguments, work on his motive. If you succeed in making your opponent's opinion-should it prove true-seem distinctly prejudicial to his own interest, he will drop it immediately.
Example: A clergyman is defending some philosophical dogma. You show him that his proposition contradicts a fundamental doctrine of his church. He will abandon the argument.

36. You may also puzzle and bewilder your opponent by mere bombast. If your opponent is weak or does not wish to appear as if he has no idea what you are talking about, you can easily impose upon him some argument that sounds very deep or learned, or that sounds indisputable.

37. Should your opponent be in the right but, luckily for you, choose a faulty proof, you can easily refute it and then claim that you have refuted the whole position. This is the way in which bad advocates lose good cases. If no accurate proof occurs to your opponent, you have won the day.

38. Become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand. In becoming personal you leave the subject altogether, and turn your attack on the person by remarks of an offensive and spiteful character. This is a very popular technique, because it takes so little skill to put it into effect.

Speaking of making reasoned arguments, and to bring this back around to books, I would highly recommend:

Nonsense by Robert J. Gula
[image error]

Five great memoirs, according to author Ben Yagoda

By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY
"We live in an age of memoir," says Ben Yagoda, who traces their development in his new book, Memoir: A History. Yagoda names "the five greatest memoirs you've probably never heard of."

•Roughing It by Mark Twain (1872). "His account of six years in Nevada, San Francisco and the Sandwich Islands is among his least-known books, but it is a comic gem."

•Memoirs by John Addington Symonds (written 1889-1893, published 1986). "Symonds, an English scholar, was gay and sexually active, and his no-holds-barred memoir could not be published in his lifetime. It's fascinating to chart the change in his attitude: from a rueful sense of himself as a deviant to a sort of defiant pride."

•I'll Cry Tomorrow by Lillian Roth (1954). "Roth, a former Ziegfeld showgirl and early-talkies actress (she was in the Marx Brothers' Animal Crackers), created a sensation because of the frankness with which it depicted her alcoholism and abuse by husbands and lovers. In some ways, it created the template for the contemporary memoir, with its emphasis on trauma and recovery."

•Growing Up by Russell Baker (1982) and An American Childhood by Annie Dillard (1987). "They're luminous and could easily trade titles, though Baker spends more time on the public realm and Dillard on the private."

From USA Today

Alias Reader wrote: "Five great memoirs, according to author Ben Yagoda "

This book has been getting a lot of local press because Yagoda is a professor at a nearby college (Univ. of Delaware). From what I have read, he thinks that far too many people write memoirs.

Here is a good review:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...

Alias, thank you so much for that list! I plan to save it because, as you noted, many of those seem rampant today! I was reminded as I read through it why Plato so disdained the Sophists. They were teaching people how to win arguments, while Plato was interested in teaching people to find the truth. Science is supposed to be in the service of finding truths, not winning arguments.

Also wanted to add I love the Teaching Company courses!

Again, thanks!

You're welcome, Libyrinths. :)

I am on my library's list for The Teaching Co. course for the Italian Renaissance.

I, too, like The Teaching Co. And all their courses go on sale at least once a year. A great investment, imo.

Libyrinths wrote: "Alias, thank you so much for that list! I plan to save it because, as you noted, many of those seem rampant today! I was reminded as I read through it why Plato so disdained the Sophists. They were teaching people how to win arguments, while Plato was interested in teaching people to find the truth. Science is supposed to be in the service of finding truths, not winning arguments.
..."

So true. Sad that today's "gotcha" mentality often keeps the truth from getting the attention it deserves.

I think we saw a lot of these tactics used in the last presidential election.

Is anyone planning to see The Lovely Bones? I am, but probably not in the theater. I loved the book....

My husband was an extra in this movie, parts of which were filmed near us in Pennsylvania. In the book, the fictitious Salmon family lived in our school district.

There is a trailer here:
http://www.lovelybones.com//?utm_sour...

This was posted on another board, and I thought you might enjoy it.

