Slashdot Mirror
Literature Teeters on the Edge of a 'Gr8 Fall'
aicrules writes "Yahoo news is reporting that the great works of literature often read and discussed by the brighter of our up-and-comers could be the latest victim of reaching the lowest common denominator at the potential expense of everyone. The article describes the efforts of Dot Mobile to make such literary masterpieces as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet more accessible. From the article, 'We are confident that our version of 'text' books will genuinely help thousands of students remember key plots and quotes, and raise up educational standards rather than decrease levels of literacy,'"
And this mindlessness is exactly the sort of thing that will push it over...
Here's a message for them: Lrn2RdFlBks. UGtMrFrmIt.
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
People have been condensing things like this for humor for years. Ophelia's last line: "Glub!" And remember the story about consensing the Lord's Prayer into a text message? (I think it had lines like "God, UR GR8")
So we take something that's been used for humor, and use it for Cliffs Notes instead. Big whoop. No one is going to think that the summaries are the original works. I mean, anyone who has taken a logic class has come up with "2B v ~2B"
Although it does remind me of the time in high school when we were reading Romeo and Juliet aloud in class. I read Mercutio's "Queen Mab" speech, got through the whole thing, then looked at the footnotes, and had the reaction, "I said what?!?!?" (From then on, I read the footnotes with the text, not afterward.)
The article describes the efforts of Dot Mobile to make such literary masterpieces as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet more accessible.
Perhaps Professor Sutherland ought to check out the following links:
Romeo & Juliet
Hamlet
Kudos to Chris Coutts...they're still damned funny, although the idea of Professor Sutherland pitching this sort of thing for real is just ludicrous. As the epitath on the Bard's tombstone reads:Does this mean that Professor Sutherland is cursed, since he's caused Shakespeare's corpse to spin at such a rapid rate? ^_^
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Need I say more?
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
wtf wallhax0r cl4n?
that your bastardized versions of literature classics will genuinely ensure thousands of potential intellectuals become pillars of society's caste of illiterate yokels.
the net impact of this will be nil. What person who was going to read some classic piece of literature is going to forego that experience after checking out the text message summary?
And who will go read the real thing after getting one of these?
In fact I also will go out on a limb and predict that this marketing ploy by the cell phone company will fail. Kids will not want these phones and that will greatly overwhelm the couple idiot parents who might think this would be a good idea.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
From the article: "To be or not to be" soliloquy is rendered: "2B? NT2B?=???".
So are they following in that ridiculous "ubonics" tradition and further degrading the English language or what?
If you give a liberal an enema, he'll turn transparent.
"Yahoo news is reporting that the great works of literature often read and discussed by the brighter of our up-and-comers"
:). But I do believe that. We put far too much devotion into the "classics' and developing our "canon recognition", and not enough time into actual thinking up new and interesting ideas.
Why does it always have to be the same books that are read by people? I mean..we're just limiting our range of expression here. Maybe our society would be a bit better off instead of mentally choking the chicken the brightest of our bright discussed things that matter..like say coming up with alternative fuel sources or fixing the economy.
Wow do I sound like one of those anti-TV coots there
Make them into games.
Can you imagine a more violent game than Romeo and Juliet?
Two gang waring mafia type families and a plot where the two main characters die?
Have the full text and add a game requirement that you have to talk to people with the accent and all. actually walk up to people and ask them questions and make statements that forward the game, rather than the standard now where you just button mash to get through the plot and power up.
Mix the two areas, good games need good plot, and good books need to be read by later generations.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
"brevity is... wit." ;-)
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
NdISaMur?
I, for one, am starting to root for the asteroids.
There's a type of home game where you can spell things out in "leet" speak, or you get cards with strange letter and number cominations and you have to decipher the meaning. Anyone remember what it's called? That's what I think of when I see someone writing "R U Their".
I can't understand the vast numbers of kids and people my age even that write with such sheer illiteracy that it makes me think twice about talking to them. Should I really expect someone who asks "How RU", to understand me when I talk about solar flares, or which car gets the best milage? Sure there are bright people that have given in to pretending they're typing on a cell phone, but why would someone try to initiate communication with other english reading person, with a line like "Hey Jou wat u doin?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
is found at every Slashdot discussion link's label: : Read more....
This won't affect literature any more than did those yellow-bound examples of conciseness.
Trolls: The high-tech version of those morons that scrawl obscenities in public bathrooms.
literary masterpieces as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet more accessible
I didn't think it was possible to make copyright free, translated into a hundred languages, written on just about every type of paper ever made, litterature even MORE accessible.
Whats next - write it on Charmin and have it installed inside the stalls of every public school bathroom?
"Murderer? Well, that's a harsh word. I prefer to think of myself as a Mortality Technician."
From the summary: will genuinely help thousands of students remember key plots and quotes, and raise up educational standards rather than decrease levels of literacy,'"
The plots cannot be taken out of context from the book they are presented in, for example here is the "plot" of animal farm:
Animals overthrow cruel/greedy humans to try to set up utopian society, true believers in the revolution pushed out, some use revolution for own goals, end up just like humans
Doesn't do the book much justice(not to mention doesn't contain one of the best sentences in all of English literature: "4 legs good, 2 legs bad"). You can't have anything but superficial discourse(make slashdot joke here) if all you are familiar with is a vague outline of the plot....
