6 posts tagged “ny times”

Bastardy, gambling, changing employers without permission, false pretense, “selling cotton after sunset”: these were all grounds for arrest in rural Alabama by 1890.

Being crazy doesn’t make you stupid.

At one time justification of the arts and humanities was unnecessary because, as Anthony Kronman puts it in a new book, “Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life,” it was assumed that “a college was above all a place for the training of character, for the nurturing of those intellectual and moral habits that together form the basis for living the best life one can.”

- Will the Humanities Save Us? by Stanley Fish, Think Again (NY Times Blog), 01.06.08

Considering I have a Sociology degree with a minor in Creative Writing, I can't say that my college classes prepared me exceptionally well for my current career but that freshman year focused on The Roots of Western Civilization and Philosophy definitely have informed who I am and the choices I make. I consider Morality and Ethics and Truth and big ticket concepts like them in my every day life. I cycle through those words and ideas that resonated in class in real world scenarios all the time. I learned, perhaps more than anything, to continue to acquire knowledge. I don't believe I know everything or learned it all in kindergarten. My classes may not have taught me how to put together a great power point deck or excel at project and people management but I've acquired those skills and I use those character-enhancing handouts and discussions and microfiche sessions and trips to museums as constant reference points in my quest to be a good human being.

Goodness, I hope we still value our universities as those kinds of training grounds.

update: edited for grammar, 01.13.08

Advice about when and where not to read was once a medical specialty.

Revamping Disney.com has been a No. 1 priority for Mr. Iger, who has sought to extend the Disney brand by embracing new digital media. But behind the revamping, analysts and others say there is an equally pressing issue facing Mr. Iger, one that many entertainment conglomerates may face in the coming years: Who should be running the company’s Internet properties?

Sometimes I forget that I'm part of something big.

One controller is shaped like a sleek television remote (sometimes called the Wii-mote); the other plugs into the remote with a short wire, creating a vague resemblance to the two-handled martial-arts weapon it is named for, the nunchuk.

And beneath the controllers’ white plastic shells are an array of time-tested digital technologies working together in new ways.

- At the Heart of the Wii, Micron-Size Machines by Michel Marriott. The New York Times, 12.21.06

Now if only stores actually had wii-motes and nunchuks in stock...