No.

Post #1,727 by mmoffitt 7/13/01 2:14:51 PM Reply	No. Children need to go outside and play. They need to develop their own imaginations, not be limited to the "virtual world" experiences concocted by a dev team. They won't lose a damned thing by not using computers until they graduate from college. In fact, they'll probably develop better minds without them (recall that when the first class of graduating 12th graders in the US that had the [SIC] benefit of computers in grades K-12 took the SAT, their performance was so miserable that the test had to "stupified" and the kids had to be allowed to use calculators to perform elementary arithmetic). IMO, our kids are fatter, dumber AND less social because of computers. It is past time we got them off their asses, away from video screens and out in the real world while the have the luxury of time on their hands. They'll be plenty enough time for them to waste their lives in front of machines like I do when they get older. bcnu, Mikem AR - Actual Reality, Try it, You'll like it.
Post #1,733 by Ashton 7/13/01 2:55:27 PM 7/13/01 3:05:02 PM Reply	Amen. And especially include - ALL FORMS of 'computer games' (naturally this fits within the category as you put it, but..) I have Evidence ;-) Remember Radio? Those old adventure, mystery stories were Good for kids of all ages: YOU HAD TO fill in the sound effects with YOUR imagination. "War of the Worlds"! (that 'unscrewing sound' supposedly of a Large Metal 'hatch' on the alien vehicle: it was.. a 'Mason jar' lid being unscrewed in a toilet bowl, close-miked !!!) Etc. Video, computer 'games' supply ALL the pseudo-environment. A steady diet MAY wither nascent imaginative abilities as surely as (cf. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man) "not hearing / learning" Language! at the correct, early formative period: dooms one to virtual muteness forever. Etc. Any of us here could think of many more - despite the attractions we also demonstrate. But NOT as a young child !!! That time is IRREPLACEABLE. A. Edited by Missing User 70 July 13, 2001, 03:05:02 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #1,738 by admin 7/13/01 3:41:27 PM Reply	Yes. My son learns his math on a computer, in fact -- the Stanford Math Program. Young kids need adult supervision and interaction with computers. Like anything (including outside play), moderation is key. Nothing is a substitute for anything else, but there are some things computers allow kids to do that they can't do elsewhere (anyone ever play Incredible Machine?). A computer is a tool. It can be misused like anything else. It's up to the parents to make sure. And I would suspect that too much television would have a much greater impact than too much computers. Now, some caveats: my son is home schooled, and he's not allowed to play computer games. So keep that in mind when addressing the above comments. :-) Regards, -scott anderson
Post #1,742 by Ashton 7/13/01 3:56:05 PM Reply	Fortunately.. always there will be the Exception(al).
Post #1,785 by boxley 7/13/01 10:46:04 PM Reply	100% agree Odd inn t it? :) when I was a tad I only came inside to eat and tgo sleep only when snow fell. I allow my kids access for downloading game codes and if they are on the net I am constantly checking what sight they are on visually. My sister in law got them email setups and I cluelessly let them expire for one reason or another. Kids need fresh air, lots, interaction with adults and kids outside the family unit (safely of course). Nature is best explored young, that gives one a life long sense of wonder. My fire ant crusade is taking a new phase, I will dig up a colony, figure out with my kids what the attack plan is and makem write it up. maybe we wil all learn something. Kids are scared of spiders, spider webs catch mosquito's leave the spiders alone etc. thanx, bill can I have my ones and zeros back?
Post #1,932 by tseliot 7/16/01 2:36:07 PM Reply	Should kids under 13 be allowed to read books? No. Children need to go outside and play. They need to develop their own imaginations, not be limited to the "virtual world" experiences concocted by an author. They won't lose a damned thing by not using books until they graduate from college. In fact, they'll probably develop better minds without them (recall that when the first class of graduating 12th graders in the US that had the [SIC] benefit of books in grades K-12 took the SAT, their performance was so miserable that the test had to "stupified" and the kids had to be allowed to use Cliff notes to write elementary essays). IMO, our kids are fatter, dumber AND less social because of books. It is past time we got them off their asses, away from white pages and out in the real world while the have the luxury of time on their hands. They'll be plenty enough time for them to waste their lives in front of bound volumes like I do when they get older. bcnu, T.S. AR - Actual Reality, Try it, You'll like it. That's her, officer! That's the woman that programmed me for evil!