It is the 100 Best Last Lines from Novels

They have my personal favorite #8 from A Tale of Two Cities. :)

I am printing it out as I think some of these last lines are so good, I want to read the book !


http://americanbookreview.org/PDF/100...

Wow JoAnn, seeing Bob almost tempts me to see this one, but The Lovely Bones was not a favorite of mine, so I expect I'll skip this one.

Sherry (sethurner) wrote: "Wow JoAnn, seeing Bob almost tempts me to see this one, but The Lovely Bones was not a favorite of mine, so I expect I'll skip this one."

He is not going to see it either! LOL And you probably would not even glimpse him as he is easily missed. Everyone in my family except me DID see him in Marley and Me - even though I knew when to look for him!

I think I'd like to see The Lovely Bones, but not sure I can convince anyone to go with me.

Kate

I read the book but didn't love it, so am not sure whether i'd watch the movie or not. There was a commercial for it recently but i can't even recall who is in it. I do know i wondered how they would present the story from the narrator's point of view, though. Now knowing Bob is in it, well! Of course we'll rent it, so we can slow-mo his scene. ;-) Wait! Did you tell us which scene he's in?

deborah

madrano wrote: "I read the book but didn't love it, so am not sure whether i'd watch the movie or not. There was a commercial for it recently but i can't even recall who is in it. I do know i wondered how they would present the story from the narrator's point of view, though. Now knowing Bob is in it, well! Of course we'll rent it, so we can slow-mo his scene. ;-) Wait! Did you tell us which scene he's in?
..."

I know he told me, but cannot remember...will have to ask him. Extras are usually in the scenes around the stars, not WITH the. And of course, he never knows if any scene he is really in might get cut before the final edit.

He and Charmer (our granddog) were in "IN HER SHOES" and we could barely see them....we could see Charmer more than Bob! When he first got there (to Philadelphia) he called me to tell me that Charmer had been taken to wardrobe. LOL

Cute story. Does he have a repertoire of movie stories? I would think so. Let us know if you see him on TLB screen.

deborah

madrano wrote: "Cute story. Does he have a repertoire of movie stories?
deborah"

Oh, yes. And I have heard each one three times!

1542 The Memoirs of John A. St.Hilaire Vol. II (Read __ Dec 1979) This is the second of four pamphlet-sized booklets self-published by the husband of a relative of mine. It is an account of his family and his memories, and I found it all fascinating and well worth my time.

1543 The St.Hilaire Family Vol I, by John St.Hilaire (read __ Dec 1979) This is the third of the four booklets published by the author, full of wisdom and thoughts about his family in Canada, Minnesota, and Washington Stale.

1544 The St.Hilaire Family Vol. II, by John St.Hilaire (read 10 Dec 1979) This is the fourth and final volume of this family memoir by the author, which I enjoyed even though quite parochial.

1545 History of Eastern Christianity, by Aziz S. Atiya (read 13 Dec 1979) This was written by a Copt, and told of the Coptic, Jacobite, Nestorian, Armenian, St Thomas Christians of South India, and Maronite Church. Only the Maronites--mainly in Lebanon--are in unity with Rome. This book told me a lot I didn't know, but some of it didn't interest me too much.

1546 American Caesar, by William Manchester (read 23 Dec 1979) This is a monumental biography. MacArthur was born in Little Rock, Ark., 26 Jan 1880 and died 5 Apr 1964 in Washington, D.C. A sweeping story, filled with much I did not know, and of course a brilliant story tying together much I only knew in patches. MacArthur was a figure larger than life, and of course accomplished much for which his country owes him gratitude. His personal courage is almost unbelievable--and something I had never before realized! An amazing career, and in his direction of the Pacific campaign, and in his Japanese occupation he was amazing. I of course backed Truman vociferously in 1951, and I do not believe I was wrong. But I cannot but admire many facets of MacArthur. I was particularly struck by his final speech at West Point: "The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished, tone and tint; they have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ear, for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory, I always come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes in my ears--Duty, Honor, Country. Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps. I bid you farewell." A very enjoyable book, even though popular rather than scholarly or definitive.

