Clifford Stoll writing in Newsweek back in February, 1995:
‘Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.’
I’d buy that for a dollar.
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‘How To Spot And Critique Censorship Tropes In The Media’s Coverage Of Free Speech Controversies:’
‘In discussing our First Amendment rights, the media routinely begs the question — it adopts stock phrases and concepts that presume that censorship is desirable or constitutional, and then tries to pass the result off as neutral analysis. This promotes civic ignorance and empowers deliberate censors.’
Sometimes, it’s an ‘anti-mentor’ who can help you see the light.
Don’t count on these fools to protect speech, and keep an eye on those politicians as well (which way blow ye winds of political expedience?):
‘The important thing to understand about journalists is that they are the lowest ranking intellectuals. That is to say: they are members of the intellectual class, but in the status hierarchy of intellectuals, journalists are at the bottom. That is why they have traditionally adopted the status cues of the working class: the drinking and the swearing, the anti-establishment values and the commitment to the non-professionalization of journalism.’
and on professors:
‘The important thing to understand about academics is that they are the highest rank of intellectuals. That is why they have traditionally adopted the status symbols of the 19th-century British leisured class—the tweeds and the sherry and the learning of obscure languages—while shunning the sorts of things that are necessary for people for whom status is something to be fought for through interaction with the normal members of society (such as reasonably stylish clothing, minimal standards of hygiene, basic manners).‘
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This blog is hankering for some Chili’s. Chili’s in Jersey City, that is.
It appears to be mere chain-food for tourists and some locals.
But what does it mean as an experience? How should I live? How can I escape the culinary cul-de-sacs of suburban life and finally see what it means to be living?
Dear reader, that’s where the New Yorker comes in.
Let’s get a writer in there to dissect the tchocthkes, and introspect on the Self in the suburbs and the many interior lives of tourists moving through the modern world.
Let’s send a neuroscience grad student in there to see what the diners’ brain scans might say about uniformity of dining experience and how we might form memories.
As long as they stick to the restaurant reviews, and shut the f**k up about politics, radical literature and (S)elf-introspection (the navel-gazing, clueless kind), I’m more inclined to read: