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December 21, 2004
College Isn't For Everyone
Ross Douthat at andrewsullivan.com talks about proposals for giving everyone a college education. He does not seem to think it is a great idea, but I suspect if it did happen the trends of the past fifty years would continue. Both high school and college diplomas would mean even less than they do today. Colleges would get easier, add a lot more remedial classes, and people who went to college would learn less than they do now, which would make college degrees worth less than they are now. Considering that we already graduate people from high school who can barely read and that students graduate from some colleges now and still can not put a coherent thought to paper, this would not be a good trend. At my former high school and many other public high schools if you show up, do the minimum amount of work, and can perform at about an 8th grade level you graduate. Instead of putting more people into college and lowering the difficulty and the quality of college curriculum even more, we instead need to improve the quality of our lower level education so that high school diplomas mean something more than that you showed up for four years. Graduating from college only means something today because it is still hard to do most of the time, which makes it at least a partial (if imperfect) measure of education and intelligence. Make it so everyone goes and it loses even that quality.
This will be my last post for a while as I am about to be away from my computer for about a week. I have The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells and The Hobbit to listen to over the next week.
Merry Christmas!
Posted by Pete at 04:10 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Moneyball
Over the course of the weekend trip to and from Ft. Worth my wife and I finished listening to I Am Spock by Leonard Nimoy and listened to almost all of Moneyball. Spock was interesting to listen to because I had no idea how bad Nimoy thought the third season of Star Trek was. It makes sense as it had bad episodes like Plato's Stepchildren and several so-so episodes like Spock's Brain (which Nimoy for obvious reasons as an actor did not like).
Moneyball was the far more interesting book. I had heard similar theories expounded several years ago and tended to agree with them, but I never heard them in this depth. The basic theory of Billy Beene the GM of the Oakland A's and several other theorists is that there are great market inefficiencies in professional baseball that can be exploited by people willing to do their homework and ignore tradition. Runs are the product of the industry and outs are a scarce resource. Speed, fielding, and batting average tend to be overpriced when measured in player salaries, while walks, ability to run up pitch count, and on base percentage tend to be underpriced. In pitching ERA , pitch speed, and number of hits are not the most effective measurements. The most effective measurements are the number of walks, strike outs, and home runs allowed because they rule out luck since no other defensive players are involved. The people who argue these are the efficient ways to run a team cite statistical abstracts that prove these theories. The other evidence is that even though they have one of the lowest salaries in baseball the A’s keep having one of the best records and make the playoffs almost every year. This year they were only one game behind the Angels for the AL West lead at the end of the season and had made the playoffs for several years in a row before that.
The main point of Moneyball is that new knowledge is almost always attainable even in subjects that have been thoroughly studied like baseball statistics. The other major point was the problem of subjective experience tainting views of objective stats. One of the strongest points of the book is how it intersperses narrative biographies to illustrate its statistical points. Chad Bradford for instance is a relief pitcher who throws underhanded and was repeatedly sent to the minors despite hardly allowing any runs. He pitches slow and underhanded so despite his fairly decent stats he kept getting stuck in minor leagues because he did not throw like a normal reliever. I have not read any other baseball book that I can think of, but will probably read a few more now that I am done with this one. I think I am going to look up how the players the A's drafted in the book because of high on base percentage have done so far and report on this in a future post. Nick Swisher is the only name from the book's draftees I recognize on the A's current roster and he has a respectable OBP of .352 and SLG of .417.
Posted by Pete at 02:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Christmas Gifts
One year in college a church next to our campus was having a charity gift sale were instead of buying gifts for people that do not need anything you bought gifts for poor people who do need things in their name. Most of the people I am buying gifts for this year do not need them. Most (from what I can tell) do not even particularly want them. They like the fact that I make the effort to get them something and this shows I care, but most do not act like they want to get anything in particular. And I do not need anything myself. The gifts people get me are nice and I always tell people what clothes I need or books I want to read so I make sure the gifts I get will not go to waste. But lets face it, if I really want or need something I am probably going to buy it eventually. Same thing goes for most of the people I am giving to this year. So this year everyone on my list is at going to get something from me, but also is going to get something donated in their name to Samaritan’s Purse. I am going with an animal theme and giving away goats and baby chicks.
