The Teeming Brain

Last November when I was at the World Fantasy Convention in Austin, I attended a panel discussion about the current state of the horror genre. One of the panelists was anthologist and editor Stephen Jones, who needs no introduction to anybody who’s paid serious attention to horror fiction for the past twenty years or so. As the longtime editor of one of the industry-standard annual anthologies, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror — as well as literally dozens of additional books — Steve has helped both to gauge and to establish horror fiction’s constantly shifting identity. His stature is only enhanced by the string of high-level credits he’s amassed over the years as a publicist and consultant for various prominent horror films (e.g., Hellraiser, Nightbreed).

Given all this, I was thrilled when my boldness in introducing myself to him after the panel led, via a series of post-convention emails, to his agreeing to be interviewed by me. The interview stretched over a long series of emails spanning several months and, I’m pleased to say, will be appearing in a future issue of Cemetery Dance magazine (issue #59, which I believe may be published late in 2007). I’m also pleased to say that Steve was quite happy with the way the interview turned out, and in fact said he felt it was one of the best he’d ever done.

What led me to crave an interview with him was the things he said during that WFC panel discussion about the precipitous decline of reading and literacy in contemporary society. Readers of The Teeming Brain will know that this parallels a concern I’ve been pursuing for quite some time. But I was previously unaware that Stephen Jones shares many of my thoughts. It goes without saying that his status in modern publishing lends an extra weight to his views on such matters.

Below is a snippet from my interview/conversation with him. If you find it interesting, then I urge you to keep an eye out for Cemetery Dance #59 later this year.

* * * * *

MC: I was absolutely riveted at WFC when I heard you talk about the declining levels of readership across the board in Britain and America, and about the way this is affecting the writing and publishing industry. Then just a week or two after I returned from the convention, I read your year’s-end summary in the new edition of The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and was again riveted when I saw you take up the same theme. You even speculated there that given current trends, the profession of “writer” might one day, in a logically foreseeable future, become a quaint historical curiosity along the lines of other defunct professions like the lamplighters in gaslit cities of a bygone era. Obviously, this is an issue that’s of great concern to you, and it’s a concern that’s shared by many other people as well. Would you please share your thoughts about these matters? Maybe restate what you said in your year’s-end summary? Or even just quote yourself wholesale if you want, since your words deserve the largest possible audience.

SJ: It’s simple, really. You only have to do the math. Most kids are leaving school sub-literate these days, whatever the official figures claim. Exams are being dumbed down. The days when I left school with a solid grounding in Shakespeare, Dickens, Jane Austin and Geoffrey Chaucer are, apparently, long gone. How many kids read Mark Twain anymore, let alone L. Frank Baum?

Almost nobody reads these days. There are too many other distractions: cell phones, Playstations, reality TV. It’s exactly what Aldous Huxley predicted in Brave New World: it’s all a form of “soma” to keep the masses happy so they don’t complain while the troops are sent off to fight pointless wars—which seem to be planned like video games themselves—crime rates rocket out of control, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, animals are driven to extinction and the planet is gradually destroyed by a couldn’t-care-less mankind.

In the old days, we used to get our information from words. For instance, we would read a book about global warming and understand its implications. Or, at the very least, we would look at an article in the newspaper that would present the salient facts, which we could think about and maybe discuss with others. Nowadays, in Britain, at least, newspapers have become part of the “dumbing down” process. Here we now have “lite” newspapers that are more like MTV newsbites for people who don’t want to read about anything in-depth. And what they read about is the latest gossip surrounding such empty vessels as Paris, Britney, Lindsay or Angelina. They aren’t actually learning anything—except how not to behave in public and what the latest fashion accessory is. Television is no better, with most major news programmes now presented as if they were a coffee afternoon.

Now apply all that to fiction. With successive generations leaving school unable or unwilling to read, progressively fewer people are buying books—except, of course, much-needed self-help volumes and witless biographies about people who have barely lived a life yet. That attrition applies to all books. Now remember that horror is just a very, very small part of the overall industry, so the percentage of people who actually pick up a horror title—and, God help us, anthologies account for an even smaller percentage of that figure—is probably miniscule compared to worldwide sales. To make matters worse, figures seem to indicate that publishers on both sides of the Atlantic are publishing more titles in a vain attempt to capture that elusive reading public. So now you have the publishers dumbing down their books for a dumbed-down readership. Add to that the fact that corporate takeovers have consolidated the number of major publishers into a handful of mega-corporations around the world, which means that choice is ever more limited, and the book chains will only discount those titles that are pre-ordained to be “bestsellers.” And you can see how it’s all a recipe for a disaster waiting to happen.

