04w10:1 Posted March 1st, 2004 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2004 week 10 number 1 I now find myself trying to please an audience; even though I know some of you personally, I also know I have never met some of you lucky enough to be part of this club. I say this because today’s selections border on being boring, but are paired as examples of the evolution of our language. Article One discuses the new standards imposed by the infamous American SAT test (and this dear folks I thought would only be interesting to one person I know, but I had to tell myself, ‘if it’s good enough for her it’s good enough for the rest’). Because the SAT’s aren’t an issue in Canada I found it a bit of a yawner, with its tone is somewhat haughty and mocking. However, the impression it left on me is how it illustrates what we consider good writing to be (and thus, what constitutes a good read) has, along with the lexicon and pronunciation, changed over the centuries. I was also left with the impression that such changes are marked by certain individual styles, whose novelty becomes influential. The second article is etymological: the question of why The Passion of the Christ is called such. There are a lot of articles out there on the film The Passion of The Christ and its supposed controversy, but I’ve been sparing you them since I find many of them slanted and unfair. But I am no censor: if you’re really interested contact me and I’ll send you some links. (Hint: there’s a lot on Slate.com, including a great critique by Christopher Hitchens posted this past weekend. The best thing I’ve read about the film is a partial translation from a French newspaper available here). Another note: due to server issues I have been unable to update my website (including the goodreads archive index) for the past month, but hopefully things will be back up and running in the next week or so. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Would Shakespeare Get Into Swarthmore? | by John Katzman, Andy Lutz and Erik Olson http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/03/katzman.htm “How several well-known writers (and the Unabomber) would fare on the new SAT […] Reader’s evaluation: This essay is poorly organized, with only one paragraph (though, to Mr. Shakespeare’s credit, the topic sentence does speak to what the rest of the sentences in his one paragraph are about). It is riddled with errors in syntax, incomplete sentences being the most noticeable problem. Although his supporting sentences are vivid in their description, they are vague and general, not true examples. And he unfortunately spells ‘honor’ with the extraneous ‘u.’ Grade: 2 out of 6” Why Is It Called The Passion? | Sam Schechner http://slate.msn.com/id/2096041 “The simple answer is that the English word passion referred to Jesus’ suffering long before it evolved other, more sultry meanings. Today, the word still refers to Jesus’ torments, as well as to retellings of the crucifixion in the Gospels and elsewhere, even in pieces of music. (Before Gibson’s Passion, for instance, there were Bach’s Passions.) But the Christian meaning and its modern, carnal cousins are not entirely unrelated. In fact, the more common meanings of the word passion—strong emotion, zeal, and sexual desire—grew organically from the Christian sense over the course of several centuries. ” —————————————- http://www.instantcoffee.org/tim/goodreads To remove or add yourself from this list, email tim@instantcoffee.org emailed by Timothy on Monday 01 March 2004 @ 3:03 PM
