Rockism

Read and respond. Are you a rockist. Where are your music biases?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/arts/music/31sann.html?_r=1

Language

Like far too many "educated" Americans, I am fluent in exactly NO other world languages. I can read French a bit, but it's been twenty years since I did any real reading in French, way back in grad school. I have a hazy desire to learn Spanish because so many of our nation's newest citizens are Spanish speakers, but I never seem to find the time.



If I could learn any language, I think I would go back to French. That language retains, for me, its cosmopolitan allure, its sound of sophistication. And I would like to read the Mallarme, Rimbaud, Baudelaire and Reverdy again with clarity. There is newish translation of Rimbuad’s Illuminations by my hero John Ashberry. I have the dual language edition and have enjoyed playing with some of the challenging ideas therein. My French is too too rusty to do much more than look at various phrases and try to remember how the verb tenses work.



Read the essay here. Then write about 400 words in which you summarize your own work with world languages and then look to the future. What will you learn and why? After all, you are still young! Your brain is still plastic enough to learn a language quickly.

Show off as a writer. Please proofread carefully.

The Ghost in the Machine

We can distinguish five positions on consciousness: eliminativist, dualist, idealist, pan­psychist and mysterianist. Which are you? Readf and explain why you favor your choice.

Read the article here.

Scientist Politicians

The author of the article here (Why Don't We Elect More Scientists?") says, "To avoid receiving the candidates’ canned responses on these and other issues, I sometimes wish that a debate moderator would forgo a standard question about immigration or jobs and instead ask the candidates to solve a simple puzzle, make an elementary estimate, perform a basic calculation."

Read the article and then respond in the comment section, please. You may be askd to join the NYT subscription list...it's free...just do it.

Write down your intellectual response to Paulos' proposition that we would be better off if more scientists were in government.

In your writing, make good points...show off your writing style...present yourself as bright and interesting!

Given what you know about the book, where do your sympathies lie: with Fingal, who says the essayist may not alter facts or with D'agata, who says "it's art, d***head."

Post in less than 4000 characters.

Faith and Reason

Reason should be illuminated by faith and faith must be undergirded by reason.

Identify two tropes and one sentence level figure. Then should how that use of language makes the idea more convincing.

AP juniors, please post here...

jrb

La Mort de La Dissertation

An article at the Times summarizes arguments for and against the assignment of formal, sustained arguments with sources, namely the term paper.  Since no one writes term papers anymore (most college students report that they never write a paper over fifteen pages) I guess the argument is, in terms of practice, settled. But the emergence of the "synthesis" essay on the AP exam is just one of the signs that some people are at least troubled by, if not in actual mourning for, the old fashioned assignment.

I'm not as bothered by the inability of students to use sources as I am their disinclination to reason carefully in writing. In that sense, I think the term paper asks for two linked but distinct skills.

Please read the Times article (you may need to log in) and then write a short comment in which you take a side. Give at least one good reason for your stance.