We do OK with the whole intellectual elitism thing
by jacobstevens on Jul 29, 2011 12:58 PM PDT
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PrintDid you know Google offers search tools, including an aggregation of your search results' reading level?
Reading level
Results by reading level for field gulls:
| Basic | 38% | |
| Intermediate | 32% | |
| Advanced | 29% |
Search Results
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Results by reading level for bleacher report:
Basic 56% Intermediate 43% Advanced < 1% Search Results
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Results by reading level for niners nation:
Basic 48% Intermediate 52% Advanced < 1% Search Results
But let's not get too proud of ourselves.
Reading levelResults by reading level for gravitational singularity:
Basic 2% Intermediate 6% Advanced 92%
Ah, SBNation's schema can't render intermediate HTML, eh? No visual bar graph satisfaction for you, then, unless you take the time to perform these searches on Google yourself.
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51 comments
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6 recs |
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Comments
Can't even say it's necessarily a good thing. Great writing is often not complicated.
Head of catering.
Faulkner is complicated as all fuck
by Greetings from the Lord Humongous! on Jul 29, 2011 5:32 PM PDT up reply actions
You could not be more correct.
Dostoyevsky is too, but that probably has to do with the translation as well.
by Hopefulmsfan on Jul 30, 2011 12:00 AM PDT up reply actions
Sort of
I’ve read a lot of Russian writers in Russian because, well, that’s what I study. Dostoevsky is more complicated than Tolstoy, but simpler than Pushkin.
Formerly Known As Vasilii
by Thomas Beekers on Jul 30, 2011 1:28 PM PDT up reply actions
More like really, really difficult
I have it in Russian and English though. Read em side by side
Formerly Known As Vasilii
by Thomas Beekers on Aug 2, 2011 4:54 PM PDT up reply actions
That's how I did Dante.
Had to lean pretty heavily on the English; I figure I can trust Pinsky though.
He could be.
But many of his stories and books are also quite simple. Basically he did whatever he wanted to with words.
Booty Butt Cheeks
This has been brought up, but Faulkner wrote a 100 page story within a story written from the perspective of an idiot man-child. It was probably the most readable part of that entire book.
If Faulkner is “not complicated”, no writing is complicated.
by Johnny Slick on Jul 30, 2011 12:07 AM PDT up reply actions
George R.R. Martin
When nearly every other fantasy author is obsessed with copying Tolkien or abusing their thesauras, Martin’s clear and concise prose is a huge breath of fresh air.
yes, agreed.
Offseason 2011: The purge of Ruskell's Boy Scouts continues.
by Wayward Llama on Jul 30, 2011 2:02 PM PDT via mobile up reply actions
More of a Glen Cook fan myself.
Sounds similarly refreshing I mean.
"It was a dream come true to be the quarterback in Seattle; Bigger and better than anything I could have dreamed of." -Matthew Hasselbeck
Lord Palmerstone!!
"It was a dream come true to be the quarterback in Seattle; Bigger and better than anything I could have dreamed of." -Matthew Hasselbeck
by Cheddar28 on Aug 2, 2011 8:04 AM PDT up reply actions 2 recs
His other stuff... meh.
“Choke” was a’ight. I liked parts of “Lullabye”. He seems to have better ideas than stories for the most part. It doesn’t help my attitude towards him that I saw him give a talk at the apex of his popularity and all it was was a bunch of name-dropping. Guhhhhhhh.
Oh wait
I read that as “not complicated” to write, rather than to read. Definitely true in to read, as Orwell theorized in his famous essay
Formerly Known As Vasilii
by Thomas Beekers on Jul 29, 2011 4:55 PM PDT up reply actions
"Some people have a way with words
and some people not have way." – S. Martin
by Upton Jupiter on Aug 5, 2011 8:49 PM PDT up reply actions
Nothing exemplifies the point of this post more than this discussion.
A day-long conversation about literature leads the comments section. I love this place.
I've got ridiculous upside.
by Jacson Bevens on Aug 1, 2011 10:52 AM PDT up reply actions
Heh
Great of you to look this up, thanks. I for one sure have this elitist chip on my shoulder and now I know why Field Gulls always felt more like home than any other Seahawk site.