Monstar L
Don't we get warnings about this every decade for the last several centuries? Wasn't writing in the vernacular going to ruin writing back ever since writing was invented?
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
I mean it seems like I have been reading about the collapse of western civilization, literature and the death of all knowledge since I was a munchkin for goodness sakes.
Alarmist noise meant to freak people out or push a point of view.
I mean am I wrong or does this seem like just another re-hash of the old tv/computers/comic books/gore movies and porn will rot your brain noise?
ACK
So the scary thing is that plot is emphasized as the important part of reading -- of literature. Is it? Let's consider that reading a book teaches us language, teaches us history and teaches us, above all, how to (or not to) think.
So when some e-book comes along that bows down to the quick-speak of IM counterculture, let's stop to ask ourselves just why the product is harmful. What is it that we want our population to learn through reading? Granted that not everyone is going to pick up Anna Karenna. But for those who pick up Great Gatsby, there's a hellova lot more to be gleaned from reading the book than knowing that "G4tz di3z."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
While I am sure there will be plenty of purists out there that will be up in arms at this I think it might be quite a good thing. Anything that gets people interested in reading and expanding their mind has got to be good even if it means dumbing down some old masterpieces to get them interested. What concerns me about this, however, is their stated reason for doing it:
remember key plots and quotes, and raise up educational standards
Surely remembering plots and quotes isn't why we get our students to read these works. Many modern works have plots that are just a involved, often more involved. Quotes are good if you're a bit dim and need to sound intelligent for 30 seconds but not a lot else.
As for their choice of material, well, I'm sure it will mostly be Shakespeare simce he's the only person most people seem to be able to name. That's a real shame because, personally, I don't enjoy reading Shakespeare. He wrote plays - plays are supposed to be watched. There are plenty of people who wrote books why not try promoting them instead?
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
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I am tierd .
I am sad.
I wonder what is about to happen
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Stop telling me what to do , I run my own life mum.
Wonder what else is out there .
if you are a Chicken , You suck!!!!
My girl friend dumped me , but I tell everyone she died .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
More often discussed then read.
What's wrong with a few cliff notes so we can join with the best of bar room pontificators. And some of these so-called classics are leaden and ponderous.
This seems like an excellent use of technology. I don't think I'll have to attend english class ever again because I can learn all about rhetorical devices and reading great literary works on my cell phone. What would I do without you, Dot Mobile?
I have bad karma
While I have a negative knee-jerk reaction (is there a positive one?) to this sort of thing, if it helps a student remember an essential moment in a story it's hard to argue against it. I don't think it's plausible to suggest that this sort of 'translation' will supplant the original text, but works like Shakespeare often have to be worked through with a good teacher in order for students to understand them. Language (specifically English for this context) is not a static language: it's always growing. I'm hesitant to come out and say that text messages are constituting a new branch of language, but it's undeniable that "LOL" and "IANAL" are now part of the vernacular.
In more modern spelling this becomes:
Was this considered a radical watering-down, back in the day?
I've also considered what Shakespeare's plays would look like as IRC logs; I suspect such an approach would work at least as well as the blog version of Pepys' Diaries
rtcl2long 2mny wrds brdnow lol cya
What? What do you mean that doesn't count as a real comment?
^======^
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Maybe the intent was different. Joyce said of Finnegans Wake, "It took me 17 years to write it. It can take you 17 years to read it."
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
We called them Clift Notes back in the day. Hey rent the movie and you get it in two hours or less. With the great works the story is secondary to the writing. Picking high notes in the great works renders them banal and pointless. Let's reduce Citizen Kane to "some rich ole dude croaks and his last words are the name of his sled he had as a kid, the end". Does it have the same impact?
Mod up interesting, please.
There's a crucial difference between then and now. Then, rapid communication was written -- as in, a letter or a phone call. I would guess that writers wrote to the best of their ability to get the point across, or at least spelled out words correctly. The culture of intentional "l337 sp43k" was most likely small.
On the other hand, kids now use this language more frequently - and it's leaking into school essays, assignments and homework. During my most recent teaching stint, kids simply replaced "you" with "u," perhaps by unconscious slip of the typing hand. So IMHO, there is a danger in not addressing and resolving this challenge.
joined channel #unixgurus
sid060> did you know that the abbreviations you and your "homeys" use are codes from the mainframe days?
Rayn3> what do u mean?
sid060> Well... I don't know if I should tell...
Rayn3> u have 2. give an example.
sid060> Okay. "how r u" is code for "I am absolutely bereft of gorm."
Rayn3> r u seri^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
``Fake'' books of jazz and pop tunes with dumb chords substituted, simplified classical pieces that are easier to play, etc.
:)
If you can have a dumbed-down Bach or Beethoven as a ring tone on your phone, why not a dumbed down Jane Austen or Dostoyevsky on your bookshelf?