Post #1,936 by mhuber 7/16/01 3:14:42 PM Reply	Several old authors agree There are bits in Plato that are amazingly familiar. Kids these days don't respect their elders, that new technology is ruining their minds, the whole bit. And the new technology in question is literacy. Oh sure, we can laugh at them, but how many book-addicted note-heads do you know who can recite the Illiad from memory? Use that written word as a crutch and your brain turns to mush so bad all you can memorize without a major effort is limerics. The irony, of course, is that the complaints were written down... White guys in suits know best - Pat McCurdy
Post #1,940 by Ashton 7/16/01 3:46:30 PM Reply	You mean? There was a young lad from rehab Who read everything in the lab His retention was nil And he talked like a pill But he had a large volume of blab er.. ya mean that's a Symptom? of the too-early exposure to Great Books of the Western World? Could. Be. There was a young drop-out named Billy Who never could find him a filly He invented The Shill And became very shrill So he's richer but still very silly Yup. Guilty as charged.. :-\ufffd
Post #1,954 by mhuber 7/16/01 5:17:29 PM Reply	Only if you read them I don't think having them read to you does the same thing. But if you read to your kids, they want to do it themselves, which leads to the loss of advanced memory function. Yeah, I failed: instead of memorizing the Oddesey when I read it to them, my kids got the idea it would be cool to know how to read it themselves. By the way - epic poetry doesn't work very well as bedtime reading. Didn't work when my mom tried it on me, didn't work when I tried it on my kids. Maybe we need new translations. Alas that we have lost Dr. Seuss (one of the greatest poets of the 20th century, and I say that without a hint of irony of any kind) Achillies, would you, could you march on Troy? Because of the side you are on? I will not, will not march on troy, because you are a jerk, Agamemnon. Would you could you, as an Achaean? Agamemnon, dream on. Would you, could you, cuz they offed your pal? THOSE BASTARDS! I will kill them all! Clearly, I am not Dr. Seuss. But I think that might work better than some versions I've read. White guys in suits know best - Pat McCurdy
Post #1,955 by Another Scott 7/16/01 5:23:02 PM Reply	Post of the Day! Congratulations!!! :-)
Post #1,956 by Another Scott 7/16/01 5:32:59 PM Reply	Incidently, another had similar thoughts. A comparison between the Odyssey and Seuss's "You're only old once" [link\|http://www.muohio.edu/~delucej/senectus/essays/hubacher.html\|Homer Meets Dr. Seuss] Another master of poetry with a Seuss-esq spin was Shel Silverstein. [link\|http://www.geocities.com/selyfriday/Silverstein/bookgiv.html\|The Giving Tree] is amazing, IMHO. (Beware it's a Geocities link so there'll be a popup...) Cheers, Scott.
Post #1,959 by mhuber 7/16/01 6:10:36 PM Reply	Silverstein! My now-pregnant daughter found out about Santa because I failed to adequately hide my copy of Unka Shelby's ABZs. A real genius. Also wrote most of the lyrics for Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. (Only 16, Penecillin Penny, I Got Stoned and I Missed It...) Now there's a poet: deep and moving when he wants to be, but mostly crass and earthy and rude and very, very funny. And always manages to arrange it so that the exactly right word happens to sound perfect. Somehow, I think I am better able to face life because of having read and heard his poetry. White guys in suits know best - Pat McCurdy
Post #1,965 by Arkadiy 7/16/01 6:54:34 PM Reply	Bravo! I've always suspected that the siege of Troy was closer to a village fistfight with bloodshed than to an event of epic proportions!
Post #1,982 by boxley 7/16/01 9:27:19 PM Reply	when you consider the attitudes of the correspondents who practiced the phalanx by ripping out trees and calling it fucking, they took their warfare serious. Either that or 2 guys were in the trojan horse and 5 guys waited outside. Hey maybe your right! Condom brand trojan is much smaller than magnum! thanx, bill can I have my ones and zeros back?
Post #2,881 by CRConrad 7/26/01 11:15:36 AM Reply	Agreement, but question Arkadiy: I've always suspected that the siege of Troy was closer to a village fistfight with bloodshed than to an event of epic proportions! Yeah, sure... But: What is "epic proportions", then, if not just lots of bloodshed? Christian R. Conrad The Man Who Knows Fucking Everything
Post #2,892 by mhuber 7/26/01 11:44:40 AM Reply	Definition of epic proportions: Such that someone is willing to compose an epic. An unsung hero is one who failed to properly inspire the poets - poets find heroic deeds and generosity to poets far more inspirational than heroic deeds alone. Like the current situation where a small event with good video is more newsworthy than a large one without, I suspect the Trojan War was an epic event in large part because of the quality of the poets who sang of it. It did involve the destruction of a significant enough city that evidence could be found thousands of years later, so we aren't talking about a completely media-generated event. White guys in suits know best - Pat McCurdy
Post #3,127 by wharris2 7/30/01 7:50:28 PM Reply	Certainly not lots of bloodshed Most of the major (oh, let's say the top five) battles of WW 1 were bloodier than almost every previous conflict in the world combined, with the possible exception that the American Civil War might skew the "every previous conflict" a bit. What was it, a million or two at Verdun? Come to think of it, I don't think I've seen any epic movies or stories about that war. French Zombies are zapping me with lasers!
