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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Dec 16, 2010 - 01:19am PT
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"The Five Chinese Brothers" a classic.
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Rudder
Trad climber
Long Beach, CA
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Dec 16, 2010 - 01:22am PT
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Notes from the Underground... again. Just gets better. :)
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Batrock
Trad climber
Burbank
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Dec 16, 2010 - 02:04am PT
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By Motor to the Golden Gate by Emily Post 1915.
About miss manners adventure by motor car across the United States with her son and sister. It was not written as a funny book but it is pretty dang hilarious.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Dec 16, 2010 - 02:32am PT
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"Rikitikitembonosairembocheriberiruchipipperipembo" Tragic ending.
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Dec 16, 2010 - 11:11am PT
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well, i just finished teaching "hamlet", which i estimate makes about the 30th reading (they're taking their timed writing even as i type)
but i recently finished victor davis hanson's "culture and carnage"--brilliant
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bookworm
Social climber
Falls Church, VA
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Dec 16, 2010 - 11:26am PT
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December 16, 2010 12:00 A.M.
In Defense of the Liberal Arts
The therapeutic Left and the utilitarian Right both do disservice to the humanities.
The liberal arts face a perfect storm. The economy is struggling with obscenely high unemployment and is mired in massive federal and state deficits. Budget cutting won’t spare education.
The public is already angry over fraud, waste, and incompetence in our schools and universities. And in these tough times, taxpayers rightly question everything about traditional education — from teachers’ unions and faculty tenure to the secrecy of university admissions policies to which courses really need to be taught.
Opportunistic private trade schools have sprouted in every community, offering online certification in practical skills without the frills and costs of so-called liberal-arts “electives.”
In response to these challenges, the therapeutic academic Left proved incapable of defending the traditional liberal arts. With three decades of defining the study of literature and history as a melodrama of race, class, and gender oppression, it managed to turn off college students and the general reading public. And, cheek by jowl, the utilitarian Right succeeded in reclassifying business and finance not just as undergraduate majors, but also as core elements in general-education requirements.
In such a climate, it is unsurprising that once again we hear talk of cutting the “non-essentials” in our colleges, such as Latin, Renaissance history, Shakespeare, Plato, Rembrandt, and Chopin. Why do we cling to the arts and humanities in a high-tech world in which we have instant recall at our fingertips through a Google search and such studies do not guarantee sure 21st-century careers?
But the liberal arts train students to write, think, and argue inductively, while drawing upon evidence from a shared body of knowledge. Without that foundation, it is harder to make — or demand from others — logical, informed decisions about managing our supercharged society as it speeds on by.
Citizens — shocked and awed by technological change — become overwhelmed by the Internet chatter, cable news, talk radio, video games, and popular culture of the moment. Without links to our heritage, we in ignorance begin to think that our own modern challenges — the war in Afghanistan, gay marriage, cloning, or massive deficits — are unique and not comparable to those solved in the past.
And without citizens broadly informed by the humanities, we descend into a pyramidal society. A tiny technocratic elite on top crafts everything from cell phones and search engines to foreign policy and economic strategy. A growing mass below has neither understanding of the present complexity nor the basic skills to question what they are told.
During the 1960s and 1970s, committed liberals thought we could short-circuit the process of liberal education by creating advocacy courses with the word “studies” in their names. Black studies, Chicano studies, community studies, environmental studies, leisure studies, peace studies, women’s studies, and hundreds more were designed to turn out more socially responsible young people. Instead, universities have too often graduated zealous advocates who lacked the broad education necessary to achieve their predetermined politicized ends.
On the other hand, pragmatists argued that our 20-year-old future CEOs needed to learn spreadsheets rather than why Homer’s Achilles did not receive the honors he deserved, or how civilization was lost in fifth-century Rome and 1930s Germany. But Latin or a course in rhetoric might better teach a would-be captain of industry how to dazzle his audience than a class in Microsoft PowerPoint.
