Ian Simpson gave a very reasoned response to my recent blog entry about anti-intellectualism in mass culture. His comment regarded the word, “nerd”: “The term ‘nerd’ is often worn as a badge of honor these days by a substantial subset…
Ian Simpson gave a very reasoned response to my recent blog entry about anti-intellectualism in mass culture. His comment regarded the word, “nerd”: “The term ‘nerd’ is often worn as a badge of honor these days by a substantial subset…
Many people act as if they really believe the first line to St. John’s gospel, “In the beginning was the word.” They think by using a word or phrase they can create or deform the reality being described or make…
A while back I wrote about Parade’s use of the July Fourth celebration as a platform for worshipping celebrity culture. As I said then, it’s the “modus operandi” (the way it works) in the mass media. This past Sunday, Parade…
Another low point in the endless and senseless coverage of a married professional golfer’s extramarital affairs was Maureen Dowd’s smarmy attempt to find a trend in the actions of Tiger Woods and White House social secretary Desiree Rogers who might…
Here are some of the more than one million pages of news media, books and websites on the Internet that cite Ronald Reagan as having said, “Trust, but verify.” Many of the citers are writing about politics or foreign policy,…
No sooner did I post a rant about syntactical mistakes that editors (and teachers) hate to see, in yesterday’s blog on ways to get the media to toss away a news release, when low and behold—I pull from my mailbox…
The New York Times may be going a little too far in trying to make its Tuesday “Science Times” section accessible to the mythical average Joe-and-Jane. I’m sure many of my (perhaps mythical) readers know the section I’m talking about: It’s…
Michael Lynch, a so-called energy consultant who used to be involved in energy research at MIT’s Center for International Studies, has a silly little piece of specious reasoning in today’s New York Times. The point of Lynch’s article is that…
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