Too Much Technology?

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Bevil Bramwell, OMI, has a very interesting column that appeared Sunday on the Catholic Thing web site. Here’s an excerpt:

Thomas Aquinas makes a striking comment about imagination: “because a man seeks to occupy a higher grade as to accidentals, which can increase without the destruction of the subject, he can also seek a higher grade of nature.” Here is the heart of the problem: for all its usefulness technology is accidental, peripheral.

Yes, I too appreciate twenty-first century medicine and the car and other technological gains. But that is not the real business of becoming more human. It’s telling how many people show an odd identification with Steve Jobs. The BBC calls it a cult. Some people built their lives around Apple technology. This is not like a locomotive driver whose life depends on the locomotive. The driver still produces useful services for society. But those in a cult? Not so much. The focus of the Jobs cult seems not the great spiritual struggle, but simply a fashionable way to fill time, to connect with people who are not here (perhaps while not connecting with people who are here), to get caught in the flow of facts and not to achieve real knowledge.

It ties in to something I’ve felt for a long time, that technology has become for many people a means of escape from real life.

Miscellaneous Musings, Tuesday, July 12, 2011

This is from Mark Steyn’s column Selective Shaming on National Review On Line. It seems there’s been massive test fraud on the standard achievement tests conducted by the Atlanta Public School system. It’s a clear example of the core problem with unions of any kind; the object becomes protection of the union workers and jobs and to heck with any other goal, like actually doing the job. How long will taxpayers continue to put up with this kind of thing?

The APS [Atlanta Public Schools] Human Resources honcho Millicent Few illegally had an early report into test-tampering destroyed. So APS not only got the federal gravy but was also held up to the nation at large as a heartwarming, inspirational example of how large urban school districts can reform themselves and improve educational opportunities for their children. And its fake test scores got its leader, Beverly Hall, garlanded with the National Superintendent of the Year Award, the Administrator of the Year Award, the Distinguished Public Service Award, the Keystone Award for Leadership in Education, the Concerned Black Clergy Education Award, the American Association of School Administrators Effie H. Jones Humanitarian Award, and a zillion other phony-baloney baubles with which the American edu-fraud cartel scratches its own back.


In reality, Beverly Hall’s Atlanta Public Schools system was in the child-abuse business: It violated the education of its students in order to improve its employees’ cozy sinecures. The whole rotten, stinking school system is systemically corrupt from the superintendent down. But what are the chances of APS being closed down? How many of those fraudulent non-teachers will waft on within the system until their lucrative retirements?

What Happens if You Don't Follow Policy

According to the AP, (P)MSNBC has "suspended" Keith Olberman for making political contributions this year.  A quote from this story goes as follows:

NEW YORK (AP) — MSNBC has suspended prime-time host Keith Olbermann indefinitely without pay for contributing to the campaigns of three Democratic candidates this election season.



Olbermann acknowledged to NBC that he donated $2,400 apiece to the campaigns of Kentucky Senate candidate Jack Conway and Arizona Reps. Raul Grivalva and Gabrielle Giffords.


NBC News prohibits its employees from working on, or donating to, political campaigns unless a special exception is granted by the news division president — effectively a ban. Olbermann's bosses did not find out about the donations until after they were made. The website Politico first reported the donations.

My first thought was that, in light of the fact that Olberman is an opinion journalist, (I think that's what he is, I've never watched him) it was wrong of the network to, effectively, fire him.  He didn't pretend to be a reporter, as far as I know.  However, the key to the situation is in the last paragraph above: he made those contributions in violation of network policy.

Again, this situation boils down to one similar to PBS' firing of Juan Williams; an employer has a right to fire an employee.  NBC is, in fact, apparently in a much stronger position in this case than was PBS in the earlier incident.  This isn't a matter of free speech as far as I can tell.

We should all calm down and determine the facts.

Honest Abe - GEICO Commercial

So often, commericals these days are, how shall I put it, stupid.  Those Sonic commercials come to mind.  Companies that approve commercials like that, to me, are saying their customers are idiots.  What is worse, I think, is that such commercials don't accomplish what they intend, the selling of a particular product. Sorry to be so blunt.  I think the only reason I can fairly say that, is that there is evidence that ad agencies still exist that are capable of being creative and getting their message across at the same time.  One shining example, one that appears too infrequently on TV, is this Geico Abe Lincoln commercial.  It's real, at least for us guys, because we've all been there.  C'mon ladies, you know it's true. 

The only other thing I could add is, that while Abe Lincoln was an honest man, he wasn't a stupid man.