“In an age when higher education is threatened with a relentless technology that threatens to dispense with human beings altogether, Professor Van Doren exemplified a tradition of inquiry that celebrates personal interaction as the path to a meaningful education — one shaped by spontaneity, emotion and, yes, reverence.”
2. “Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?”
“As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.
“But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount.”
3. “Pick Your Poison, Dark or Light”
“Why do some people prefer to belt out a peppy Abba song in the happy knowledge that the heroine will get her guy in the end (Mamma Mia!), while others opt to hang on every malign word that issues from that smeary rictus on the face of Batman’s nemesis (The Dark Knight)?”
4. “Putting the Dream Car Out to Pasture”
“Beyond the bad economic news may lurk a less remarked shift in Americans’ psyches: a change in the role the automobile occupies in people’s emotional lives and self-image. For decades, automakers pitched cars as sex symbols, as extensions of drivers’ freedom or affluence or eye for beauty. Even if that pitch is inverted — if hybrids or minicars become the most desirable wheels, bespeaking a driver’s thriftiness or environmental sensitivity — is it really possible to be passionate about a compromise?”
5. “The Territory of Sugarland (Maps Handy)”
“To Sugarland this diversity gives the album its distinctive identity; too often, the members say, country songwriters tend to copy their hits and stick with what works. ‘Eventually what you get is: “I can’t figure out which George Strait record to buy because I don’t know which song is on which record. All 50 of them are great, but you can’t tell them apart,”’ Mr. Bush said.”
6. “Shout-Outs to Mom and God? See Online”
“For those who care to dig (usually with much squinting), scanning the small-print data crammed into album packaging can be tremendous fun, revealing aspects of an artist not always evident in the music.”
7. “Steven Spielberg’s Director’s Cut”
“But now that the big studios are all firmly embedded in big corporations, profit margins are the obsession. Add in skyrocketing star salaries and ballooning marketing costs, which have hammered margins, and pop go the sweetheart deals. ‘Big names don’t carry the same weight they used to,’ said Harold L. Vogel, an independent media analyst.”
8. “First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry.”
“The students who create and give away digital copies are motivated not by financial self-interest but by something more powerful: the sweet satisfaction of revenge.”
“Campaigns to educate students about the pitfalls of Facebook — how professors, parents and prospective employers can use the social networking site to uncover information once considered private — have become a staple of freshman orientation sessions and career center clinics. Students are apparently listening.”
“Every indicator suggests we’re the shoppingest society that’s ever lived; every day, we purchase more stuff, produce more trash, descend deeper into debt and feel the press of commercial desire grow ever more intense.”
11. “Mind Over What’s the Matter”
“Neiman, an American who is currently the director of the Einstein Forum in Berlin, boldly asserts that when Marxism, postmodernism, theory and fundamentalism challenge the Enlightenment they invariably come off second best. I agree, and I wish more people did so.”
“Readers with a sci-fi bent might, upon completing this book, decide that the 1973 film Soylent Green should no longer be viewed as merely a schlocky doomsday vehicle for Charlton Heston, but as an almost plausible peek at the year 2022, when global warming and overpopulation have rendered the earth inhospitable to most plants and animals, and steak and strawberries are black market goods consumed only by the super-rich.”
“In recent years, a growing number of writers, from the best-selling to the less so, have hit the rubber-chicken circuit, speaking at colleges and businesses, chambers of commerce, trade fairs and medical conventions.”
