Mini Blog about Twilight of the Books and Notation System

In reading the text, Twilight of the Books by Caleb Crain, a couple questions and opinions arose. First of all, the Census Bureau and National Endowment for the Arts throw out stats that supposedly point towards the decline of book readers at a ridiculous pace which causes me to wonder how accurate they actually are. Thousands of Americans were asked questions about their reading habits but how many Americans are there. Do these thousands of people accurately represent the reading hobbies of the entire population?
I also had another question: why did the largest improvement of reading skills among fourth and fifth graders occur just before the No Child Left Behind Act too effect? Isn’t that “act” in place to improve the reading skills of students? I found the statements by Maryanne Wolf to be pretty interesting when she spoke of the act of reading. She says that “humans started reading far too recently for any of our genes to code it for specifically.” I found that taking a look back and observing the act of reading, it actually is not natural. Looking at a bunch of lines while our brains interpret them simultaneously is crazy to me. And according to Wolf, our brains shouldn’t even be able to do so. Her basis for determining this is due to the tests that she did on squid, which have similar optic-nerve cells, which I also find interesting. Another aspect of the reading that was interesting was the way in which the illiterate thought. Instead of describing items with colors they used metaphorical names such as “peach”, “liver”, and “decayed teeth”. Also when asked which of the four items did not belong (a saw, axe, log, and hammer) they chose the hammer because it was not used in the wood cutting process while most people would choose the log because it is not a tool.
I read this book and made notations using a notation system, and when I came back to discuss the book I found that I could pick up my thoughts right where they left off yesterday. It was really cool, like I had just read the article when usually I forget a lot of the stuff I read in texts. So I definitely approve of using a notation system while reading.

Engineering?

What factors consists of a successful life? To me, success in life comes from happiness and accomplishment. My personal philosophy is that we, as humans, are all here on earth to serve some purpose. When we all die there should be some traces of evidence to prove that each and every one of us made a difference.I believe that we are here to make an impact on the world, and when we have that sense of accomplishment it should make us happy. I have made decisions concerning my specific educational and professional goals so that I will be able to consider myself successful.

My plans for success start in the classroom. As a kid in elementary school, I realized that my academic strength lied in the subjects, science and mathematics. Even while not in school, I loved to solve analytical word problems and play games that involved counting. My interest in the subjects only grew throughout my grade school career and I concluded that I would like to use my strengths to help better the world by becoming an engineer. I am going to study engineering in college so that I may someday be able to find solutions to the world's technical problems by using mathematics and science, two subjects that I enjoy working with. Hopefully, I can make a difference and better the world in years to come.

Some particular problems in science that I am currently interested in are the natural resources that are rapidly being depleted and the pollution on earth. The population is increasing and as more people inhabit the earth, the amount of nonrenewable resources being used also increases. There needs to be more alternative resources that are renewable and healthy for the earth. If they are not healthy for earth, they contribute to the overall pollution on earth. An earth that could end up being uninhabitable if the air becomes too polluted. There needs to be solutions to these problems and engineers are important pieces to the puzzle.