The publishing industry simply cannot sustain its current level of output forever. More books and less readers means that, eventually, the industry will implode. They can’t keep throwing money at “celebrity” biographies or facile how-to books in the hope that one title may become a best seller. In the end, the whole pack of cards will come tumbling down and that’s when the cutbacks will begin. And guess where those cuts will happen first? That’s right, not with the bloated volumes of disposable garbage that they have over-hyped and over-paid for, but with the genre titles, the new writers, the collections and anthologies. All those areas that they perceive to be losing money on because they’ve never supported them as they should have.

It’s a depressing scenario, but more than likely to happen at the moment. Of course, the small presses can and will pick up some of the slack but, let’s face it, most writers and especially anthology editors can’t survive on the kind of money paid by the smaller publishers. And you can forget print-on-demand—there’s no money in that at all. So I can foresee a time when the writing of genre fiction will have reverted to a “gentlemanly” hobby, much as it was in the 19th century, to be indulged in only by the independently wealthy or a dedicated few who can squeeze it in after work or while bringing up a family.

Of course, it could be worse. You could be a poet!

This message is just a placeholder to let all of my loyal Teeming Brain readers know that I’ll be making a more substantial post later in the week. Today is the last day of the district school year at my place of employment. That means the past two days have been filled to bursting with all of the normal end-of-year, red tape-level crap (taking classroom inventory, calculating grades, planning for new classes next year, etc.), which is why I haven’t had a chance to compose a post. The present one will be the last one made from my classroom computer until August.

Even as I type these words, the bell for the end of the lunch period on this half-day of school is ringing. Now students are rushing past my door in a collective frenzy to vacate the premises. Shrieks of raucous joy resound from the beige institutional floor and ceiling tiles. The outer doors of the school building explode open. Cackles of adolescent glee flap and flutter up to the sky like uncaged eagles.

Oh, wait — those sounds of sprinting, shrieking, and cackling are coming from me, not them!

So anyway, I’ll be back soon to continue my ad hoc explorations of all the topics, ideas, and issues that have come to characterize this blog. As always, thanks for reading.

I must go now. Freedom beckons.

I’ve been tagged recently with a meme titled the “Thinking Blogger Award.” The first one to tag me was my friend Maurice Broaddus, whose blog, “The Pontifications of the Sinister Minister,” you would do well to read. Maurice and I have hung out at a couple of past World Horror Conventions, and we spent a lot of time together at last November’s World Fantasy Convention. He’s reflective and intelligent, so it was a pleasure to be tagged by him for this meme-ish award.

The other tag came from Richard Ristow’s blog, “Damned Critic: Cranky and Critical Readings in Poetry and Fantastic Fiction.” I’ve only just discovered this one, but it’s already looking like I may be spending some quality time browsing through its archives.

So, here’s a thanks to Richard and Maurice for the recognition. And now I’ll spread the love.

1. The Archdruid Report. John Michael Greer’s blog that explores ecology, spirituality, industrial society, and the burgeoning global energy crisis. Its subtitle or subheadling explains its nature: “Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society.” More lucidly and elegantly than anybody else I’m aware of, John is producing some seriously important reflections, analyses, and predictions about the dramatic ways that life on earth is changing for all of us and will continue to change in the coming years, decades, and centuries. His insightful focus on the philosophical, spiritual, and cultural aspects of peak oil etc. is particularly valuable.
2. Clusterfuck Nation. James Howard Kunstler’s blog. Again, the subtitle/subheading explains its nature: “Comment on current events from the author of The Long Emergency.” In addition to its value in providing lots of solid commentary on and analysis of current events relating to peak oil, global warming, economic globalization, American imperialism, rampant Western consumerism, radical Islamic jihadism, and more, Kunstler’s blog is worth reading because it’s damned funny. He has a fiercely satirical way with words and ideas that few can match. One of my favorite amongst his many quotable quips serves as a good example: “If America could harness the power it wastes blowing smoke up its own ass, we could magically escape our energy-and-climate-change predicament.”
3. Dark Ages America. Morris Berman’s blog. He only updates it infrequently, but it’s always worth the wait. I’ll let its self-description do the talking: “This is the blog for MORRIS BERMAN, the author of Dark Ages America. It includes current publications and random thoughts about U.S. Foreign Policy, including letters and reactions to publications from others. A cultural historian and social critic, MORRIS BERMAN is the author of Wandering God and The Twilight of American Culture. Since 2003 he has been a visiting professor in sociology at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. Feel free to write and participate.”
4. All Hail the New Madness. The blog of horror writer Simon Strantzas. In addition to ongoing updates about Simon’s creative endeavors, it’s full of insightful reflections about the creative process and the alternating cycle of elation and despair that characterizes the writing life.
5. Theofantastique. A blog maintained by John Moreland, “a researcher, writer, and speaker in intercultural studies and new religious movements.” I discovered it a few months ago when Kim Paffenroth, author of Gospel of the Living Dead and maintainer of his own very worthy blog, mentioned The Teeming Brain and Theofantastique alongside each other in a post titled “Christianity and Horror — Finally!” And then Mr. Moreland commented here at The Teeming Brain, if I remember correctly, although I think I may have failed to respond. I’ve been so scattered by my teaching job that I haven’t had time to explore Theofantastique properly, but it looks like a veritable gold mine of fascinating material. Sounds like a great summer reading project. Here’s its self-description: “A blog devoted to the enjoyment and exploration of myth and archetypes expressed in the pop culture genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, and their connection to religion.”

