Monday 2 August 1999

I had just read an e-mail from Diary-l, a mailing list I subscribe to. A person there had included a pointer to this webpage. I had looked it up, now I tried to stare it down. It won. And I made a promise to myself. Two promises, actually. "Make site simple" was the first. "Never make fun of those who need it simple" was the next.

Yes, I remember a while ago, I made a parody of simple simple writing. And believe me, I am not going to write like that! But I'll try to avoid the "oh no it is a carpet of words" feeling, at least. Especially since with me, it would be a carpet of long words.

The short term memory of humans is fairly restricted. We can typically hold ca 7 items in mind at any one time. This is not nearly as bad as it sounds, though, since the "items" can be complex ones. And our brain is rapidly building more complex concepts from simple ones. It also draws heavily on our long term memory. This also works for reading: The fluent reader will recognize words by their form. Only with unfamiliar words and names will she have to dive down to the level of letters.

Yes, the fluent reader reads English in a similar way to how an educated Chinese reads his language: By looking at the picture of the words. When we learn to read, we do it in a different way; but the end result is very similar. If all goes well, the shape of the words fade from our sight, and we look directly at the meaning.
If there is a meaning.

For the benefit of the reader, there are some helpful extras: Punctuation and capital letters. The idea is to make it easier to navigate the sea of text. Now our brain can see at a glance where things start and stop, for instance. I think this is a good thing. I see that the irc generation has started to abandon these props. Is it too much hassle to hit the shift key for every new sentence? These things were invented for a reason: To help the reader. I consider it rude to ask others to do more brainwork so you can do less.

But I better live as I preach, and avoid the long sentences. And the endless paragraphs, too. After all, it turned out that I did not want others to do it unto me.

Heard on the news today: "Nigeria is a country with very high illirat ... illir ... illi ... illiteracy!"
(I am not making this up, just translating it from Norwegian.)

It's always nice to have squeaky clean underwear when travelling. Though this time my employer has actually forked out for a single-bed room on the night train. Yay! Way to go. Now, not only can I sleep my way to the top - or at least to Oslo - but I also have most of the day to play tourist and perchance to do some shopping. Not that things are any cheaper in Oslo than in Kristiansand, quite the opposite, but the capital city does have more shops. Ooh! Shopping all day! Could I wish for more? Well, a girl or two to shop with. Shopping with girls is the greatest. And I don't say that just because they sometimes will try on clothes who are just a little bit too small for them... It is more that girls tend to share my enthusiasm for looking around, comparing stuff, touching, trying, making mental notes on the benefit of each and every thing. (Men will do that with cars, but cars are pretty expensive.)