Blogging about Books

If you have a Windows PC and read your books on your computer screen, you should download the free Mobipocket Reader and give it a try. This is software designed for portable gadgets like Blackberry and Palm and those that use Windows Mobile. But there’s a version that works great on Windows PCs, presenting the text on your screen in a very easy to read format. Just go to http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/ProductDetailsReader.asp and click the red download button in the right column. After you’ve installed it, try moving some of your plain text books (like the ones I email you). Just open the reader software, click on Import (from the selections at the top of the screen), then in the drop-down menu that appears click on Text document, then navigate to select the file you want. In a few seconds, the software creates a copy in its special format (.prc) and puts that copy in a new folder (My Ebooks, under My Documents). The book appears on your screen ready to read, in a format that lets you flip pages (left to right), rather than scroll down. (Thanks to David Green in Idaho for pointing this out to me).

Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com

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Continuing our series of Norse sagas, this week’s ebook of the week is the Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson.  Next week I plan the Younger Edda.  Then, if you aren’t sick of sagas by then, Njal’s Saga, followed by Erik the Red’s Saga, and maybe even The Death of Balder. Then back to Robert Louis Stevenson for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, followed by The Black Arrow. Then on to the Chinese classic The Red Chamber, then the Spanish classic The Cid.

This week’s kid’s book of the week is Dickens’ Oliver Twist.

Please let me know by email seltzer@samizdat.com  if you’d like me to add you to either or both of those distribution lists.

Richard Seltzer

A reader recently asked: 

I am currently learning about paperless environment and if it’s in fact possible. At the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), in his farewell lecture, Ted Nelson stated, “I believe you can have a paperless office, BUT NOT IF YOU IMITATE PAPER!” What are your thoughts on a paperless office/school? Is it possible? What would be the benefits and/or drawbacks of a paperless work environment? For instance, imagine a kindergarten room without paper for coloring or an art classroom. Furthermore, how does one create a virtual document without replicating its paper-based predecessor?

I replied:

Over 20 years ago, Barry Folsom, then a VP of personal computers at Digital Equipment, said (repeatedly) that the paperless office was about as likely as the paperless bathroom.

Actually, I think that’s the wrong question, the wrong challenge.

What matters isn’t paper vs. no paper, but rather choice vs. no choice and what choices.

It’s very rare that new technology replaces and eliminates what came before. More often new technology leads to additional choices — new ways to do the same kinds of things that you did before and at the same time making it possible to do things that before were impossible or never dreamt of.

Photography didn’t eliminate oil painting — it became the basis for a new art form. Likewise movies and books, television and movies, etc.

I believe that the “environment” you are talking about consists of four layers:

• mechanism for writing/creating
• surface on which the creation appears
• storage/copying medium
• means of communication

“Paper” is the most common traditional surface. It is well-matched with pencil, pen (all kinds of pens), and brush.

We create on a computer screen primarily with keyboard and mouse, but in some instances with finger (touch screen) or stylus (as with a Palm Pilot).

And we can scan what we create on paper and then edit on a computer screen, which, in a limited way, unites those two kinds of surfaces.

Stretching the concept of “surface”, we can also create with voice (dictation, voice-recognition, or simple recording), and then edit with keyboard and mouse.

But I’m hoping that future technology will give us more surface choices.

In ancient times, wax and clay were commonly used surfaces, written on with a stylus. And rock with a chisel.

Kids used to play with and learn to create with Etch-a-Sketch, using the built-in knobs.

I’d like to see new kinds of surfaces that you can write and draw on with traditional pen or pencil or brush (or new devices that have a similar look and feel) and the input is automatically stored (both shapes and colors; and letters recognized as letters) so it can be edited, copied, and communicated electronically. Ideally, such a surface could be quickly and easily erased for immediate reuse.

When we reach that point in technology development, kids in kindergarten could move smoothly and naturally from writing and drawing on paper to writing and drawing on this new surface.

But that ideal future environment still wouldn’t be “paperless”. Rather the role of paper, at home, at school, and at work, would be quite different, and a complement rather than an alternative to high tech.

Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com

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A reader asked:

I am teacher in VA. I am currently reading an article on hypertext design. I was fascinated by the following difference between hypertext and print pages: “Print design is typically linear and continuous in nature (where each page provides information aiding in the comprehension of future pages) whereas hypertext design is generally non-linear and requires that each page be independent in terms of its content (in that the viewer may enter the site through any number of pages within the web).

