More examples of BAD engineering in the electronic world:

1.  Android OS - Contacts applet - No provision made to enter a new contact.  You cannot start from zero -- you cannot CREATE a contact.  All you can do is (a) IMPORT a set of contacts from certain compatible pdm-type systems (eg, GoogleMail) or (b) SAVE a phone number you're already using as a new contact.  INTELLIGENT DESIGN:  Always have a Contacts option along the lines of "Contact - New".

2.   Various electric appliance designs:  No off button.  No way to stop using electricity or to shut the machine off short of pulling the plug.  I used to encounter this in software, too:  Windows defaults set to "Standby" for the power button (hint:  a Power Button should be an ON/OFF toggle for the POWER).
Built-in energy-saving modules & their firmware are great - but once again, a fundamental of all appliances has been left out in favor of bells & whistles that no one needs.  Perhaps PG&E had a hand in such designs?  Or the idea is that only millionaires and tech-savvy-istas will be the ones to use hardware in the cyber-junk age?  INTELLIGENT DESIGN:  Always incorporate a prominent OFF Switch. 

3.   Back to Android:  A media player that cannot be paused, except by hunting thru various levels of the album's track displays until you find the precise track in the precise album that's playing and pull it up.  INTELLIGENT DESIGN:  Always have (when audio or video medium is being played) a PAUSE button or link visible.  ALWAYS.

4.   For media players in general - Windows, Android, whatever mainstream mess we're looking at: Players that, while wanting to catalogue everything on your device, fail to offer any File Browsing capability. INTELLIGENT DESIGN:  Always allow "File-Browse" for a media player, so you can hunt up files, check their properties, save them to playlists, etc., without having to second guess the various and confusing ways the media player's own software catalogs files.

And so on and so forth. 

Ei qui hoc legat ~

I am hoping (aside from wanting to finish & digest Mr. Clor's volume) to re-read Marcus Aurelius soon. I've only been through it once, and there was a lot there.  As always, the problem is practice, putting notions into practice, which enterprise is commonly fouled by attachments, desires - the pull of pleasure and the drag of habit.

I wish I was free to read; retired or in hospital or whatever; there's a lot I want to browse or study.  Generally, either work or family or my own fatigue intervene, and then (pro pudore) my own indolence or hyper-susceptability to distraction take care of what little time remains.  Add to it that I'm a slow reader, a slow reader with a near-useless memory, and you can plainly see that I'm swimming upstream in regard to my reading. 

Saturday I found the Hayward Library street-corner book-sale going on.  While my Lovely Elle went to the bank and the farmer's market, I reviewed the books, and even after thinning out and re-pruning what I was interested in, I still took away some six or seven books. 

• Coming Out Conservative by Marvin Liebman - an anti-communist activist, Conservative fundraiser and propagandist, a buddy (more or less) of Wm. F. Buckley Jr., etc., these are his memoirs about being Gay in the heart of the straight & narrow, and coming out only late in life. 
• The Accidental Activist by Candace Gingrich - Newt Gingrich's cousin or somesuch, who also came out as a Lesbian after years of keeping it under wraps, her memoir.
• Letters of Jefferson (purely pleasure reading)
• a life of Sacajawea - for I'm woefully ignorant of the Lewis & Clarke travail - and I've always been interested in what her story was.
• And ---

The Upstairs Nothing intervenes - I cannot recall the other books!  They seemed important enough at the time to add to my burgeoning collection of fact, fantasy and filibustering, but damned if I can recall them. 

However, I do recall a couple of the ones I put back:

• Alexandre Dumas, Los Tres Mosqueteros, en Español.
• Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography and quotes from Poor Richard's Almanac (which, actually, I may have picked up). 

Vale.

On Moderation, by Harry Clor.  Have begun this again - will try to study and grasp and evaluate his essays.  At this point:  Recommended; a sober look at the lost virtue.