Readers Prefer Kindle or iPad, Even if Slower
By Larry | July 7, 2010
It sounds strange at first. Reading on a Kindle or iPad slows you down. Reading a physical book is faster. The Nielsen company comes to this conclusion following a survey of twenty four frequent readers.
Using short stories by Hemingway, book readers completed their reading in what Nielsen said is statistically significant faster times. Kindles proved slowest.
Everyone disliked reading on a laptop. Since laptops are work tools, they’re not the reader of choice for relaxing or entertaining reading. Too similar to work, apparently.
However, even if books are faster reads, people prefer e-readers. As screens improve this will likely add momentum to a switch in favor of digital readers. It’s not hard to project that the reading experience will change even more radically with hyperlinks, videos, photos and audio inserts to supplement text. The latest Kindle app allows you to turn on a shared highlight function. You can share with other Kindle readers sections of books you mark as noteworthy, making reading a shared experience in a limited way.
This integration of digital multiple media is changing not only how fast we read, but how we read and, no doubt, we’re in for much more change. How are digital readers changing our (or your) reading and learning?
Topics: On Media | No Comments »
- Similar Posts
- Blogging the Information Reformation
- How has the Web Altered Your Brain?
- Media and How we Use Them
The Israeli Army Video
By Larry | July 6, 2010
The video of Israeli Army soldiers in Hebron performing a dance routine has created an international stir. However, it may be less an exercise in diplomatic and political insensitivity than an indication that we live in a global media culture and we’re so used to media they’re a seamless part of our lives.
That these young people did not perceive how their synchronized dance would look on video to those outside their environment simply reveals how deeply they embrace a YouTube way of life. The medium, the sharing and the performance are so embedded in their lives they didn’t give due consideration to the security issues nor public perception of their dance.
It’s a do-it-yourself media world. Anyone can be a producer. The lines between performance and normal affairs are blurred everyday. To be on-camera is no longer special. No studio is required as it was in the broadcast television era. The era of elite professionals set apart to prepare content for an audience who passively receive it through complicated, inaccessible technology is ancient history.
We carry cameras with us. We send images so casually it’s not even remarkable. We document the mundane and the historic. A airliner slides into the Hudson River and it’s captured on an iPhone, posted on a photo site and reported on Twitter. Prisoners in the Philippines perform a Michael Jackson synchronized dance while behind bars. It’s sent around the world and becomes a viral sensation.
And young soldiers, without thinking through the implications, dance on-camera and share their production. The world gasps, but that’s life today.
Topics: On Media | No Comments »
- Similar Posts
- Reality TV, Laura Bush and the Press
- Media and How we Use Them
- Breaking Trust with Gen X and Gen Y
A Nation of Minorities
By Larry | June 13, 2010
Sitting in the waiting lounge of the airport in Lincoln, Nebraska, I watched a tall, slim little girl of about fourteen and her younger brother walk down the hall with great energy. I surmised they were Somali.
Moments later, a woman in a long, white African dress, her head wrapped as many Somali women entered and followed the children to the waiting area. My musings aside, an African family greeting an arriving passenger in Lincoln is not even cause for notice. Even here in the heartland, we are a nation of diversity, a fact that we sometimes forget and something major media often overlook as they picture us as mostly white of Euro or Nordic stock.
However, the news that the U.S. in 2010 is a nation with no majority confirms our diversity and raises many interesting questions. It may also provide insight into some of the current swirling divisions that leave us so conflicted, immigration being one of the most contentious.
The presumptive image of the country as mostly WASP may linger with the visibility of the Boomers but a growing population of children and youth who are ethnically diverse has already changed us. We just haven’t quite fully comprehended what’s happened, nor the implications for the future.
Whether mainstream institutions (at least what we used to call mainstream) such as mainline religious denominations and mass membership organizations such as service clubs populated by the old majority can stand remains to be seen. The development of ethnically diverse congregations has lagged behind the population shift in part due to cultural, language, economic and class differences.
Facing changes in youth culture, mainline groups haven’t been able to attract and keep their own young people, so the changes necessary to be hospitable and welcoming to people who come from different cultures and speak different languages will prove no less difficult.