In my day we'd memorize everything as song or poetry. Books are dumbing down the next generation...
crazy dynamite monkey
It already happens with movies ... just check Titanic in 30 seconds (and re-enacted by bunnies).
Literature, especially Shakespear is about the power and joy of words, the fun that can be communuicated by language, the stirring of a good speech. Shekespear especially was a playwright whose words were meant to be spoken aloud not read on the page. Milton was a poet whose words were meant to stir the hearts in their full flower. Text messages by contrast are meant to get the key factoid ("*sq 11pm") across in the minimum spanm of time. The two are different things.
While I am all for the remixing of culture let's not pretend that "woun2mnkd" is the same as "woe unto the people of the earth." It is not, and the very difference lies in the words themselves their rythm, cadence, etc. Past attempts to reset literature into the modern vernacular have succeeded or failed to the extent that they produce something worthwhile. Resetting the words to a new place say a Nazi-Era Richard III work. Replacing all the dialogue with vastly-reduced snippets out of context fails. It doesn't fail because it isn't the cannon, but because it doesn't stand on its own.
I strongly suspect that for all those who already like the works so transcribed these messages will seem interesting, or cute. For those who do not they will be as interesting as reading all of Shakespear silently without even an image of the stage in your mind, that is, boring.
Personally the quotes themselves, divorced of context, mean nothing.
I don't see why it is so important to read Romeo and Juliet and other plays. They are meant to be watched. The actors are supposed to play a major role in how the characters are precieved. Take the students to see the play performed or bring in the movie. What really made me think Shakespear was awesome, was the Romeo and Juliet movie with Leonardo Dicaprio.
If you are going to just bring in scripts for you class to read, why not It's A Wonderful Life or Star Wars? That is only half the experience, and one not meant to be thrust upon the audience.
I'm very much against the idea of "accessible" versions of literature. Often, you'll see authors using wordplay or the physical structure of words that can't be translated a la Lewis Carroll.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Hamlet, for examplem, is a story delivered by a writer that likely invented more new words and phrases that "stuck" with the language than any other single person, this particular play being a prime example. Is translating this story(and a translation is effectively what it is) to a particularly crude and simplistic laguage that is designed for brevity, sometimes comedy, and not much else some sort of crime? Well, no, not really, because you can translate it well, or poorly. Let's say it's poor(and it will be). This means you have a poorly translated classic. What will happen? No-one will read it, and those that do won't recommend it to their friends. This is no more relevant than a Coles Notes of Hamlet, or Reader's Digest Abridged. Last time I checked, Reader's Digest, sitting on a humble hamper in my mother's bathroom, hasn't brought about the end of civilization as we know it. It's introduced a story to someone who likely wouldn't have read it in it's original form.
What *is* bad is the lack of support for reading the original in general. Like video games and violence, I don't think cel-speak causes illiteracy. I think the illiterate are drawn to it.
DT
The point of Shakespeare and Dickens is not to memorize what happens. It's not history class. The Picture of Dorian Gray isn't a story about a portrait, it isn't a history lesson about what crazy stuff happened to some rich guy in the 19th century, it's a wonderful work of literature about a man and a time period.
Memorizing a few plot points and quotes from Faulkner does absolutely squat for learning anything whatsoever about these works of art. This isn't raising educational standards.
Turning Hamlet into a text message removes 100% of what makes it important. There's no point to it anymore at all.
From the Fine Article (and the summary):
'We are confident that our version of 'text' books will... raise up educational standards rather than decrease levels of literacy"
Wow, that's good news. I was afraid they would raise the standards down.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
A while back, I saw something in the local Barnes & Nobles called 'No Fear Shakespease' where an original play is "translated" for modern day nitwits to understand. Example passage (taken from SparkNotes site) To be, or not to be? That is the question-- Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep-- No more--and by a sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to--'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished! translates to.... The question is: is it better to be alive or dead? Is it nobler to put up with all the nasty things that luck throws your way, or to fight against all those troubles by simply putting an end to them once and for all? Dying, sleeping--that's all dying is--a sleep that ends all the heartache and shocks that life on earth gives us--that's an achievement to wish for. *shudder* Never mind that the passage is castrated of any aesthetic value, the big problem in my mind is that challenging literature like Shakespeare should be, you know, challenging. Make some effort to actually read it instead of demanding that the great works of literature be dumbed down to your level.
Good literature? Says who? Some stuffy academics? Some theatre luvvies? What on earth are they thinking...
Go read it yourself, make up your own mind. If you can get to the end... ALL ON YOUR OWN... and enjoy it then, maybe he doesn't suck very badly.
Otherwise... There's mountains of understandable, readable books, watchable plays out there. Leave Shakespeare in the grave he deserves to be in.
Deleted
Seriously, his attempted standrard of "simplified spelling" is not that different than leet speak. He even had all official whitehouse communiques done in this method for a time. But someone pointed out his name would end up butchered and he dropped it.
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
I don't know about everyone else, but I really don't see most of these great works of literature as something to put on a pedelstal.
I mean there were developed as entertainment and phillosophical points of view, but they don't really have much to teach us other than the authors point of view and perhaps a perspective of the world they lived in.