For most of this week I’ll be tied up with professional development training at my job. To tide over my high school classes during the interim (and to help prevent a nervous breakdown on the part of the substitute teacher), I came up with an assignment that should take awhile for my students to complete. Hell, it took me a couple of hours just to type up the description for them, which printed out at nine single-spaced pages. So I know it should take them awhile to read it, let alone respond to it.

And that is, in fact, the nature of the assignment. They’re supposed to read a loooong letter from me, and then respond to it in writing. For this week’s Teeming Brain post, I thought I could do no better than to share this letter. Maybe it’ll provide a window into what life is like in my classroom.

Or maybe it’ll just prove how ill-suited I am for this job.

Either way, I hope you find something interesting in it.

* * * * *

TO: All students in my high school classes

FROM: Matt Cardin

DATE: May 7, 2007

RE: You and me

Dear everybody,

As I told you last week, I’m going to be involved in some required professional development training this Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, so I thought I’d leave you something to do while I’m away. I mentioned this assignment to you last week as well.

To get the grading part out of the way right up front: the assignment is worth 100 points. These are test points. You will get all of them simply for doing what I ask you to do. That will necessarily involving your reading this letter from me to you. I’m talking about every last word of it. If you stop reading it before you’ve finished it and start asking someone else, “What are we supposed to be doing?” then you’re just proving a point that I make later in the letter. Please don’t do that.

As many of you, or most of you, or maybe all of you, already know, I’ve been fairly frustrated with some of my classes this year. Maybe you’re a student in one of those classes, or maybe you’re not. In any case, you know that I’ve been variously annoyed and frustrated and angered and depressed at the way much of this school year has gone. A couple of my classes have been more difficult and unruly in their behavior than anything I’ve previously encountered as a teacher. You’ve seen how I’ve handled it. I’ve complained a bit, withdrawn a bit, shut down a bit, shrugged my shoulders, overlooked various things I probably shouldn’t have, and in general have just rolled with the punches. We’ve still had fun together. That’s simply the way I do things. Ask anybody who’s had me as a teacher in the past, and they’ll confirm it.

I’m happy that we’ve all reached a point where we’re now getting along personally here at the imminent end of the school year. I honestly like every one of you on a personal level. I hope you like me in return. Somehow I achieved the status of being a “cool” teacher back when I first started working here in 2001, and I sense that this reputation has survived the current school term. I guess this is good. I’m certainly not complaining.

But I do fear that I haven’t exactly done many of you a service by being so compliant and unassertive these past many months. I don’t think you’ve gained as much as you otherwise might have from your time in my class if I had forced the issue by becoming more authoritarian, clamping down on immature and rude behavior, and generally running things with greater strictness. Maybe I’m too hung up on the idea that getting along with you personally is more important than accomplishing the academic work that could be accomplished under conditions of stricter discipline. The thing is, I know there’s a wide variety of opinions and inclinations among you when it comes to English class. Some of you like to read and write. Others of you don’t. Some of you are naturally good at it and drawn to it. Others of you aren’t. Personally, I think the current American high school system is unrealistic and unfortunate in the way it forces teens to take classes they don’t want in subjects they don’t like. So I have a hard time convincing myself to force the issue when some of you express a complete disinterest in my class.

On the other hand, maybe I should force the issue. After all, it’s hardly the case that you should never be expected or required to do things you don’t want to do. It’s just part of life to do some things simply because you have to do them. In the issue at hand, maybe you really would benefit from a more authoritarian approach on my part. I just don’t know.

The controversy itself leads into a wider question that I’ve been preoccupied with lately, namely, the question of who and what I should be as a teacher. And my mentioning this begins to lead into the part of this letter where you’ll find out what task I’m wanting you to complete in order to earn your 100 points. But first, you’ll have to read some more.

