Comment Re:WoW 2.0 (Score 1) 389
I know it's 'the thing' to trash the game du jour, but this is getting ridiculous.
I kid you not, the real reason that we're graduating people who can't read? Lower and middle schools are promoting children who are failing for two reasons:
1. to preserve their "self esteem"
2. holding back children reflects poorly on the school
Then, when the kids get to high school, they can't be sent back to the schools that didn't teach them, and it's now the high school's problem.
Ah, the ubiquitous assumption that student's grades are a function of teacher quality, and teacher quality alone.
I hate to break it to you, but there is a substantial fraction of kids who just don't give a shit. You can be the best teacher in the world, but if there's no will from the student to learn, they won't do well.
An education is like a stool. To get a good, solid one, you need three legs: a committed student, a good teacher, and supportive parents.
If the quake had happened by itself? No issue. If the tsunami had happened by itself? A likelihood that power would have been interrupted temporarily, but not an issue.
I am with those who insist that the main technical problem with nuclear energy is a sound regulatory framework. I don't see it. And without it, it is unsafe technology.
Your thoughts on risk assessment are part of what makes our society so litigation intensive - if one child gets harmed by something, no matter what the rate of incident is, by God, sue those people into the ground, there should be NO harmful incidents using product X! I don't care if there's a 0.00001 incident rate, we need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars fixing the problem!
For those of us used to the waits George gives us, 2 years is a piece of cake.
If you like Sanderson, definitely read "The Way of Kings". The magic system in that world is different.
But then again, a lot of people in this thread are leery of beginning series that are just on their first book....
Actually, part of what made this book so long in coming was the fact that GRRM initially wanted the 4th book to skip ahead years, with some of the intervening detail revealed in flashbacks. He got partway into writing it, and realized that wouldn't work.
So, he started over. Then he realized that this new approach required him to fill out all sorts of stuff that he hadn't counted on, which made the book length explode. Then he seperated them into two, and "A Feast for Crows" was born.
He has stated many times that he wrote himself into a corner (my words, not his), referring to the issue as a "Meerenese Knot". It appears he's finally resolved this, and now is comfortable setting a hard date to be finished with the manuscript.
This is one of the best fantasy series I've ever read.
Actually, it's more what I'd call "realistic" fantasy. Now, before you start telling me that fantasy is by definition not realistic, let me explain.
Martin's characters are some of the most relentlessly human I've seen in a fantasy series. None of the characters, save a few who live on the edges (so far) have been pure good or pure evil. Everybody is a shade of gray.
Add to that the fact that Martin isn't afraid to kill off major characters, and it's a delight to read.
"If I do not want others to quote me, I do not speak." -- Phil Wayne