Post #3,138 by boxley 7/30/01 9:24:59 PM Reply	sgt york? Rather tame by what actually happened. I would love to see a realistic remake of that story. A typical hill boy who cut his teeth on guns but was peaceable by nature. thanx, bill Our bureaucracy and our laws have turned the world into a clean, safe work camp. We are raising a nation of slaves. Chuck Palahniuk
Post #3,226 by mhuber 7/31/01 11:37:15 AM Reply	Wouldn't be beleivable. That story could only happen in real life. For those unfamiliar, York was a young man seriously dedicated to peace. IIRC, he was drafted. Anyway, he found himself alone and facing a German installation that was about to do some things that were not peacable. (Was it executing the rest of his unit? I really should look this up again.) So Sgt. York captured them. All by himself. The story goes that he later explained that he surrounded them... Saved many Allied lives. And did so while respecting, as much as possible under the circumstances, the lives of the enemy. From what I have heard, he remained a very gentle and peacefull man. A hero in every sense of the term. It is a shame that his story is not more commonly known. ----------------------------------- Including the nearly ancient Greek one. But not the really ancient Greek term. That term meant a vampire-type undead person, and later the usage changed to refer specificaly to one who lives past death by epic poetry of his deeds. White guys in suits know best - Pat McCurdy
Post #3,247 by wharris2 7/31/01 1:03:22 PM Reply	Here's the story His unit was pinned down by a machine gun nest, and they were trying to outflank it and come at it from the rear. The rest of the flanking unit captured a number of Germans and between guarding them and trying to keep from being shot by the machine guns were trying to figure out what to do. York went on ahead to the machine gun emplacement and started picking them off one by one (as he put it, they had to stick their heads up to see him and he'd touch them off when they did) until a few rushed him. Eventually the German unit became so demoralized that the major surrendered his unit . As York was marching his 100 prisoners back to the American lines, they picked up a few others. From his account ([link\|http://www.alvincyork.org/Diary.htm\|http://www.alvincyork.org/Diary.htm]), There were considerably over 100 prisoners now. It was a problem to get them back safely to our own lines. There were so many of them, there was danger of our own artillery mistaking us for a German counterattack and opening upon us. I sure was relieved when we ran into the relief squads that had been sent forward through the brush to help us. OCTOBER 8th 1918 (continued) So when I got back to my major's p.c. I had 132 prisoners. We marched those German prisoners on back into the American lines to the battalion p.c. (post of command), and there we came to the Intelligence Department. Lieutenant Woods came out and counted 132 prisoners. And when he counted them he said, "York, have you captured the whole German army?" And I told him I had a tolerable few. French Zombies are zapping me with lasers!
Post #3,347 by Ashton 8/1/01 2:01:25 AM Reply	No idea he had kept a diary - thanks. While the Hollywood version did present some improbables - like the Major? being much concerned with York's philosophical misgivings - it seems that Gary Cooper gave us a reasonable facsimile of York. (The artifice of giving turkey calls! as he picked off the Germans in a trench, one by one - seems utterly York-like, as I read his own words.. Hell, even if it isn't true (?) I'd prefer to believe it.) At least I cannot imagine a sequel which might add anything to his performance - there are no young Gary Coopers. Would that H'wood would learn that you just can't remake most other classic performances (say, Sabrina.. or any of the noir flics). Cheers, A.
Post #3,151 by a6l6e6x 7/30/01 10:46:59 PM Reply	"Tunes of Glory", "All Quiet on the Western Front" Alex This is my sig. There's another almost like it, but this one is mine.
Post #2,311 by GBert 7/19/01 11:00:12 AM Reply	Homer translations Last year I came across the relatively new translations of the Iliad and Odyssey by Robert Fagles. The language is so musical and metrical that it makes you want to read aloud, yet the meaning flows easily and compellingly also. Recommended! A short PBS interview with Fagles from 1997 [link\|http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june97/odyssey_3-3.html\|here]. Giovanni Pedestrian, n. The variable (and audible) part of the roadway for an automobile. -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
Post #2,313 by mhuber 7/19/01 11:05:05 AM Reply	Thanks That kind of information is greatly appreciated! White guys in suits know best - Pat McCurdy
Post #2,323 by GBert 7/19/01 12:40:18 PM Reply	You're welcome -- enjoy! --!msg
Post #2,047 by mhuber 7/17/01 11:14:52 AM Reply	Clarification: There is a cost to literacy. I think it is worth it. White guys in suits know best - Pat McCurdy

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