Student "edition" found at {csi dot journalspace dot com}.

Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

I talked about the “Survivor: Cook Islands” finale yesterday in the student edition. One of the things that an often misunderstood Asian contestant, whose name sounds like “Cowboy”, said in the reunion is that kids nowadays are quick to decide on things, but impatient.

As I’ve also said in one of the past posts in the student edition, I believe that this is the effect of having instantaneous or near-instantaneous results from technology. I also think that this kind of behavior is not limited to young ones, but also to some adults with attention deficit disorder.

This is also an information age term. Maybe less than fifty years ago children would have been labeled by psychologists or guidance counselors as “easily distracted” or “lacks focus”. Computers and the games therein give these kind of people an easy way to interact with the world, without having to bother going out and looking for friends.

They are also helped by the fact that a lot of books nowadays are being adapted into movies. Thus when someone talked about “The Lord of the Rings” or “The Da Vinci Code” they can have an opinion without having read the book because they’ve seen the movie, and they will usually not like it as much as the others talking do because those who have read it were able to catch more nuances passed over by the filmmakers and thus missed by those who just went to a theater or played a disc.

The point I’m getting at is that I am irrationally biased against outspoken opinionated people who don’t read books regularly, because I believe that books not only enhance the imagination but also practice one’s concentration and retention of details. So I’ll know the source of the information isn’t just a movie or a quick internet search.

And I’m not including the wildly popular “Harry Potter” books here, because they are compelling page-turners, even for seven-year-olds.

It takes a certain amount of patience to be able to finish – and appreciate – a book.

Session 1455 says eggs came from the pterodactyl and not the chicken. I doubt if that claim was taken from a book. Class dismissed.