Take Shakespear from example... I mean his works were specifically devolped to entertain an live audience of his era with comeday and tragedy and frankly the only reason we study him because he was most likely the only one to do it at his time.
Unless of course there were other play writers that just wrote heaping mounds of dog poo and English Parliment locked them up in the tower and burned their plays that we don't know about...
As far as works that people should read as something they should get value of... I'd recommend Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, Dante, Friedrich Nietzsche, or some other off the wall phillosopher rather than these people who wrote for entertainment value.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I mean am I wrong or does this seem like just another re-hash of the old tv/computers/comic books/gore movies and porn will rot your brain noise?
The day my comic books and porn start having things like "'lolz ur funny' she sed az a d00d sed a joke," then I'll agree. Last I checked, even Penthouse letters used proper grammar and spelling.
I'd rather have my kid learn from a properly written comic book than haX0r-speekish Shakespeare.
Slackware
Dot mobile appears to believe that if students know the details of the story, it is almost as good as knowing the story.
If I tell you hops, yeast, water, and malt, does this mean you will enjoy beer? No. There needs to be context, nuances.
Storytelling is not merely the recitation of facts, it is the art of gaining the interest of the audience, making them feel something.
I hope this is more of a farce done for publicity than a serious effort to rewrite the literature of the world.
I think the blame should be placed squarely on the parents. If they're not reading and talking about books, their kids won't have the same passion. Some kids get lucky to have the book bug bite them early and commit themselves to reading at a young age without any influence from their parents. There's more to life than video games, computers and iPods.
No one in my family was a reader. But reading was my escape from being a fat, ugly teenager and my parents didn't discourage me when I spent my allowance on books. As a slimmer, ugly adult, I still read the newspaper websites every day, two books per week, and a dozen magazines per month.
To some extent is is just an alarmist attack on progress. It's more efficient to write "How R U?" into a cell phone if the other person is familiar with the language. But previous generations have been right about culture loss from progress. How many people speak or read Latin today? 50 years ago there were thousands if not millions more who knew at least a little. Instead we knoew computer languages and "L337 Speak".
;-) When you're part of them, you can teach them the old ways of english, and dazzle them with complete sentences.
http://1337hax0r.com/ the URL there wouldn't have made sense 10 years ago, now it does to some people.
With every little bit lost, we gain in another area. Old people don't want change because we have to leave behind stuff that works already, and learn on top of it too. Such is life though, so embrace your leet speaking underlords when possible so you don't get left too far behind
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I watched the first half of CK last night and was going to finish it tonight. Now you've ruined it for me by giving away the ending. Damn you Belseth!
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
"...raise up..."
Raise up?
They're going to improve educational standards? Educational standards indeed.
The real threat to civilization is this phrase "the lowest common denominator". It's right up there with "I could care less".
Your god may be dead, but mine aren't!
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'nuff said.
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
"Misfortunes one can endure--they come from outside, they are accidents. But to suffer for one's own faults--ah!--there is the sting of life." by Oscar Wilde in Lady Windermere's Fan
Translated to bastardspeak:
Mis4tunes 1 can Ndure, they cum from outside, they R axEdents. But 2 suffr 4 1's own falts, ah!, theris the stingo'life.
Oscar is spinning in La Pére Lachaise.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
I am intrigued by your ideas, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. How much is subscription ona per-roll basis?
to make the schooling process easier we lower the bar
this article confirms that its gotten to the point that the bar is low enough to trip over
stupid blokes, bloody rubbish
But this text message this is a joke.
"raise up" educational standards?
ROTFL!
Shorthand like this is easier to write, not read. Since the kids in question are only reading the stuff - not writing books when they can barely read - what's the point?
Spoken like a true illiterate. It is a good thing they are not raising down educational standards! ;)
Sixty million high-school kids say that's all it's good for.
Yes, I pulled that number out of my ass. Now there's more room for literature.
Whats next - write it on Charmin and have it installed inside the stalls of every public school bathroom?
To pee or not to pee?
Ya, and guess what. This kind of crap has lead to a government that actively pushes ignorance while trashing science, publishes proven lies (like 'abortion causes cancer'), ignores warnings of major environmental problems etc. etc. A population increasingly ignorant and bent on making everyone as ignorant as them as they try to give control of the government to religious idiots.
Sounds to me like it is actively happening, wake up and notice for crissake!
Stupidity: it's a renewable resource!
It would never get past the censors. It glorifies premarital sex, gang violence, and teen suicide.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
The Skinhead Hamlet - Shakespeare's play translated into modern English
Circumcision is child abuse.
f001 m3 0nc3, 5h4m3 0n - 5h4m3 0n y0u. f001 m3 - y0u c4n'+ g3+ f00l3d 46ain.
- D4 pr3zz
Romeo's enemy:"Romeo Montesco, get ur sword! ph34r m3!"
:'("
Juliet: "Romeo, I luv u, Pwn m3!"
Romeo: "OMG Juliet died?
*brrrrrr* I shudder of just thinking about it!
Whats next - write it on Charmin and have it installed inside the stalls of every public school bathroom?
"Billy? Why did you leave a whole roll of toilet paper unravelled on the bathroom floor?!"