Beyond cultural differences, a deeper challenge is embedded in the demographic changes we’re going through. The Census Bureau analysis of the population makes a case that change is coming “from the ground up.” By this the demographers mean the changes are occurring because young couples are having more children. Thus, the population changes are not the result of immigration, they’re from propagation. This is home grown diversity. It isn’t an immigrantion issue.
It does raise challenges we’re not giving much thought. We’re challenged to think seriously about quality public education for all children, now more than ever. We’re challenged to consider our attitudes toward national identity in a globally interconnected world. Those nations that effectively adapt, incorporate diversity and understand global connection will be better situated to play a role in shaping the world to come rather than merely reacting to what comes from elsewhere.
And those of the former majority are challenged to overcome fear of new people who have different cultural practices, language, dress and ways of doing things. This will require developing the capacity to be comfortable in a multicultural world.
This is already happening, of course, but it’s also true that cleavages and conflict plague progress toward an inclusive society. The immigration debate about border control is the most contentious example. But there’s also the English-only movement and the long-simmering issue of white privilege that some deny and others claim still afflicts relations between blacks and whites.
Even more deeply embedded in this change is something we just don’t like to talk about in the U.S.–class differences based in part on economics. The widening gap between rich and poor is far deeper than multiculturalism.
In fact, elites from every ethnic and language group may share more in common with each other than they share with the poor from within their own ethnic heritage. In the past several years, an affluent, elite global class has developed that enjoys wealth and privilege quite apart from the day-to-day struggle of working people and the poor within their own ethnic and language groups.
This cleavage isn’t addressed by the Census Bureau study, but it is the one with the most potential for social harm and long-term damage to social progress and harmony. If the mainline churches were to address the justice issues inherent in this challenge, they would be tackling one of the foremost issues at the root of the changing demographic landscape.
Whether they can do it and survive is altogether another question. But it may be the most important question they face.
Topics: On Culture | No Comments »
- Similar Posts
- Class and Black Elites
- Facing the Big Taboo–Class in America
- Class? Don’t Talk About it.
Illegally Harvesting Madagascar’s Rosewood Trees
By Larry | May 26, 2010
Illegal harvesting of Madagascar’s rosewood trees is occurring unchecked because the government is in turmoil according to a report in the New York Times. I’ve walked in these forests and the report offers one more disappointing example of the consequences of bad governance, poverty and avarice in Africa.
The island nation off East Africa is an ecological treasure perhaps unsurpassed in the world. Animals, insects, flora and fauna flourish unlike anywhere else. Civil instability has led to a failure of governance. No one controls the reins of government and, therefore, no regulatory agency can halt the illegal harvesting of Madagascar’s ecologically unique forests and make the order stick.
Poverty makes the valuable trees easy picking for local people who profit little from the cutting, but in the absence of anything better their share is enough incentive to destroy the forests. Unprincipled buyers of the illegally harvested wood add to the problem. For several years cutting of exotic woods has been monitored and its traffic controlled. This has made more end-users sensitive to the problem of endangered forests but it hasn’t resulted in stewardship of Madagascar’s rosewood.
Saving a forest is not as emotionally compelling as saving endangered animals and preserving Madagascar’s forests hasn’t been given the same degree of attention as the Brazilian and Indonesian rain forests. It’s a smaller, relatively isolated land area. But the devastation is no less important or permanent.
If its forests are destroyed, the ecological chain that makes Madagascar such a unique and rich trove of natural treasure will be damaged perhaps beyond recovery. Another casualty of Africa’s struggle with governance.
Topics: On Development, On Poverty | No Comments »
- Similar Posts
- Recovering Niger
- A Cheap, Effective New Treatment for Malaria
- SCHIP and Traditional Family Values
Mogadishu, Somalia–World’s Most Dangerous City
By Larry | May 25, 2010
A report by Richard Engel of NBC News is not only frustrating, it’s frightening and disheartening. Engel reports from Mogadishu that the city is all but destroyed and all who could leave have gone. Those who remain are under the rule of the Al-Shabaab, an Islamic insurgent group that has imposed Shariah law.
