I’m at Bibles International for a week to hear Glenn Kerr talk about Hebrew discourse analysis and Bill Smallman talk about cross-cultural communication. I’m reading a very interesting book on the latter topic, Teaching Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for...
Culture
It Doesn’t Get Much Better than This
It doesn't get much better than this... ...except that my alma mater's own Warren Cook did it better in 1998 (?) on one of the only two cassette tapes I still treasure. I don't know how he did it—some passages aren't even as clear as those of the great choir (Canada's...
ACPADI Book Club—Creation Regained Week 2, Chapter 2: “Creation”
It’s hard to write a brief post on this chapter! Don’t feel you have to read the whole summary; it’s here for your use and mine both now and in the future. Just pick out what interests you in the book, scan my post to see if I added anything, and make a comment....
Three Effects of New Technologies, From Someone Who Was Both More and Less Truly Oracular Than McLuhan
Neil Postman was more oracular than Marshall McLuhan because his predictions, in my limited experience, came true more spectacularly. Postman was less oracular than McLuhan because his predictions made sense to normal people. One of Postman’s predictions/descriptions...
McLuhan Quote 3
Today, a kind of quote from McLuhan which gives rise to the kind of article Alan Jacobs just wrote at The New Atlantis. Some of McLuhan’s pronouncements are so confidently oracular and yet so nonsensical that you sort of scratch your head and say, “I guess he’s just...
McLuhan Quote 2
Marshall McLuhan in 1976: Interviewer: What would happen if you could shut off television for 30 days in the entire United States of America? McLuhan: It would be a kind of hangover effect, because it’s a very addictive medium. You take it away and people develop all...
Nick Kristof Is Right and (A Lot of) TV Preachers Are Wrong
Kristof says: Centuries ago, serious religious study was extraordinarily demanding and rigorous; in contrast, anyone could declare himself a scientist and go in the business of, say, alchemy. These days, it’s the reverse. A Ph.D. in chemistry is a rigorous degree,...
McLuhan Quote 1
It’s the 100th anniversary of the birth of Marshall McLuhan, the great media theorist. It’s time for some quotes. This one’s about the meaning of a phrase he coined (or popularized?), the “global village.” There are more quotes to come. The global village is not...
Five Steps to Pleasure
I listened to Marvin Olasky interview Stanley Fish, in part about his new book, How to Write a Sentence. Stanley Fish cited a great sentence in this piece by John Updike, and further called that piece the greatest sport essay in history—if my memory serves. I saved...
Get Motivated!
All the Cool People from another sector of American reality, a much bigger sector than mine, are coming to my town. Plenty of dogs and ponies will make an appearance in the show. But I am more interested in the promised goods. I’m told that if I come, I will get...
Same Old Fish
Marvin Olasky asks Stanley Fish intelligent questions. Check out the audio, too.
Four American Cultural Assumptions Revealed
When we address our culture, we have the benefit of lifelong immersion in it. But alas, that blessing is also a curse, for like fish in water, we cannot see the medium in which we swim. It is hardest to see what is always before our eyes, hardest to remark on values...