The Nature of Things

How do you read books? Are you a traditional print book reader? Are you addicted to an e-reader? Perhaps you use your smart phone or your tablet. Or maybe you are one of those people who "read" by listening to audio books. Modern readers certainly have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to choices of how to enjoy their habit, but in spite of the various formats that modern technology makes available to them, the Pew Research Center found that among U.S. adults who have read books in the previous twelve months, most have chosen to read print books. Moreover, they found that among American readers, only 6% are digital-only book consumers. What I find really appalling about this chart is that 26% of Americans have not read a book in the past twelve months. You would think that most people would have read at least one book, even by accident, but, if we are to believe this survey, more than one-quarter of adults in this country have not cracked a book of any kind in the la...

The Pew Research Center is a respected non-profit organization that regularly polls Americans on a variety of subjects. They also have devised several online quizzes that we can take to find out just how smart we are about particular subjects. They are fun and instructive and even ego-boosting if you happen to do well on them. I've taken some of the quizzes before, but I was reminded of them when I read the Bad Astronomy blog today. The subject of the blog was the tests on science and religion. The results from those who have taken the tests seem to indicate that - surprise! - Americans know more about science than they do religion. The bad news is they don't know much about either. Now, these tests are pretty simple and are based on general knowledge that any reasonably well-read adult should have. They are brief - one has 13 questions and one has 15 - and only take a few minutes to complete. At the end, you get to see your results and how you ranked among others who have t...