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DYING.
What a sight to see when you’ve got a cup of morning coffee in your hand.
From today’s David Brooks article
A worthwhile thought about the advent of Internet reading on our learning curve:
The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the medium. What matters is the way people think about themselves while engaged in the two activities. A person who becomes a citizen of the literary world enters a hierarchical universe. There are classic works of literature at the top and beach reading at the bottom.
A person enters this world as a novice, and slowly studies the works of great writers and scholars. Readers immerse themselves in deep, alternative worlds and hope to gain some lasting wisdom. Respect is paid to the writers who transmit that wisdom.
A citizen of the Internet has a very different experience. The Internet smashes hierarchy and is not marked by deference. Maybe it would be different if it had been invented in Victorian England, but Internet culture is set in contemporary America. Internet culture is egalitarian. The young are more accomplished than the old. The new media is supposedly savvier than the old media. The dominant activity is free-wheeling, disrespectful, antiauthority disputation.
These different cultures foster different types of learning. The great essayist Joseph Epstein once distinguished between being well informed, being hip and being cultivated. The Internet helps you become well informed — knowledgeable about current events, the latest controversies and important trends. The Internet also helps you become hip — to learn about what’s going on, as Epstein writes, “in those lively waters outside the boring mainstream.”
But the literary world is still better at helping you become cultivated, mastering significant things of lasting import. To learn these sorts of things, you have to defer to greater minds than your own. You have to take the time to immerse yourself in a great writer’s world. You have to respect the authority of the teacher.
Right now, the literary world is better at encouraging this kind of identity. The Internet culture may produce better conversationalists, but the literary culture still produces better students.
Is ___________ a liberal?
[Flash 10 is required to watch video]
Create a BP oil spill on any website. Lovely.
…one in ten American homes uses electricity from Russian missiles and bombs.
In part thanks to the Megatons to Megawatts program. Pretty Cool.
What is fun, yet tasteful?
That’s right. A bouncy Titanic.
A bouncy castle version of the Titanic - complete with inflatable icebergs - has been branded “sick” by critics at a toy trade fair.
The 40ft high slide is a replica of the ill-fated luxury liner which sank on its maiden voyage to New York in 1912 drowning 1,517 passengers and crew.
It shows the crippled liner sinking with its keel raised high in the air as if it is just about to disappear under the waves forever.
Organisers of the bouncy castle fair in Ibach, Switzerland, say the exhibit has gone down well with visitors.
But Switzerland’s Titanic Club spokesman Gunter Babler said: “Is it ethical to let kids slide down the decks of a blow up Titanic? Hundreds of people died sliding down those decks.”
And one visitor said: “It’s pretty sick. It’s like having a bouncy graveyard.
“No-one could forget that scene from the Titanic movie with all the people sliding down the decks to their deaths. It’s very insensitive.”
But organiser Franziska Bhend explained: “The tragic Titanic accident happened years ago and those emotions have been dealt with long ago.
“Now people are having fun on the slide and enjoying themselves.”
If you don’t understand how awesome this is, I don’t need to know you.
