Greetings from sopping wet Calgary, where thunderstorms and local flooding delayed my arrival until after midnight (2 am my time), which really put a damper on the 8am talks. I had meant to schedule some book-related posts to appear here while I’m gone, but I’m an idiot, and didn’t select “Scheduled” from the posting status menu, so it didn’t show up.
Now that I have stable Internet access, I’ll post some physics stuff later on, but for the moment, here’s a much shorter version of the book-related post I wanted to do today: There’s a Joe Queenan essay in the New York Times Book Review from last weekend, in which he talks about required summer reading lists. He starts out sort of down on the concept, but sort of comes around to being in favor of required summer reading for high school and college students.
So here’s the semi-dorky poll question:
Required summer reading lists for students: Threat or menace?
Your answer should be in the form of a five-paragraph essay of no more than 300 words.Or, you know, a blog comment. Whichever works better for you.