on Nov 28 04 19:13, Robert Bull wrote to Kay Shapero:

 RB> So that means, that the bigger screen is not a killer feature for 
 RB> reading 
 RB> text?  Unless you can change the mode to give you a bigger font, I 
 RB> suppose.

Oh the larger screen is useful regardless of the orientation you set it to.
 It still provides a lot more text per page.  And you can change the font
size, either directly in the file or using the "zoom" function
which has three settings - small, medium (the default case) and large. 


 KS>> CBIP - SF: THE COBRA TRILOGY by Timothy Zahn - One of the more
 KS>> thoughtful treatments of the cyborg soldier idea, complete with a
 KS>> healthy regard for the Law of Unintended Consequences.  The first 
 KS>> book takes one of the original recruits for the Cobra project and 
 KS>> follows him through his career.  The soldier part is actually fairly 
 KS>> short; the real meat of the book comes in the "ok, we've
created all 
 KS>> these supersoldiers, the war is over, and we can't reverse the process 
 KS>> that created them.  Now what?" part.  The book ends with their 
 KS>> solution.

 RB> Would this have been stimulated by Vietnam?  

I doubt you'll find a book written after Vietnam involving the military
that won't reflect that experience.  In this case the problems aren't
psychological so much as social (civilians being afraid of returning
soldiers who of necessity still have some of the modifications to speed and
strength, and even some weaponry) and physiological damage (early onset of
arthritis and the like) caused by some of the implants.  And of course
inevitably those who have "seen the elephant" are changed by the
experience in ways generally not understood by those who haven't.

 RB> When I read the Kalevala I read it three sections or so at a time 
 RB> then went 
 RB> onto a novel, so as to avoid getting bored with too much at once.  

That's about what I'm doing with War and Peace - treating it like a TV
serial rather than something to deal with all at once.

Speaking of books:
CBIP: _Paladins_ by Joel Rosenberg.  Almost didn't read this one (it came
in a bundle with several other books I did want), but whatever it was that
bugged me about his early works seems to have worn off.  It's set in an
alternate version of Earth where Pendragons in the line of Mordred rule
England, in the equivalent of our Age of Sail, and Our Knightly Heroes have
stumbled over something particularly nasty afoot in the eastern
Mediterranean.  Not but what they don't have plenty of problems of their
own.  The setting is nicely fleshed out, the characters are interesting,
the author can't quite resist the occasional in-joke, but on the whole
doesn't use them to excess.  I'm about 3/4 of the way through.

--- Msged 6.0.1