Tuesday, February 14
5:20 am
It is -5 °C, with a high forecast of +1 °C.
From the Environment Canada website:
Today Clearing early this morning. Wind northwest 20 km/h becoming light late this morning. High plus 1.
Tonight Clear. Low minus 11.
Normals: Max +2 °C, Min -10 °C
The ground is white again. We had about 2" of snow overnight. The walks and driveway will need some shovelling this morning.
5:50 am Literature
Me: I want to continue playing with making a few notes for "The Use and Abuse of Literature" by Marjorie Garber. I now realize that this book is an example of literary study. As I understand it, literary study is exactly what it says, the study of literature. Three other terms are often used, somewhat interchangeably: literary criticism, literary theory, and literary history. I have then looked all four terms up in wikipedia. Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Literary theory focuses on the analysis of texts. Literary history emphasizes the historical development of literature.
Now for my sense of this. Literature is writing about some aspect of human nature and culture. Psychology and sociology also do this, the difference being in the type of language used. These disciplines use empirical data to make statements of varying generality. Literature on the other hand is often imaginative, using more ambiguous language and emphasizing interpretation rather than description to provide its meaning. The study of literature is an examination of these works. Some writers focus on writing while others focus on what they have written. Some may divide their time between both activities. An author of novels who also reflects, and writes, about these reflections does both. Garber is one who focuses on the study of literature. Having read the first few chapters of "The Use and Abuse of Literature" I am struck by the inherent ambiguities and contradictions in much of which she says. I consider this a strength, not a weakness. People are very, very complex. Cultures even more so. Writing about people and cultures should reflect this complexity and ambiguity. The danger is to simplify and come up with rigid statements and principles.
Garber: "In the pages that follow I will attempt not only to argue for but also to invoke and demonstrate the 'uses' of reading and of literature, not as an instrument of moral or cultural control, nor yet as an infusion of 'pleasure', but rather as a way of thinking." [p. 7]
Me: I like this. For me, literature is something that makes me think. "The Taming of the Shrew" makes me think about human relationships, particularly those between men and women. It does not attempt to suggest what I should think. Scholarly writing, paradoxically, does not usually make me think - it primarily provides me with information that I should remember and perhaps fit into a broader conceptual framework. Much of the thinking that does occur is at the level of detail, having to do with procedure or related studies. Literature is much more open ended and flexible in terms of what kinds of ideas happen next. Interestingly, this very process of writing these notes, which is, I guess, a form of literary study, has required me to seriously think about literature.
Me: The first chapter of Garber's book describes a 2004 study on literacy in the US. Among the top ten most read books in this survey, I have read all but Stephen King's "The Stand". I just went to the amazon.ca website to see if it was available and discovered there was a new revised version of this classic. I then went to amazon.com and learned that the new version was available as an ebook. Done. As soon as I click on the order icon I receive a message saying that it is now on my iPad2 and ready for reading. This is certainly better than trying to download a movie.
9:00 am Technology
Now that I am on a roll, I searched amazon.com for an ebook on the iCloud. Done.
[Addendum 12:40 PM]
I continue to make progress with iCloud. I was able to determine that although it was installed on the iPad2, it was not actually installed on my laptop. I then learned that it would only install on a computer that had the Lion operating system. I finally learned that one could only upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion if one had an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. A check showed that I had the earlier version called an Intel Core Duo. Thus there is no way to upgrade my laptop so it will run iCloud. At least I now know where I stand.
Having said all that I did find a sequence of steps for sharing Pages files between the iPad2 and my laptop.
create document on iPad2 using Pages
tap on Documents to save latest version
on laptop, open Safari
go to icloud.com/iwork and follow prompts
once it is in Pages on the laptop, continue to edit document
then click on Share icon at top of window
select upload for private use
This will eventually send an email to me from iWork.com
Access this email on the iPad2
Tap on shared documents icon
Login to iwork
click on Download link to obtain the file
tap on page then tap on open in Pages link
This is actually easier than it sounds.