Culture means knowing how I can find out in two minutes. Of course, nowadays I can find this kind of information on the Internet in no time. But, as I said, you never know with the Internet.
And so you don't know with the books.
For their part, the British have what House calls the "etiquette of simulation". The British feign an interest in someone. They pretend to want to meet again when they don't really. They simulate concern.
Saying things like "It's nice to meet you" are rarely meant the way they are said, she says. "It's just words. It's simulating interest in the other person."
From a German perspective, this is uncomfortably close to deceit.
On cultural differences between Germans and Britons embedded in the language.
Surrender, on the other hand, is the realization that you do not have time for everything that would be worth the time you invested in it if you had the time, and that this fact doesn't have to threaten your sense that you are well-read. Surrender is the moment when you say, "I bet every single one of those 1,000 books I'm supposed to read before I die is very, very good, but I cannot read them all, and they will have to go on the list of things I didn't get to.
You're NOT going to be well read. Don't worry, that's OK.
When it comes to preservation, video games are problematic. Hardware becomes outdated and the media that houses game code becomes obsolete, not to mention the legal issues with emulation. In short, one day, there may not be a way to play Super Metroid at all, and that's a scary thought.
Some people may still laugh at it, but video games have become part of the cultural heritage. But how to preserve work that is so volatile and bound to quickly aging technology? Somebody wrote a 27-page paper on it.