Confuscius say- "Baseball wrong. Man with four balls cannot walk."
by Outside Contain on Jul 29, 2011 1:34 PM PDT reply actions
You may want to narrow this down by site instead of just words
“site:fieldgulls.com” gives 71%/29%/0%
“site:bleacherreport.com” gives 54%/45%/<1%
“site:sbnation.com” gives 54%/46%/<1%
“site:ninersnation.com” gives 64%/36%/<1%
Before, you were measuring sites that included words. These are the actual sites.
Yes that's correct.
Of course if external references to a site didn’t also hold some kind of significance Google wouldn’t be market capitalized at $200B.
Head of catering.
by jacobstevens on Jul 29, 2011 2:32 PM PDT up reply actions
It actually means the results are inconclusive.
It’s not accurate to say searching for the string “field gulls” returns sites that include those words. If it were, search engines wouldn’t be so useful. Google counts pointers, basically, to determine a page’s relevance. It’s surprisingly accurate, when you think about it. Try it: there are a handful of irrelevant results out of the top 50+ for “field gulls,” the first one coming after the first 15 (which is deeper than many users bother with). But you don’t get a bunch of random results for every football & baseball team’s home turf, and you don’t get academic journals on how sea gulls are considered a ring species. You get content from within the fieldgulls.com domain, or other sites that referenced and discussed this site. But go deep enough and you’ll become immersed in irrelevant content. Deep, like several hundred results deep.
So since the macro discussion about the Seahawks, the macro discussion about this site’s discussion about the Seahawks, since that exceeds the boundaries of the site domain, arguably it would be more accurate to review the search string and not just the site, right?
Well there’s one other problem. “field gulls” returns about 5 million results, and “site:fieldgulls.com” returns 15,000 results. Huge difference. Not knowing the “reading level” methodology they employ, I can’t be confident in results on a relative drop in the bucket sample size, even if it more accurately filters out irrelevant results (eliminates false positives but also eliminates false negatives which should be included).
Besides, how accurate was it to begin with? What constitutes basic or advanced reading level? Counting big words? What if the content pays no regard to grammar, sentence structure, or discretionary use of superlatives? If you took a person new to the English language and had them read, would Bleacher Report be easier to read? Or significantly harder?
So I dunno. I’d toss the results and their significance.
Head of catering.
So what you're saying is all those searches for mutations of ras protooncogenes and p53 tumor suppressor gene in cardiac hemangiosarcomas and its effect on subatomic particles in the Andromeda Nebula's are paying off?
by B.B.Finnegan on Jul 29, 2011 3:23 PM PDT reply actions 2 recs
Hey, where's my paycheck?
For my entire life, our emerald city was set in the finest gold ring, upon a royal purple standard of excellence. The best will stumble, but the elite will always rise again.
Me like Seahawk
Seahawk good
by central_scrutinizer on Jul 30, 2011 10:16 PM PDT reply actions 3 recs
If you love great characterization & real dialogue,
you could hardly do better than Eddie Little or Charles Bukowski.
Though their names are never mentioned in English Lit classes.
by broadbill birdwatcher on Jul 31, 2011 1:24 PM PDT reply actions
Let's start bringing down gravitational singularity to make us look even more intelligent.
Searching now…..
You have to post things that will get indexed by Google.
Gravitational singularity is a single gravitation that ruins your season before it begins by making everyone smack into each other as hard as they can for no reason. The singularity calls this the “nutcracker drill.” The gravitation warps spacetime in a way that Alex Smith’s passes curve into Earl Thomas’ hands.
Head of catering.
by jacobstevens on Aug 1, 2011 10:15 AM PDT up reply actions
That's an excellent point which reminds me of enforced Marmaduke sterilization.
Enforced Marmaduke sterilization.
Regardless
I still like the dig at Niners Nation…… Then again Alex Smith’s “booksmarts” and “ability to learn quickly” (I think he finished his degree in 3 years at Utah) hasn’t translated especially well at the Pro level, now has it?
Hate to burst your bubble here...
When you scope the search to the actual site (rather than keywords to it), the results are quite different.
How's that working out for you... being clever? - Tyler Durden
That's been pointed out
Formerly Known As Vasilii
by Thomas Beekers on Aug 12, 2011 12:45 PM PDT up reply actions
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