As we near the end of this school year, I feel very much the way a college professor named Mark Edmundson described in an essay he wrote entitled “On the uses of a liberal education: as lite entertainment for bored college students.” It was published in 1997 in a hugely influential magazine that you’ve probably never heard of called Harper’s, and it raised a firestorm of controversy across America because of what Edmundson said about the students and the administrators on America’s college campuses. In a nutshell, he said the students are eaten up with an attitude called “consumerism,” that is, the idea that the whole point of life is for people to buy and use up things they enjoy. He said America’s college students have absorbed this attitude from the social environment around them, which has been defined from their earliest childhood by television, video games, advertising, shopping, and so on. And he said this attitude has infected their view of education, so that they graduate from high school thinking that a college education is just something else to buy, and since they are paying for it, it’s the job of the colleges to give them what they want. As for the administrators at these colleges, Edmundson said they have given in far too quickly to this insane demand that the modern generation of students is making, mostly unconsciously, on America’s higher education system, and that as a result our colleges and universities are in awful shape, since they’re awarding more and more degrees to people who are not truly educated, people whose college classes have been watered down and reshaped to make them less difficult and more entertaining.

The part that I identify with the most is the part where Edmundson describes his feelings about the way his students view him. In most colleges it’s standard for students to fill out an anonymous evaluation form at the end of every class they take. This form represents their chance to rate the jobs their teachers have done. In his article Edmundson describes his feelings upon reading the comments his students left at the end of a semester course he taught about the writings of Sigmund Freud. As usual, the comments were extremely positive. His students loved him because of his humor, his tolerance, his references to movies and other pop culture items, and more. In all of these things, he reminds me of me. As you know, I joke all the time in class with you. We horse around a lot. I like many of the same movies and a lot of the same music that you like, and I talk about these with you. I’m casual and tolerant about pretty much everything. And for the most part I feel like we get along well because of it.

But Edmundson, instead of feeling good about his students’ nice words, said he was conflicted over their collective response to his class. He said he felt like the only thing they had gotten from him was the jokes, the casualness, and the easy attitude he brought to the subject he taught, when in fact what he had wanted was for them to be deeply affected by what he was teaching. So he hated the image of himself that emerged from his students’ comments on those evaluation forms.

I’ll let him speak for himself, since he does it better than I can. I ask that you read the whole quoted passage below very carefully. FYI, for those of you who don’t know it, the indented paragraphs contain Edmundson’s words. This type of indentation is a standard format to indicate extended quotations from somebody else’s writing. When it goes away and the left margin returns to normal, that’ll mean Edmundson’s words are over and it’s me talking to you again.

Here’s what Edmundson said:

I have to admit that I do not much like the image of myself that emerges from these forms, the image of knowledgeable, humorous detachment and bland tolerance. I do not like the forms themselves, with their number ratings, reminiscent of the sheets circulated after the TV pilot has just played to its sample audience in Burbank. Most of all I dislike the attitude of calm consumer expertise that pervades the responses. I’m disturbed by the serene belief that my function—and, more important, Freud’s, or Shakespeare’s, or Blake’s—is to divert, entertain, and interest. Observes one respondent, not at all unrepresentative: “Edmundson has done a fantastic job of presenting this difficult, important & controversial material in an enjoyable and approachable way.”

Thanks but no thanks. I don’t teach to amuse, to divert, or even, for that matter, to be merely interesting. When someone says she “enjoyed” the course—and that word crops up again and again in my evaluations—somewhere at the edge of my immediate complacency I feel encroaching self-dislike. That is not at all what I had in mind. The off-the-wall questions and the sidebar jokes are meant as lead-ins to stronger stuff—in the case of the Freud course, to a complexly tragic view of life. But the affability and the one-liners often seem to be all that land with the students; their journals and evaluations leave me little doubt.

I want some of them to say that they’ve been changed by the course. I want them to measure themselves against what they’ve read. Why are my students describing Freud’s dangerous and disturbing ideas as being interesting and enjoyable to contemplate? And why am I coming across as an urbane, mildly ironic, endlessly affable guide to this intellectual territory, operating without intensity, generous, funny, and loose?

Because that’s what works. On evaluation day, I reap the rewards of my partial compliance with the culture of my students and, too, with the culture of the university as it now operates.

Okay, this is me, Cardin, speaking to you again. If you read and understood what Edmundson was saying, then you’ll understand a significant part of how I feel about my performance as a teacher this year. And every year.

So what is all this leading up to? What’s the 100-point thing you’re supposed to do for me?

In answer, I give you—(drum roll)—something else to read! It’s on the next page. You just may recognize the author. The piece is an editorial that was published in the Springfield newspaper, the News-Leader, a little over two months ago. It talks about me and it talks about you. And I don’t just mean that metaphorically; I mean it really talks about me and you. Turn the page and you’ll understand. And after that, I’ll tell you what I want you to do to earn your 100 points.

[Note to Teeming Brain readers: At this point in my letter, I provided a photocopy of the editorial I wrote back in February for inclusion in The News-Leader, the large daily paper based in Springfield, Missouri. The title the editor gave it is "Media obsession with trivial hurts our nation." I've mentioned it previously here at my blog.]