It is quite interesting to know that hypertext is non-linear in nature. I was wondering… what are the advantages of non-linear instructional design in student-centered, constructivist learning? Any disadvantages?

I appreciate your thoughts and ideas.

__________________________

My answer:

It is not non-linear. Rather it is multi-linear or rather multi-path (since it has nothing to do with lines).

You do not go to pages in isolation.

Rather you go from one page to another by multiple paths, defined by the designer, like one of those old branching adventure stories.

At any page, you have a number of choices.

If you are designing those pages as a teacher, you would probably want to organize those choices by difficulty and interest.

You would also want to make it easy for the student to navigate back to major decision points and follow another path.

Think of it like multi-universe theory.

Or like your life.

Every decision you make, changes your perspective and puts you in a position to make other decisions (some new, some modified).

That’s much more life-like than reading a single book page-by-page from start to finish.

It would be far more difficult to describe the experience of reading just from one page to the next to someone who had never deal with a traditional book before, than it would be to describe navigating through a hyperlinked environment.

To be complete, I should add something about search [both site-specific and covering the whole Web] as an alternate means of navigation. And for more advanced students, who aren’t as likely to wander aimlessly as beginners, you also should consider links to off-site resources, for instance to Wikipedia. In that case there is no link back. The student has to use the back button instead. The risk of wandering would be a major disadvantage for beginners and for students who are easily distracted. For experienced and motivated students, the additional resources are an enormous advantage, and even when they get lost they can learn a great deal.

So if I were doing the design, I’d have at least three different learning environment. The one for beginnings would be completely closed (perhaps not connected to the Internet), with all navigation by way of links. The second environment would add search, but limited to the school’s Web site. The third environment would include links to major off-site resources (like Wikipedia) as well as the ability to search the entire Web.

Students could advance from the one environment to the next by demonstrating their ability and motivation. I don’t mean by passing tests, but rather by producing high quality creative work.

I hope that helps.

Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com

Updates:

After many interruptions, I’m finally back to updating our CDs and DVDs. I just finished the update for our Religion CD http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/religioncd.html (86 books added, for a total of 1025 books), and the CDs that are subsets of that — Christian http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/christian.html (61 books added, for a total of 626), Jewish http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/jewish.html(5 books added for a total of 103), and Occult http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/occult.html(24 books added for a total of 121). The new books (on both Religion and Christian in the subsection for Calvinist/Puritan/Presbyterian) include Calvin’s Commentaries, Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary, Fox’s Book of Martyrs, and volume 1 of John Knox’s works.

I now plan to update the rest of our Classic Collection CDs — American Lit, British Lit, World Lit, Books about Classical Music, Children’s Books, and Non-Fiction — and then the Complete Book DVD set which includes all those books.

Please let me know which of our CDs and DVDs are most important to you, so I can adjust my priorities accordingly.

Update policy:

If you buy a CD from us, you can buy an update of that CD (with all the books) for just $10. And if you buy a DVD from us, you can buy an update of that DVD for just $30.

******************

Two-for-the-price-of-one offer extended for another month (until the end of April:

Buy a CD or DVD from us and get a second copy of the same item for free. It applies only to full-price purchases, not updates. Please consider donating the extra ones to schools or libraries or using them as gifts. (You’d be amazed how many people who could enjoy and benefit from book collections on CD and DVD don’t realize they can buy and read books this way). You can do this as many times as you like for, as many CDs or DVDs as you like.

*********************

CIA World Factbook:

The 2008 CIA World Factbook is now available, so I’m adding that (replacing the 2007 edition) to all of our Country Region CDs http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/seedprescure.html

That includes these CDs:

Africa

Australia

British History

Canada

China

Cold War

France

Germany

Ireland

Italy

Japan

Middle East

Philippines

Portugal

Russia

Scandinavia

Scotland

South Asia

Spain and Latin America

Wales

World Reference

plus the Region/Country DVD.

*************************

“Ancestor Surfing”:

Reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and the sequel, Catriona, I remembered that a couple of the Scottish family names that were prominent in those novels — Campbell and Drummond — appeared the book that covers my mother’s family tree “The Cary-Estes Genealogy”. Reading an intriguing but confusing passage there led me to double-check with Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) And in a matter of minutes I was surfing rapidly through biographies of ancestors. Then I went back and covered the same ground slowly and carefully putting together Web pages that focused on particular lines, with links to the relevant Wikipedia entries. If you are curious, please check http://www.samizdat.com/ancestorsurfing.html You can get to the various lines from there. Even if you have no connection to the Estes family, you might want to check to see if you’d like to do something similar for your family.

