Why Smart People Have to Embrace Video
Life changing… In 1985, Neil Postman published a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death. Every once in a while you read a book that completely changes the way you see the world. Once (or maybe twice) you read a...
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New Members of Congress Today, some 1500 years after the Fall of the Roman Empire, historians still search for the reasons for the collapse of the greatest and most durable Empire the world has ever known. And one that...
Read moreHow Do You Know We’re Living In The Roman Empire?
The idiot in chief… One of the most influential books I ever read was Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. Published in 1984, it was seminal in shaping my thinking about the impact of television on our culture....
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ha ha ha… all very amusing… When I was growing up there were two books that provided alternative views of what the future might look like. One was 1984, by George Orwell, a totalitarian view of a world run...
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Neil Postman 1931-2003 Every once in a while you read a book that changes your life. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman was such a book for me. Although I read it in 1985, it was a book...
Read moreTHE CUL-DE-SAC OF CULTURE
Although we like to credit Gutenberg with the printing press, the concept of movable type actually originated here, in China. During the Ch’ing-li period (1041-1048), an alchemist named Pi Sheng conceived of the notion of movable carved blocks for...
Read moreDebatable, part 2
Tonight at 7PM…. Lincoln v. Douglass. Tune in…. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, Republican candidate for the Senate from Illinois, and Stephen Douglass, Democratic candidate conducted a series of seven debates across the state of Illinois. In these debates, each...
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