The Wonders of the World Before Man

On the last page of The Great Gatsby I really liked the paragraph about long island when it was "a fresh, green breast of the new world," and I noticed that I had seen this theme of being awed by imagining the past in other places. For example, there is a Dave Matthews Band song that talks about the wonders of a world untouched by man. The line goes "Now the world is small, compared to how it used to be with mountains and oceans and winters and rivers and stars". This is similar to the way Nick describes his wonder with this land before the trees were cut down to make way for Gatsby's house. The most interesting part of this paragraph, in my opinion, is when he describes how a man must have "held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder." I can absolutely relate to this overwhelming wonder about the world's past, before humans settled in it. The beauty of this untouched nature, the "old, unknown world," is something we all like to imagine. From what Mr. Bolos and Doc Oc have mentioned about The Kentucky Cycle, that it follows the same piece of land throughout different sections of history, I imagine that the wonders of the unknown world before man will play a part in that book as well.

Be Specific

During Mr. Bolos's speech about asking teachers for college recommendations, he made a very good point about what makes a compelling recommendation or essay in general. Bolos said that the best teachers to ask for recommendations are those that know you best because they can use the most specific examples in their letter. This got me thinking about the power of using specifics rather than generalities when writing. Yesterday was the track and field banquet, and I noticed how this principle applied to the banquet as well as essay writing. The banquet consisted of many runners and coaches giving speeches and there was a consistent theme throughout the speeches. The ones with specific stories and details were much more interesting than those that used general statements. For example, one runner gave a speech in appreciation of one of the coaches that told a story about a time they talked with the coach and what it meant to them. This gave the audience a much better understanding of the relationship between that runner and their coach because they could see for themselves what kinds of interactions went on between the two. Because the audience contains a lot of parents that may not personally know the coaches or runners, it is hard for them to connect to speeches about the coaches if general statements are used rather than personal stories.

Indirect Victims of Terrorism

When we talked in class about the death of Osama Bin Laden and the feelings we had about the situation, I noticed a recurring theme of fear of retaliation. We talked about this in class a bit, and Mr. Bolos mentioned that Al Qaeda does not operate on a short timetable, so a retaliation attack is very unlikely. Personally, I was concerned with this recurring worry about retaliation because it shows the more long term effects of terrorism that persist after a bombing or attack; fear. I am not trying to blame those who feared retaliation for their feelings, but it is sad to see these feelings take place. Even when we are on the offensive and successfully execute an operation, the effects are the same, citizens experience fear just from the idea of conflict with terrorists. I recall reading a very interesting chapter in Freakonomics that addressed this point exactly. The section talks about Richard Reid, who attempted to detonate a shoe bomb on an airplane in an act of terrorism. Although he failed entirely to actually detonate the bomb, the attack prompted airport security around the world to require passengers to remove their shoes while passing through security, a process which I'm sure we are all familiar with. The authors, Levitt and Dubner, then calculate that if taking off, x-raying, and replacing one's shoes takes an average of 1 minute, then 1,065 years of security and passenger time are spent, per year, on this process, equivalent to the average life span of 14 people. In summary, although Reid failed to harm any people in his attack, he still "levied a tax that is the time equivalent of 14 lives per year." The chapter also talks about the actual risks of being involved in a terrorist attack, "roughly 1 in 5 million"and notes that, in fact, the average person is "575 times more likely to commit suicide." Again, this post is not trying to say that those who feared retaliation are being irrational, but merely that I saw an interesting connection between our classroom discussion and a Freakonomics section I read a while ago.