Making a break-through like that in tracing my ancestry on the Web reminded me of the experience of Paul Atrides (”Muad-Dib”) in the novel “Dune.” Thanks to the effects of the “spice” and of his special genes, he suddenly senses the presence both individually and collectively of all his ancestors back for thousands of years.

******************

Book reading devices for the blind:

For those of you who are blind and are frustrated that the Kindle is not accessible, you might want to try the Victor Reader Stream from Humanware or the Adept1 from Amazability.

Gail Selfridge wrote me about the Victor Reader Stream, “If you’re going to advertise the Kindle reader for your sighted readers, I think you should advertise the Victor Reader Stream by Humanware for your blind readers. It’s fantastic. It reads text files, NLS digital Talking Book files, MP3 files and almost any other kind for books except is it .wma files? Whatever Windows Media Player can play, and Humanware says in their next update, they’ll add those. This thing is great. The guy who sold it to me called it the blind person’s IPod. I take the Victor Reader Stream everywhere with me. I can read the morning paper while I’m waiting for an appointment. It’s fantastic.”

I’ve had a demo of the Adept1. It isn’t portable, but it was designed complete for the blind by the blind. And unlike the Kindle (which comes with no books — you have to buy them separately), the Adept1 comes with a complete library. See http://www.amazability.com/adept1.htm for details.

Meanwhile I’m having great fun with my Kindle — reading more than I have in many years.

*************

Free ebook of the week and free kid’s book of the week:

This week’s selections are “The Master of Ballantrae” by Robert Louis Stevenson and “Pinocchi” by Collodi. Please let me know if you’d like me to add you to either or both those email distribution lists.

Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com

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On Saturday, March 29, for a couple of hours I couldn’t get to dozens of popular sites, despite the fact that my Internet connection was functioning and there was nothing wrong with my computer. The sites were all reachable/ping-able, but the Web pages kept timing out before they could load.

I called support at my ISP (a cable company) and at my Web host (becasue I couldn’t get to my own site), and nobody seemed to know what was going on.

Then I noticed at the bottom of my browser screen that in all cases the pages stopped loading while trying to get pieces from Google. Then it occurred to me that all my pages have at least three Google scripts — ads from Adsense, a search box, and a tracking code from Google Analytics. And millions of other sites also have Google scripts on all their pages.

It turned out that Google didn’t go down that day. Rather my cable provider had a problem with “dirty” signals on my block, which they fixed the next morning.

When I heard that, I realized that the pages that had timed out were cached (saved) on my computer. Those were the pages that I go to most often, so my browser saves them to speed loading. But when those pages have scripts calling for pieces from Google or other sites that are slow or unreachable the loading stalls.

This experience made me wonder how Google has structured their servers. If a cached page won’t load when Google is unreachable because my Internet connection is down, then pages from many of the most popular and useful sites on the Web wouldn’t load if Google went down.

Please keep in mind that I am non-technical. I’m a writer, not an engineer.

But it’s common knowledge that the US Army through DARPA originally designed the Internet to be disaster-proof, making it so there was no central point of control. Much of what I appreciate most in the Internet culture derives from its basic anarchic design. If one part fails, signals pass around that point and business continues pretty much as normal.

And I have a sinking feeling that our increasing dependence on Google creates a risk that that initial design was meant to guard against.

I would certainly hope that for its search functions Google has redundant servers situated geographically remote from one another, so if an earthquake or other disaster hit headquarters, business could continue with very little disruption. (Not just remote backup, and the remote ability to continue to operate normally). That would seem to make obvious business sense, though I have no knowledge that it is in fact the case.

What most concerns me is the other services and applications of Google, like advertising, which require Web site owners to put Google scripts on all their pages, and which mean that in loading an ordinary Web page, pieces from Google need to load as well.

I suspect and fear that those scripts are all calling on servers at a single physical site and that if disaster struck that site, much of the Web could suddenly become unreachable.

Does anyone know if Google has redundant capacity at other physical sites so business for their Web-site partners could continue uninterrupted? From my experience on Saturday I am concerned that much of the Web that we now take for granted and depend upon could be at serious risk.

Of course, the simplest solution would be for Google to include in its scripts a piece of time-out code — that if the Google servers don’t respond within 15 or 30 seconds, the script stops and the page loads normally without that Google-provided piece of information.