Okay, so now you know a little bit about what I think of my job, and my students, and the entertainment culture that virtually saturates the very air we breathe. I hope you understood as you read the editorial that I wasn’t attacking any of my students here at this school, but was instead attacking the culture you’re growing up in. I view you mainly as a symptom of that culture, not a cause. And I myself suffer from the very same disease that I diagnose in you.

Again, what does this all mean? What are you supposed to do to earn your 100 points? It’s simply this: You’re supposed to write me a letter in which you respond to that editorial, and also to everything I’ve said in this letter to you, and tell me what you think and how you feel about it all. Tell me whether you agree or disagree with the point I made in my editorial. Tell me whether you agree or disagree that you and your fellow teens today are being zombified by television, movies, video games, popular music, and an all-pervasive attitude of consumerism. Tell me whether you agree or disagree with Mark Edmundson about the attitude and outlook that he thinks young people have today. Tell me whether you think I’ve done you a disservice by running your class so casually this year. Have I short-changed you? If you say no, then it must mean you think you’ve learned some valuable things in here. Tell me what they are. Or if you say yes, then please explain to me what you wanted to learn in here that you didn’t.

While you’re at it, if you want to talk about anything else that comes to mind as you think about these matters and write your letter, please write it down, because I’ll be more than happy to read it. I’ve gotten really personal with you in these pages by sharing some of my private thoughts. I ask you to do the same with me, in your letter, to whatever degree you feel comfortable doing so. Nobody will read what you write except for me. And I’ll give you a hundred points for your efforts. I want you to start your letter with either “Dear Mr. Cardin” or “Dear MC” (I’d really prefer the second one) and end it by signing your name. I’d prefer the whole thing to be typewritten. That’s why the substitute teacher is taking you to the computer lab. But you can handwrite it if you really want to, as long as your writing is legible.

Be advised that a mere few sentences, or even a mere few paragraphs, simply won’t do. I’m talking about a substantial letter that clearly shows evidence of your careful thought and honest emotion. Write it as well as you can, in terms of both what it says and how eloquently it says it. If you wonder just how long it should be or how in-depth it should go, take my own letter here as an example.

In the interest of fostering further personal-ness between us, I thought I’d finish this letter by reprinting something from my blog, The Teeming Brain. I started the blog last year in June, and it’s become quite popular in the months since then. Many of you know that I’m a published writer. There’s a crowd of people who are interested in me and my creative works. This can be seen in the fact that the blog is currently averaging about 3100 hits per month. My first post last year was a kind of “About Me” entry that was intended to give readers an indication of who I am. It’s reprinted for you below. Maybe reading it will give you a better idea of what’s really important to me, and why I struggle so much with this teaching gig.

And hey, that gives me another idea for the letter you’re supposed to write me: At the end of it, after your signature, please include a section titled “About [your name.]” Mine, for instance, would be titled “About Matt Cardin.” I want you to write up a miniature statement of who you are. You can say whatever you want in it, as long as it’s honest. Consider the “About me” section that’s found on MySpace pages as a good example of what I’m looking for. I’d really love for you to use this part of your letter to tell me about your view of life in general, as in, what type of things you think are important and valuable, what you think about the purpose or “meaning” of life, how you’ve come to believe these things, and so on. You’ll see that I’ve said a little about this kind of thing in my own self-description below. But whether or not you talk about such matters in your own “About Me” description is entirely up to you.

So, to repeat, you need to write two things:

1) A letter to me in which you respond to my letter and editorial

2) An “About Me” section at the end of the letter, after your signature

The assignment is worth 100 points. It needs to be full of depth and detail. It’s not extra credit. You’ll get a zero if you don’t do it. It’s all-or-nothing—100 points or 0 points. You’ll get all of them as long as you do what I’m telling you to do. The assignment will be due at the end of the hour on Wednesday, May 9^th, so plan and pace yourself accordingly.

Okay, that’s it. Get to work.

[Signed]Matt Cardin

[I finished by pasting in the text of my inaugural post to this blog from last June 13, 2006 titled "Welcome to The Teeming Brain."]

It’s time for another reading log. I haven’t counted the number of items on this one, but it seems longer than the previous reading logs I’ve posted. That may have something to do with the fact that I’ve been reading for a specific project. Among the usual items relating to peak oil, the current economic situation, etc., you’ll see lots of items on the list below that relate to the question of technology’s role in education. A glance at my post from April 23 titled “School Meets the Matrix” will explain why.

The increased length of the list may also have something to do with the fact that I’ve taken to including more and more key snippets and excerpts from the items on the list of articles and essays. This is mostly for my own satisfaction and convenience, so that I can look back over my reading lists and be reminded of the overall gist of their contents.

Interestingly enough, I was freed up, as it were, to pursue the technology-and-education tangent by the unfortunate conflagration mentioned in my previous post. All of this work-related reading (which has also turned into a passion in itself) occurred at the expense of my ability to progress through the queue of Holy Horrors submissions. It’s always something, I guess. For now, it’s back to work on the anthology, which of course provides many peculiar pleasures in its own right.