"Sorry teach, I was just getting to the good part of the book!"
Just flunk the microcephalic cretins.
];)
Regards;
There's more to accessibility than the exact language. Languages, after all, change over time. In addition, centuries-old literature may contain centuries-old cultural references that may today be rather obscure. It may be a bit much to expect today's readers to be fully aware of who the movers and shakers were in Florentine society circa the time of Dante Aligheri, say, and when that author refers to personages who may have been prominent in -his- era we today may be lost without ample footnotes and other annotations. When Shakespeare uses idioms that have since fallen out of use, the same applies -- and one can reasonably argue that Middle English wordplay is not exactly the main point of studying Shakespeare compared to the broader themes.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
This title of course will turn people off who'd rather avoid things like judgement, guilt, responsibility, morality, and heck, reality itself. This points up why people avoid the classics: they were more morality tale than anything of today. Even the "morality tale lite" nature of the original Trek gave way to the pop politics posturing and beat you senseless with the not too subtle message style of the ST:tNG. People don't want to learn anything that might cause introspection about themselves, how they think, what they do. They might face confusion from comparison between those things and other ideas and ideals.
Being challenged intellectually is a deeply moving thing at times and people avoid it. It makes their heads hurt.
I keep a copy of The Inferno on my desk. It reminds me to try hard not to be too quick to jump and to persevere at being laid back and calm. Pride and a lot of other things go before great falls. I've learned other things from other old works too but I don't think that the trend will change.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
Still, I don't blame you for getting this wrong, it seems to be a fact of modern life that you can produce crap art as long as it has a "deeper meaning", forgetting that the best art is a feast for the mind and the senses.
but I read it as "Madwifi sets fire to house"
(and no, wireless on was not already on my mind).
This is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of. When I have kids, I'm going to make sure their chat clients won't send a message unless every word is properly spelled.
This reminds me of something similar, but in reverse:
It is in the realm of possibility to coerce a member of the equine species to a source of oxidized hydrogen, however, one cannot force him to imbibe.
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Today's l337 IM-speak will be tomorrow's Strunk & White. Strunk and White themselves upended a great deal of literary style when they streamlined the way the English language is used in formal writing, and I'm sure that Dickens, Shakespeare, and Chaucer rolled in their collective graves when The Elements of Style was first published. This is just another iteration of the same recursive pattern.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
This same argument has been put forth by countless authors. In the 1930s and 1920s, during the era where film and photography were born and growing as what we now call "art", many doomsayers claimed that traditional art was doomed forever. When we began to easily copy traditional art, doomsayers said that this would be the end of the "aura" of art, and that giving the masses access to such things would dumb them down and ultimately destroy "high" culture.
So has this "end" come? No, not really. Art still carries on. I expect literature to do the same in the face of being exposed to the "masses". Look at architecture, one of the oldest forms of art. I mean, we have prefab trailers, but that doesnt destroy architecture as a whole.
Furthermore, the people that dont care to read it anyway, wont. The people that do want to read it, will. Maybe some that get these dumbed down versions will be inspired to seek out the originals. The point of art really isnt to make those who understand and are exposed to it feel like elites, its for an artist to express himself.
Unrelated though, I wonder what the hell they think their market will be. If you are writing a paper, it would be a stupid way to get information. If you are assigned to read it, it would be a stupid way to get your information. If you are stuck in a test, its a stupid way to cheat. If you want to read it, then you wouldnt read it on a cell phone ... go google a summary or something.
I like to take cheesy pop metal lyrics and try to read them aloud as if it were serious classical poetry. My personal favorite is "Pyromania" by Def Leppard.
Perhaps I should put out a CD.
Not to mention that Billy S. was writing for a popular audience, not for the annuals of liturature and lit professors.
He had theatres to fill and Groundlings to amuse. The PhD thesies on his writing came much, much later.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
G0dx0r cr8t3d t3h h34v3nz & t3h 3rt
Stop! Dremel time!
... to the three or four English majors that may read this.
"Great Literature" is [homer] BOOOOORING! [/homer]
This is not a sign that people can't read. Arguably, with the profusion of websites, mobile phones, instant messaging, and whatever other elsewise crap, people read now more than they have since dime novels were popular. That it's the modern equivalent of dime novels shouldn't come as a great shock. The best-selling books are romance novels that feature kinky sex, and the most-watched TV waffles between doctor shows that feature kinky sex, cop shows that feature kinky sex, and reality shows that tease you with the promise of kinky sex but actually only have people eating cow eyeballs.
Bitching that people can't make head or tail of Shakespeare, think the Grapes of Wrath is a shiraz that gives you the runs, and haven't got the patience to read Tolstoynian phone-book novels, does NOT make you any less of a nasty stuck-up prick who thinks he's better than everyone else.
You stop telling me to read Shakespeare, and I'll stop telling you to read Stephen King, and we'll both be happy.
Shakespeare? show me the congress library.
when William Goldman mutilated Morgenstern's classic.
"Good bits" version indeed.
I'm a Shakespeare fan myself, to each their own.