Posted by Pete at 12:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 20, 2004
Graduation Pictures
Graduation was OK, but took forever. There was a general ceremony for everyone where they gave out honorary doctorates and individually hooded about 70 doctoral students. Juan Williams of NPR and Fox News was the speaker and he did a decent job talking about how to use your education to change the world for the better. The two honorary doctorates went to the first black undergraduate student and graduate student of UNT from 50 years ago and Williams talked about Thurgood Marshall and how he used his education for good. This all took at least two hours. Then it was off to the separate college’s graduations and they had signs up for each college (except mine of course) for where to go. Luckily I kind of knew where I was going so I was not too late. This ceremony only involved around sixty students and was much less formal and over in about an hour. The building for my college ceremony was some cool looking performance building named after Murchison, who has buildings on campuses all over Texas named after him..
By the end of the ceremony it had been close to seven hours since I had left my uncle’s in Ft. Worth where I was staying and I had not had lunch so I was ready to go. I ended up going to dinner and then visited my uncle’s church where he is the pastor. He helped to start this church a year ago and they meet Saturday nights in a Baptist church since they do not own a building yet. He also performed a tuba duet of Deck the Halls and Silent Night with the music leader which ended up sounding very good. Then Sunday morning I went to my cousin’s church (my uncle’s son) that my cousin had founded a year and a half ago and where that cousin’s brother in law leads worship.
Posted by Pete at 02:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 17, 2004
Social Security Reform
Michael Kinsley of Slate asked the other day if by definition social security privatization is doomed to failure. I have cared about this issue for longer than any other public policy issue I can think of and Bush proposing these reforms four years ago was the first thing he did that made me think he was the right man for presidency. Kinsley's argument is based on major flaws and a misunderstanding of how investing and economic growth works. Investing is not a zero sum game. This tends to be how many liberals approach things like investing: "One person is making money so someone else must be losing the same amount of money. The are only so many pieces of the economic pie and it is never growing." Another thing which Kinsley does not understand (or chooses to ignore) is that in its current form social security is a drag on the general economy. Every year all the tens of billions of dollars of surplus of social security taxes are forced into government bonds by legislative dictate, not by the market. This gives the federal government a cheap source of capital that otherwise would be lowering the cost of capital for the rest of society.
Although I think the economic case for allowing people to invest their social security taxes into private accounts is very sound, it is the moral case that I care more about. Donald Luskin has a thorough takedown of Kinsley's economic mistakes here, but my favorite part was his conclusion: "Oh, and there's another little matter that Kinsley ignores. It's a liberal blind-spot, I guess. Personal accounts are a good idea because we are a free people who ought to have a say over how our money is invested. And after all, it is our money. Isn't it?"
Posted by Pete at 10:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 16, 2004
The Roman Way
I have been brushing up on the classics recently, specifically I listened to the book on tape versions of Edith Hamilton’s The Roman Way and The Greek Way along with The Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar over the past two months. As much as I like the Greeks and how much our society idolizes the Greeks for their love of play, art, and thought, I think our society is much more like the Romans. I am sure many others have made these points before but the Romans were so practical and competent about everything. There are some areas like our love for sport where we follow the Greeks, but the Romans loved sport too. In other areas like tragedy we are way off the Greeks. The Romans did not invent many new great ideas in religion or philosophy, but they were good at building stuff and had a very legalisitc and orderly culture that would slap together whatever worked from other cultures. The thing that impressed me most about the Romans in The Conquest of Gaul was how orderly they were outside of Rome and how quickly they could build things when they needed to, even when away from any supply base in the middle of some barbarian forest. From Caesar’s description of his troops and their enemies it does not seem like they were braver or better at fighting, but that the Romans planned better and followed orders.
