Yeah, I remember that scene. Actually, I thought that the Captain's
instruction to remove that page from the book was a bit extreme. A sober
discussion on why those criteria might be incomplete, or unreliable, or
some of them more relevant than others, would have been more useful, IMO.
O.K.
On Sun, Aug 26, 2018 at 6:10 PM <epostboxx@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 25. Aug 2018, at 04:08, Torgeir Fjeld <t.fjeld1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:one commentary:
Right. Who said we couldn't measure the greatness of literature? Here's
seems to assume that the word "great" is merely quantitative in nature. The
"The problem with a question like "Can we measure greatness?" is that it
word "measure" comes from the Latin via the French. The root Latin word
(mensura) means something like "size or quantity as ascertained by
measuring." And apparently the French derivative (mesure) has the sense of
a limit or boundary.
that ill fit it to be applied to anything qualitative, you in fact limit
In short, because the question seems to come loaded with assumptions
your assessment of the qualitative thing being assessed by even asking it. …
Cf. the following excerpt from the script of the film DEAD POETS SOCIETY:
KEATING
Gentlemen, open your texts to page 21 of this introduction. Mr. Perry,
will you read the opening paragraph of the preface entitled "Understanding
Poetry"?
NEIL
"'Understanding Poetry,' by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D. To fully
understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme and
figures of speech, then ask two questions: 1) How artfully has the
objective of the poem been rendered and 2) How important is that objective?
Question 1 rates the poem's perfection; question 2 rates its importance.
And once these questions have been answered, determining the poem's
greatness becomes a relatively simple matter. If the poem's score for
perfection is plotted on the horizontal of a graph and its importance is
plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields
the measure of its greatness. A sonnet by Byron might score high on the
vertical but only average on the horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on the
other hand, would score high both horizontally and vertically, yielding a
massive total area, thereby revealing the poem to be truly great. As you
proceed through the poetry in this book, practice this rating method. As
your ability to evaluate poems in this matter grows, so will, so will your
enjoyment and understanding of poetry."
KEATING
"Excrement. That's what I think of Mr. J. Evans Pritchard. We're not
laying pipe. We're talking about poetry. How can you describe poetry like
American Bandstand? "Oh, I like Byron. I give him a 42, but I can't dance
to it." Now, I want you to rip out that page. Go on. Rip out the entire
page. You heard me. Rip it out. Rip it out! Go on. Rip it out! [Charles
rips out the page] Thank you, Mr. Dalton. Gentlemen, tell you what. Don't
just tear out that page, tear out the entire introduction. I want it gone.
History. Leave nothing of it. Rip it out! Rip! Be gone, J. Evans Pritchard,
Ph.D. Rip. Shred. Tear. Rip it out! I want to hear nothing but ripping of
Mr. Pritchard. We'll perforate it, put it on a roll. It's not the Bible.
You're not gonna go to Hell for this. Go on. Make a clean tear. I want
nothing left of it."
A longer excerpt can be found at
https://genius.com/Tom-schulman-dead-poets-society-understanding-poetry-scene-annotated
Chris Bruce,
currently appreciating the sublimity of exemplars
of the species Arbutus menziesii on the south-western
shore of Vancouver Island without evaluating them
according to the CHAMPION TREES criteria:1) height
and 2) trunk circumference at 1.3 meters, in
Metchosin, British Columbia
P.S.: For an American Forests evaluation of Champion Trees use the formula:
Trunk Circumference (inches) + Height (feet) + 1/4 Average Crown Spread
(feet) = Total Points
Arriving at calculations can be a bit complicated. There’s a lot of
recommended equipment, from a simple tape measure to a handheld laser
hypsometer, which provides height, range and angle measurements. AF details
its requirements in an 86-page tree-measuring handbook found at:
https://www.americanforests.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/AF-Tree-Measuring-Guidelines_LR.pdf
- cb
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