The Idiots and the responsible press. Turning back the clock. Freestyle Catholics and sanctimonious secularists ; Have we really invented so much? ; Full speed backward! ; I remember, I remember -- Being seen. Wave ciao ciao to the camera ; God is my witness that I'm a fool... ; I tweet, therefore I am ; The loss of privacy -- The old and the young. The average lifespan ; Fair is foul, and foul is fair? ; Thirteen years misspent ; Once upon a time there was Churchill ; A generation of aliens -- Online. My email doubles ; How to elect the president ; The hacker is crucial to the system ; Too much of the internet? But in China... ; Here's a good game ; The textbook as teacher ; How to copy from the internet ; What's the point of having a teacher? ; The fifth estate ; A further note ; Dogmatism and fallibilism ; Marina, Marina, Marina ; I urge you to be brief -- On cell phones. More thoughts on the cell phone ; Swallowing the cell phone ; On photography ; Evolution: all with just one hand ; The cell phone and the queen in "Snow White" -- On conspiracies. Where's the deep throat? ; Conspiracies and plots ; Fine company ; Don't believe in coincidences ; The conspiracy on conspiracies -- On mass media. Radiophonic hypnosis ; There are two Bit Brothers ; Roberta ; The mission of the crime story ; Bin Laden's allies ; Going to the same place ; Mandrake, an Italian hero? ; Are viewers bad for television? ; Give us today our daily crime ; Maybe Agamemnon was worse than Bush ; High medium low ; "Intellectually speaking" ; Suspects behaving badly ; Shaken or stirred? ; Too many dates for Nero Wolfe ; Unhappy is the land ; Time and history -- Forms of racism. Women philosophers ; Where do you find anti-Semitism? ; Who told women to veil themselves? ; Husbands of unknown wives ; Proust and the Boche ; From Maus to Charlie -- On hatred and death. On hatred and on love ; Where has death gone? ; Our parts -- Religion and philosophy. Seers see what they know ; European roots ; The lotus and the cross ; Relativism? ; Chance and intelligent design ; The reindeer and the camel ; Watch it, loudmouth... ; Idolatry and iconoclasm lite ; The cocaine of the people ; The crucifix, almost a secular symbol ; Those strangers, the three Kings ; Mad about Hypatia ; Halloween, relativism, and Celts ; Damned philosophy ; Evasion and secret redress ; The holy experiment ; Monotheisms and polytheisms -- A good education. Who gets cited most? ; Political correctness ; Thoughts in fair copy ; Meeting face-to-face ; The pleasure of lingering -- On books, etc. Is Harry Potter bad for adults? ; How to protect yourself from the Templars ; The whiff of books ; Here's the right angle ; Journey to the center of Jules Verne ; Corkscrew space ; On unread books ; On the obsolescence of digital media ; Festschrift ; The Catcher in the Rye fifty years on ; Aristotle and the pirates ; Lies and make-believe ; Credulity and identification -- From stupidity to folly. No, it's not pollution, it's impurities in the air -- How to get rich on other people's suffering ; Miss World, fundamentalists, an lepers ; Return to sender ; Give us a few more deaths ; Speaking with license ; Conciliatory oxymorons ; The human thirst for prefaces ; A noncomrade who gets it wrong ; Saying sorry ; The Sun still turns ; What you mustn't do ; The miraculous Mortacc ; Joyce and the Maserati ; Napoleon never existed ; Are we all mad? ; Idiots and the responsible press.
Summary:
Collects short essays from the author that reflect on the changing modern world, touching on such topics as popular culture, politics, being seen, conspiracies, the old and the young, new technologies, mass media, racism, and good manners.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.