Reflections, and being philosophical

At least once a year, I go back to Benjamin Franklin’s “The 13 Virtues,” finding myself not being able to observe even one third of them at the same time. Here they are.

1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
13. HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Well, about the last item, how to interpret it is a pending problem for me because I am not a Christian. In older times, “humbleness” was a virtue all Japanese should have. I think I know what the humility is, but sometimes it is difficult to be humble. What relieves me is that even Franklin himself didn’t ever try to work on them all at once. He would work on only one each week “leaving all others to their ordinary chance.”

And I sometimes talk about those lessons with young people. However flippant and sometimes hoody they seem to be in appearance, most of them surely take them seriously. I am always surprised to see that. I wonder if those disciplinary rules might be even quite “new” to some of them, in this time of diversity and generosity. You can imagine how I can be philosophical when I think about this.

Possibility of reorientation, in media sense

Well. I’m using Kindle. I enjoy it.

But, to tell the truth, I didn’t care about its level of perfection. What I wanted the most in getting it was just experiencing the feel of media vicissitude. What McLuhan celebrated, with the advent of “new media,” when he showed the idea of “the medium = the massage” was the possibility of our recapturing collective identity, which had been segmented as individualism brought by the printed culture, significantly symbolized by Gutenberg galaxy. How will the device like Kindle be interweaved within the texture of media vicissitude, between visual and oral?

Anyway, I believe that Kindle is the device that represents such a time of change of media environment in our time. It’s huge.

Gutenberg Galaxy on Kindle

You know, I’ve recently posted an entry about the convenience of Kindle downloading classic masterpieces just for under 3 bucks. Then, my friend reminded me how Project Gutenberg is useful when we are craving for literary classics on Kindle. Just a series of operative works like downloading files and converting them to the Kindle compatible ones enables us to read them, with Kindle. Yup, I believed that such arrangements provided us with the best way to read works by brand-name writers, since those are our common property we can share without any expense. I’ve sort of thought like, though, before experiencing Kindle, it is true “only if time allows.”

But, I guess, it’s worth taking time for downloading, converting, transferring, now that I got a Kindle, with interfaces specific for the act of reading. With Kindle, we can read novels and news articles and research papers, as much as we did with printed forms. The new gadget’s concept is completely different from other electronic devices oriented for several purposes. I believe now is the time for me to put a Gutenberg galaxy into my Kindle, to utilize the common property of human beings, for free, since it is the device made for that kind of utility.

The friend I mentioned above is Marr-san, an Apple “evangelist” in Japan and good mentor of mine, who substantially guided me to begin my blogs and Twitter. When I’m stuck, he sometimes gives me pieces of advice. Thank you Marr-san.

That Kindles my mind, actually

I bought several items via Kindle in first three days. Here’s the list:

The Henry James Collection II: 24 Novellas and Short Stories, The Henry James Collection I: 24 Novellas and Short Stories, The Henry James Collection III: 16 Novels in One Volume , The Complete Charles Dickens Collection, The Women(T.C. Boyle), The Complete Mark Twain Collection.

Each item cost only 3 dollars, except for Boyle’s The Women. I guess, for people outside US like me, shipping cost of items purchased at Amazon.com makes us think twice to “place the order.” Kindle edition of The Women was actually a little more expensive than printed version, but it is needless to say which we should buy, in terms of total cost.

For a bookworm like me, Kindle is really a messianic new device that helps non-US people reach primary sources “printed” in US. It’s extremely easy to buy them now. As a researcher, however, I still don’t know how to handle the reliability of the sources when they are mediated by Kindle.

Other than that, it’s really awesome. The e-ink display way exceeded my expectation and the letters and pictures are beautiful on it. The lightness allows me to hold it as long as I like. While my driving a car, text-to-speech gives me authentic news source like New York Times, Financial Times, LATimes etc the instant they are out, while I’m in Japan. And still the battery will last for days.

I’m on with Kindle.

Kindle 2 released in Japan, eventually

The international version of Kindle was released last week, and now it’s available in Japan.

It surely has such a good texture that reminds me of the “real” book.

Fun thing about Kindle is it has a lot of stand-by pictures of famous writers like Ralph Ellison, Charlotte Bronte, James Joyce etc, which may urge users to buy complete works of them sold only at 2 or 3 bucks!

Start!

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This blog is going to be my primary one that reflects my thought concerning my research projects, jobs, family and so on. Zacky’s AlterBlog has already started mumbling something, especially about my particularity(?) on electronics, gadgets, music and other hobbies of mine. Please enjoy this blog and, if you like, visit  Zacky’s AlterBlog either.