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Death by misadventure
Aug. 31st, 2009 09:29 pmNot much to talk about, really -- mom's birthday yesterday, sister's first day of school today, discovering Animal Farm slash, etc. So here's some articles and more memes that you might be interested in.
The Future of Reading: "Reading Workshop" Approach Lets Students Pick the Books
I wish I had this sort of thing in middle school; I was already reading quite a bit on my own then, but this would've helped me enjoy it more, and I would've had a teacher to guide me toward better books, which somewhat solves the problem of kids reading only trashy, unchallenging literature. But I still see the need to have more approaches where everyone reads the same book and discusses it, and there's no way you can have a "reading workshop" in high school. There's discussion at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ontd_political here, which somehow has over 100 comments. :3
Innocent, But Executed
Capital punishment is not one of my pet issues, but things like this are why I'm against it. From a practical perspective, it seems almost absurd to kill people who have killed others just to show that killing is wrong; plus, the question is not (and should not be) whether or not someone deserves it, but whether or not we are willing to execute innocent people just so we can execute the guilty ones as well. It's almost always difficult to prove something happened beyond a reasonable doubt, and it's even harder to prove that someone will not show remorse and reform once s/he gets out of prison (if s/he does). I know that wrongful punishments are going to happen because no justice system will ever be perfect, but life-or-death situations are where I draw the line; you can get an innocent person out of jail, but you can't bring them back from the dead. Besides, it costs more to perform the death penalty (ironically enough), and for the truly irredeemable death is not a punishment but merely a way out of it.
Translation Party
A fun site where you type in an English phrase and see it get translated into Japanese and back again until you can't go any further. The goal is to keep the translating going as long as possible. I was able to do this on the third try; can anyone go any farther?
All right, some random memes:
For the next one, I have never played D&D ever in my life, so I don't know what much of this means, but it still looks interesting anyway:
( Read more... )
Also, a few days ago I posted this meme, where you guess which movie the quote came from. The answers are below the cut; don't look at them if you still want to give it a shot.
( The answers... )
The Future of Reading: "Reading Workshop" Approach Lets Students Pick the Books
I wish I had this sort of thing in middle school; I was already reading quite a bit on my own then, but this would've helped me enjoy it more, and I would've had a teacher to guide me toward better books, which somewhat solves the problem of kids reading only trashy, unchallenging literature. But I still see the need to have more approaches where everyone reads the same book and discusses it, and there's no way you can have a "reading workshop" in high school. There's discussion at
ontd_political here, which somehow has over 100 comments. :3Innocent, But Executed
Capital punishment is not one of my pet issues, but things like this are why I'm against it. From a practical perspective, it seems almost absurd to kill people who have killed others just to show that killing is wrong; plus, the question is not (and should not be) whether or not someone deserves it, but whether or not we are willing to execute innocent people just so we can execute the guilty ones as well. It's almost always difficult to prove something happened beyond a reasonable doubt, and it's even harder to prove that someone will not show remorse and reform once s/he gets out of prison (if s/he does). I know that wrongful punishments are going to happen because no justice system will ever be perfect, but life-or-death situations are where I draw the line; you can get an innocent person out of jail, but you can't bring them back from the dead. Besides, it costs more to perform the death penalty (ironically enough), and for the truly irredeemable death is not a punishment but merely a way out of it.
Translation Party
A fun site where you type in an English phrase and see it get translated into Japanese and back again until you can't go any further. The goal is to keep the translating going as long as possible. I was able to do this on the third try; can anyone go any farther?
All right, some random memes:
For the next one, I have never played D&D ever in my life, so I don't know what much of this means, but it still looks interesting anyway:
( Read more... )
Also, a few days ago I posted this meme, where you guess which movie the quote came from. The answers are below the cut; don't look at them if you still want to give it a shot.
( The answers... )