I believe that Google should reassure the Internet community that this concern of mine is without merit, or that they have already dealt with that problem, or that they plan to have a solution in place soon.

If you know people who work on the engineering team at Google, could you please forward this message to them?

Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com

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Reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and the sequel, Catriona, I remembered that a couple of the Scottish family names that were prominent in those novels — Campbell and Drummond — appeared the book that covers my mother’s family tree “The Cary-Estes Genealogy”. Reading an intriguing but confusing passage there led me to double-check with Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/) And in a matter of minutes I was surfing rapidly through biographies of ancestors. Then I went back and covered the same ground slowly and carefully putting together Web pages that focused on particular lines, with links to the relevant Wikipedia entries.

Making a break-through like that in tracing my ancestry on the Web reminded me of the experience of Paul Atreus (”Muad-Dib”) in the novel “Dune.” Thanks to the effects of the “spice” and of his special genes, he suddenly senses the presence both individually and collectively of all his ancestors back for thousands of years.

If you are curious, please check http://www.samizdat.com/ancestorsurfing.html You can get to the various lines from there.
Even if you have no connection to the Estes family, you might want to check to see if you’d like to do something similar for your family. Here’s the explanation I sent to relatives:

______________

Following clues from pp. 83-86 of the Cary-Estes Genealogy book and using Wikipedia , I was able to trace the family ancestry back as far as 50 generations (to about 550 AD). The crucial piece of the puzzle is Charles Fleming, believed to be the son of John Fleming who owned 493 acres in New Kent County, Virginia, and died in 1686. As the book notes, it is believed that John was son of the probable immigrant to America, Sir Thomas Fleming, the second son of Lord John Fleming and his wife Lilias Graham. The line from Lord John Fleming leads back to James I (Stewart or Stuart) King of Scotland (1394-1437). With political marriages among the royal families of Europe (as part of political alliances), that piece of information leads to ancestors who were kings of England and France, Holy Roman Emperors, Emperors of the Byzantine Empire, princes of Kiev/Muscovy, and Viking chieftains. The ancestors include William the Conqueror and Charlemagne, King John (of Robin Hood and Magna Carta fame) and King Duncan I of Scotland (who was murdered by Macbeth), half a dozen saints, as well as the House of Este in Italy (by a very different route than family tradition — by way of the Cary family, rather than the Estes family) For many generations, both the father and mother are not only known, but also have entries in Wikipedia, which links to their parents.

Keep in mind that, except in cases of people who are related to one another marrying each other, the number of your ancestors doubles with each generation. That would mean that you could have as many as a quadrillion ancestors in 550 AD. But there were only about two hundred million people alive at that time. You might conclude that just about everybody alive today is descended from just about everybody who was alive back then. But just a few hundred years ago, most people lived in rural areas, with little travel and little contact with people in other towns, much less other countries. It was common for a family to stay in the same small geographic area for many generations (except when driven away by catastrophe, such as war, plague, and famine). That meant lots of inter-marriage, with everybody in a town being cousins to one another. (From a biological viewpoint, war, plague, and famine may have been “necessary” to change/expand the gene pool and increase the likelihood that mankind would survive). In any case, very few people can trace their ancestry back four or five generations, much less 50.

I have followed a few of the lines of descent as far back as I could trace. But literally thousands of other lines are possible. You can surf through those others by using the Wikipedia links in the following documents. At the very least, this should give you a new and personal appreciation for history.

My starting point for numbering generations is Adela (my first grandchild). If you are a relative of mine, check your generation number (I’m in generation 3). Then, as far as we can determine with available information, you are a direct descendant of (have the genes of) everyone in these lists with a higher generation number than yours.

• Adela to Adela, 31 generations — line back to Adela of Champagne (1140-1206), Queen of France, wife of Louis VII, King of France
• Adela to Kings of France, 41 generations — line back to about 800, including most of the rulers of the Capet dynasty, such as Louis IX (Saint Louis, for whom the city was named) of the Crusades
• Adela to Viking Kings and Kings of England (House of Plantagenet), 49 generations — line back to the heroes of the Norse Sagas, including all the kings of England for hundreds of years, back to William the Conqueror
• Adela to Kings of Scotland (Houses of Alpin and Dunkeld), 50 generations — line back to the 6th century, including Duncan I, who was murdered by Macbeth
• Adela to Charlemagne and Beyond, 51 generations
• Adela to Byzantine Emperors, 36 generations
• Adela to the House of Este, 38 generations

Other lines I hope to find, explore, and add here:

• Princes of Kiev
• Kings of Scotland (House of Stewart or Stuart)
• Kings of England before the Norman Conquest
• Kings of Wales (hopefully leading to some legendary connection with King Arthur)
• Kings of France from the Merovingian Dynasty (purported descendants of Mary Magdalene in the novel The Da Vinci Code)
• Any line (such as Byzantine Emperors) that can lead back to ancient Rome

Please let me know what you discover in your own ancestor surfing; or if you find typos or other errors here, so I can correct them.

Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com

The free ebook of the week is “Catriona” or “David Balfour”, the sequel to “Kidnapped” by Robert Louis Stevenson, plus “The Forme of Curry” a cook book compiled, about A.D. 1390, by the Master-Cooks of King RICHARD II.

And this week’s free kid’s book is “Stolen Treasure” by Howard Pyle.

If you’d like me to add you to either of both email distribution lists, please send me email at seltzer@samizdat.com

Suggestions always welcome.

Meanwhile, The 2008 CIA World Factbook is now available, so I’m adding that (replacing the 2007 edition) to all of our Country Region CDs http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/seedprescure.html

Richard Seltzer

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I’ve been publishing electronic books for 15 years, but until now I’ve only read them on a computer, never on a special handheld reading gadget. I didn’t feel the need. Like someone who has never tasted chocolate or never touched ice doesn’t feel the need…

I’m also an obsessive reader. I’ve kept a list of every book I’ve read since I was in the sixth grade — fifty years ago. over 3000 books. http://www.samizdat.com/readall.html

Reading is an important part of my life. Now Amazon’s Kindle has changed reading for me — irreversibly.

I just got my Kindle two days ago.  It’s excellent,  far better than expected.  The drawbacks that I anticipated (and rambled on about in my blog) were bogus. Amazon’s Kindle Book Reader deserves an unqualified “BUY!” recommendation. (NB –– for now, this device is for the sighted only, not the blind).

First revelation: Easy on the eyes. You have to see it to appreciate it, but “digital ink” makes a big difference. With digital ink, the screen looks like paper, with the text visible as reflected light, rather than light passin g through a screen (as with computer monitors). The digital ink is very easy on the eyes, so you can read longer without fatigue. And you can select the type size (six choices) to suit your eyes and tastes. In the past, people read electronic books when they had no choice (due to availability or cost or because they needed to do searches), and used printed books far more often, not just from habit, but also for comfort and convenience and portability. Now, finally, there’s a gadget that gives the advantage to electronic books.

Second revelation: It can use plain-text files. The Kindle comes with about 180 Mbytes of storage (which Amazon translates as room for about 200 books). When you connect it to your PC or Mac, it appears to your computer like an external storage device. You can move files to and from it as easily as you do with flash memory. And you can read plain-text files on your Kindle without having to convert them to Kindle’s special format. That means (this is a plug) nearly all the books on our CD and DVD book collections are immediately readable on the Kindle. http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/ For our customers, the Kindle is the ideal reading device that they have been dreaming of. And for Kindle users, our book collections are the ideal source of great reading material at extremely low cost (as low as a penny a book with our Complete Book 3-DVD set, as opposed to a typical cost of 99 cents per public domain book at Amazon’s Kindle Store).

Third revelation: You can easily and inexpensively expand the storage space to hold thousands of books. The Kindle has a slot for you to add an SD memory card. Nowadays a 2 gig card typically sells for about $13, 4 gig for $32, 8 gig for $60, and prices for this kind of storage have been falling. In other words, you don’t need to wait for Amazon to come out with a new model to be able to expand your library beyond 200 books. With the typical plain-text book taking up about 500 kbytes (less than the typical specially formatted book that Amazon uses as a benchmark), one gig of storage can hold about 2,000 books. That means that an eight gig SD card should hold about 16,000 books –– (which by the way is close to being a good match for the current version of our Complete 1Book DVD set).

Fourth revelation: Unexpected extras.