I enjoy figuring out what's going on in the "original" text, but I did try reading a page or two of these: http://www.sparknotes.com/nfs/ in B&N one day and I was very impressed. Instead of footnotes in tiny font in awkward places, these have Shakespeare on the left page and mondern english explanations (not bastardised translations) on the right page, very easy to flop back and forth to understand what's going on, or ignore it, or review without getting lost again.
Reading Shakespeare doesn't define 'literacy', but if you're interested in learning why he's been favored so long by so many, these seem a great place to start.
-mix
With the raised expectation that more and more kids must finish high school, and that more and more kids must go to college you really end up distressing the IQ bell curve. Sooner or later something has to give.
Not everyone is capable of college work and not everyone is capable of even high school work.
The real problem is the establishment which keeps pushing on children works which are almost written in a foreign language, because they have this weird idea that literature is somehow like some sort of refined spirit which needs to be left to mature in oaken casks for a couple of centuries before it's any good.
Shakespeare was a good writer, but he was pretty derivative, he was hardly one of the greatest writers of the last millennium or anything special like that. Give the kids some modern literature, then they can spend their time understanding it as literature, instead of struggling to overcome the barriers caused by the differences between the modern world and the old world, and their respective languages, barriers which are neither necessary nor helpful.
The teacher had them memorize passages this week, actually, and having the "What does that mean again?" version helped my son to keep track of lines.
So: one point for "translations" helping kids understand the text. Not that they're a replacement. I'm not really sure that problem's out there, though. May be just us turning into our "kids nowadays" parents. (The problem with kids nowadays, I'm pretty sure, isn't that they read and enjoy watered-down Shakespeare.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
b) The English language is wonderful in its complexity and Shakespeare's age is arguably when it was at its most florid. A "dumbing down" of the literature of this period, regardless of the author, can only ever lose some of that. If part of what makes it a classic is the use of the language, then how can reducing that language to leetspeek possibly retain those qualities that make it a classic? A classic like Hamlet is much more than simply an interesting plot and the wonderful interplay between the characters, the puns, the double entendres and social references will all be lost in the translation. So will the incredible use of the language. It is as if someone was taking a beautiful, hand-carved chair from the height of the Rennaissance, converting it to a modern IKEA chair, and passing it off as the classic with a new twist to help new folks understand the genius of the chair. I'm sure they'll get the gist in ten seconds flat, but that gist isn't the most important part of that chair, is it?
I'll tolerate anything except intolerance.
(2 * B) || !(2 * B)
Or for LISPers: (or (* 2 B) (not (* 2 B)))
I am Spartacus
"A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read." --Mark Twain
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Funny how Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" was considered in his day (along with many of his plays) to be aimed at the lowest common denominator. His fight scenes and love scenes, which were quite racy for the time, were considered to targeted at the "masses." Hell, if he were still around, he'd probably be leading the charge to do this kind of thing.
/*this is always true, please remove.*/
/*Change to use error trapping.*/ /*are we dead, or not?*/ /*Please use proper indentation for easier reading.
if ( $question = ( 2B || !(2B) ) ) {
if ($mind[SlingsArrows] > $mind[TakeArms]) {
die()
sleep()
}
}
please see Carl of you need pointers on developing clean code. */
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They said it totally wrong; everyone knows it is "if(2b || !2B)"
On a serious note... this is hilarious.
The poetic flow and imagry of the text is what makes these worth reading. The childish scribbles being produced here ruin everything that makes the story have value.
It's like making renaissance paintings more accissible by rendering them in ascii art.
To those who reply that Latin is useless, a little working knowledge of Latin comes in handy more often than you'd think. If you'd like to have an intelligent conversation with your doctor, for instance, it pays to know a bit of Latin. When I started working in medical research I had to learn bits and pieces. It would be handy to know more.
Capitals and punctuation are used because they make things easier to read and they often contribute to meaning as well. There are examples where changing the punctuation changes the meaning of a paragraph entirely. What happens when you omit the punctuation? You lose something.
Frequently when I'm chatting to people they remark how I use full sentences, proper spelling and capitals and punctuation. Yes, I do, because I think what I have to say is important enough that I'd like the message to arrive intact.
2 Ub3r1337 c14n5,
5kr1mm3d de_v3r0n4, 4
pvp s3rv3r,
n 4 h34t3d m47ch,
1499y 10v3r5 1057 7h31r 1iv35,
Fuxx1n9 t3h \/\/h00013 g4m3.
7w3r3 g3y 10v3r5, cuz
s1mul74n30u5 h34d5h075
l1k3 h4pp3n n3v3r5.
n d00d, if ur c0nfuxx0r3d, d0n7 f331 g3y,
g0 b4ck 4nd 5cr011 ^^^ 50m3, RTFA!
Speaking of Animal Farm, wasn't one of the major points in the book how the animals' illiteracy allowed the pigs in charge(literally) to change the laws and history without anyone noticing? "Four legs good, two legs bad" -> "Four legs good, two legs better"
In fact, I could have sworn keeping literacy alive was an important part of Farenheit 451 (not the one with Michael Moore). And the changing language in 1984 was a way for the Party to re-write the past and stop thoughts that were 'ungood'. Makes you wonder if their authors thought literacy was important...