1547 Vipers' Tangle, by Francois Mauriac translated by Warre B. Wells (read 24 Dec 1979) This is an extremely well-done account of an evil and miserly man who shortly before his death is touched by grace. Very expertly done, and moving, but sad. His wife dies, having gone thru hell with him, and after she dies he comes to realize she may have loved him after all. A very good book.






--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One site keeps you connected to all your email: AOL Mail, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail. Try it now.

I omitted the title of my post: What i read in December 30 years ago (1979)

Schmerguls wrote: "I omitted the title of my post: What i read in December 30 years ago (1979)"

That McArthur speech is marvelous - thanks for taking the time to repeat it for us. My father, who served in the Army under McArthur, was very disappointed in him over the Phillipines incident where the General apparently filled his escaping transport plane with furniture and left the nurses behind to suffer under the Japanese. I don't know how true this story is, but I heard it all my youth.

Bunny wrote: "That McArthur speech is marvelous - thanks for taking the time to repeat it for us. ."

There is just something about our military academies, at least the oldest ones (West Point and Annapolis) that just has such a hold on its graduates.

"But in the evening of my memory, I always come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes in my ears--Duty, Honor, Country. Today marks my final roll call with you. But I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of the Corps, and the Corps, and the Corps. I bid you farewell."

I am certain that any Annapolis/USNA grad would say the same, but substitute the word "Brigade" for "Corps". Well, any Annapolis grad except for Jimmy Carter.

Kirkus Reviews is closing down. Read about it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/boo...

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/...

I heard about that on NBC Nightly News. It's sad to see so many magazines biting the dust. And all those people out of work!

deborah

Another article about Kirkus, including the fees it paid, compared to the shockingly low fees paid to reviewers by Publishers Weekly!

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/c...

JoAnn, this line covers it all. "Hearing about their closing reminded me that they were still publishing," said literary agent Ira Silverberg.

The part about the free reviewing, while true, holds its own problems. At least with some reviewers you would develop a sense of their standards & whether you could trust them. With free reviews (& i've only read ones from online book seller's sites) you don't know if the reviewer is the author's family or friend (or the writer herself!) or someone who holds a grudge against that author. There are so many other things i've noticed. My point being that i rather appreciated knowing that hard copy reviewers tended to share any prejudice they might hold. They are open & accountable, whereas the freebees don't have to be, so i don't feel the level of trust. THIS IS NOT TO SAY they aren't honest & good, only that if i have to spend time questioning the writer, i'm unlikely to buy a book based on the review.

deborah

madrano wrote: "JoAnn, this line covers it all. "At least with some reviewers you would develop a sense of their standards & whether you could trust them..."

This is exactly how I approach movie reviewers....I know the standards of the few whose reviews I read, and while I many not always agree, at least I know where they are coming from.

When you have a million reviewers, as Amazon does, where are the standards? There is a lot of dreck over there. Especially since Amazon started its "VIne" program which ships free copies to selected reviewers. I never trust a review from a Vine reviewer. I read enough book blogs to know that the people who receive free copies want more and more of them - or at least it seems that way to me.

I'm glad i wasn't aware of the Vine program! I agree, what reviewer would want to lose that gravy train? Not i!

deborah

Video-books. The Washington Post has a great article today (Monday) about something new: video-book hybrids(called Vooks). I guess you read the text on a computer (or maybe a Kindle?), but there are embedded video links that include pictures, scenes from the novel, background info, etc. It sounds great for non-fiction, but I'm not sure I want to see their dramatization of scenes or of what characters look like, etc. The article reminds us that "books" are a relatively recent phenomenon so we should not be distressed by this kind of evolution in technology. Hmmmm.

I'll give the URL to the Post article, but I don't know how to embed an actual link yet:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...

Oh, joy, GoodReads converted the URL to a link FOR me. Maybe technology isn't so bad after all.

Sarah wrote: "Video-books. The Washington Post has a great article today (Monday) about something new: video-book hybrids(called Vooks). I guess you read the text on a computer (or maybe a Kindle?), but there..."