What’s frustrating is the continuing state of anarchy that has marked Somali life for the last 19 years and the inability of either internal or external intervention to create change. And it’s frustrating that Somalia was for so long considered a remote and insignificant point on the map. Now that it’s a training ground for terrorism, and fifty U.S. citizens have migrated there for training or to participate in the insurgency, it’s being re-discovered. The long-term neglect of the people, however, is paying the wrong dividends now.
Beyond the horror of the inhumanity, it’s also shocking to see the utter destruction of Mogadishu, once a strikingly beautiful city on the shores of the Indian Ocean. The glimpses we see in Engel’s report reveal just how damaging years of violence have been.
Somalia’s troubles seem inescapable. Perhaps a million Somalis are internally displaced and the population of Mogadishu, according to Engel, has dropped from one million to 700,000.
Engel reports U.S. drones can be heard circling Mogadishu nightly. This reconnaissance is one way the U.S. is supporting the African peacekeeping mission, a mission that never leaves the main roads according to its commanding officer.
Once remote and overlooked, my guess is we’ll come to know Somalia, for better or worse. As a former CIA officer states in Engel’s report, today Somalia is a “grade A problem.”
Topics: On Poverty | No Comments »
More on Thinking Globally, Acting Locally
By Larry | April 30, 2010
In a previous post I referred to the phrase, “Think globally, act locally.” It’s become a bumper sticker cliché, yet it remains meaningful in our shrunken, globally interconnected world.
We are connected in ways unknown to earlier generations. From global economic policy to national governance. From local community organization to the education and training of individuals.
No single entry point is sufficient and no small scale effort independent of others is adequate. This goes against the grain of our desire to make a difference immediately, locally and personally, yet I believe it’s necessary to take this broader view in order to effect change at a level that affects the most people.
What the people in The United Methodist Church are doing in Imagine No Malaria is partnering to achieve scale while also rebuilding local infrastructure to support community health and social development. They are thinking globally, acting locally.
The fight to end deaths caused by malaria is a global fight and it will be won neighborhood by neighborhood, one family at a time. But individual children live in families and families live in communities and individuals are affected by the quality of life of communities.
Viewed in its totality, the effort to substantially reduce deaths caused by malaria is a huge undertaking. Only a couple of years ago it was considered an impossibility. But in the years since the people of the UMC have become involved, a global movement has developed that views this goal not merely as a vision but as a target.
When then-General Secretary Randy Day hung a bednet at a meeting of the Board of Global Ministries four years ago, he put the challenge to the church. Then he and Bishop Jao Machado of Mozambique spoke at a Summit on Global Health sponsored by TIME magazine. He held up a hand-crank radio and explained how it could be used to deliver information to help prevent malaria. Immediately following this, Dr. Day and I spoke to the Council of Bishops about the challenge to end malaria.
These fledgling efforts led to General Conference affirming Four Areas of Focus with the Global Health focus including a campaign for $75 million to provide bednets to combat the disease. In a mesmerizing speech, Bill Gates, Sr. called the church to join a global movement to end the tragic effects of this disease. And the delegates responded.
Two years later, the people of The United Methodist Church are taking the challenge into their own congregations, acting locally on this global problem. They have raised $10 million, the first goal set by the campaign plan. And they are moving forward.
Last week, a delegation of three bishops, guests and general agency staff participated in two launch events for Imagine No Malaria with the three bishops of the Democratic Republic of Congo in two cities there. The striking thing about this was the crowds that turned out to hear the blunt speeches and wonderful singing of Yvonne Chaka Chaka, a singer of continent-wide renown.
When she asked the thousands of people surrounding the stage in Kamina in central Congo if they wanted nets, they responded with a roar of affirmation. Only a few short months ago, many did not know what causes malaria and were not interested in bednets. The educational message has spread quickly and the response is immediate. These conditions–of awareness and desire for nets–are yet another important step forward.
However, small scale efforts cannot achieve the goal of continent-wide coverage. This requires multiple partners and geographic reach. In Kamina, for example, The United Methodist Church has already distributed 15,000 nets. This is important. These nets will protect thousands of children. But 450,000 people in the region remain without. This illustrates the challenge. It’s one of scale.
With partners, including the United Nations Foundation, the Global Fund to Combat HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a host of others, the UMC must scale up to cover the region and, when coupled with other important changes, the goal of reducing malaria deaths in Kamina and the whole of Africa can be achieved.
