For the past few months I´ve been wading through an impenetrable fog that is The Thin Red Line, a 1962 paperback by James Jones, and after battling to about half way I think I´m ready to quit.

I am, infinitely more than I already was, in awe of Terrence Malick who managed to read through this battlefield of a book (though he did take 20 years off) to create a visually stunning adaptation into a movie that, if the world was in any way fair, would have won a great many Oscars. But then Saving Private Ryan happened and you know the rest…

Reviewers of the novel on Amazon obviously don´t agree with my conclusions, claiming the movie is underdeveloped. Among other things. Well…the film is monstrously long as it is and if it followed the book any closer (and it stays pretty true) people could order lunch and dinner during a screening and still have a siesta before anything of substance happened. Because that´s how the book feels like. You read and you read and… nothing. He´s still stuck on a pointless little detail.

The narrative is long-winded, sentences stuffed with filler apparently designed to draw you into the scene visually but achieving what I´d say is an undesired effect of losing track of the main development. On the other hand the style might be ideally suited to people with no or little of their own imagination, who require every twig, sound, leaf, wave, smell, thought and gunshot described in detail to paint the atmosphere and fill in the blanks. For everyone else it gets in the way of the more important thing – story or action development. To put it in perspective, what takes 15 seconds on film takes about 15 pages in the book.

I can see why Jones writes the way he does, after all he wants people to understand the reality of combat, the mindset of a soldier. But describing the mindset and perspective of each and every soldier in a company is a bit over the top. Bloated. When you´re seeing Guadalcanal campaign through the eyes of 10 or 20 different people it´s a bit hard to keep track of who´s who and what happened to him earlier.

Guess I prefer the more film like approach to books where you pick it up and it doesn´t let go until the end.

I might return to The Thin Red Line someday, purely because I think I owe it to the movie, however for the time being I can´t bring myself to read another page. Until then I think I´ll watch the beautifully shot Mallicks film version a few more times.

I like reading. That’s an unavoidable fact really but the point I’m trying to make here is that I’ve been thinking of a paperless day for years now and it just doesn’t come. In fact it’s not even on the horizon.

Even with Google Reader hovering around the 200 subscriptions mark, a day just doesn’t feel right without having something to read on paper. It’s not just that it doesn’t feel right. I’ve been noticing that the electronic and paper ways don’t really overlap that much. So in essence what I’m saying is that I don’t want a paperless future. I need newspapers. I need magazines.

Kottke pointed out a feature in The Morning News where readers and writers profess their love for the print.

Viva Print indeed.

But it also got me thinking… what would I miss most if print periodicals folded? In a way the scenario happened to me during the months spent on Ikaria. There were no daily newspapers to spend a few minutes with. Even my Google Reader soon climbed up to 1000+ unread items (it gives up counting beyond a 1000) as I didn’t get to use the computer in my spare time. I was totally out of it.

My salvation were old issues of The Ecologist. I read all of them… even though they were a year old (at a minimum) they at least kept me somewhat sane for those few minutes when a I got a chance to dive into them :)

And what did I start reading when I got back home?

In print it was the back issues of Polet, likely the best thing about Delo newspaper in its entire history. Very high on the evening reading list was also ŽIT, a local version of Science et Vie, Popular Science, New Scientist and whatever else is similar, with a long and proud history of over 50 years and going on strong (I hope). So when it comes down to it, these two are my must reads. If all else fails I need these so there’s at least something to hold on to.

Sure, there are several other magazines and newspapers I read. I’ll read, or browse, almost anything. Once at least. There are bottom lines somewhere… Among the desired reading is the local edition of Le Monde Diplomatique, Sobotna Priloga and The New York Times international weekly supplement (however I don’t read NYT online). I read a few other magazines but there’s nothing I would miss terribly.

