1) A FINAL-ESQUE (no poem is ever truly finally finished) REVISION of your first poem. The new draft should look really good and be stapled on top of the ever-growing stack of drafts.
2) Read “Lorelei” (p. 22 of The Colossus) very carefully and closely. We want to be able to give it a good take-down on Monday and move on.
3) Enjoy your New Yorker, and give us a blog (This is required blog #3 of this week… get caught up on blog #1 and #2 if you missed a day).
“Content, not just cartoons,” says Mrs. Coon…..
4) If you need to go back and add citations to web posts, please take care of that, too…
October 22, 2009 at 1:26 PM
Sry I hit submit by accident.
After reading all the comments about the article on concussions in football, I felt obligated to read it. “Offensive play” analyzed how concussions caused by hits to the head lead to long term debilitating effects. As helmets improve and the rules regarding mouth guards are becoming stricter, it is clear that our society is trying to prevent these concussions. Malcolm Gladwell specifically analyzes football and compares it to dogfighting. I completely disagree with this claim. Like Gus, I feel that football is a sport played based on passion. Young athletes don’t play football to entertain others (even though it does). They play because they love the game. I understand that concussions are a significant issue, but to compare football to dogfighting is absurd. We do need to address this issue, and I believe that our society is on the right track. We are improving ways to prevent brain damage in contact sports.
October 22, 2009 at 1:25 PM
After reading all the comments about the article on concussions in football, I felt obligated to read it. “Offensive play” analyzed how concussions caused by hits to the head lead to long term debilitating effects. As helmets improve and the rules regarding mouth guards are becoming stricter, it is clear that our society is trying to prevent these concussions. Malcolm Gladwell specifically analyzes football and compares it to dogfighting. I completely disagree with this claim. Like Gus, I feel that football is a sport played based on passion. Young athletes don’t play football to entertain others (even though it does). They play because they love the game. I understand that concussions are a significant issue, but to compare football to dogfighting is absurd. We do need to address this issue, and I believe that our society is on the right track. We are improving ways to prevent brain damage in contact sports.
football players endure endless amounts of hits
October 21, 2009 at 7:46 PM
I too read “The defiant ones” and I too am grateful to have missed out on these “modern” childrens’ books. I thought it was interesting that many of the childrens’ stories Zalewski mentions, for example “Sourpuss and Sweetiepie” and “Harriet, You’ll Drive Me Wild” seem to be geared towards adults in an almost creepy way – as if to assure them that their childrens’ behavior, or even their own behavior, is normal and can be corrected. Conversely though, it is possible that that element was present in the books I read as a child, but I remember mine as altogether more lighthearted and entertaining. I also thought it was interesting that he describes the illustrations of each book he mentions, because the illustrations are primarily what I remember.
October 19, 2009 at 2:50 AM
In the Oct. 12th publication of the New Yorker, the first article that caught my attention, after flipping through a series of advertisements was “The Talk of the Town”. This article is about the new strain of flu, H1N1, afflicting the nation presently. The most interesting part of the article that rang true was “That uncertainty makes it hard to devise a public-health message that strikes a balance between comfort and terror.” This is very true, and can even be connected to they ways in which different people have handled it. Some schools closing, and others maintaining awareness.
October 19, 2009 at 1:06 AM
Yea Laura, I guess the bear does look a bit scary, but it also looks like a comfortable cushion.
I read The Talk of Town, discussing the surprise of his Nobel Prize and his path to presidency, which he achieved extremely fast. I learned that it took him only five years to move from a member of the Illinois congress to the President of the US. However, he complains that Obama has not accomplished anything in 8 months. I agree with the writer that the prize did come as a surprise, but he justifies the prize as a “means to give momentum to a set of causes,” an incentive to get Obama started.