* * * * *

BOOKS (and reports)

• W. Norton Grub and Marvin Lazerson, The Education Gospel: The Economic Power of Schooling (2004)—Preface, introduction, ch. 1
• Kim Paffenroth, Gospel of the Living Dead—Chs. 3, 4, 5, conclusion, notes, bibliography (finished)
• William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Julius Caesar—Acts II, III, IV
• Tech Tonic: Towards a New Literacy of Technology (2004) [Report from the Alliance for Childhood]—Introduction, chs. 1, 2, 3
• Toward a New Golden Age in American Education: How the Internet, the Law and Today’s Students are Revolutionizing Expectations, 2004 [The 2004 National Education Technology Plan from the U.S. Department of Education]
• Visions 2020.2: Student Views on Transforming Education and Training through Advanced Technologies, August 2005 [Report from U.S. Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of Education, and NetDay to supplement 2002 report Visions 2020: Transforming Education and Training through Advanced Technologies]

SHORT FICTION

• Fiction submissions for Holy Horrors (fewer than usual, due to unforeseen circumstances)

ARTICLES, ESSAYS, etc.

• Aijaz Ahmad, “Imperial Sunset?” MRZine (online version of Monthly Review), April 18, 2007 [“The ‘decline of U.S. hegemony’ has been a favorite theme among many circles of the left since the early 1970s. . . . Is that ‘decline’ now becoming a real ‘sunset’?”]
• Bart Anderson, “Mini-review: Energy Crossroads, PO documentary,” Energy Bulletin, April 24, 2007 [“How do you get your older Midwest relatives to swallow the Red Pill and understand why you're obsessed with peak oil? Or your scientific and engineering friends who wrinkle their noses at the mention of eco-villages and collapse? Tiroir A Films has just released a DVD for when End of Suburbia just won't do.”]
• Brett Arends, “All the World’s a Bubble,” TheStreet.com, April 27, 2007 [“Legendary value investor Jeremy Grantham. . . says we are now seeing the first worldwide bubble in history covering all asset classes. . . . ‘The bursting of [this] bubble will be across all countries and all assets, with the probable exception of high-grade bonds,’ Grantham warned. ‘Since no similar global event has occurred before, the stresses to the system are likely to be unexpected.’”]
• Douglas Brinkley, “Vonnegut’s Apocalypse,” Rolling Stone Volume 1, Issue 1007 (August 24, 2006) [“He survived being captured by the Nazis and the suicide of his mother to write some of the funniest, darkest novels of our time, but it took George W. Bush to break him.”]
• Joe Carroll, “Gasoline at $4 Coming to a Pump Near You, Unfazed by Rising Tab,” Bloomberg.com, April 23, 2007
• Michael T. Charles, “Where are we going as we leave no child behind? La Technique and Postman, Papert, and Palmer – Part One,” Interface: The Journal for Education, Community, and Values Volume 4, Issue 1 (February 2004)
• Michael T. Charles, “Where are we going as we leave no child behind? La Technique and Postman, Papert, and Palmer – Part Two,” Interface: The Journal for Education, Community, and Values Volume 4, Issue 3 (April-May 2004)
• “Computers in Education – Introduction,” eNotes, no date given
• Rick Crawford, “Techno Prisoners,” Adbusters #11 (Summer 1994)
• Martin Crutsinger, “Factory Jobs: 3 Million Lost Since 2000,” Yahoo! Finance, April 20, 2007 [“Those lost manufacturing jobs are fueling an intense debate over globalization -- the increasing connection of the United States and other economies.”]
• Hugh Mercer Curtler, “A plea for humanistic education,” Modern Age, Fall 2006
• Erik Curren, “Stay in the City and Don’t Buy Guns or Gold,” Conserve Magazine, April 1, 2007 [“Intentional community pioneer Albert Bates talks about surviving peak oil.”]
• Ellen R. Delisio, “Author Says Technology Brings False Promises to Schools,” Education World, March 18, 2004 [Interview with Todd Oppenheimer, author of The Flickering Mind: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved (2003)]
• “The Distractions of Imagery,” MANAS Volume XXXIX, No. 22 (May 28, 1986) [Review of Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)]
• “An Educational Ideal,” MANAS Volume VI, No. 28 (July 15, 1953) [“The institutional practice of education. . . may be in direct opposition to the theory of education which insists that education must be wanted.”]
• Larry Elliot, “When the lights go out,” The Guardian, April 14, 2007 [Review and comparison of David Strahan’s The Last Oil Shock and Duncan Clarke’s The Battle for the Barrels (both 2007). “There's not a lot of love lost between the two camps. Strahan says Clarke and, indeed, the whole of the mainstream global oil industry is in class-one denial about the looming energy crisis. Clarke's view is that the peak oilers are using a flawed methodology to come up with unfounded and alarmist conclusions. There's clearly a market out there for both books: an internet search for ‘peak oil’ comes up with more than six million hits.”]
