So I know it is likely many people in class would be happy to bitchslap me after I post this (especially you Tolkien fans), but  I think this is incredibly funny and relevant to our arguments over book vs. movie. So is it a sin to say that some movies are better than their book counterparts? I think not.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19156_6-deleted-scenes-that-prove-book-isnt-always-better.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage

What I like about Borges's "Library of Babel" is idea of randomness and connectivity that permeates the story and the construction of the library.  In a real library, we organize everything based on their genre: fiction, travel writing, childrens stories, etc.  However, these are superficial relationships.  True connections between literature are much more random (maybe a writer of childrens literature found inspiration in a science textbook, like Lewis Carroll being influenced by mathematics and producing Alice in Wonderland.  Borges is an author who is very involved in genre, and the evolution of genre.  Part of what's great about the evolution of genre is that one must accept random connections beneath the surface, going across all the genres.  This

A few weeks ago, we discussed the criteria for selecting books for a course on the evolution of literature. Since then, I have been thinking about the elements of the stories we’ve read and watched that made them candidates for this course’s required readings. While reflecting on the books we’ve read and movie we watched this semester, I realized that their most advantageous traits were the ones that connected them to the stories read/watched and informed our reading of the next book. I suppose this makes sense in a class where we’ve learned that evolution in a biological and literature sense is endless.

 Attached are the word clouds Anna and I used for our presentation, and below is our outline for how we wanted to structure the discussion. We wanted to base our discussion primarily on the class's input, but as you may notice, many of the things we had planned to talk about or found interesting beforehand were also what people found interesting in class.

Project Presentation

 In Anne's discussion group on Thursday we touched on whether differing interpretations of what someone says or anything else they may put out there for the public and how to judge if any interpretations were "inaccurate".  This was not referring to outright lies and intentionally misleading others such as quoting "he hates _____" when the actual quote was "he loves ____".  Rather, we were trying to see if it is wrong to personally interpret someone's words as the original meanings may be lost during the process.  Personally, I feel that there are labelling it interpretations as wrong or right would not be very effective, rather it should be on a degree scale.

Alright, so I've noticed that people seem to be revisiting the idea of the Library of Babel, and thought that I would give it a go too. Despite everything that was explained when the idea was initially introduced, and everything we have discussed since, I still kind of like the idea of this all-inclusive Library. I might, however, have a slightly different image in mind when I picture the Library of Babel than the one that Dennett did, one that might account for some of the irregularities that we, as a class, picked up on for Dennett's model. Granted, this image has gone through several revisions since I first conceived of it, but I believe that I have settled on something (for now!) that I quite like.