Background Probability

The Agnostic Popular Front has moved to its new home at Skeptic Ink, and will henceforth be known as Background Probability. Despite the relocation and rebranding, we will continue to spew the same low-fidelity high-quality bullshit that you've come to expect.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Reading this week

UnreasonI am only a few chapters into this one and already a bit disappointed with its tone and substance. Jeremiads I can handle, but only when the call to repentance embodies something more than mere cultural conservatism for its own sake.

"Hey, you kids, get off my cultural landscape!"

I love reading Shakespeare while listening to Bach at least as much as any thirty-something I've ever met, and guess what: I can do both on my eeePC laptop or my iPhone! Luddism is not the answer, Ms. Jacoby. Using our new technology in an ongoing exploration for ever expanding knowledge by internalizing a sense of intellectual curiosity is a far better hope for ourselves and our progeny, and it may be far easier to do this using screens than forcing ourselves back to ink and paper.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is on my amazon list. I'm wondering if I should remove it now after reading this.

Damion said...

My advice is to check it out from the library and read the final chapter, in which she attempts to pull out of what has by that point become a depressing downward spiral of cultural fatalism - and (alas) augers on in.

IMO = $.02 (no refunds)

Anonymous said...

i actually prefer to watch professional wrestling on mute while listening to Bach...

such activity helps me reconcile cultural ranges.