The tool combines several assessment techniques, said Whitmer. These include the Flesch-Kincaid readability index, which measures the complexity of the students’ language by counting the number of syllables and number of words per sentence. The type-token ratio, which looks at how many times words are repeated, is also used. In addition, a “critical-thinking coefficient,” which “classifies words according to the degree of critical thinking represented” is used, as is a standard word count, said Whitmer. A weighted formula is then used to determine a grade, which faculty must review and approve before submitting.
Here’s a trait I have which could be common or rare, I have no idea: one of my strongest moral emotions is “I shouldn’t do that, because my childhood self would not have wanted to become an adult who did things like that.”
When written out like that, it sounds overly constraining. Why should kid-Rob be the final arbiter of morality? He’s a kid – what does he know?
What it feels like is a strong desire to avoid “value drift,” a feeling that value drift is an especially sad or tragic thing, a horrible waste of potential. “Go out into the world and learn and grow, but don’t let the world make you forget why you’re doing all this in the first place.”
It goes without saying that I don’t have a perfect recollection of what kid-Rob was really like, and so when I think this way, I’m consulting an adult ideal I label “kid-Rob’s values.” (A moral discussion with my actual childhood self would go quite differently, I’d expect.) The practical upshot is, mostly, an especially emphatic insistence on the “children’s book morality” I described in this post:
At the same time, the complex of feelings lingers. The ones from the old morality tales of childhood have this vast potency for me. The stuff of kindergarten morality. Be kind and patient. Don’t be a bully. Don’t be quick to judge. The good kids in the stories were quiet and hesitant, the bullies brash and supercilious.
These are not exactly uncommon values, but they have a special force for me, because when I think about violating them, a special set of Red Alert klaxons start blaring in my mind: “WARNING!! POSSIBLE VALUE DRIFT DETECTED!!” I don’t claim that this is the right way to be, necessarily, but it’s the way I am.
The Three-Body Problem was enjoyable, but it had this strange way of adding unnecessarily implausibility to an already (necessarily, and enjoyably) far-out plot.
For example, at one point there’s a massive government project to produce a very advanced machine, and in the scene where it’s finally completed and is being demonstrated,
(1) the scientist in charge of the project excitedly explains its capabilities to the head of state, who appears to have never understood them even on the most basic level, despite assenting to the project and its immense (and – trying to avoid spoilers – they are immense) costs
(2) the head of state, comprehending at last what the machine actually does, is impressed and says he retracts his earlier skepticism about the project (which could apparently have been dissolved at any earlier point by simply describing it to him)
The true purpose of the scene is, transparently, to explain the machine to the reader. But that could have been done in so many ways that wouldn’t have added extra implausibility. Why this way?
There’s also a thing that keeps happening where a character will propose a complicated or difficult plan (such as that project), and Liu will fast-forward the plot via a few lines like “the plan worked without a hitch, and (a few days/months/years) later it had been completed.” It’s fine to skip over stuff like this if that isn’t the kind of story you want to tell, but this makes it sound like the characters can automatically do anything they can conceive of, without ever encountering unexpected difficulties. (A lot of authors would insert a chapter/section break and then begin, in medias res, with characters surveying or discussing the plan’s results. Same literal events, but less of a implication that everything is easy.)
On an entirely different note: Wang Miao and Da Shi are very shippable.
So I was about to ask if anyone else remembered the 2005-era comedy website “Videogame Recaps,” not out of nostalgia (I disliked it at the time) but because it’s interesting as a relic of its time (so many gay jokes), and then I looked it up and … it’s still updating
Last update 10/19/17
I click on the latest one and immediately it’s comparing some videogame tower to a penis. God, I remember that was like 50% of their humor back in the day, comparing every cylindrical object in every video game to a penis
They’ve been there all this time, comparing things in video games to penises, while I went about my whole young adulthood
My Henry Darger obsession has died down in the last few years – there’s only so much out there about him, and not all of it is any good – but I just randomly thought to look up the American Folk Art Museum to see if they’re doing any new Darger stuff, and found this, from April of this year:
An HCRR Foundations grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities will be used for the formative stage of efforts to preserve, digitize, and ensure wider access to the Henry Darger Papers, which will lend a greater understanding to a complex and enigmatic artist whose writings and art display ingenious creativity at the heart of interdisciplinary study in the humanities.
The American Folk Art Museum is the home to the single largest public repository of artworks and writings by Henry Darger (1892–1973), one of the most significant self-taught artists of the twentieth century. Darger’s large-scale, double-sided watercolor paintings are critically acclaimed and held in many prestigious collections around the world. Lesser known is the artist’s extensive writing activity, highly connected with his visual practice.
All of Darger’s manuscripts are in the collection of the American Folk Art Museum, including his autobiography and several epic novels, the most famous being The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, which exceeds 15,000 pages. The manuscripts and other papers in the collection have never been published. Their fragile condition makes their access difficult, as it necessitates minimal handling.
With this grant, the American Folk Art Museum plans to complete a conservation survey; convene an advisory board with Darger scholars and museum colleagues to strategically determine which materials will be digitized; identify the best web platform possible to communicate the scope of his oeuvre; solicit advice from copyright and technical specialists to determine how to digitize the fragile materials; and consult with digital humanities experts. The result of the planning process will be a white paper report that will 1) guide decision making for preserving and creating access to the Darger Papers, 2) describe technical requirements for future digitization, and 3) make recommendations for future conservation. (my emphasis)
Love Actually is a film I have never seen in its entirety yet have seen literally countless times in parts cause my mom is obsessed with it. I cannot tell most of the actors apart so that plus the ten plots makes it one of the most enigmatic films in my memory and impossible for me to comprehend
You know, back when I was in college, I never did understand what motivated so many people to major in chemistry.
I’m not knocking chemistry as a field, there, I’m sure it’s a fascinating world unto itself once you get into it. But how does one “get into it,” starting out as an 18- or 19-year-old choosing a major, with at most a freshman-level class under their belt? Physics appeals to those who want to understand reality on the deepest level and those who just want to build the coolest possible shit. Biology is life. What’s the romance of chemistry? Explosions? Poisons? Pharmaceutical drug discovery??