• You don’t need a computer at all, much less a computer connected to the Internet, and you don’t need to pay any monthly service fees to enjoy your Kindle. You can buy and receive books over the built-in wireless connection, hassle-free, never needing any technical knowledge, not even needing to type in an Internet address.
• The Kindle has a small, but very usable keyboard and a search function that makes it easy to find what you want within a book. It also has easy ways to highlight and bookmark text and make annotations and even to put copies of favorite pages/passages in a clipboard area. At first I thought I’d move books onto the Kindle when I wanted to read them, and delete them when I was done, and hence I wouldn’t need expanded storage capacity. Now I realize I’m going to want to keep them all on the Kindle with my personal notes and highlighting.
• Moving from page-to-page and from book to book, making your choices and your searches is all intuitive, (helped by left-right page turning, rather than up-down scrolling). If you stop reading a book before you finish, the next time you turn on the gadget or go to that book, you’ll start where you left off.there are multiple ways to navigate through a text.
• The rechargeable battery appears to last for days of use (apparently because the digital ink draws little power). You can continue to read and otherwise use the unit while it recharges.
• Not only can you easily copy plain-text files to your Kindle, you can also copy MP3 files, so you can (with headphones) listen to music while reading. (Quick tip — on the back next to the on-off button, is a switch for turning the audio on or off. If you aren’t listening to anything, make sure that’s in the off position, or your batteries will run down far faster than necessary.)
• You can also use your Kindle to wirelessly browse the Web without fees for your Internet connection. When you elect to go to the Web, you are presented with only about a dozen choices, of which Amazon.com is, of course, number one. But second on the list is Google, and while it’s a bit awkward, combining use of the little keyboard and following the choices you are presented, you can generate lists of Google search results and by selecting items you can go just about anywhere on the Web. Simple, text-heavy pages (like my samizdat.com) come across far better than pages laden with special effects.
• The Kindle Store shows up very much like the Kindle Books area at Amazon.com does on a PC (digital ink displays graphics well, but only in black and white). You can use search and the built-in keyboard to find anything you want. For example, search for the word “samizdat” and you get a listing of the over 1,000 Kindle books that we offer. Do a search for “samizdat dickens” or “samizdat” followed by any other classic author and you’ll get a list of our offerings by that author. Then you can make the online purchase with a few quick clicks and the book is immediately delivered to your Kindle, wirelessly. The process is ridiculously convenient.

I expected the Kindle would be good for best-sellers and newspaper and magazine subscriptions at reasonable prices, with immediate wireless delivery. That basic benefit was obvious from the descriptions at the Amazon site, including the ability to receive a free sample chapter of a recent book before deciding to buy. I expected convenience in buying and receiving books from just about anywhere; and being able to carry a couple hundred books in my pocket.

But I got far more than I bargained for. I didn’t expect the device to be so easy on the eyes or to be able to multiply the storage capacity many fold so easily. And I was surprised that the Kindle accepts plain text without any changes, letting me copy them to my Kindle from my computer over a USB cable. That ability means that I can now read on my Kindle any of the 15,000 books that I have collected and organized on CDs and DVDs. http://samizdat.stores.yahoo.net/

I’m hooked, and the folks who see me using it seem to get hooked quickly too.

Suggestions welcome. Please email me at seltzer@samizdat.com

Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com

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Candidates have no control over when photographers click. The expression and the gestures that wind up in photos and on TV are in the control of the photographers and their editors. But the candidates usually can control the background.

In staged photo ops and in televised speeches, the people who appear in the background convey an important message — these are the kind of folks who back this candidate. That needs to be carefully choreographed. Obama seems to understand that well, while Hillary Clinton and McCain don’t.

When Hillary won the New Hampshire primary, she made the typical lame after-victory comments (repeatedly looking down at her notes), while Obama, who lost, made what was technically a concession statement, but was actually an excellent speech, full of memorable soundbytes. So Obama is better at speech-making. That wouldn’t necessarily make him a better president. But in the background as they spoke, we saw a bunch of college kids behind Hillary, and behind Obama we saw a diverse mix of people — different ages, different races, different genders. That was the message that he needed to get across at that time — that he was not just a “minority” candidate, that he has broad electable appeal, and his campaign is intended to unify America.

Now today’s newspaper reports about Obama’s victories in Maryland, Virginia, and DC, the photos of him delivering his victory remarks show in the background middle-aged white women. (See the front page of today’s Globe http://www.boston.com ) Reporters get the message — a message that Obama has never explicitly stated. Check this morning’s headlines: “Obama Cuts Into Hillary’s Base” (Associated Press), “Obama Gains With Women Voters” (Chicago Tribune), “Women, Whites Turn to Obama” (Sydney Herald).

I voted for Hillary Clinton in the Massachusetts primary. But, increasingly, Obama impresses me — not so much for what he says outloud, but rather for the control and savvy he demonstrates by his mastery of such details as photo-op background.

Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com

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