Many Start But Few Finish

 

I make no apologies for re-posting this article, the thrust of which rings as true as ever today.

Why is it that we have no trouble reading a book, whether in paper or electronic form, but find it so difficult to get through to the end of any other form of text on the web? The phenomenon is well described in this very funny article by Farhad Manjoo of Slate. I have only included the beginning because, as he himself says, you won't finish this article.

• by FARHAD MANJOO 
 
•  JUNE 6, 2013

I’m going to keep this brief, because you’re not going to stick around for long. I’ve already lost a bunch of you. For every 161 people who landed on this page, about 61 of you—38 percent—are already gone. You “bounced” in Web traffic jargon, meaning you spent no time “engaging” with this page at all.

So now there are 100 of you left. Nice round number. But not for long! We’re at the point in the page where you have to scroll to see more. Of the 100 of you who didn’t bounce, five are never going to scroll. Bye!

OK, fine, good riddance. So we’re 95 now. A friendly, intimate crowd, just the people who want to be here. Thanks for reading, folks! I was beginning to worry about your attention span, even your intellig … wait a second, where are you guys going? You’re tweeting a link to this article already? You haven’t even read it yet! What if I go on to advocate something truly awful, like a constitutional amendment requiring that we all type two spaces after a period?

Wait, hold on, now you guys are leaving too? You’re going off to comment? Come on! There’s nothing to say yet. I haven’t even gotten to the nut graph.

I better get on with it. So here’s the story: Only a small number of you are reading all the way through articles on the Web. I’ve long suspected this, because so many smart-alecks jump in to the comments to make points that get mentioned later in the piece. But now I’ve got proof. I asked Josh Schwartz, a data scientist at the traffic analysis firm Chartbeat, to look at how people scroll through Slate articles. Schwartz also did a similar analysis for other sites that use Chartbeat and have allowed the firm to include their traffic in its aggregate analyses.

Schwartz’s data shows that readers can’t stay focused. The more I type, the more of you tune out. And it’s not just me. It’s not just Slate. It’s everywhere online. When people land on a story, they very rarely make it all the way down the page. A lot of people don’t even make it halfway. Even more dispiriting is the relationship between scrolling and sharing. Schwartz’s data suggest that lots of people are tweeting out links to articles they haven’t fully read. If you see someone recommending a story online, you shouldn’t assume that he has read the thing he’s sharing.

OK, we’re a few hundred words into the story now. According to the data, for every 100 readers who didn’t bounce up at the top, there are about 50 who’ve stuck around. Only one-half!

***

October 2021

I would like to complete and add my own experience to the article but this, for reasons explained above, will have to be the subject of another post.

The Trains Bust

 

Or as we say in undemented English The Brains Trust. The brain has been much in my mind recently as I struggle to come to terms with a brain that is functioning at about 5 to 10% of its usual rate.I wish I could do something about it, but unfortunately I can't. I can write this entry in my blog but it would take me perhpas 10 minutes or more to wprk out what the date is today!

Extant But No Longer Active

Noted extant logger Barnaby Capel-Dunn was born in 1944. He Has been logging since about 2005 but was active only until about 2015.

Publications: The Subliminal Mr Dunn (ongoing); Of No Fixed Adobe; We're Hiring! (Memoirs)

Pandora Papers

 The headlines thundered: Jordan’s king amassed $100 million in concealed property including homes in Malibu, London and Washington. An alleged mistress of Russia’s leader managed to covertly buy a luxury residence in Monaco. The Czech Republic’s prime minister, an anticorruption crusader, secretly acquired a French Riviera estate. (New York Times)

There is only one thing worse than the stories of billionaires throughout the world, buying influence, avoiding tax, money laundering and generally engaging in criminal activities.

It is the utter failure to do anything about it.

Where Eagles Dare to Tread

 

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen.

 My castaway this week is the well-known blogger and all round dogsbody, Barnaby Capel-Dunn. 

Barnaby, you are probably best known, if at all, for The Subliminal Mr Dunn which down the years has become a byword of quality of sorts.

Barnaby, you are allowed to take one luxury with you, in addition to the Holy Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, to accompany you on your desert island.

Roy, do I really have to choose either of these books? As a Catholic, I can hardly be expected to take an interest in the Old Testament, can I? As for Shakespeare, after having him shoved down my throat at school, I really don't want to start all over again. On the other hand, I am loth to cause any bother, so I'll go along with the Bible and Shakespeare so long as you promise not to fob me off with th e-book format as the BBC is too often wont to do these days. 

