By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Aug 23, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
The Twitterization of Higher Education
I’m excited for my son who is starting college this fall at one of the nation’s finest liberal arts institutions, Centre College.
I am a passionate believer in the value of a liberal arts education. I think a strong liberal arts education is the best foundation for vocational and civic preparation. Developing and honing thinking and communication skills is the foundation for success in most every job and will help ensure informed civic involvement. And, the liberal arts just makes for a richer inner life. Besides, what other form of education can both best prepare you for the technical tasks ahead and simultaneously help you convincingly rationalize why you are glad you failed if things don’t work out?
The liberal arts just make practical sense.
And I am grateful that our technically sophisticated world waited until a few thousand contemplative years had passed before we began communicating in Tweets, texts, IMing, and Facebook messaging, Imagine if the Platonic dialogues had been a series of cell phone texts between Socrates and Plato.
Or if Henry David Thoreau had Tweeted (and ReTweeted) his reflections at Walden in a series of 140 or fewer character insights instead of writing prose?
Imagine the Federalist Papers being hammered out by Jay, Madison and Hamilton in Facebook posts, comments, messages—complete with “Likes” and links to inspirational quotes and funny pictures. And of course with text acronyms (ROFLMAO, LOL, OMG WTF and the like).
It just wouldn’t be the same. It would still be an education, I suppose, but not convey much that inspires or enlightens. And it would produce a society of Dennis Leary’s– fast talking, sarcastic, misanthropic entertainers. We need Dennis Learys, no doubt about it. But not that many.
I suppose there is certainly irony in the fact that I am putting these thoughts in a Facebook post. Our modern social media is brilliant at forcing us to think quickly and condense richer thoughts into communicable fragments that are adequate to the task. Twitter, Facebook and texting allows instantaneous communication to a mind-bogglingly vast audience. And that provides incredible societal benefits.
Those benefits are primarily for data-driven communications. And that makes our world a safer, higher functioning and more efficient place. But the liberal arts and contemplative life makes our world a more interesting place— and allows us to create a more meaningful life.
I embrace both. Why? The Golden Mean, as the Greeks called it. The often desirable middle between two extremes.
And I learned that as part of a liberal arts education.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Aug 23, 2012 at 10:45 AM ET
The Politics of Tech
Matthew Inman of “The Oatmeal” successfully managed to raise $500,000 in two days to go towards a museum honoring Nikola Tesla. [Guardian]
In 6 days, with help from Inman the project raised it target amount of $875,000. With NY state matching the raised amount that puts the project at over $1.7 million. [The Next Web]
“Google’s Motorola division claims Apple is infringing on seven of its patents and wants to block iPhone, iPad, and Mac computers from being imported to the U.S.” [Digital Trends]
Here is a list of the 20 Most watched TED talks so far. If you don’t know what a TED talk is you should acquaint yourself with them by watching a couple of the videos on the list that sound interesting to you. [TED Blog]
Instead of buying Instagram for $1 billion cash, the deal was $300 million in cash and about 23 million shares of Facebook stock. The Instagram founders are out almost $300 million. [NY Times]
In a move that I’m surprised took this long to happen “eBay bans ‘intangible’ items including spells, curses & advice” [Wired]
There has always been a measured slickness in how Barack Obama’s political operation has handled race, the third rail in politics. They have taken the guards off the rail and made an old obstacle an instrument of fashion. And they have done so with an instinct for the genuine and legitimate guilt surrounding race in American life. As political maneuver, it is a thing of grace in some ways.
At least until the thing turns shameless and expedient. Bill Clinton got the first dose of the treatment, when he protested that Obama’s credentials as an anti-war stalwart were “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen.” That comment was then shape-shifted from a hard political jab at Obama’s rhetorical dodges on the Iraq War to an insinuation that the notion that Obama could win the presidency was wishful fantasy. No dispassionate observer who saw the video and heard Clinton in full cry would have arrived at the seamier interpretation, but with the nudging of Axelrod and Co., and with a little help from South Carolina’s congressman Jim Clyburn, the idea that Clinton meant much worse took hold.