Lileks had his take on the same question today, ”So why do we like the Romans? They were nasty bastards, after all, casually cruel, indolently sadistic when it suited them, tyrannical and arrogant. But they were civilized. At least for the time. They’re familiar. They had stadiums, plumbing, buildings whose visual vocabulary can be found in any American town, sculpture that looks startlingly vivid and real, and laws. (Too many laws, I suppose – and that bred an attitude towards the law that also seems familiar.) All other empires give off a strange and foreign whiff – the Egyptians come close, but their theology and architecture doesn’t resonate with the Western heart, and it doesn’t help that they wrote with pictures that make anyone channel their inner schoolkid and hum the snakecharmer ditty: “na na na, na, na. Nana nana nana na.” The other eastern empires had their odd gods with elaborately braided beards and lion bodies; the Aztecs et al are stuck in a Discovery Channel hell, with some historian attempting to decode inscrutable friezes about severed penises and human sacrifice while the soundtrack plays mournful pan flutes. They’re all very interesting. They’re all quite fascinating. But I think if you asked most people “of all the empires in human history, which would youn like to –“ “Rome,” they’d answer, before you finished the question. Oh, it would be different than we expected; you couldn’t begin to count the things you couldn’t anticipate. But you suspect – or hope – that you’d figure it out quickly. You could learn the ropes of Rome. You could pick up what you needed to know. If Western Civ is Mac OSX, Rome is DOS. Different interface, but you’re still using qwerty.... “Pompeii” is about a volcano, yes, but it’s the finest novel about plumbing you’ll ever read. I’m not being sarcastic. The hero is the local official in charge of the water supply for the cities around Pompeii, and most of the book concerns his efforts to fix a break in the aqueduct. It’s a brilliant move – the politics of Rome may be fascinating and amusing from a distance, the amphitheater diversions appalling, but by GOD they were engineers of the finest sort, and to learn how they did what they did is truly a delight.”
Posted by Pete at 01:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 15, 2004
Grad School
I finished my final paper last night and unless things go drastically wrong I will be walking the stage on Saturday. I took almost all my classes online or in Houston so this will only be my second time going to UNT, the first being the very first day of class. I was able to finish in 16 months and was even able to work part time while doing it. I am starting to send out job applications now and hope a good position opens up in San Antonio or the surrounding area so I will not have to move. I have some prospects in the area, but it looks like if I am willing to move to a city like Houston I can find a job very easily.
Posted by Pete at 04:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 13, 2004
Carl's Jr. and the French
The French are suing Carl's Junior. Carl's Junior is one of my favorite fast food restaurants, but unfortunately it does have any franchises for several hundred miles from where I live now. Carl's Junior made a commercial that made fun of the French for surrendering so often. Its motto: "Don’t be a big chicken. Eat one." So in typical French fashion, instead of taking up arms against Carl's Junior they are filing a class action lawsuit.
The worst part of the suit is the Orwellian language of the lawyers doing the suing: "The actions of Carl’s Junior in these commercials are blatantly racist and a violation of the intent of the United States Constitution’s First Amendment regarding the use of Free Speech." After all, we know the first amendment has nothing to do with protecting offensive, controversial, or unpopular speech.
Update: Dangerous Dan informs me that there is a Carl's Jr in San Antonio. After visiting Carl's Junior's website I found one lone Carl's Junior on the way south side of San Antonio, with the nearest other locations being near Dallas, El Paso, and Brownsville. Why the hell didn't anyone tell me this before?!? I knew there was one in Wichita Falls and even made some friends stop there about two years ago so we could eat there on a road trip.
To sum up, screw the French. In the next week or so I will be eating at this restaurant and will see if it is as good as the others in California I grew up on. I will not order the offending chicken sandwich since ordering chicken at Carl's Junior is like ordering a hamburger at La Madeline. You go to Carl's Junior to get a big hunk of ground beef covered in BBQ sauce, cheese, bacon, and maybe an onion ring or two.
Posted by Pete at 10:05 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 10, 2004
Iraq the Model
Roger L. Simon has a cool post up about one of the best blogging stories ever. Omar and Mohammed of the blog Iraq the Model got to visit with the president the other day. Omar and Muhammed (along with their bother Ali a doctor) are two Iraqi dentists who started a blog to show the positive things happening in Iraq and to work towatds solutions to improving Iraq. Now they know the president of the United States.
Posted by Pete at 02:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
What the Hell is Wrong With England?
I know of no other way of putting it than that after reading stories like this from the Belmont Club. In Texas if a person breaks into your house you are allowed to kill them. You may even use a pistol or other weapon to do so. This is true in most fo the rest of the U.S. as well. The law is that it is a justifiable assumption on the part of the victim that a person who is willing to break into your home does so to commit nasty crimes like rape, kidnapping, and murder. You are therefore allowed (and by many police officers encouraged) to use lethal force to defend yourself and your home. Not so in England. The law there is basically do nothing and hope they leave. If the victim hurts the burglar the victim goes on trial and may be sent to prison. The professor quoted by the Belmont Club recommends "the victim should adopt a state of active passivity." The right to self defense is a basic human right and it is unfortunate that many European governments do not understand this.
