« July 2007 | Main | September 2007 »
August 28, 2007
Back to The Book
Alan Jacobs expands on his earlier semi-review of Harry Potter in Books & Culture. It is insightful and entertaining. For example, he deals with some of the many criticisms of the series, and notes a few I wasn't aware of:
[A]nother and different set of critics has emerged here at the end of the series, for whom the evident traditionalism of the books is their greatest flaw. One of the participants in Slate.com's Book Club thinks that the novel, and its epilogue in particular, "feels awfully bourgeois in its concern with little other than our heroes' marriages and children." (I did not know that concern for marriage and children was the exclusive province of the bourgeoisie; but that's why I read Slate, to learn stuff like that.) And as I scanned the blogs I lost track of the number of people who complained that the epilogue, and indeed the whole series, is defaced by "heteronormativity." Not a gay or lesbian couple in sight—though, if it makes anyone feel better, I have seen that a few readers of the previous book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, think that Harry's obsession with finding out what Draco Malfoy is up to marks a welcome homoerotic interlude.
Overall, Jacobs praises the series, arguing that the underlying meaning and imaginative scope transcends the (many) limitations of Rowling's literary skill. His final conclusion:
What do we choose to imagine, when we choose? The answer is always revelatory, which is one of the reasons Chesterton was right to say that "the simple need for some kind of ideal world in which fictitious persons play an unhampered part is infinitely deeper and older than the rules of good art, and much more important." The Harry Potter books remind us of this, and they can be, if we read them rightly, both a delight in themselves and a school for our own imaginings. They have many flaws, but I have not dwelt on them here because I forgive J. K. Rowling for every one. Her seven books are, and thank God for it, always on the side of life.
But you really should read the entire article, not just the two paragraphs excerpted here.
Technorati Tags: books, chesterton, harry potter, alan jacobs
Posted by maphet at 09:43 AM | Comments (1)
August 23, 2007
Links for the day 08-23-2007
How Not to Raise a Genius and Baby Einsteins: Not So Smart After All. My experience, both from our own kids and from seeing others in similar situations, is that many parents feel guilty about using TV as a babysitter. Baby/Little Einsteins acts as a means to assuage that guilt by making the TV-time "educational."
Our kids have learned a few things from Baby and Little Einsteins. Inevitably, though, that is because my wife is sitting there watching the show with them, talking about what is happening, and making the experience active rather than passive. So, of course, in the end, the only way for toddlers to really learn is for parents to interact with them. Any situation where the parent(s) have given up on that and turned over the entire job of parenting to PBS, Cartoon Network, the Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon is a bad situation.
At the same time, the APA pronouncement that children under 2 should never watch TV sounds either like an effort to swing the pendulum in the other direction, or a pronouncement from detached academics and researchers who have never had the pleasure of attempting to put a meal together with an 18-month old screaming bloody murder for no good reason.
Anyway, in other links:
Arthur Miller's Missing Act. Much like "Intellectuals" by Paul Johnson
Google Apps no match for MS Office, report says. Say what you will about Microsoft, there simply are not that many other solutions suitable for enterprise-level needs.
On the other side of the ideological spectrum: Apple Laptops Transforming PC Sales?. The trend away from low prices as the determining mark and towards customer service and reliability also seems to be a good thing.
Posted by maphet at 11:07 AM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2007
Mr. Bonds
Mr. Bonds
Originally uploaded by maphet.
Wednesday night I saw the Giants play the Braves at Turner Field. Bonds did hit a home run, but what was more interesting was the amount of booing he received every time he even approached the plate. Although he beat Babe Ruth and Hank Aarons, it seems like it would have been more rewarding to see one of them play.
Posted by maphet at 10:31 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 07, 2007
Netflix and Software Design
Some interesting notes on Netflix specifically and software design in general at the Netflix Community Blog regarding the use of 1/2 star ratings:
here’s what I learned from months of testing this across the country: when we make the ½ star options possible, we get fewer ratings. Significantly fewer ratings. We have argued these results internally for some time, and our best guess is that the complexity of doubling the number of choices from 5 to 10 deters many people from rating, so they just give up. (“3 stars? No, 3 ½ stars.. no… 3 stars… no… oh forget it…”)
In other words, more options sometimes equals less usability. A lesson that is hard to grasp in software development, with the notable exception of Apple.
Also noteworthy is the remark that Netflix treats 3 stars as a neutral rating in their recommendations. Which means I should probably bump some of my movies up to 4.
Posted by maphet at 09:29 AM | Comments (1)