October 19, 2009 at 12:46 AM
I read the article “Offensive Play” and found it very powerful. I was given an entirely new outlook on football and other contact sports. I was shocked by how so many head injuries led to brain damage in football, and how these guys playing out in the field sacrifice their lives without even being aware of it. They all take countless hits throughout their career, but it does not catch up with them until it is already too late. It was very interesting to see the comparison between dog fights and football. Both the dogs and the football players are simply pawns in a game, who are under the control of their owners/coaches. Besides being physically tough, they are so mentally strong that they will fight through pain just to win. I agree with Gus and Billy that the only thing wrong with this comparison is that the dogs are forced into this kind of game, while the football players eagerly sign up for it. However, in the end both dogs and humans become so caught up that they are in the same fighting place. Perhaps such state of mind is unavoidable though. Anger is a great part of human nature, and proof of violence and hostility can be seen throughout human history. We are animals, and animals fight. Although we may not kill each other as often as we have in the past, we will still continue to fight each other.
October 18, 2009 at 11:20 PM
Rewind to six weeks ago. My uberpopular twelve year old brother and I were out Jay Sean and Lil Wayne as we drove to Dover Sherborn Middle School for his first ever football practice. This was an afternoon long anticipated by my athletic brother, the king of DSMS and an extremely talented basketball and lacrosse player. “Hey Dev, ya forget somthing buddy?” I called to him as he overzealously hops out of the car without his jersey. “Thanks Sis, seeya.” And off he went.
Two weeks later, Devon quit the football team. With a coach who screamed to the point of voice cracks at innocent 12 year old boys for merely dropping a pass or missing a block, Devon was tired of feeling shamed for his mistakes. Most of Dev’s friends have followed suit, with parents now holding meetings to remove the coach. Though I was never an enthusiastic supporter of Devon’s promising football career, I was more relieved than ever upon reading Malcom Gladwell’s “Offensive Play”.
I was actually floored by this article. To have that side of football exposed was remarkable. I was so struck by the psychological side of the sport, the extremity of the “never back down” mentality. Despite my horror at the physical impacts and damages, I was equally as shocked by the devotion to the sport and team. That competitive spirit, that determination, is admirable despite the detrimental side effects. At the same time however, I found myself wondering if that radical devotion to the game is about something more than just football. I wouldn’t be surprised if that devotion is about something more intrinsically personal than just the sport, but I’m note sure what. I was equally as fascinated by the correlation between dog fighting and football. The parallels detailed in the argument were so clever and well thought out, making this an article easy to be glued to.
October 18, 2009 at 10:40 PM
Oh and on a side note on page II, it says that the Hanson Brothers are still making music after their hit “MMMBop” from twelve years ago. I miss them and that song.
October 18, 2009 at 10:37 PM
I agree with the comment Gus made about the article “Offensive Play.” Football and dog fighting are different for the fact that dogs do not self enroll themselves in the sport. Owner put their dogs in these fights, not the dogs. Football is a sport where the person participating wants to play, as Gus said they play for the love of the sport. Yes, severe injuries can take place in both sports, but in football the players ares putting themselves at risk while in dog fighting the owner is putting their dog at risk.
October 18, 2009 at 10:10 PM
After reading the past few comments, I read “Offensive Play”. It was interesting, but disturbing to see what football players go through. The article that really caught my interest was “Naughty Boys” (98) by David Denby. It was a review of the movie “Where The Wild Things Are”. I thought maybe Denby could help make some sense of the movie I just came back from seeing, but he was almost as confused as I was. Having never read the book, I have to wonder how well the movie relied the author’s ideas. Denby was correct to say that “the link” between “Max’s anger [and] the creatures’ wounds” is “fuzzy”. The main character, Max, is a young boy who feels distant from his family, but the sadness of the creatures comes from an unknown source. Audiences feel a small connection between Max and Carol at the beginning of the story, but as the tale continues and Max grows more mature the only connection they have is one by purely staged by the director. That is, Carol destroys his model city (his haven) in the same manner Max destroys his sister’s room, leaving, just as Max does, a broken heart made of sticks on the ground.
