Thursday, September 07, 2006

Disturbing things in the newspaper

I picked up a copy of USA Today to browse over lunch. (Apparently the new policy of not eating or drinking in classrooms means that people aren't leaving newspapers around for me to read second hand) It's been a while since I had the time to look in a paper, and I was surprised as some things I found in there. The article on higher education statistics, for one: The US only has a 35% college participation rate, and a measly 17% completion rate. 17%! I assume that community colleges and the like are a larger part of this than Penn State, but that still seems like such a low number, especially coming from my point of view. Craziness.

The other thing that I thought ridiculous: A book review of 'World War Z' by Max Brooks (review by Deirdre Donahue). I've never heard of the book, but zombies are always interesting, unless you say this about the book: "Brooks' clever premise is that a virus has turned people into the undead. Hordes of flesh-devouring zombies roam the earth, hunting down and infecting the living. Governments, armies, doctors, economies collapse in turn." Wow, how original and clever! Wait.. I must have missed something, that's the same premise of every zombie story I've heard of. (Doctors collapsing?) I'm going to go ahead and assume that Brooks' way of telling the tale might actually possess "more creativity and zip than entire crates of other new fiction titles", but still.

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