• Randall K. Engle, “The Neo Sophists: Intellectual Integrity in the Information Age,” First Monday Volume 6, Number 8 (August 2001)
• Joe Essid, “‘Cobwebs in the Sky’: Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi as Hypertext,” Kairos 6.2 (Fall 2001)
• Elizabeth Farnsworth, moderator, “Keyboard Debate,” PBS Online NewsHour, December 27, 1995 [Two perspectives on technology in the classroom from Damon Moore and Clifford Stoll]
• “The Failure of Moralists,” MANAS XXXIV, No. 19 (May 13, 1981) [“Writers with underlying faith in human beings do not preach. They do not tell other people what to do. They do not, in the ordinary sense, try to persuade.”]
• “Gasoline prices: up, and rising,” CNNMoney.com, April 22, 2007
• Hannah Goff, “Too much technology in the classroom?” BBC News, January 15, 2007
• Peter Gow, “Technology and the Culture of Learning: How Our Digital Tools Change the Nature of School,” Independent School Magazine, Summer 2004
• John Michael Greer—Weekly blog posts at The Archdruid Report
• Krishna Guha, “Stark warning about rising Medicare costs,” FT.com [Financial Times], April 24, 2007 [“The warning, required by law, came as new projections showed the share of Medicare costs paid out of general taxation would exceed 45 per cent by 2013. More realistic assumptions suggest this threshold could be breached as early as 2010. . . . Monday’s projections show Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted in 2019. The trustees project that Medicare costs will rise from 3.1 per cent of gross domestic product last year to more than 11 per cent of GDP in 75 years.”
• James Harkin, “Death in cyurbia,” The Guardian, April 16, 2007 [“Our celebration of the virtual world must be balanced by research into its psychological effects.”]
• Eugene W. Hickok, “Higher Education Needs Reform, Too,” The Chronicle of Higher Education Volume 52, Issue 27 (March 10, 2006)
• David R. Holmes, “The Computer Beast at the Schoolhouse Door,” Independent School Magazine Spring 1998
• Rob Hopkins, “A Film Review: Little Miss Sunshine,” Transition Culture, April 16, 2007 [“For me, how this overlaps with energy descent is that once the cheap oil that has allowed our social relationships and community bonds to fracture starts to dwindle, we will need to start learning how to communicate again, we will come home to each other.”]
• Susan Jacoby, “Blind Faith: Americans believe in religion – but know little about it,” The Washington Post, March 4, 2007 [review of Stephen Prothero’s Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know – and Doesn’t (2007)]
• James Howard Kunstler—Weekly blog posts at Clusterfuck Nation
• Bernard Lagan, “Threat to food crops as Australia prepares to turn off farmers’ water,” The Times, April 20, 2007 [“John Howard said that an expert panel had advised the Government that the worst drought in the nation’s history left it no choice but to turn off irrigation systems in the agricultural heartland of the Murray-Darling basin in the east.”
• Marvin Lazerson, “The Education Gospel: Loud Music, the Lone Ranger, Playing Within Your Game, and It’s Hard to Learn When You’re Hungry,” Almanac Vol. 52, No. 25 (March 14, 2006)
• Pamela Mang, “What Is Education For?” Independent School Magazine, Spring 2005 [Essay about the “need for education to take center stage in the race for a sustainable future”]
• Marc Marenco, “Glowing Glass Islands, Invisible Musicians and the Brave New World: Accommodation and Critique in the Age of Access,” Interface: The Journal for Education, Community, and Values Volume 2, Issue 5 (June 2002) [“What I am looking for, what I am committed to, is a robust, open, sustained conversation about the psychological, social, economic, moral and spiritual impact of ICT that is just as robust as the evangelical fervor with which ICT is being embraced in our schools and homes.”]
• Marc Marenco, “Pedagogy, Ubiquity, Opacity: ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in Higher Education,” Interface: The Journal for Education, Community, and Values Volume 1, Issue 3 (December 2001) [“My conversion to ICT was not an easy one. . . . I find myself in the peculiar position of being a Luddite permeated with the technology I seem to reject.”]
• Kathy Marks, “Australia’s epic drought: the situation is grim,” The Independent, May 2, 2007 [“Australia has warned that it will have to switch off the water supply to the continent's food bowl unless heavy rains break an epic drought -- heralding what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation.”]
• Wendy McElroy, “Nock on Education,” Ideas on Liberty (formerly The Freeman), Volume 50, No. 1 (January 2000)
• Leland Miles, “Liberal Arts in an Age of Technology,” American Education, June 1984
