Unnervingly, book apps record data about how we read, including which books we do and don’t finish, how long we spend reading them, and where we give up, if we do. And niftily, that information can be passed on to publishers.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the same technology is soon to be used by universities to monitor students’ reading. CourseSmart, which sells digital versions of the big publishers’ textbooks, announced [its] new program last week.
Luckily, for now, this software is being piloted at only three universities. But it is, almost inevitably, coming our way.
So, why do we vote on Tuesday? You can find the answer back in 1845.
In 1845, before Florida, California, and Texas were states or slavery had been abolished, Congress needed to pick a time for Americans to vote. We were an agrarian society. We traveled by horse and buggy. Farmers needed a day to get to the county seat, a day to vote, and a day to get back, without interfering with the three days of worship. So that left Tuesday and Wednesday, but Wednesday was market day. So, Tuesday it was.
In 1875 Congress extended the Tuesday date for national House elections and in 1914 for federal Senate elections.
For all the Midwest’s evenhandedness, much of it has been embittered by the recession, and the work ethic we’re known for, when without direction, becomes destructive. The literature of this Midwest shows this side of us, the hardened and hungry folk. It forgets, largely, the generous people I know they co-exist with.
If the Midwest is not surreal…it is made hyper-real [in its literature]…
