Contents contributed and discussions participated by Mark Smith - English Companion Ning Group

Your Brain on Computers - Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime - NYTimes.com - 5 views

www.nytimes.com/...25brain.html

Internet brain

shared by Mark Smith on 25 Aug 10 - Cached

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”
...

Cancel

Wilfred Owen's 'Dulce et Decorum Est' - 11 views

www.bl.uk/...index.html

poetry

shared by Mark Smith on 24 Aug 10 - Cached

Mark Smith on 24 Aug 10

Background and discussion of Qwens' well known WWI poem.

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Background and discussion of Qwens' well known WWI poem.</div>

...

Cancel

The art of slow reading | Books | The Guardian - 9 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...slow-reading

reading

shared by Mark Smith on 19 Jul 10 - Cached

Adam Babcock liked it

Seeley notes that after a conversation with some of her students, she discovered that "most can't concentrate on reading a text for more than 30 seconds or a minute at a time. We're being trained away from slow reading by new technology."
...

Cancel

How facts backfire - The Boston Globe - 7 views

www.boston.com/...how_facts_backfire

brain belief reading

shared by Mark Smith on 13 Jul 10 - Cached

Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
...

Cancel

What's Wrong With To Kill A Mockingbird? - 5 views

jezebel.com/...aluating-to-kill-a-mockingbird

shared by Mark Smith on 07 Jul 10 - Cached

Mark Smith on 07 Jul 10

"At its foundation, To Kill A Mockingbird is not the most morally complex of works, it is true. But then again, it is a novel written for children, and when it was composed, in the late 1950s, and published, in July, 1960, the proposition that black people ought to be treated as equal citizens was still a radical one in America. If Lee makes it clear to her audience where she believes our sympathies ought to lie - with Tom Robinson, the man falsely accused of rape, whose conviction is assured by a racist judicial system, and with Mayella Ewell, the impoverished incest victim who is forced to falsely accuse him by her abusive alcoholic father - then it is perhaps because at the dawn of the 1960s, the civil rights movement had yet to realize many of its most important victories, and the second-wave women's movement was barely even beginning."

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">"At its foundation, To Kill A Mockingbird is not the most morally complex of works, it is true. But then again, it is a novel written for children, and when it was composed, in the late 1950s, and published, in July, 1960, the proposition that black people ought to be treated as equal citizens was still a radical one in America. If Lee makes it clear to her audience where she believes our sympathies ought to lie - with Tom Robinson, the man falsely accused of rape, whose conviction is assured by a racist judicial system, and with Mayella Ewell, the impoverished incest victim who is forced to falsely accuse him by her abusive alcoholic father - then it is perhaps because at the dawn of the 1960s, the civil rights movement had yet to realize many of its most important victories, and the second-wave women's movement was barely even beginning."</div>

...

Cancel

Don't mention the mockingbird! Meet Harper Lee the reclusive novelist who wrote the cla... - 9 views

www.dailymail.co.uk/...erised-40-million-readers.html

literature

shared by Mark Smith on 30 Jun 10 - Cached

In the novel, Scout lives in fear of a ‘malevolent phantom’, a psychologically disturbed neighbour called Boo Radley, who ultimately saves her life. While it is clear that the character is in part based on a reclusive neighbour, in reality, it was Harper’s mother Frances who was the source of much terror and unhappiness.Suffering from depression and violent mood swings, friends in the close-knit Alabama town say that Frances allegedly twice tried to drown her daughter in the bath. As a result, perhaps, the young Harper was regarded as a difficult and aggressive child who would think nothing of punching other children who annoyed her.
...

Cancel

Hive of Nerves: an article by Christian Wiman | The American Scholar - 5 views

www.theamericanscholar.org/hive-of-nerves

literature philosophy

shared by Mark Smith on 03 Jun 10 - Cached

It is as if each of us were always hearing some strange, complicated music in the background of our lives, music which, so long as it remains in the background, is not simply distracting but manifestly unpleasant, because it demands the attention we are giving to other things. It is not hard to hear this music, but it is very difficult indeed to learn to hear it as music.
...

Cancel

Mark Smith on 03 Jun 10

THERE IS A DISTINCTION to be made between the anxiety of daily existence, which we talk about endlessly, and the anxiety of existence, which we rarely mention at all. The former fritters us into dithering, distracted creatures. The latter attests to-and, if attended to, discloses-our souls.

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">THERE IS A DISTINCTION to be made between the anxiety of daily existence, which we talk about endlessly, and the anxiety of existence, which we rarely mention at all. The former fritters us into dithering, distracted creatures. The latter attests to-and, if attended to, discloses-our souls.</div>

...

Cancel
Mark Smith on 03 Jun 10

fascinating and wide ranging examination of modern consciousness as seen through literature

<div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">fascinating and wide ranging examination of modern consciousness as seen through literature</div>

...

Cancel