Reading, Revisited

So it's been ten days since I started and a full week since I talked about the fact that I was going to try to reprogram my mind to be able to read again, and I thought an update might be in order.

Adjustments need to be made to that list I offered, both in removing parts and adding a few that I overlooked the first time.

The reading list updated (these are books that I am partially through at the moment):

1. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
2. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
3. Talking as Fast as I Can by Lauren Graham
4. On Celtic Tides by Chris Duff
5. The Magician King by Lev Grossman
6. The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt
7. The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr
8. The Big Tiny by Dee Williams
9. The Unexpected Guest by Agatha Christie
10. Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
11. American Gods by Neil Gaiman (this is a re-read, but still counts)
12. Accidental Saints by Nadia Bolz-Weber
13. The Cornish Coast Murder by John Bude
14. Dragons at Crumbling Castle by Terry Pratchett
15. So, Anyway... by John Cleese
16. Moab is My Washpot by Stephen Fry
17. Cheer Up Love by Susan Calman 

As you can see, quite a few books have been piling up, unfinished, neglected around my house.

The good news is that since I started this project ten days ago I not only finished the three that have been struck out above (it wasn't my intention to read down the list...just sort of happened) but I also finished the Fredrick Backman book I kicked this all off with.

So there you have it.  The brain can be reprogrammed to be able to handle the focused task of reading a book, despite several years of social media corruption.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll read.

On Forgetting How to Read

When I was eight my uncle gave me a copy of the Hobbit for Christmas, and that started me into a fury of reading that has lasted my entire life.

Over the past year, however...maybe two or three...I haven't been reading as much.  I used to read like I needed it to survive, living in up to ten different stories at a time.  As it stands now, I failed majestically to reach a self-assigned goal of twenty-four books last year, and thus far this year I've probably only read three or four.

This is an unspeakable failure, if you ask my childhood self.  (He was a bit of a judgmental jerk sometimes).

I've been wondering why this is.  Why am I unable to read now?  Why can't I concentrate on letting myself fall into the stories like I used to?

As of three days ago I am currently partway through reading the following:

1. Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
2. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
3. Talking as Fast as I Can by Lauren Graham
4. On Celtic Tides by Chris Duff
5. The Magician King by Lev Grossman
6. The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt
7. The Angel of Darkness by Caleb Carr
8. The Big Tiny by Dee Williams
9. The Unexpected Guest by Agatha Christie
10. Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

As you can see, though my level of success has faltered, my patterns remain.

I want to read all of these books.  I want to finish them, to absorb them, to experience every word of them, but I can't.  I can't focus.  I can't read.

Then my wife sends me this article about how smart phones and the internet are making us dependent on constantly shifting information and instant gratification.  We're reprogramming our brains to be unable to focus for more than seconds at a time, it said.  It also said some religious crap that I could have done without, which is why I'm not linking it here.

But the one takeaway I...took away...from the article was that the reprogramming can be reversed.  All you have to do, it said, was force yourself to read an hour a day.  Just one measly hour out of twenty-four.  I decided to do it.  This was three days ago.

Did I choose one of the ten that I was in the middle of and attack it?

Of course not.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman.  That is the book I'm pouring through right now.  An hour a day.  It's really good.  My wife recommends it highly.

So far, three hours of reading in three days has left me with a renewed happiness I lost somewhere in the flashing and clicking.  I'm going to keep doing it.  Once I finish this book, I'll tackle each of the ones above until they are done, and then I'll go on the hunt for more.

Wish me luck.

It's all a matter of perspective

So I'm browsing down my Facebook feed and I come across this old chestnut:

Now, very quickly, I'd like to point out the fact that there is no way they can accurately measure the number of people that would fail the test, so the "97%" statistic is clearly bogus.  On top of that, why would you first say that only a small percentage of people will succeed and then use that fleeting success as the basis for whether or not it should be shared.

