The activity of assimilating written material, often as indistinct from the activity of INTERPRETATION. The latter sense of the term occurs widely enough that behaviors, situations, or circumstances might likewise be “read.” A general penchant for conflating reading and interpretation may well reflect a collective preference for putting carts before horses, or even a reflexive tendency on the part of advanced thinkers to insist that adjacent carts and horses are simply single entities. It should be noted, however, that if a cart-horse complex is moving in reverse (say, rolling downhill), it may in fact be preferable (for the horse) to be in the “rear” (defined by the vector of motion). Which is to say that the cart should in fact always go “before” the horse, backwards (see PROGRESS).