Psalm Sunday

 Santiago de Compostela, ora pro nobis

Saint Joseph of Arimathea, ora pro nobis

Saints Peter, Paul and Mary, ora pro nobis

Where Sheep May Safely Graze, ora pro nobis

Massed Bands of the Household Division, pray for us

North Rhine-Westphalia, pray for us

British War Aims

 Established on the eve of the Normandy Landings

To ensure that the NAAFI regains a footing in Western Europe

To make Britain a land fit for biros

To chase the Nazi jackboot from British coastal waters 

 

 

 

RESPECT!

 

What I have read recently, or am reading at the moment

• Jill,Philip Larkin. Recommended by Michael Leary of Orange Crate Art  fame. 

A most extraordinay book, not at all what I was expecting, indeed far better than what I was expecting.

• The Anti-Death League, Kingsley Amis.
• My Enemy's Enemy, Kingsley Amis, etc. etc.
• The Life of Kingsley Amis, Zachary Leader

The contrarian in me is drawn towards his books where the comic impulse is less to the fore.

• After the Fall. Being American in The World We've Made. Ben Rhodes. 

If his conversation with the team of Americast is anything to go by, I can look forward to a treat from Barrack Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser.

• The Great Mistake, Jonathan Lee. Sample
• In Memory of Memory, Maria Stepanova. Sample
• Moon Tiger, Penelope Lively. Her masterpiece.
• Perfect Happiness, Penelope Lively. Sample
• Twitter and Tear Gas, Zeynep Tufecki.
• Dutch Girl, Robert Matzen. The early life of Audrey Hepburn. Sample
• An Officer and a Spy, Robert Harris. Sample

Of Pens and Pencils

 One of the nice things about losing my memory is that I'm not quite so interested in the truth any more.  Having said that, I think that what follows is a pretty good approximation to this elusive truth.

Like many of my generation, I started off using a quill and an ink well. I suppose if I scouted around I could probably dredge up one of the weekly letters I was forced to write home to my mother from school, but I don't feel like doing that just at the moment, so my first surviving record of original writing is a diary I started keeping when I was fourteen. Analysis reveals the use of a fountain pen, possibly a Parker 51, given to me by my dear sister but unfortunately lost fairly quickly, and an obvious predilection for Waterman's blue washable ink. Looking back now, from a time when I can scarcely write a sentence without having to correct, adapt or rephrase something, I am astonished to see how few crossings-out there were. Most remarkable and alarming of all was the way my writing style changed COMPLETELY and almost beyond recognition from one week or month to the next. Indeed I think it was only when I got to university that I settled upon the handwriting which has been mine ever since.

Pencils: I was at one time very keen on propelling pencils but otherwise only took a limited interest until the day when I had to provide and impose pencils with the right graphite hardness for exam purposes.  Should I issue HB or 2B pencils for the multiple choice part of the exam?

2B or not 2B, that was the question.

Proust and Beyond

 

Following an internet outage earlier in the week leaving all but my smartphone out of commission, I came across Marcel Proust’s masterpiece A la recherche du Temps Perdu. I had downloaded it several years ago but then had to abandon it in the middle of Swann’s Way. 

Returning to the fray, I needed to get my bearings again.The first thing I noticed on my tiny Kindle was that the estimated reading time was all of 122 hours…  I was reading the book in the original French and was intrigued to learn that the English translation is now In Search of Lost Time which has the advantage of being closer to the French text. This is a recent change introduced towards the end of the last century, but I still prefer Scott Moncrieff’s original rendering of the title as Remembrance of Things Past.

***

Concerning the word “text” mentioned above: Before the printing press there was handwriting, and before handwriting? Words had to be “weaved together in a fine and delicate fabric”. The Latin word for fabric is textum.

What about the word “slave? It derives from Slav. In medieval wars many Slavs were captured and enslaved, which led to the word Slav becoming a synonym for an enslaved person.

 I would like to start this entry in almost the same way as I started my last but one post. I don't think it's possible to get this far through life without asking yourself what you would do differently if you had your time all over again. Would you be content to make do with what is known as "real life" or would you rather be part of a long-running TV or radio series such as Line of Duty or The Archers? Would you rather spend your days in the company of interesting, talented and exceptional people or with the incredibly boring souls you are bound to meet in real life? Personally, I wouldn't hesitate a second.

The only danger with a life on screen is that you might become typecast, like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, or perhaps discarded all together. There are ways of avoiding this fate: many people would be surprised to learn that the actor playing Steve Arnott as a southerner in Line of Duty in fact has a broad Scottish accent in "real life", and of course Hugh Laurie has changed a lot since his days in Blackadder.

Changed, perhaps, but not out of all recognition, and that is why I would plump for a life on the radio waves every time. You see, just as nobody knows you are a dog on the internet, nobody knows you are a star on the radio. Ideally, I could spend my whole life on The Archers, and no-one would be any the wiser. And I wouldn't even have to learn my lines.