October 18, 2009 at 8:12 PM
I also read the article that Tarun read that is titled “Offensive Play.” Although I agree with Malcolm Gladwell that football is a violent sport, I believe his argument is very wrong. Football is a sport one plays because they love it. Although football is played, at the college and pro level, in front of large audiences, it is played for fun by millions of kids and adults throughout the country. Dog fighting is a an event for pure audience attention, gambling purposes, and entertainment. The dogs involved obviously do not participate for the “fun” aspect.
October 18, 2009 at 3:14 PM
I flipped through the whole New Yorker, front to back, and then read the comments here that had already been posted. I went back to the New Yorker and read the same article that Laura read. These books don’t sound very good. The children in them sound awful; ordering their parents around, always having the upper hand, etc. It seems weird to me that the adults in the stories are basically all portrayed as “harried and befuddled, scurrying to fulfill a child’s wishes…” (pg. 83). I’m glad I had the books we had when we were younger, they were much better than these books sound!
October 18, 2009 at 2:07 PM
As I flipped through the New Yorker, I came across an article titled “Offensive Play.” The article discussed the issues football players face after retirement. The main problem concerning former football players is the damage their heads sustain. The author, Malcolm Gladwell, then goes on to compare football to dogfighting. In his view, both football and dogfighting are violent activities that are done for the pleasure of a large audience, and in the end harm the people involved.
October 18, 2009 at 1:56 PM
Beginning with the front of the New Yorker, I found the cover art, “In the World of Books,” by Eric Drooker to be a great metaphor of how I sometimes feel about schoolwork. It is as if the amount of work I have to get done is so large and overwhelming, that I am almost insignificant to the books and papers themselves.
However, the part of the magazine that captured my attention this week was the poem on page sixty-six titled “A History of Origami” by Bob Hicok. The part that struck me the most was the layout of the poem. It is on two pages, but the lines are broken up into tiny sections of anywhere from one line to multiple lines. When looking at the poem in its entirety, it looks like no other poem that I have ever seen. Just like origami, it is unique to its creator. As for the content of the poem, I cannot say that I particularly cared for it, but its structure was most intriguing.
October 18, 2009 at 1:54 PM
Haha, the bear is chilling. Got its own sort of tanning lamp, set for life. Since Laura brought it up, I decided to look at the article pertaining to the bear and it was quite interesting. The article is entitled “The Imperfectionist” on page 34. It is about this artist who makes art through “collisions”. His art does not really follow the normal path, which is what I thought was most interesting, because it seemed to follow the right brain topic we were on for a while. When you look at the image on page 35 and the bear on page 36, you would think it was a little silly (or creepy); perhaps these images are real representations of the thought process that he thinks about. Which brings me to the question: If someone asked you to draw what you are thinking about at that precise moment, what would you draw? Right now, I would draw a bowl of pasta with alfredo sauce because it is about the hour.
October 18, 2009 at 11:50 AM
I started reading this New Yorker as I usually do: by browsing for funny cartoons first, reading pieces of “Talk of the Town” and “Shouts and Murmurs” second, and diving into a longer article last. This time, I actually read the short story, which I hadn’t done before. The story, titled “Complicity,” focuses on one particular relationship the author has with a woman. The author, Julian Barnes, describes this relationship less as a series of events and more as a scattered map of moments, memories, and interactions, some of which are initially unrelated to the relationship but then connected and repeated in a way that keeps the reader engaged an on their toes.
P.S. It’s a very creepy looking bear.
October 17, 2009 at 4:42 PM
Browsing the New Yorker as I usually do, back to front, I came across the article “The Defiant Ones” by Daniel Zalewski. The piece focuses on the changes in content of children’s books. After reading about various current bedtime stories and the politically correct way in which parents now raise their children, I can’t help thinking about how grateful I am to have graduated from diapers over a decade ago. These current stories sound absolutely dreadful.
Also, does the bear on page 36 look really scary to anyone else, or is that just me?