When it comes to online reading I do most of it through Google Reader. Absolute must reads are a few comic strips (life without PHD Comics is not one worth living) :p and a few blogs/websites. Whenever I don’t have extra time and boredom I skip all those with serious content hyper production syndrome like BoingBoing or Coudal Partners no matter how much cool stuff may be hidden inside. I sometimes feel a sense of slight guilt but there are other things I can do than scan through 1000+ unread items…

I just hope the best newspapers and magazines with an opinion stick around for a while longer in their present paper form. For everything else I honestly don’t care which way they go. Instant, general news reporting is like fast food. Largely boring and worthless.

Call me a heretic but HD television is pretty much bullshit. Whether you categorize it as a conspiracy to sell more TVs, blu-ray players and everything else associated with it is entirely up to you.

I loved reading the comments when Danielle Nagler, Head of HD @ BBC Vision called for reasons to broadcast Top Gear in HD:

What it is about Top Gear that means you really want to watch it in HD?
What are the qualities which you identify as particularly suitable for HD?

Unless you live in a rain forest far away from any TV set you’ve likely heard of Top Gear at least in passing. It is by far the best show currently being played on television anywhere. Stunning visuals, funny hosts and amusing challenges, oh and some cars you’re likely never going to drive (or see). But that’s a bonus that doesn’t really matter. The thing is… people really want to watch it in HD.

However I just don’t see why?!

I’ve been looking at many, many screens at work, day in and day out with that specific idea in mind. From uncompressed camera output, to broadcast 720p on various LCDs and huge plasma screens and all the way to standard 55cm CRT screen at home. And really, the only difference I see is in saccadic eye motion of the presenter reading off teleprompter. That and perhaps some other minor details (hair & dust on jackets) get partially lost on the way to my old cathode ray tube TV. And that’s the difference between the uncompressed stream and SD!! The compressed HD broadcast on LCD control screens doesn’t show those details either!

So really… what have we lost?

Now to get back to Top Gear. Cars are big, the landscape around them is a stage zooming past, you’re unlikely to have a particular wish to see how poorly shaved the presenters are or how many paint scratches are on the cars. So which details exactly would you like to see in HD???

HD on room sized TV sets, for the majority of content, is largely a pointless exercise. Period.

Addendum: Aug. 3rd 2009

Apparently I stepped on a few toes with this one. Which is nice :) However it quickly becomes obvious people assign more meaning to HD than it deserves. But really, the name says it all – high definition. That’s all there is to it. It’s not magical picture transformation, just more detail. It’s hilarious to read the high speed movement would look less jagged and such. Well… even straight out of the camera there wouldn’t be much of a difference since movement has little to do with detail. Much more with frame rates, shutter speed and such things. And after all that comes compression. Which destroys all that lovely detail, especially in high speed movement, especially at bandwidths currently used in broadcast.

I’m pretty sure BBC is aware of that and that it is probably the reason they’re asking for (good) reasons why Top Gear should be in HD. They just don’t see the point. The HD decision would be pure marketing and little substance.

Addendum: Aug. 5th 2009

I see we got around to the age old audiophile paradox. For some people a CD or god forbid an MP3, is simply not good enough. Nothing short of top quality vinyls and associated hardware in a purpose built acoustically perfect room would do (slightly exaggerating of course). This sort of phenomena is widespread in every hobby really. Which is fine. I don’t care what other people spend money on.

What started this post were ridiculous claims by people who only want the best, but quite honestly have no idea what that is. Repeating marketing hype is easy. Justifying ones expensive purchase by any means necessary is something Mike Johnston wrote about quite a few times (browse the archives if you wish) and is quite natural. Everyone does it. He also wrote about the difference between worthiness and value. Two wildly different concepts.

I guess what I tried to say from the beginning is that sometimes you need the ability to step back and evaluate something in an uninvolved manner. BBC is doing that (I hope so) by trying to figure out if HD would bring enough added value to Top Gear. On the quality scale it probably wouldn’t, on marketing it probably would.