The punch that Clinton absorbed was uncocked repeatedly. Sometimes on defense — when the Jeremiah Wright tapes surfaced, for example, the reasonable question of what drew Obama to a church with a history of incendiary rhetoric was cleverly converted to a teaching moment about an older generation’s fixation with race. When questions about the link between Obama and his old neighbor and fundraiser William Ayers started to burn, the line of inquiry was brushed off as an indirect method of raising fears about black radicalism, and it soon faded.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Obama’s Hidden-Hand Politics
By Bradford Queen, Managing Editor, on Wed Aug 22, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
The Politics of Faith
David Jang, an influential Christian leader in Asia, is hailed by some followers as the “second coming of Christ.” [Christianity Today]
President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney share their perspectives on faith in the latest edition of the National Cathedral’s Cathedral Age magazine. [National Cathedral]
Catholics are split over voting for the Romney-Ryan ticket. Paul Ryan, Romney’s choice for VP, is a Catholic. [CNN]
A new study shows that the size of megachurches are part of their appeal to members, and that members find it easier to worship in a crowd and get involved. [Live Science]
Ministers are finding social media, especially Twitter, to be a teaching tool and a way to connect with church members. [Baptist Press]
Current TV host, and former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer interviewed our own contributing RP, Jeff Smith, about the scandal swirling around MO GOP Senate nominee Todd Akin for his outrageous comments concerning rape and pregnancy. Smith served in the Missouri legislature with Akin, and has some fascinating insights. Watch below:
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Aug 22, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Has this ever happened to you?
Sometimes during the day I find myself realizing –after it is apparent to everyone else involved–that I have made a blunder of some sort.
I may try to fix the mistake in mid-air, so to speak.
But rarely can.
Then my mind races for a plausible excuse for why I did the dumb thing I did. After that usually fails, I try to think of a way to blame it on someone or something else.
It’s about that time I hear a voice in my head say matter-of-factly, “Clean up on aisle three.”
Here’s one 23-year Washington veteran (and friend of The RP) who became so frustrated by the Obama Justice Department’s failure to make Wall Street investigations a top priority that he moved to Savannah to write a book about it.
Jeff Connaughton, a former Biden Senate staffer and Clinton White House lawyer, most recently served as chief of staff to then Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE), who chaired two oversight hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee on financial fraud prosecution — the first in December 2009 and a second in September 2010.
Check out this review in Main Justice, and read an exclusive excerpt of “The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins” below:
Click here to review and purchase
“For me, what is deplorable is not the Justice Department’s failure to bring charges, but its failure to be adequately dedicated and organized either to make the cases or reach a fully informed judgment that no case could be made.
Given the inadequate effort, as President Obama virtually admitted in his 2012 State of the Union address when he announced the formation of yet another task force (which remains an ill-staffed farce), we’ll never know what an appropriate effort would have produced. And that has resulted in the appearance of a double standard.
If the explanation for the inadequate effort is corruption (the administration could not afford to anger Wall Street contributors), the revolving door, or a belief that the health of the financial industry is more important than legal accountability, then we have an actual double standard.
I don’t know the explanation, but in terms of faith in our institutions, it may not matter whether the double standard is real or apparent. That double standard has torn the social and moral fabric of our country in a way I find to be unforgivable.”
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Aug 21, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Your Inner Jack?
Yeah, c’mon….admit it.
Every guy, deep down, has an inner-Jack Nicholson wanting to get out.
You know what I mean. Some prefer to call it the “wild man” or the “id” (those who fear it call it less flattering names) —but it’s there and is a vital creative life force in all men that is better to be embraced and let out for exercise than contained, condemned, suppressed and ignored.
To hate it is to hate ourselves.
To kill it is to kill an essential part of ourselves.
So, go for it. Give in –at least once this weekend–to your inner Jack.
At long last, thanks to the folks at ESPN, WSOP.com, Caesar’s, Veetle.com, and our extraordinary Webmaster, Justin Burnette, we are now proud to share with you video from The RP’s impossible journey to the final table of the 2012 World Series of Poker, $1000-buy-in no limit Texas hold ’em event. (Click here to read his full account.)
Specifically, the video below shows the final twenty minutes of The RP’s four day, 40 hour marathon in which he finished in 8th place out of the original 4,260 entries.
The folks at ESPN obviously knew The RP’s best side, so most of the video of the final table is shot from behind our erstwhile blogger, who sits in front center of the screen, back to camera, in a white shirt with blue sleeves and a tan No Labels hat — which unfortunately, had no label on its back. So we miss his poker face — and the naive surprise in his eyes for having the extraordinary luck to be where he was.
But, we do get to see some entertaining hands in these 20 minutes: The RP surviving two all-ins in which he was the big underdog; an opponent with a much larger stack getting eliminated, thereby earning The RP an additional $14,000; and the final hand in which The RP gracefully exits the stage.
The Twitterization of Higher Education