I'm glad you posted that Sarah! I saw it this morning and was going to share it too. Are you in the DC area or an on line reader?

Donna in Southern Maryland

Good article from the Post. I particularly was drawn to this line, Perhaps the folly isn't in speculating that the book might change, but in assuming that it won't.

True! We've embraced change over the years. The ones which we like linger, the ones we don't either revert, change again or we stop using them, in essence "killing" them in our own eyes, i guess.

Regardless, i'm intrigued with the nonfiction reading in this sort of venue. They might actually be able to offer more than paper versions since the price should be less. However, i agree that i don't want my novels & their characters presented with the imagination of someone else. This is one of the joys of reading, imo.

Thanks for the article.

deborah

One of my daughters received a Kindle as a Christmas gift from her husband. She's delighted with it, and purchased two books as soon as she registered. They downloaded immediately. She was happy to have reading material that wouldn't take up much room on the plane ride home.

Speaking of technology, my son-in-law received a contraption that would enable us here in South Carolina to watch the NY Giants football game on our TV, even if it wasn't scheduled locally, by hooking into his TV in New York City, all by remote control. Amazing. (Unfortunately, in a way, after he spent what seemed like hours trying to set it all up with audio as well as video, we found out that the game was to be televised locally because they were playing a southern team. Ah well, we're all set for the next time!)

Carolyn (in SC) C234D wrote: "even if it wasn't scheduled locally, by hooking into his TV in New York City, all by remote control. Amazing...."

No kidding! Who knew? It's amazing what we learn when our kids visit, isn't it? LOL!

We've had problems since moving here with our phone in the room where the computer is. We even bought new phones, thinking the old ones were the problem. Not so. (We think the problem is that this room has metal siding outside, as well as inside. It used to be an outdoor room.)

Well, our son has been calling us to look on "gas buddy" to locate the cheapest gas as they drive back to Oregon. They suggested we try our cell phone. Sure enough, that works! Now, if needed, we know of a way to be on the computer & phone simultaneously. Two Years Later! :-0

deborah

Carolyn, I know someone who lives in France and watches American TV shows via that same contraption. It is amazing and beyond my capability for understanding.

I was going to take advantage of their presence here for a few days to get all kinds of little computer and electronic stuff done, but there was so much going on all the time that I didn't think of most of it until they had left. One of them gave me a digital picture frame (I think that's what it is) last year, and they were going to download (?) some pictures into it, but that never got done, either. If it isn't written down, it doesn't have a chance, it seems.

Carolyn (in SC) C234D wrote: "I was going to take advantage of their presence here for a few days to get all kinds of little computer and electronic stuff done."

I do this same thing when my son-in-law (my tech support) is around. Fortunately I see him at least every other week, and he also has the ability to remotely access my desktop (something else I fail to comprehend).

He gave me a digital picture holder (I carry it in my purse) and I had to have him write down the step-by-step instructions so I can change the photos.

OK, I'm so dumb. How do you put in the quote referring to another post? I used to know how to do it on aol, but now I'm clueless. I feel like I know how, but I can't do it.

Carolyn (in SC) C234D wrote: "OK, I'm so dumb. How do you put in the quote referring to another post? I used to know how to do it on aol, but now I'm clueless. I feel like I know how, but I can't do it."

Carolyn - Instead of going straight to the comment box at the end of the thread, click on the "reply" button at the end of the post you are responding to. This puts the sender and first few lines of that post in italics at the top of the comment box. But I'm not sure how to include part of a long post, or a later part of it. I use "reply" and then cut and paste the specific part into the italicized part. By the way, it doesn't show as italicized while you are responding. The italics are provided by the HTML tags inside the arrows.

Sarah wrote: "But I'm not sure how to include part of a long post, or a later part of it. I use "reply" and then cut and paste the specific part into the italicized part..."

This is exactly what I do, Sarah.

Thank you both, I think I've got it now. You have to click on "reply" on the original topic thread, not the digest. I think I'll drop the digest.