I am not against making literature more accessible, but I am worried about what will be lost (intentionally or not), when people no longer read the originals.
How would the following be written in txt, and could it keep its original meaning?
"Down in the street the wind flapped the torn poster to and fro, and the word INGSOC fitfully appeared and vanished. Ingsoc. The sacred principles of Ingsoc. Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past. He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side? And what way of knowing that the dominion of the Party would not endure for ever? Like an answer, the three slogans on the white face of the Ministry of Truth came back to him:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH "
That's the prologue to the Canturbury Tales, when written, in entirely correct English.
Languages evolve.
DGWant to learn about race cars? Read my Book
They say that they're confident that their product will "raise up educational standards." That's a pretty bold statement for a company with writers who use phrases like "raise up" for their press releases.
In my highschool english classes, I learned Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and a bunch of other Shakespeare plays. I remember doing readings of it, analyzing lines etc, and I did quite well in those classes. However, I failed to see how studying such material would help me improve my education, let alone my english. Maybe if I was in some literature class or drama class, then I would see the merit of such a class, but just the premise of it being a classic work doesn't mean it helps education in any way.
You know, I put 'The bookshop' sketch here. But I kept getting 'lameness' error. too many junk characters.
so instead, I'll post a link:
David Coperfield with one 'P'
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Double plus good Idea!
Citezen 08x90345
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Woe un2mnkind
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
About 6 years ago, when I read Shakespeare in junior high, our books had the original play on the left page and a "translated" to modern English version on the right page. It helped out A LOT. Face it, archaic English is not in most of our lingual repitoires. It was great reading the original (trying to read, in some parts) and trying to understand it before reading the translated version. I don't think there's a problem with something like the version I read. Now... if they're translating it to 1337, that's a bit different.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
This will only result in the further degradation of humankind...
And besides, IMspeak is just the poor-man's 1337. Add some simple binary logic, and it's much briefer.
English: To be or not to be.
IM: "2B? NT2B?=???" (from article)
1337: 2B||!2Bp
And continuing (because I'm bored): 1z t3h 2u3st10n. wh3thr z n0blr n th3 m1nd 2 5uph3r t3h sl1ngz n arr0z oph 0u7r4g10s 4tun || 2 t4k rmz vs 4 c oph tr0bl3z & by 0pp0z1ng end tehm?
That is correct, thank you. That's ironic, because just yesterday I remembered that joke, and couldn't remember where I'd heard it before.
Eats, Shoots, & Leaves is a book about punctuation. Sounds boring? It isn't.
A panda walks into a bar. He has a gun, and he kills the bartender with it. Then he walks out of the bar right away. The man sitting at a bar is stunned until a woman comes up to him with a laptop with Wikipedia open to "panda". The definition is an animal that eats shoots and leaves.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Sorry, I messed up the joke [I was recreating it since the setup isn't as important as the punch line, but I missed a key part].
A panda walks into a bar.He grabs a few peanuts from the bar and pops them in his mouth, then he pulls out a gun, and kills the bartender with it before he walks out of the bar. A man sitting at the bar is stunned until a woman comes up to him with a laptop with Wikipedia open to "panda". The definition of a panda is an animal that eats shoots and leaves.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
don't download this movie...It's a gay porn http://imdb.com/find?q=In%20the%20Flesh;s=all , long life to imdb before looking more about a movie!
Excellent post! There is much more to poetry than the words on the surface.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
Keanu Reeves has been in a Shakespeare movie, "Much Ado About Nothing." The rest of the cast is first class, however.
IMDB Much Ado About Nothing link
I want to quote it to future generations.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
Raise up. Heh.
Thats not the 'ending' of the book... I'm reading it right now.
I am unique, just like you, and you, and you...
arghhhh....
Pleae, someone shoot me...
It's like this.
It's a crap idea, and no-one wants it.
However, it's a crap idea that cannot fail. The works are out of copyright and so all they need is a file of literary quotations and a perl script and they're collecting 20 pence a message.
Of course, the you have to shout about it because no-one really wants it. Hence bunging a few quid to a professor, amd attempting to make it a news story.
In one sense this is doomed to fail - but it'll probably make a pile of money for the few involved, for trivial effort and risk.
So what if people don't learn the old classics. Quite frankly they aren't of great relevance to modern life and for most kids being forced to read them encourages a dislike of literature and reading.
High Literature is a type of art that appeals to a certain small class of people. This is great and fine for them but there is little reason to inflict it on those who don't enjoy it.
Ultimately the reasons given for reading literature simply don't apply to forcing great literature on unappreciative audiences. The reason we read literature rather than just essays is that it should entertain as it teaches. If the audience doesn't appreciate it then it fails at this task.
Reading literature under duress just generates resentment and dislike it doesn't encourage a lifelong love of literature. We would be better off choosing books that had action and other aspects the students liked but combined this with sophisticated issues and interesting questions. There is no objective reason Ender's game isn't just as appropriate to teach in class as Shakespeare and the students will like it way more.