The more instantaneous our technology, the more we are losing the ability to communicate. Twitter and text-messaging result in economy of expression, not in clarity or beauty. Millions are becoming premodern — communicating in electronic grunts that substitute for effective and dignified expression. Indeed, by inventing new abbreviations and linguistic shortcuts, we are losing a shared written language altogether, in a way analogous to the fragmentation of Latin as the Roman Empire imploded into tribal provinces. No wonder the public is drawn to stories like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, in which characters speak beautifully and believe in age-old values.
Life is not just acquisition and consumption. Engaging English prose uplifts the spirit in a way Twittering cannot. The anti-Christ video shown by the Smithsonian at the National Portrait Gallery will fade when the Delphic Charioteer or Michelangelo’s David does not. Appreciation of the history of great art and music fortifies the soul, and recognizes beauty that does not fade with the passing fad.
America has lots of problems. A population immersed in and informed by literature, history, art, and music is not one of them.
— Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University
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scuffy b
climber
Three feet higher
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Dec 16, 2010 - 11:33am PT
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Ah, Wayno.
Whenever I hear or read the word "smother" I think of that brother in
the oven with whipped cream.
It's Marcia Wise Brown, right?
She also did the best version of Stone Soup.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Dec 16, 2010 - 03:01pm PT
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I just looked it up Skuffy, Claire Huchet Bishop wrote it. It seems that there was some controversy as to how the Chinese were depicted to children. Not PC enough for today's kids.
The other one was actually,"Tikki Tikki Tembo..." by Arlene Mosul. I can't spell words longer than 19 letters.
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lars johansen
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Dec 16, 2010 - 08:39pm PT
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Roberto Bolano's 2666, a fictional study of the proliferation of violent murders on the US Mexico border, mostly of young women. These terrible events remain unexplained and largely unsolved.
Roberto Bolano is now gaining popularity as a writer unfortunately after his premature death from hard living. Also check out The Savage Detectives.
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damage
Social climber
olympia, wa
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Dec 16, 2010 - 10:34pm PT
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Anything sci-fi with spaceships
but,
Kafka on the Shore was recommended to me. It's very good.
Postcards from the trailor park, gave me some good laughs.
Just started.
Postcards from the ledge,
The six alpine/himalayan climbing books,
Glacier mountaineering, An illustrated guide
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Bad Climber
climber
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Dec 18, 2010 - 03:55pm PT
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Great thread--and a literate bunch of Tacos!
I'm currently on an Afghanistan binge:
Just finished War by Sebastian Junger--an absolute MUST read. That the US abandoned the Korengal Valley where all these terrible firefights take place leaves me to believe our efforts there are doomed, just like the Russians. Junger doesn't take much of a stand on the right or wrong or genesis of the war, although his sense of desperation comes through at times. It's mostly a record of what front line soldiers go through--riveting.
Just started Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer. I'm a big fan of Krakauer's work, and the Pat Tillman story is a tragic, compelling tale.
Last novel: A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore---good!
BAd
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Dec 18, 2010 - 04:43pm PT
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not all so literate...reading Life/Keith Richards. surprisingly articulate for someone who can barely speak.
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dogtown
Trad climber
JackAssVille, Wyoming
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Dec 18, 2010 - 08:35pm PT
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Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommels, book and wrtings.
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Skeptimistic
Mountain climber
La Mancha
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Dec 18, 2010 - 10:54pm PT
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Travell & Simmons "Myofascial Pain and Dysfunction"
About to start "The Art of Racing in the Rain"
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Dickbob
climber
Colorado
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Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes
Its about the Vietnam war. Exceptional. It took him 40 years to write it. It just came out in paperback.
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NigelSSI
Trad climber
B.C.
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Claudius the God
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labrat
Trad climber
Nevada City, CA
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Mariposa by Greg Bear
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Gal
Trad climber
a semi lucid consciousness
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"Cutting for Stone" -it was ok, but...
I would now like to read "postcards from the trailer park" from the above recommendation, I hope it to be hilarious ;).
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