Posted by Pete at 10:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Clinton's Legacy Continues
The terrorist Susan Rosenberg was once indicted for her part in an armed robbery where a guard and two police officers were killed and in 1984 was to sentenced 58 years in prison after being convicted for possessing 600 pounds of explosives. Recently she decided not to take a teaching posistion at Hamilton College after alumni starting to withdraw donations and prosepective students started to withdraw their applications over her appointment. How did a terrorist who should be in prison until 2042 get a job offer like this in the first place? Bill Clinton commuted her sentence of course.
Also do not forget that Clinton pardoned fugitive Marc Rich who, in a sincere act of repentence for his previous financial misdeads, a few days later became one of the middle men in the UN Oil for Food scandal.
Posted by Pete at 09:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Caucus This
It looks like the Democrats may try to get another state to hold its primary before Iowa does its caucus. I have never understood 1) why people still put up with having a caucus instead of a primary 2) why every four years the primaries are first held in the same few states and 3) why they are help so early. A primary vote takes a few minutes out of your time which is something a normal person will do. For a caucus there are all day events, which normal people are reluctant to go participate in. The same states going first each time means tens of millions of people like me never get a real say in who is nominated. I have now been eligible to vote for the past three presidential primaries and not once has my vote (first in California in 1996 and the next two in Texas) had a chance to make a difference. And why are they so early in the year? Maybe that made sense years ago, but lets make the earliest one in March and shorten pu the campaign season by a few months.
Posted by Pete at 09:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 09, 2004
State of Fear
Bryan Curtis in Slate has an insightful critique of Michael Chricton’s latest novel State of Fear that makes many of the same points I made earlier. State of Fear (which could be the name Chricton chose for any of his novels) is about environmentalists who wreck havoc on consumers through weather changing machines. Chricton does his homework and has a good sense of what his readers will care about. He also is willing to tackle a wide range of subjects and has fairly memorable plots with very forgettable characters.
However, the Curits errs on thinking that Chricton is “right wing.” He seems more like a conservative to me and by conservative I mean someone who does not like change. He did not like Japan becoming more powerful in the eighties in Rising Sun, he did not like the growth of new technologies in Prey, etc.. Curtis writes, “But Chricton's books have suffered as his right-leaning politics have come to the fore. Titles like Rising Sun, Disclosure, and Airframe (about the mendacity of the electronic media) were naked political screeds designed to land him on the op-ed page.” I have not read Disclosure, but Airframe at least is hardly a right wing polemic and is much more about the aeronautics industry than it is about the media. It does make the media look bad in some parts, but the reporter in the story does a fairly good job of fact checking before running a story. The book makes union thugs some of the major bad guys, but it does the same thing with corporate executives who are the main villain Chricton uses in many books. The book is also very clear in predicting that the deregulation of airlines championed by many converatives (not Chhricton reactionary style conservatives) is going to cause commercial jets to constantly fall from the sky. Like many of Chricton’s other dire predictions this has not happened yet.
Update: Peter Robinson in the corner has a post with related views on Chricton's fear-mongering including examples I forgot like Westworld, The Andromeda Strain, and The Terminal Man.
UPdate #2: John Adler of the corner says that Chricton is only a contrarian and argues aginst whatever scientific/corporate/political fad is up and coming.
Posted by Pete at 10:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 08, 2004
Eagles and Statistics
My finals schedule has been turned on its head this semester because UNT made it to a bowl game. They started out the season losing to Texas 0-65 and then lost the next three games for an 0-4 start. The Eagles then won their next seven games to finish 7-4, which is a pretty good turn around even though they did it by beating some schools I had never even heard of. In their 11 games their opponents scored a combined total of 327 points against them, while UNT only scored a total of 299 points. The Eagles will be playing Southern Miss in the New Orleans Bowl on December 14. For some reason this means that the final for my statistics class is due three days earlier than it was originally.
Posted by Pete at 03:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Stubby the Wonderdog of War
About a year ago I read the book The Lost History of the Canine Race by Mary Thurston which details the history of man's interaction with dogs and the various tasks that dogs have performed for societies over the course human history. Most dogs have worked with other animals in farms or fields or have been beasts of burden or work in place like taverns or pulling things like carts. The other main type of dog has been dogs used in war and I had to reread this section of the book this morning for a class.