Surely you would want the 97% failures to do the sharing...unless you don't want it shared for some bizarre reason.

But, those little bits aren't the point of this.  The point of this is that there are, as I can see it, three possible correct solutions, and everyone should understand why this is.

The basic solution is this.  If you take the result of the first problem and add it to the addends in the second, you get the result of the second problem.  Therefore, 5 + 2 + 5 equals 12.  Moving on, 12 + 3 + 6 = 21, and this is where two of the three results come into play.

34

Using the established rule, 21 + 5 + 8 = 34.  Simple and easy.

Except when it isn't.  Perhaps another view could be taken that you are meant to extrapolate the complete problem from the given values.  Shouldn't there be a "4" in the mix?  Isn't that how things work?  If your answer is "NO!" then stick with 34 as your answer and shake your head at all of those foolish people who say "YES!" and come up with:

45

Because if you add the 4+7 equation into the mix and then you follow the rule established above then you end up with this:

1 + 4 = 5

2 + 5 = 12

3 + 6 = 21

4 + 7 = 32

5 + 8 = 45

See, there you go.  Not quite as simple but still pretty straightforward.

Except...

A third perspective, and one that will be irritating to SAT enthusiasts everywhere but possibly delightful to realists or people who don't have time for silly games is this:

Just because someone else makes a mistake doesn't mean you have to join them in it.

You know the answer.  You've known it all along.  You just thought you shouldn't.

5 + 8, no matter what anyone tells you is

13

I'm glad we had this talk.

My Birthmark, an FAQ

So I have this birthmark on my arm.  It's a bump, roughly the size of a rat, and it's topped off by several dark red spots.  It gets noticed on random occasion by someone, and inevitably I end up answering the same questions about it.  To save time in the future, allow me to cover them here.

1.  What is that on your arm?  (Alternatively:  What happened to your arm?  Oh my God, what did you do to your arm?  Ew, what's that?).  It's a birthmark.  I was born with it.  It has always been proportional to my arm, so that when I was a child it was much smaller than it is now.

2.  No, I mean the raised part.  It looks swollen.  It is swollen.  There's a boatload of blood vessels gathered around under there making a big bump appear.  I can't explain it, except to tell you the medical term I was given long ago:  benign hemangioma.  Just think of someone like Gorbachev with that port-wine stain on his forehead, only mine's on my arm.

3.  Does it hurt?  Not usually, except when I use my right hand a lot, like after typing for hours on end.  So, actually, yes, usually.

4.  What would happen if you got cut there?  I suspect I would bleed a considerable amount.  It's worth noting that I believe this would be the case no matter where I got cut.

5.  Have you ever thought about having it removed?  Yes, every so often.  However, when I was a child and my mother asked the doctor about that very thing, he said, "He can either have a bump, or a dip.  Which would you like?"  With this in mind I usually forget about the whole thing before I get too deep into planning.

6.  How often to people ask about it?  When I wear short sleeves, at least once a day.

7.  Are you tired of people asking about it?  Not really.  It's been a lifelong sociological study for me, seeing how people react and how they go about asking, if they do at all.  The first thing that happens is they notice and try to steal glances when I'm not looking.  I see them.  Some people just ask right away, genuinely concerned that I've hurt myself.  Others take their time and try to slip it into the conversation casually, like it's possible to do that with something as odd as this.

8.  What do you usually tell people when they ask?  Depending on the person, and how long it has taken them to get around to it, and how polite they are when they do, I have a collection of answers I give outside of the regular explanation.  Some of those have been:  My arm is pregnant,  It's my twin that I absorbed in the womb, It's my massive arm wrestling muscle, etc.  Once, just to get out of the situation where the person was being especially rude, I looked down, screamed, and ran out of the building holding it like it was broken.  But mostly I just say, "Birth."

9.  What do you call it?  The Rat.

This probably covers everything.  I'll amend the list should new questions arise.

A Poem in English