Thursday, February 14, 2008

“This is just like Pearl Harbor”



.....FROM this morning’s New York Times:
Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?:
.....A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”
.....Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”
.....Such, uh, lack of global awareness is the kind of thing that drives Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of American Unreason,” up a wall….
.....Ms. Jacoby, whose book came out on Tuesday, doesn’t zero in on a particular technology or emotion, but rather on what she feels is a generalized hostility to knowledge….
.....But now, Ms. Jacoby said, something different is happening: anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”) have fused in a particularly insidious way.
.....Not only are citizens ignorant about essential scientific, civic and cultural knowledge, she said, but they also don’t think it matters.
.....She pointed to a 2006 National Geographic poll that found nearly half of 18- to 24-year-olds don’t think it is necessary or important to know where countries in the news are located. So more than three years into the Iraq war, only 23 percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map.
.....Ms. Jacoby, dressed in a bright red turtleneck with lipstick to match, was sitting, appropriately, in that temple of knowledge, the New York Public Library’s majestic Beaux Arts building on Fifth Avenue. The author of seven other books, she was a fellow at the library when she first got the idea for this book back in 2001, on 9/11.
.....Walking home to her Upper East Side apartment, she said, overwhelmed and confused, she stopped at a bar. As she sipped her bloody mary, she quietly listened to two men, neatly dressed in suits. For a second she thought they were going to compare that day’s horrifying attack to the Japanese bombing in 1941 that blew America into World War II:
..... “This is just like Pearl Harbor,” one of the men said.
.....The other asked, “What is Pearl Harbor?”
..... “That was when the Vietnamese dropped bombs in a harbor, and it started the Vietnam War,” the first man replied.
.....At that moment, Ms. Jacoby said, “I decided to write this book.”….

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh wow - we have a lot of work to do. She needs help. We need help.

Anonymous said...

I mentioned Barry Goldwater in class the other day, so the "conservatives" would have a sense of their history. The confusion was palpable.

Anonymous said...

Wow is right, with a figure like hers, who needs kowledge? Anyone can be smart, just ask any ugly ass Berkely liberal who thinks their freedom comes from a book.

Anonymous said...

Oh! Well put 1:57! Can you see your colon yet?

Anonymous said...

1:57 must be one handsome fellow, based on his obvious ability to attract women who look like that.

Can we see a picture, oh magnificent one?

Anonymous said...

You really think 1:57 is a fella?

Me, too. Gotta be.

Anonymous said...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7007109937779036019&pr=goog-sl

I challenge you to popst this video on your blog, Chuunk. Let's hear about the corrupt left for a change.

Anonymous said...

College Students Gone Wild? This shooter wasn't some redneck right-wing neanderthal. He was a fellow intellectual who was embraced by the liberal faculty and touted as being brilliant.

Grady said Kazmierczak parked his car near Cole Hall but it was not known how long he had been on campus. During his time at NIU, Grady said, "He was somewhat revered."

NIU President John Peters also said on Friday ABC's "Good Morning America," "By all accounts that we can tell right now (he) was a very good student that the professors thought well of."

Suspected Campus Shooter Had Been Honored by School. Northern Illinois University Shooting The shooter had been a graduate student in sociology at Northern Illinois as recently as spring 2007, but was not currently enrolled at the 25,000-student campus, Peters said. He also said the gunman had no record of police contact or an arrest record while attending the university, about 65 miles west of Chicago.

He was currently enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said NIU spokeswoman Melanie Magara.

The important question is, how could this happen in a "Gun Free Zone?"

Anonymous said...

8:12 should get his own blog - really.

We'll all come visit!

I promise!

Anonymous said...

Nah, I'd rather visit the enemy's camp whether invited or not vis-a-vis, Code Stink in Beserkly.

Anonymous said...

Don't feed the trolls, people!

Anonymous said...

Off your meds today, 10:30? Have mom make you a sandwich when she gets home. Ovaltine will help, too.

Anonymous said...

Be careful as to how you talk to people you think are off their meds, 11:16.

Anonymous said...

Good point, 7:35. 10:30 is the type to show up armed and dangerous, dontcha think?

torabora said...

Google "Zombie Time". You'll viddie mucho freaks both on and off meds in the Peoples Republic of Bezerkly and environs.

The photographs speak for themselves.

Anonymous said...

I thought Zombie Time was a list of Bush's business hack appointees.

torabora said...

2:38 Thanks to the cross cultural fertilization that DtB provides, you learned you were wrong today. I get things wrong too. Then I reorient on the basis of my new information.

There are many variations on this theme. Most of them come out of the business world and manufacturing process controls. In politics people tend to get "stuck on stupid" despite evidence. Our political parties are paragons of bigotry, which is stupidity at its finest. The right thinks wealth is the end all be all of existence and hates the poor. The left thinks the rich need taxed to death and loves the poor. It's screwed up.

Anyway, enjoy Zombie Time. Be sure to page up the Folsom Street Fair photos! Perhaps you guys can have one in Irvine.

Anonymous said...

TB, your usual decent attempt at dialogue is skewed in the last part:

"The right thinks wealth is the end all be all of existence and hates the poor. The left thinks the rich need taxed to death and loves the poor."

This is too simplistic, and the variables are much more complex. I know of no leftie who believes the rich should be taxed to death, whatever that means. Just that they pay a fair share of their looting of the economy. Many on the right are tools of theocratic manipulators, and do not hate the poor as much as they could not care less.

torabora said...

Hey, I got a bite!

10:06 just how much is taxed enough?

If you are single and make something more than 100k the state and fed take half of the amount over that.

Taxman: one for you...one for me!

When you look at the tax rake, the top 50% pay 97% of all the federal income tax. It's progressive as hell...The top 1% pay waaaay more than their "fair share". It's done out of a sense of what is "disposable income". You "need" so much money to have an "adequate" standard of living. The rest is play money. The poor get off scot-free in this game (re INCOME TAXES!!!...I know what you are thinking!) but the rich pay pay and pay some more.

For the record, home buying me pays 11% in federal tax on gross income.That will go up as I pay my mortgage off.I'd feel alot better about that if the feds balanced their budget...like I do. On that count, screw Bush!

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...