Excellent point. It's hard to find a happy medium here.

I agree with you that we should have dimmed OR off lighting for take-off and landing and don't think it would be a bad thing to turn the reading lights off (if possible on any particular aircraft type) for the same periods.

During taxi, there is no problem with the lights being on but as we turn on to the threshold for example, we could throw these off. This is the time of the flight when we not only need people to be accustomed to the dark, but we also need them to be fully alert incase on an emergency. That's why we turn off the IFE and why we ask people to turn off MP3 players etc.

It wouldn't hurt people to put their books and newspapers down for a couple of minutes during the take-off/landing stages of the flight.

As always though, we'd be fighting a losing battle. I'm doing a fourteen hour flight to Singapore tomorrow and I guarantee that half of the people in the cabin in which I'm working (likely J) won't watch the safety video but will instead read their paper. This, despite having the equivalent of two days in the office in which to do so.