My favorite dog story from the book is Stubby. Stubby was a bull terrier and boxer mix that wandered onto Yale's campus while the 102nd infantry was training in 1917. He was adopted by the soldiers who later smuggled him to Europe. During the first battles Stubby was in he comforted soldiers who were lying wounded on the field of battle. Stubby repeatedly saved the lives of the soldiers in his platoon from incoming mortar and gas attacks by warning them before they hit and on one occasion Stubby captured an escaping German spy. He also once saved a little Parisian girl from being run over in the street. Stubby was in eighteen major battles, was given the rank of sergeant (highest rank ever for a dog in the U.S. Army), and was received by three presidents. After his death Stubby's hide was preserved and he currently resides in the Smithsonian.
Another notable war dog mentioned in the book is Chips the most decorated American war dog of WWII. He was a German Shepard - Collie - Huskie mix who participated in eight campaigns with Patton's Seventh Army. Chips disobeyed his handler on one occasion and went into a supposedly empty pillbox in Sicily where he promptly captured six German soldiers. Chips also once tried to bite General Eisenhower.
Over the past fifty years most military dogs have been trained at Lackland Air Force Base here in San Antonio. Other dogs served (mainly as guards and scouts of some sort) in Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War. For instance, a Belgian Malinois named Carlo was able to discover 167 hidden explosives in Kuwait.
Posted by Pete at 01:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Out, Damn Bot!
MT Blacklist seems to have stopped all the sp@mbots for now. Hopefully I will be able to continue to allow unregistered comments.
Posted by Pete at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 07, 2004
&%*$#ing Sp@m Part 2
I have temporaily required registration because the sp@mb@ts starting working overtime this morning. Over 400 fake comments so far today. I have also installed MT Blacklist and that should slow it down some. Hopefully I will be able to turn off registration in the next few days, but I will probably have to experiement some to figure out what works best.
Posted by Pete at 03:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Environmentalist Arson?
I have worried about leftist violence if Bush won reelection before. Although this is not specifically election related and there have been no arrests yet, this huge case of arson looks like it may be the work of radical environmentalists who failed to legally stop the construction. Steven Hayward in the corner has similar worries.
Posted by Pete at 09:44 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Thanks Gore
Al Gore’s contribution to the democratic process continues as Washington state Democrats demand a hand recount in the state’s governor’s race. This is after already losing the first count and a recount. Then there is this from the Seattle Times, “Democratic Party asks the state high court to make it more than just a new count of votes tabulated in the recent machine recount. Democrats want a fresh look at disqualified ballots, including provisional and absentee ballots that were rejected.” I wish Nixon was still alive to give these Democrats lessons on how to lose a close election with class and dignity.
Posted by Pete at 09:35 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 04, 2004
Cosby Should Head the NAACP
Clarance Page, who is one of the better liberal writers out there, has a good column on how Dr. Bill Cosby should be the next head of the NAACP. Cosby is probably a good choice since he is extremely well known and respected, well educated and qualified, and cares more about helping blacks than he does about bashing Bush and Republicans. With the IRS considering taking away the NAACP's tax exempt status (which I think they should if the NAACP does not stop being a partisan organization) and with the scandals that have plagued the organization over the years, a man with the vision and integrity of Cosby seems a very good choice.
Previous Cosby post.
Posted by Pete at 10:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Millionaire Michael Moore
The Kerry Spot had a fascinating quote from self made millionaire Michael Moore yesterday:
"Listen, friends, you have to face the truth. You are never going to be rich. The chance of that happening is about one in a million. Not only are you never going to be rich, but you are going to have to live the rest of your life busting your butt just to pay the cable bill and the music and arts classes for your kid at the public school where they used to be free."
Besides the obvious irony of a self made multimillionaire telling other people they will never be rich, I have several family members and have known many other people who are Michael Moore style "one in a million chance" millionaires. By Moore's logic of "one in a million" I probably have known every self made rich person in this country, save for Moore himself who I have never met. I have known several people who started out very poor, but through a lifetime of hard work, thriftiness, and good investing now are millionaires. These are friends, coworkers, and family members some of whom started out for instance as first generation Americans working on subsistence farms who are going to retire very comfortably in their mid fifties and are not going to have to work again.
Here is a good article I found in the comments section of junkyardblog about how 7% of American households now have net worth's (not counting homes) of at least a million dollars.