In Austin last Sunday people danced and celebrated World Malaria Day and the formal launch of the campaign Imagine No Malaria. It was a glorious afternoon of celebration. We celebrated surpassing the first fundraising goal of $10 million. We are a part of a global movement that is making history by thinking globally and acting locally.
Topics: On Development, On Health | No Comments »
- Similar Posts
- Communication to Build Community
- Did Pres. Obama Borrow a United Methodist Phrase?
- Religion Writer Needed–No experience required
Crying Out for Bednets in Kamina, DR Congo
By Larry | April 29, 2010
The Democratic Republic of Congo has seen its most basic infrastructure destroyed by ten years of civil war. Roads, schools, hospitals and clinics, nearly every basic piece of infrastructure necessary for life is lacking, compromised, or doesn’t exist.
We discovered this in Lumbumbashi when we experienced roads within the city that in the developed world would be considered impassable. And we rediscovered it when we drove from the airbase in rural Kamina into the small town. A strip of asphalt in the center, not wide enough for a vehicle, was all that remained of a paved road that once connected the dilapidated base to the town.
But this lack of essential service doesn’t necessarily mean lack of community, nor lack of enthusiasm for improvement. Perhaps the most dangerous result of resource deprivation is the risk that people begin to believe they don’t matter, or deserve better, because they adapt to living without. It’s the risk to human dignity that comes with lack of economic resources.
But we experienced a surge of community-wide expressiveness that I’ve never witnessed before in Africa. As she did in Lumbumbashi, Yvonne Chaka Chaka called people to come forward to the stage as she sang and danced. And a sea of humanity surged forward. Sitting on the stage I could not see the end of the mass of people who had come to hear her and to learn about malaria.
But it became clear they already know malaria’s toll. They wanted nets. Now. One man held up money to demonstrate that he would pay for a net at that moment.
What this said to me is that the education about malaria has been successful. People in Kamina understand what causes it and they want help to prevent their children and loved ones from contracting it. And it says that people want action. They want change.
Unlike the children in Lumbumbashi, this crowd was insistent and assertive. I began to be concerned about the mood of the celebratory event. It wasn’t menacing in the least, but we had thousands of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder calling for nets, and we had no nets. An earlier distribution had already been carried out here. This was a launch event for more.
Yvonne managed them well, changed the mood to celebration and hope, and offerred words of education about what can be done even without nets to reduce the risk.
And the community has done significant work already. A canal 15 kilometers long has been dug to drain a large areas of standing water to reduce the breeding ground for mosquitos. Nets have been distributed, not nearly enough for the entire city, but a small fraction at least. And community health workers are accessible. The local hospital is functioning and agriculture development is producing food and generating income.
These are no small accomplishments. And yet blazed into my memory of Kamina is thousands of people crying out for nets. Crying out for the chance to live a better, healthier life.
Topics: On Development, On Health | No Comments »
Where Faith is Confirmed
By Larry | April 28, 2010
It was already an emotional day for me. The past two years have pointed toward the launch of the campaign by The United Methodist Church called Imagine No Malaria. It’s been a long, sometimes frustrating journey. And this day symbolized for me the first milestone after General Conference initiated this effort to end the preventable death and suffering that results from malaria.
The stage was set in what was a day earlier a filthy trash dump surrounded by pools of fetid water. I could not have imagined workers could clean up this place so quickly and so completely. It was testimony to the high value placed on the net distribution that would take place here. But first we were holding a public celebration to emphasize the importance of sleeping under the nets, keeping the environment clean, draining standing water and recognizing the symptoms of malaria when they appear.
Yvonne Chaka Chaka, an African singer of continent-wide renown and adoration, was the celebrity attraction. And when she called the children to come forward toward the stage there was a rush of tiny limbs and legs the likes of which I’ve never seen before. They screamed and reached out to her, they danced and created a dust storm, they smiled and the day seemed to come alive in a new way.
And I lost it. I think the tears were my own expression of thanksgiving, joy and hope. This is what we are working for. It’s about these little children having a fair chance to live full, long, productive lives. To experience the words that Jesus spoke, “I am come that you may have life, and live it abundantly.” And it’s clear in their innocence with their bright smiles and dancing feet, these little faces deserve that chance. They deserve to have a future in which life is more than a struggle to survive each day. They deserve to have the opportunity to grow and develop into the full, productive people God has created all of us to be.
