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| gromit |
 Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 10:32 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Check out this ridiculous piece in the WSJ opining that Humanities, especially Literature, should be expunged from the university.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323823004578595803296798048.html
Quote: Literature is too sacred to be taught. It needs only to be read ... Soon, if all goes well and literature at last disappears from the undergraduate curriculum
I don't know what lousy experience he had, but when I was an English major, the teaching methods, styles and such were quite varied. One prof even modelled his Modern Drama class on EST, or so he said.
And I can't imagine wading through Blake or Byron as far as I did without structure and guidance and other readers.
Those courses and others definitely advanced my appreciation and understanding, and pushed me much further into their work than I would have ventured on my own.
And of course, literature courses certainly don't preclude reading on one's own and I expect they make such self-learning/exploration more likely. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 11:57 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 6916
Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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carrobin wrote: Seems to me that HR people are generally lazy and/or swamped with applicants, and it's just easier for them to throw out all the non-college-grad resumes. My dad didn't even graduate from high school, but he ended up a millionaire (much to the surprise of my sister and me) because he was ambitious, hard-working, and a natural salesman. That doesn't get you far these days, unless you're extremely lucky (or inherit a business from your father--unfortunately, I'd be a lousy salesperson). |
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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed? |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Mon Jul 15, 2013 12:36 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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whiskeypriest wrote: HR "people" don't screen resumes any more. Computer programs do.
So, they're lazy computer programmers.
That WSJ piece reminds me of my favorite movie, in which Alan Bates is a lecturer in English literature who has grown to hate his job (or at least his students). His comment to a girl who says she wants to teach sixth formers (high schoolers here): "Isn't that rather like being a fireman called to fight fires that are already out?" Actually, I agree with the WSJ guy on one item--reading in school can be a chore, and I still cringe when recalling the trudge through "David Copperfield" as a senior in high school. (Oddly, I also read "Moby Dick" in high school because a teacher I admired named it as his favorite book, and I liked it a lot more than I thought I would.) But in general, the concept of college without the humanities indicates to me a technical school geared toward working life, not a well-rounded mind. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 8:33 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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I used to be a teenager. I smoked some pot, got into some fights, and occasionally (painful to admit) made racist remarks. Where was the friendly neighborhood George Z. to come along, stalk me on a dark night, provoke a fight, and then give me the punishment I deserved? WHY AM I STILL HERE? I WAS CLEARLY A DRAG ON SOCIETY AND BETTER OFF DEAD.
I'm so sorry I'm here, Ted Nugent! |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 5:09 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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It's too easy to pull a gun.. Do you know they make purses for women designed for conceal/carry?
Why didn't Zimmerman fight back? Because it was easier to just pull out a gun? |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 9:58 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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| Racists and gun junkies are trying to demonize Trayvon Martin by saying he was using the Skittles and Arizona Tea to blend with codeine to make himself some drank or lean. So what? Were his plans for getting high justify being murdered? A white kid with drugs is a stoner. A Black kid with drugs is a goner. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 11:03 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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| I'm not sure the jury reached the wrong verdict in the context of the applicable laws...They all but sanction murder. I would argue that everything stems from 'your' perverted and pernicious relationship to guns...machines designed to kill people. |
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I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| Befade |
| Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2013 11:24 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 3784
Location: AZ
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Jeremy..... I agree with you about the verdict and those laws and I'm not sure racism is part of this story. It's certainly not the whole story.
What definitely is key is that too many people in this country like to be armed.
With a gun handy the impulse to pull the trigger first and think....or not...later is too easy.
I taught a student who was egging cars with his friends after a night of working at a grocery store. Did one driver feel threatened? With a gun handy he solved the problem quickly. That was the last event in that 16 year olds life. |
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Lost in my own private I dunno. |
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| jeremy |
| Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 12:12 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 6794
Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)
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I'm looking out of my window watching a constant stream of ships making their way along up and down the Huangpu. Running along the West bank to my left are a parade of early twentieth century stone buildings; the built-to-impress banks and commercial houses of Shanghai's Bund; a legacy of the concessions wrested from the Chinese by the Western powers in the proceeding eighty years. The British started it - I'm sure you've read your James Clavell – though America was also one of the ravenous wolves tearing at the carcass of a helpless China. I doubt one in ten Westerners could place the Opium Wars or The Boxer Rebellion, say, but the humiliations of that time still burn (and are nurtured) in the China.
Imposing as they are, these monuments of Western power are now stared down by the glass and concrete skyscrapers on the opposing East bank. With some justification, the Pudong financial district now boasts one of the world’s most iconic skylines. The symbolism is manifest and possibly deliberate.
What is young Johnny Zhang thinking as, like a May Day parade of old, he watches all that industrial production powering out to sea. Rightful destiny? Amongst other superlatives, Shanghai hosts the world biggest container port, it is building the world’s biggest airport, it is…I would suggest that we have not seen it’s like since a young Johnny Smith surveyed the fruits of Empire being unloaded in the docks of Victorian London. |
Last edited by jeremy on Wed Jul 17, 2013 9:49 pm; edited 1 time in total
_________________
I am angry, I am ill, and I'm as ugly as sin.
My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it. |
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| Shane |
| Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 4:43 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 1168
Location: Chicago
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jeremy wrote: I'm not sure the jury reached the wrong verdict in the context of the applicable laws...They all but sanction murder. I would argue that everything stems from 'your' perverted and pernicious relationship to guns...machines designed to kill people.
That I totally agree with you on Jer, I've had guns pulled on me by people who scared the hell out of me me just because they looked like they had no idea what they were doing. |
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I'd like to continue the argument we were having before. What was it about? |
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 9:25 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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The euphemistically titled "Stand your ground law" is basically a legalized excuse to kill anybody you want, as long as you say he scared you. After all, unless there are witnesses, it's the killer's word against the dead guy's. (And now that law has been established in 21 states, I think. Not in NY, though.)
i've always been rather fascinated by Shanghai. Wasn't that the city where "Empire of the Sun" started? |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 10:49 am |
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| The USA has two extremes. One extreme is chock full of wonderful things that living or visiting there is a pleasure. The other extreme is a nightmare for the decent population of such a modern democratic country that has laws that belong in centuries past. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Wed Jul 17, 2013 11:03 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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carrobin wrote: The euphemistically titled "Stand your ground law" is basically a legalized excuse to kill anybody you want, as long as you say he scared you. After all, unless there are witnesses, it's the killer's word against the dead guy's. (And now that law has been established in 21 states, I think. Not in NY, though.)
It's my hope that SYG laws will be overturned, as cases like this play out. It's so contrary to the spirit of the law that "self-defense" can be somehow divorced from the chain of events that lead to said act of self-defense. Apparently you can ignore dispatcher and law enforcement advice, get out of your truck and pursue someone on foot EVEN THOUGH YOU'VE ALREADY MARKED THEM AS A THREAT AND REPORTED IT TO POLICE, and then pursue until it escalates into a fistfight, and THEN USE A GUN when the fight doesn't go your way because somehow the fight itself lives in a magic bubble that has no relation to your prior culpable and negligent actions that led to said fight. Only this grotesque logic could allow a jury to NOT return a verdict of the "softer" form of manslaughter, i.e. culpable negligence. MS/CN doesn't require any knowledge of mens rea, i.e. no "ill will" need be established. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2013 8:30 am |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
Posts: 6958
Location: Black Hills
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| carrobin |
| Posted: Fri Jul 19, 2013 9:34 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 7795
Location: NYC
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| Good journalism there. The moral seems to be, Don't go to Florida. Or any other state with that law on the books. |
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