Posted by Pete at 09:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 03, 2004
Time to Save the Day Again
Finally saw Team America: World Police today. For the most part I liked it, but it dragged a lot. The songs were very good and the parody worked most of the time. I especially liked Kim Jung Il's "I'm so lonely" number. The movie relied a little too much on bathroom humor, but that is a failing of most R rated comedies now a day.
I saw it at the dollar movies and expected there to be children in the audience like in most R rated movies. I only saw one family with children in the theater (there were probably less than a dozen people in the theater total) and after about fifteen minutes they got up and left. I was glad they left since this movie earned its R rating, but what the heck are parents thinking taking a ten year old to a movie like this. This movie had more swearing than any movie I had seen in a while along with other fairly explicit scenes. Do parents even bother to find out what movies are about beforehand? The worst case so far was when I saw Saving Private Ryan and there were several children who looked to be 5-8 years old a few rows in front of me. Those parents did not take their children out.
Posted by Pete at 09:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 02, 2004
Privilege
Eugene Volokh had a good column on the use of confidential sources in journalism today. He suggests two main propositions: that journalists should only be forced to divulge their sources if a crime was committed in the revealing of information and that bloggers are entitled to the same legal protections as other journalists. The second point seems obvious to me as a matter of equal protection under the law, but although I agree with his first point as well that is a bit trickier.
Volokh points out that "Thirty-two years ago, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment does not create a journalist's privilege: like anyone else, journalists must testify when ordered to do so." A lot of self appointed watchdogs (journalist in this case) seem to think that the rules that apply to other citizens do not apply to them in many cases. They are journalists before they are citizens. This has always bothered me and the trend has spread to other self appointed watchdog groups like librarians who often act like their duties as a librarian (defending patron privacy and fighting censorship) supercede their duties as a citizen (obey the law, in this case the Patriot Act). For instance, many libraries now no longer keep records they once did for fear that they might be someday searched by a government investigator with a warrant. This is in spite of the fact that searches like this have helped to save innocent lives in the past and that their patrons do not have the right to use libraries to commit crimes or acts of terrorism.
Posted by Pete at 04:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 01, 2004
&%*$#ing Sp@m
So the %&#$$! sp@mbots have starting hitting my comments section. A few other bloggers I have read recently have started to have the same problem so I am looking for solutions that do not require registrations. I am thinking of putting in MT Blacklist or a similar filter that requires you to answer a question before you post a comment. Maybe it is a good sign that sp@mbots can find this site at least.
Posted by Pete at 06:19 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Multiple Readings
Hugh Hewitt and others have been asking what modern books have you reread. I decided a while back that I should reread a lot of the books I was given in high school and junior high to read by English teachers so I reread The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, and The Great Gatsby. I liked them all more this time around (or at least understood them more) although Hewitt and others never defined what counts as modern. I also have reread the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, War of the Worlds, Starship Troopers, and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. At least Starship Troopers and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich should count as modern.
I also have also read for the first time books most other people get assigned to read at some point in their education, but I was never forced to read: To Kill a Mockingbird, Fahrenheit 411, Moby Dick, Grapes of Wrath, and Johnny Tremain.
I think this is kind of funny because we re-watch movies and plays, re-listen to music, and no one thinks twice about it, but books often take a lot more time and effort. I have seen multiple versions of Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, and A Midsummers Night Dream for instance, but watching all of these versions probably took less time than rereading Les Miserables once would. I personally try to avoid re-watching movies unless they are particularly good movies and my Netflix list is currently about 300 movies I have never seen before. My wife and friends can get annoyed at this preference as my taste get to be fairly eccentric and I have scene a lot of movies.
This topic brings up the point that you get different reactions and emotions from experiencing movies/plays/books/stories more than once. Pretty much everyone reading this knows that Romeo and Juliet die at the end of the play. But you did not always know this. My wife went to see the Romeo and Juliet movie that came out a few years ago and several of the teenagers at the screening were surprised (and depressed) to see Romeo and Juliet die. That teenagers did not know this happened in the play was a bit surprising. The last version of Romeo and Juliet was an abridged version put on by a friend of mine that works at an elementary school with sixth graders playing all the parts. The elementary students in the audience were very shocked when Romeo and Juliet died and although they may like and have other (probably deeper) reactions to Romeo and Juliet when they see it in the future they will never have the same experience of surprise.
Posted by Pete at 05:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack