This sounds about right. In 1986 (or was it 1987?), we bought the NES (incl. the Super Mario Bros. cartridge) for $79.99 retail (probably at Sears or JC Penney--some mall department store). In the fall of 1991, I bought the SNES at Circuit City for $199.99 retail--the clerks were still setting up their sales displays as I grabbed one and speed-walked to the checkout.
As far as games go, I remember purchasing in 1990 the original NES Final Fantasy at Toy's'R'Us for $69.99 retail--the most I'd ever spent on a game at that point. Older games were on the same shelves for as low as 12.99 and 14.99--Castlevania II--Simon's Quest, for one, which was already a couple of years old at that point.
While some admissions essay prompts allow for the kind of exaggerated adversity stories suggested in the summary, there are ample opportunities to showcase other traits and talents beyond overcoming challenges. See the Common Application prompts, for example, where only 1 of the 7 base prompts asks about "challenges, setbacks, or failure."
Likewise, the University of California system, through their Personal Insight Quetions, asks for 2 out of 8 possible prompts to focus explicitly on challenges and adversity.
The purpose of the admissions essay, in letter and in spirit, is to allow the students to provide, in their own words, a fuller context for the data contained within their applications. If only more high school seniors (and more so their parents) would stay true to this, we might see fewer exaggerated or bloated or fabricated adversity and hardship essays.
It is way easier (much faster) to skim through the RSS feeds for headlines, rather than going to the website itself.
This captures it perfectly.
I've 63 subscribed feeds, about 55 of which I review daily. Skimming for relevant headlines and then opening those pages in new tabs has become a central part of how I, and others I've introduced the feature to over the years, find and read articles on the web. I've curated a wide range of sources through LiveBookmarks and RSS, and this Firefox feature has been the most efficient way for me to find items of interest. I might also add that I'm using, by today's bleeding-edge standards, antiquated hardware, as I'm sure not an insignificant number of users do, and the RSS feature helps to facilitate web browsing.
(And, I saw the headline for this story through my RSS feed for Slashdot.)
In the Coda to the novel Bradbury says, “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.”
Fahrenheit 451 is less about book censorship and more about the suppression and destruction of free thought. Fire in the novel symbolizes both its inevitable destruction and eventual rebirth, as it might exist in a world full of minority opinions at odds with those of a majority.
Books, in the world of the novel, have become scapegoats of unhappiness for a majority of people; consequently these books must be annihilated to keep the people content, dare I say pacified--see the scene with Mildred and her friends when Montag reads Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" to them, for example.
In addition, these books aid the populace to think on its own, making the totalitarian government’s power more difficult to maintain.
Finally, Beatty tells Montag that the “real beauty” of fire is that “it destroys responsibility and consequences." Not only do books make the population uneasy, but also the “responsibility and consequences” of using the knowledge found in these volumes is too complex an onus for Montag's society to bear. The masses cannot think of solutions to its problems and instead throws accountability into their furnaces.
So yes, on some superficial level, a novel about book burning does touch upon censorship. But what makes Bradbury's work so great is that there is so much more at work below the censorship surface.
(Also: There's an high school English teacher on Slashdot? How do you not spend all your nights weeping?)
Ha!
The tears ran dry a decade ago my friend. As torturous as some posts here are, they are Shakespearean compared to some of the dreck that I read daily (AP notwithstanding).
So I started spewing what English teachers love. I used words like "juxtaposition" and "antithesis" and compared the rose to some other random symbolic object in the book. It was pure, unadulterated, Grade A, premium All-American BS.
I got an A on the paper.
If you were in the high school class that I teach, you wouldn't have fared so well: I snuff out that "premium All-American BS" as fast as possible. At my school, our "Top 10" students usually include some of the best writers on campus who are generally used to breezing through their English classes with ease--until they reach me. By the time they finish my class and graduate, they (they intelligent ones, anyway) learn that Addressing essay prompts Accurately earns A's and that Filling papers with Fluff earns F's.
Good teachers won't be fooled by vacuous writing, and the best won't pretend in order to boost a student's self-esteem.
True technical mastery is the ability to deploy the elements of language in ways that are incisive and surprising and exactly correct for whatever purpose the writer has in mind. This requires knowledge, but it also requires talent.
you have to give examples in his writing. Fortunately, this is trivial to do. He wasn't a constantly great stylist, but he has moments of real greatness. (And yes, I know I should really be writing about Tolkien's prose here, but poetry is so much easier to go into depth about.)
Nice explication, and to help out, I'll supply the prose:
And far away, as Frodo put on the RIng and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-Dûr was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung.
From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired. For they were forgotten. The whole mind and purpose of the Power that wielded them was now bent with overwhelming force upon the Mountain. At his summons, wheeling with a rending cry, in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the winds, the Nazgûl, the Ringwraiths, and with a storm of wings they hurtled southwards to Mount Doom.
The Return of the King, second edition, 1955, p. 223
Though many here malign his style, Tolkien's prose here is purposeful and effective. Note that Sauron's recognition and ensuing panic are reflected rhetorically in the cadence of the sentences, aided by polysendeton, parallelism, and a combination of varying sentence lengths--telegraphic, medium, and long. Syntactically purposeful, the prose also includes a smattering of lyricism reminiscent of the epics he attempts to emulate.
Form married to function is a touchstone of quality prose.
(1) Never draw what you can copy. (2) Never copy what you can trace. (3) Never trace what you can cut out and paste down.
