91–100 of 132 posts
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Or also with the cell phone: "Why do I have to press 'send' to make a call? On a regular phone, I just dial the number. I press 'send' when I send a fax."
Not on a cordless phone you don't (does anyone really have a phone any more that has a dial tone from the moment you pick it up?)
Thoreau said, "For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root." Here is my attempt. Shortly after we're born, we begin to perceive a certain amount of value in everything we encounter. We assign value to food, attention, comfort, safety, pleasure, affection, entertainment, possessions, virtue, appearance, and a million other things. We assign value to a thousand instances of a hun…
The classic nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate. The problem with your argument is that it's simply not backed up by evidence. There are plenty of cases of children who grow up in virtually identical environments, yet go on to have widely varying interests. My brother and I grew up experiencing basically all the same stimuli: same parents, same TV shows, same music, same magazines, same everything. As adult…
Very insightful view into the mind of an essay marker. I've always loathed the subjectiveness of English courses, that's why I took computer science :) I agree with the author, not everyone is cut out for English classes, but I think an alternative to these "trying help you an write essay" classes should be some kind of "just read a book and enjoy it" class. It would be a start anyway. In school, any hope of loving E…
The problem with dissecting a book is that -- just like dissecting an animal -- at the end of the exercise, the subject of the dissection is dead. While mulling over a good book and discussing it can be enjoyable, the attempt to squeeze deep meaning out of something that the author put in by chance simply kills the joy of a good book. Besides, I find that often the books that tend to be chosen for literature classes…
If that is what you really think, you have been reading the wrong literary criticism.
The most helpful grade I ever received on an essay was an 'F'. It was in my first year of university. I knew the course and knew the material but couldn't have been arsed to put together a paper which adequately addressed the subject. The comments the professor wrote were scathing and it was a wonderful full slap on the face that I'd better get my act together and actually deliver what was expected of me if I ever wa…
I went to college to be an English major. My first paper freshman year came back with a "D" on it and the remark, "Sophomoric Ramblings". It didn't seem logical, a bad grade and a compliment. (Since I was a freshman, I thought "sophomoric" meant "advanced".) One week later, I became a math major and I've never looked back.
I honestly had only used the word because I thought it was cool to pronounce "-digm".
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"I can’t believe it," she said when she received her F. "I was so proud of myself for having written a college paper."
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"I can’t believe it," she said when she received her F. "I was so proud of myself for having written a college paper."
Excellent submission. That was an extremely well-written and particularly trenchant piece of writing. It is interesting to compare the experiences of Ms. L to various people in their 40s returning to school when I was in undergrad. They too had difficulty with very basic (to us youngsters, anyway) methods of computer use. Many viewed computers with either outright terror or blatant suspicion. I have often thought of…
Do you not perhaps think that correlation is not causation? Maybe "dropping out of the education system early" is in fact a more significant data point than being 40? I'm 32 and if things stay as they are, in 10 years I'll have real trouble changing jobs in this industry. The current crop of geeks are in for a nasty surprise if they think they'll be a hot commodity forever.
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It tries my patience too, but we just have to remember: to the uninitiated, it's all rectangles. You and I see 'windows', 'buttons', etc, but to them it's all rectangles. We are so far away from an actually usable interface it's disgusting.
We are so far away from an actually usable interface it's disgusting. Tech interfaces are usable -- they're just not intuitive to those who didn't grow up using computers. Ironically, part of the problem is that the metaphors and shortcuts that some interfaces use in an attempt to make things easier end up make things more confusing: - Operating systems: "Why is the trashcan on my desktop?" - Macs: "If I want to ejec…
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Agree. I, too, taught "literature" to people that could barely read. It sucked. If you can't read, you should learn the mechanics of how to read before dealing with things like "foreshadowing" "theme" "denouement." Just, basic stuff.Otherwise, it's just ridiculous. That's what these colleges should be doing, if they're taking student's money. Not raping them in their vulnerability, naivete, and ability to get a loan.
Just, basic stuff.Otherwise, it's just ridiculous. That's what these colleges should be doing, if they're taking student's money. No, that's what high schools should be doing. No wait, actually, that's what primary schools should be doing.
Thoreau said, "For every thousand hacking at the leaves of evil, there is one striking at the root." Here is my attempt. Shortly after we're born, we begin to perceive a certain amount of value in everything we encounter. We assign value to food, attention, comfort, safety, pleasure, affection, entertainment, possessions, virtue, appearance, and a million other things. We assign value to a thousand instances of a hun…
The classic nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate. The problem with your argument is that it's simply not backed up by evidence. There are plenty of cases of children who grow up in virtually identical environments, yet go on to have widely varying interests. My brother and I grew up experiencing basically all the same stimuli: same parents, same TV shows, same music, same magazines, same everything. As adult…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My favorite 'English' class in high school was a journalism class, which was centered around learning to write well and communicate something effectively, with none of the BS about "hidden symbolism". I proudly got a D on an English paper once, when the topic was "how does the symbolism help us understand what the author is telling us", where I answered that it didn't help in the slightest, and that, truth be told, i…
Do you know how zen koans work? They help you understand yourself. They don't do it by telling you about yourself, but rather by tricking your mind into paying attention to nothing other than yourself, even though you might not consciously want to. In the same way, symbolism is intended to trick the mind into grasping a concept it consciously has problems with understanding, or perhaps outright disagrees with. It's l…