In my thirty years of communicating about faith and the abundant life this day will stand out as one of the most meaningful and moving. Through the movement to end malaria deaths, the people of The United Methodist Church have truly joined in the work of establishing the kingdom of God in the most forgotten places among the most overlooked people. Here is where we will find God and here is where our faith will be confirmed.
Topics: On Faith | No Comments »
- Similar Posts
- Crying Out for Bednets in Kamina, DR Congo
- Communicators in Training in Zimbabwe
- Silent Tsunami
A Surplus of Community Health Workers In Congo
By Larry | April 27, 2010
As we stepped into the classroom at a mission school in Bongonga, a neighborhood in Lumbumbashi, Democratic Republic of Congo, I was surprised at how many mostly young adults listened intently to the instructor. He explained how to speak to residents of the poor neighborhood about the use of bednets.
A list of points were written on a blackboard. He spoke each in a single sentence and asked a volunteer to repeat. Then he asked the entire group.
What struck me was that this has never happened before in this resource-deprived community. And I was taken aback by how many community health workers had volunteered for this duty. And those in the room aren’t the full complement. More than 150 have volunteered to take bednets into homes and teach how to use them. From none to a small complement in a matter of only a few months.
For the demonstration project only six workers were needed. It was unique—to have more volunteers than needed. However, after the celebration that would follow and the demonstration for dignitaries this small group will be taxed to deliver and train residents in the community to use the nets properly. They have their job cut out for them because nets have never been available to people here.
In fact, barely any services to sustain and enhance life are here. Not clean water. Not proper sanitation. Not paved streets. Not anything but rudimentary health services.
But perhaps these enthusiastic young people reveal at least the start of an essential asset that can provoke change. They are here, they are willing and they want to learn and act. This alone is worth celebrating.
Topics: On Development, On Health, On Poverty | No Comments »
Tea Party Protester Spits on Rep. Emanuel Cleaver
By Larry | March 21, 2010
A statement from Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s office reports that as he walked into the Capitol on Saturday afternoon to vote a Tea Party protester spat on him. The statement says it’s not the first time he’s faced such behavior. Rep. Cleaver is also The Rev. Cleaver. An ordained United Methodist pastor he has been a leader in the civil rights movement and an articulate voice in the church for social justice.
Rep. Cleaver is not pressing charges against the protestor. In a statement he expresses his dismay that the national dialogue in the 21st century has devolved to this level.
So should we all be dismayed.
The statement from Rep. Cleaver’s office follows in full:
In response to an incident earlier today, Congressman Cleaver’s office has issued the following statement:
For many of the members of the CBC (Congressional Black Caucus), like John Lewis and Emanuel Cleaver who worked in the civil rights movement, and for Mr. Frank who has struggled in the cause of equality, this is not the first time they have been spit on during turbulent times.
This afternoon, the Congressman was walking into the Capitol to vote, when one protester spat on him. The Congressman would like to thank the US Capitol Police officer who quickly escorted the others Members and him into the Capitol, and defused the tense situation with professionalism and care. After all the Members were safe, a full report was taken and the matter was handled by the US Capitol Police. The man who spat on the Congressman was arrested, but the Congressman has chosen not to press charges. He has left the matter with the Capitol police.
This is not the first time the Congressman has been called the “n” word and certainly not the worst assault he has endured in this years fighting for equal rights for all Americans. That being said, he is disappointed that in the 21st century our national discourse has devolved to the point of name calling and spitting. He looks forward to taking a historic vote on health care reform legislation tomorrow, for the residents of the Fifth District of Missouri and for all Americans. He believes deeply that tomorrow’s vote is, in fact, a vote for equality and to secure health care as a right for all. Our nation has a history of struggling each time we expand rights. Today’s protests are no different, but the Congressman believes this is worth fighting for.
Danny Rotert
Communications Director
Congressman Emanuel Cleaver
Topics: On Culture | No Comments »
- Similar Posts
- The Health Care Crisis
- Health Care for Most, If not All, In Massachuesetts
- Save One Life, Save the World
« Previous Entries