• “Mortgage ‘meltdown’ hits auto sales: GM’s Lutz,” CNNMoney.com, April 23, 2007 [“Vice chairman sees entire sector hit by problems in home financing market, truck sales to suffer.”]
• Peter J.M. Nicholson, “The Intellectual in the Infosphere,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Volume 53, Issue 27 (March 9, 2007) [“What qualifies as intellectual authority today is changing fundamentally.”]
• Albert Jay Nock, “American Education,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1931
• Albert Jay Nock, “The Value of Useless Knowledge, Atlantic Monthly, May 1934
• “Pickens: $80 a barrel this year,” CNNMoney.com, April 24, 2007 [“Legendary oilman, investor predicts high price will begin to kill demand.”]
• Peter Relic, “The Trouble with the Standards Movement,” Independent School Magazine, Winter 2000 [“The effort to improve education nationally with tough standards and state-generated assessment tests, ironically, is as much cause for alarm as for celebration.”]
• Jan M. Rosen, “Ready for the Worst: Here Come the Bears,” The New York Times, April 8, 2007 [“The bears burst out of hibernation on Feb. 27, erasing the stock markets’ year-to-date gains and raising investors’ fears that the road ahead would be rough. ‘I’m very pessimistic and very convinced that there will be very hard times -- equal to the 1930s,” said David W. Tice, perhaps the most prominent bear fund manager. ‘This has been an incredibly long bull market,’ he said, one fueled by a ‘credit-induced boom’. . . . Investment managers and analysts generally disagree on several counts with Mr. Tice.”]
• John Paul Russo, “The Humanities in a Technological Society,” Humanitas Volume XI, No. 1 (199
• Linda Starr, “And in This Corner. . . the ‘High-Tech Heretic’!” Education World, May 30, 2000; updated June 9, 2005 [Interview with Clifford Stoll, author of High-Tech Heretic: Why Computers Don’t Belong in the Classroom and Other Reflections by a Computer Contrarian (1999)]
• “Study: No benefit going high-tech for math or reading,” CNN.com, April 6, 2007 [“The study on the effectiveness of education technology was released late Wednesday by the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, a research arm of the Education Department. The study found achievement scores were no higher in classrooms using reading and math software products than in classrooms without the new products.”]
• Stephen L. Talbott, “A New Assessment of Computers in the Classroom,” NetFuture #151 (October 30, 2003 [Survey of major points in Todd Oppenheimer’s Flickering Minds: The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom and How Learning Can Be Saved (2003)]
• Stephen L. Talbott, “Aphorisms on Computers in Classrooms,” NetFuture #147 (July 15, 2003)
• Stephen L. Talbott, “How to Teach in a Post-Modem World,” NetFuture #126 (December 18, 2001)
• Stephen L. Talbott, “On Constructivism in Education,” NetFuture #96 (October 4, 1999)
• Richard Norton Taylor, “Revolution, flashmobs, and brain chips. A grim vision of the future,” The Guardian, April 9, 2007 [“This is the world in 30 years’ time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces.”]
• Transcript of interview with Kurt Vonnegut, NOW (website for PBS series), October 7, 2005
• Jeffrey A. Tucker, “Albert Jay Nock, Forgotten Man of the Right,” LewRockwell.com, August 22, 2002
• Stephen Voss and Tara Patel, “Total, Shell Chief Executives Say ‘Easy Oil’ Is Gone,” Bloomberg.com, April 5, 2007 [Editor at Energy Bulletin comments, “End of ‘Easy Oil’ = beginning of the peak oil era.”]
• Stefan Wagstyl, “Russian boom will end in pain,” FT.com [Financial Times], April 23, 2007 [“After seven years of growth, Russia is reaching its capacity limits in an expansion fuelled by credit, much of it from foreign markets, said Hans-Joerg Rudloff, chairman of Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of Barclays.”]
• Bryan R. Warnick, review of C.A. Bowers, Let Them Eat Data: How Computers Affect Education, Cultural Diversity, and the Prospects of Ecological Sustainability (2000), in Education Review: A Journal of Book Reviews, July 6, 2001
• William L. Watts, “Medicare fund to run dry by 2019: trustees,” MarketWatch.com, April 23, 2007 [“Report also says Social Security fund to be exhausted by 2041.”]
• Tom Whipple, “The GAO report,” Falls Church News-Press, April 5, 2007 [“The real dilemma of coping with peak oil, for a while at least, is really quite simple. If the government should lay out the full ramifications of peaking in hopes of rallying the people to make preparations, the most immediate consequence is likely to be serious economic setback triggered by an unambiguous announcement itself.”]
• Armstrong Williams, “Americans Experiencing Technology Overload,” NewsMax.com, Maty 19, 2006
• Naomi Wolf, “Fascist America, in 10 easy steps,” The Guardian, April 24, 2007