Making students remember quotes is just dumb and if literature is taught well the students will *want* to read the books and notes or little helpers won't be relevant. If the book needs outside help or encourages the use of cliff notes then something is wrong with the course or the book isn't appropriate for the audience.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
It seems to me that the most beneficial outcome of having youth read the classics is that they READ THE CLASSICS!
So...what you're saying is, soon everyone is going to be talking like the Counterstrike kiddies on IRC?
*contemplates*
That's... It's just... No... NO.
It's... I... I am no longer in reality.
Humanity has failed.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Hamlet: My dad's died and my mum's married my uncle. Bummer.
Ghost: Actually, your uncle murdered me. Get revenge.
Hamlet: Grr! I'll pretend to be mad. Ophelia! I hate you! Oh, and I just killed your dad.
Ophelia: Wah! Wibble! [glub]
Laertes: You bastard! I challenge you to a duel!
Claudius: Psst! Laertes, use this poisoned sword.
Hamlet: Ow!
Laertes: Damn, we both dropped our swords. Which is mine - ow!
Claudius: Crap! Here, Hamlet, have this poisoned wine.
Gertrude: Actually, I'm a bit thirsty too. GAK!
Laertes: GAK!
Claudius: GAK!
Hamlet: GAK!
Fortinbras: Ha! I rule.
You must think in Russian.
I'd rather see these kids who refuse to even attempt English form a permanent underclass than see the English language degraded to their level.
> 'We are confident that our version of 'text' books will genuinely help thousands of students remember key plots and quotes, and raise up educational standards rather than decrease levels of literacy,'"
As opposed to raising them down? Irony strikes again...
Things like this make me wonder whether the first Turing award winner will owe more to the successes of computer science or the failures of education. Writing a leet-speaking chatterbot shouldn't be too hard.
im s0ry d4ve i c4nt let u do dat.
The easiest way to remember books... http://www.thebookspoiler.com/
The friendliest digital photography forums on the net!
In case anyone despairs, the first response in the original thread to what the parent quotes is this:
I guess you love raping grammar.
Succinct, and hopeful.
I read Slashdot for the articles.
From dumbed down literature
MOD PARENT UP +1 LOL
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
You can't force people to like great literature by forcing them to read it. Some people just can't understand it. Unfortunately, people have real limitations on their abilities, and some people simply lack the language skills to grasp difficult literature. Ok but maybe you still want them to get a basic understanding of it, because ti has influence on culture. I personally think everyone should read the bible for that very reason, or at least an abriged version. Not because I believe it's a divine work, I don't, but because Christian mythology has an extremely heavy influence on our culture, and understanding it is very useful.
So I don't think we should replace the reading of classics with dumbed down versions, and whoever came up with this l33t speak idea needs to be beaten with a rake, but augmenting them with simpler versions for some classes would be appropriate. If you have a class full of kids you are prepping for unviersity, they get the real deal. If you have a remedial class where you are working on more basic reading and writing skills, you have them read a simplified version since it's more accessable to them, and exposes them to the stories in some capacity.
Few things develop in a vaccuum, they are almost always influenced by past works. As a good geek related example take Lord of the Rings. It is virtually the foundation of the popular modern fantasy world. Combine that with AD&D, which can be thought of the systemization of that universe in some respects and you have the foundation for a large number of fantasy video games.
I read the trilogy for that reason alone. I find Tolken mind-numbingly boring, I hate his writing style. It's all about the land, the events, and so on. It's probably because of that and it's extreme development that it makes for such a wonderful foundation but I hate it. The characters seem flat, they seem basically like little peices to make the story move along, nothing more. I like books about the man, the people invloved. Ender's Game would be a good example, Speaker for the Dead would be a better one, and a Game of Thrones would be one of the best.
So perhaps that's the part of the hope, is that even if they don't like it, students will gain a better understanding of the things that helped shape our culture. They are generally up on the pop culture, the things shaping it now, but it's useful to understand where it came from too.
Also they might hope some people will get ensnared and start liking it. Sometimes you read a book and like it later. I first read Speaker for the Dead in grade 10. We'd just read Ender's Game which I'd loved. Well, I hated Speaker, it was just dull in my opinion. However, years after I graduated I was in an airport with a delayed flight and a lot of time to kill. I'd read IEEE Specrtum about as many times as you can before getting bored (so like once maybe) and didn't really have much in the way of other reading material with me. So I went ot the bookstore to find something. For some reason, I was inclined to give Speaker another try. I LOVED it, it's much better than Ender's Game if you asked me and one of my all-time favourite books.
So, perhaps having me read it wasn't worthless after all. On the other hand, I still think Tale of Two Cities is a peice of shit, and we all had to read that in highschool.
Yet another article along the lines of "Our youth is degenerating!"
...according to Plato.
"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
This reminds me of Asimov's short story 'The Monkey's Finger.' It's about the mixed metaphor 'take arms against a sea of troubles,' & basically says that even though a 'host of troubles' is more correct English, 'sea' conveys the idea of vastness & unstoppable power so much better than 'host.'
Good story, get hold of copy. Then again, I've kind of spoilt half the story now. Still worth it.
Yar.