Financial Status and Test Scores

When researching PSAE scores for my last blog post, I came across a very interesting blog post which I believe was written by a concerned parent in the Proviso school district. The post explored PSAE test score data, looking for a connection between the amount of low income students at public Illinois schools and the test scores of that school. The post can be found here, and the post before it from which the data is here. Earlier in the year, as a class we discussed the clear correlation between income and test scores, and considering that both are on average very high at New Trier, it is definitely worth looking critically at this data. The first post contains data about the amount of low income students at each school, the percentage of passing PSAE scores at the school, and the amount of money spent per student at the school. In the second post, the author uses the data to find the percentage of non-low income students that meet or exceed PSAE standards. The first thing I noticed was that New Trier had both the highest test scores and least number of low income students in all of Illinois. I also noticed that at ETHS almost 100% of non-low income students pass the PSAE, while only about 66% of the whole school meets the standards. This huge difference in test scores between students of different financial status is even more alarming because the students attend the same school. This data definitely supports Doc Oc's point from when we discussed this earlier in the year, that standardized tests measure socioeconomic status rather than knowledge.

Illinois and the PSAE

In class we talked briefly about the ACT and PSAE that we all took last week. In many of my classes, students discussed their feelings about the PSAE, and the general consensus was that the non-ACT portion of the test was very simple. Students made fun of the basic addition questions (wedding photographer) on the math portion and the simple textual comprehension questions (is a hamper a bin or a washing machine?) in the reading section. My curiosity was peaked, however, when someone mentioned that the majority of students in Illinois do not pass the test. Unable to believe this, i did some searching to see what percentage of students passed and what a passing grade entailed. I was able to find an interesting statistic here, stating that 92% of New Trier students met or exceeded PSAE standards, a very impressive percentage, especially when you consider that it is likely that at least a small percentage of New Trier students make no effort to answer correctly because the test does not get sent to colleges and they are taking it the very next day after the very stressful ACT. As for the state average in illinois, according to data found here, last year 54% of Illinois passed PSAE reading, 52.7% passed math, and 52.4% passed science. While this data does not show that the majority of Illinois fails the PSAE, it does show that there is a great difference between the scores at New Trier and the state average.

Gatsby and the Fundamental Decencies

When reading the first few pages of The Great Gatsby, I was struck by a certain statement on page 2, the narrator's notion that "a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth". My curiosity was peaked when I read this quote because I have occasionally wondered if a concept like that were the truth. At first it seems irrational, but when you think about it we are all different and we each have a different "sense of the fundamental decencies" (assuming that my understanding of this phrase is correct). Some people are more kind than others, some are more athletic, some are more intelligent. This is not to say that some people are somehow better than others, but merely that we are all unique and our skills and talents all lie in different areas. When I began thinking about the meaning of this quote, I googled the passage to see what others had said about it. I was led to a Yahoo Answers page where the general consensus was that the narrator was stating that "rich people are born with better ethics/morals/outlook than poor people". I have not read more than a few pages of the book so far, so I cannot say for sure if this is or isn't the narrator's overall point of view, but at least at this point I don't feel that this is at all what he is saying. He is not saying that a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth, favoring wealthy people, or that those with a better sense of these decencies will end up being wealthy. In fact, in this statement, wealth is not brought up at all. But maybe I'm just missing something.

Remix Culture

I have just finished watching two films, one a lecture by lawrence lessig titled "Keeping Culture Free" (here) and a documentary called RiP: Remix Manifesto which follows Girl Talk and Lessig, looking at remix culture around the world (here). Both of these films were immensely interesting and I have learned much more than I had expected to about copyright law and the restrictions it tries to place on the remix and sampling of media. Girl talk, a musician who creates songs by taking small samples of many songs and combining them, has not been able to release an album because of the great risk of being sued by the companies that own the rights to the media he samples. These presentations often focused on the idea that culture always builds upon itself, and restricting artists ability to use the culture they could build on is a hindrance on culture in general. One example that struck me was Disney. RiP: Remix Manifesto used Disney as an example of culture building upon itself because of the way movies like Snow White, Cinderella, and Alice in Wonderland were all modern remakes of fairy tales. The difference in this case, however, is how Disney copyrighted these works and the characters in them so that nobody could build upon what they had built upon. They also were able to get copyright law extended greatly, so that their exclusive access to these fairy tales would last even longer.