Food for thought

“The more instantaneous our technology, the more we are losing the ability to communicate. Twitter and text-messaging result in economy of expression, not in clarity or beauty. Millions are becoming premodern — communicating in electronic grunts that substitute for effective and dignified expression. Indeed, by inventing new abbreviations and linguistic shortcuts, we are losing a shared written language altogether, in a way analogous to the fragmentation of Latin as the Roman Empire imploded into tribal provinces. No wonder the public is drawn to stories like The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, in which characters speak beautifully and believe in age-old values.

Life is not just acquisition and consumption. Engaging English prose uplifts the spirit in a way Twittering cannot. The anti-Christ video shown by the Smithsonian at the National Portrait Gallery will fade when the Delphic Charioteer or Michelangelo’s David does not. Appreciation of the history of great art and music fortifies the soul, and recognizes beauty that does not fade with the passing fad.

America has lots of problems. A population immersed in and informed by literature, history, art, and music is not one of them.”

In Defense of the Liberal Arts – Victor Davis Hanson – National Review Online.

Something else for Al Gore to worry about

Too funny… had to post in its entirety:

December 19, 2008

Letter to the editor
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but I have detected a new crisis that I have named “the daylight change crisis”. I first noticed it sometime around the end of June this year. I started paying attention and created computer models and sure enough I was right! We are losing daylight at an astonishing rate. Each day we are losing approximately 2 minutes of day light and my computer models predict total darkness by next July.

I have been able to detect this phenomenon around the entire Northern Hemisphere. And here is the scary part: the day light appears to be leaking to the Southern Hemisphere.

I thought I should bring it to the attention of great scientists like Al Gore so he can help solve this new crisis.

Richard Strimple