Word: skim
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Gold's RED team seems to have reached the same conclusion: it's O.K. to skim, and it's O.K. to read pictures instead of text. Its Hyperbolic Reader (based on the hyperbolic tree, a Xerox PARC invention) tells a children's story in Perspective Wall style. Cartoons and speech bubbles grow large as you move a joystick over them, then shrink as you turn to another part of the story's tree. In Fluid Fiction (also created with PARC software), another children's story is told in just 24 sentences. But touch the end of any sentence...
...philosophy behind them, it's hard not to get a sobering sense of the impending death of traditional, text-based linear narrative. Will generations to come ever know the delights of picking up a good book and reading it from start to finish? Or will they rather skim through it on their tablet PCs, Speeder Reading what the computer has predetermined to be the best bits based on their previous preferences, choosing alternative endings, letting the robot dog finish it for them...
Nonetheless, due to my consciousness of wasted Cracklin' Oat Bran, I make it a habit to skim the conveyor belt at every meal. Most of the time, I see many plates with a substantial amount of food on them. An all-you-can-eat buffet, such as the ones in Harvard's dining halls, unfortunately encourages this waste...
...result, you end up throwing out a plate of Mexican perfection. This can be avoided in three ways. First, you could read the menu as you walk in rather than desperately searching for that girl or boy who won your heart in Justice. Second, you could just skim the offerings before you get in line. Third, you could read the menu in The Crimson and catch the movie listings at the same time...
Compounding and confounding the situation are the milk happenings at Harvard. Someone wiped a milk moustache onto the John Harvard statue, thoroughly befuddling the Japanese tourists. Lowell House, meanwhile, can't seem to keep its milk dispensers filled; "I hate skim milk, but I have to drink it since I don't know where all the whole milk and 2% goes," complained a confused resident. Could Masters Diana and Dorothy be in cahoots with Alicia Silverstone? And what's with the milk cartons in the bag lunches claiming that their new 2% milk tastes like whole milk? What're they...