GRG's Miscellany

This month I have been mostly reading The Conscious Mind by David J. Chalmers . It's a full-on philosophy book, so it was really hard going.  But I did finish chapter 1! Why so slow? Apart from being a pretty slow reader, I only got one chapter read because I was taking Cornell notes as I worked through it. They take a lot of time and effort.  I understand better now why the students I teach hate taking them so much. There were a few important benefits for me though:    - Using them has left me with a feeling that I do understand what I've read    - For the most part I can remember the key ideas    - They provide a really nice summary to read over when I come back to take on the next chunk reading I'll continue with Cornell notes for books that I really want to study rather than just read. For books that I want to read, but might want to refer back to, I'm going to try sticky page-markers instead.  So for popular science or history books, ...

Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco is a graphic novel which is far from an easy read. It tells the stories of people from the former Yugoslavia, and the atrocities they experienced. It is powerful, compelling, harrowing - but not enjoyable. I still haven't finished it because I simply can't take reading it for more than a short while at a time. I imagined a game designed to express the same harrowing stories. It would put the player into the situation, presenting them with the desperate decisions - trying to harvest fruit under sniper fire, or trying to slip through to the Red Cross post across the river, avoiding the soldiers executing civilians on the bridge. It was tastefully done - not comic - not fun. Developing it would be difficult to get right. Exposing enjoyment in the atrocities would turn the game into a sick joke. Joe Sacco managed to avoid this when producing his book. Graphic novels are all to often dismissed as mere comics, but he showed me they can sens...