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(and as the subtitle of this journal* suggests, peeves and passions will get stuck there, between my ears)
This is also a follow-up, on what I started to express here, regarding the punditosphere's reaction to Barack Obama's recent speech on race relations in America, but now with the added (and shiny) context of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ionlylurkhere's musings, with backup from parrotfish, attitudes toward science and knowledge in New Who (contains "sorta spoilers for all transmitted DW and Torchwood to date depending how you look at it").**
Does anyone on my f'list remember the NBC TV series The Pretender (originally aired 1996-2000)? Did any of you watch it?
( In a nutshell, the subtext of the show was: 'Super intelligence is unnatural and dangerous,' further rantings cut for length )
Of course, my understanding of this subtext may have been colored by the fact that my aide at the time was terrified of going into the library with me. She would drop me off at the front door, and then wait for me, outside in the van (once, she even drove off to do errands, and left me waiting there for an hour or so). And during The Pretender's final season, of course, presidential candidate Al Gore's intellectualism was ruthlessly mocked by The Press, while Bush's "folksy" ways were celebrated as the best thing since bottled barbecue sauce...
(And then, after Bush became president, he came up with "No Child Left Behind," where the teaching of critical thinking skills was replaced with teaching of how to mark off the right answers in a multiple choice test -- again, the process of learning is removed from the equation... And we wonder why we're falling behind other nations in innovation and engineering)
And now, I'm seeing that same script beginning to play out between Obama vs. Clinton ("Yes, he's drawing the bigger crowds, but he's still appealing 'only' to the college-educated types; the working-class are yet to be convinced"), andwhen if he's the nominee, I bet that argument will be made between him and McCain, too...
:::Sigh:::
*For those of you who see your friends' LJ pages in your own style, that subtitle is: The songs that are stuck in my head.
**For those who wish to avoid spoilers, and/or don't want to read the whole post, his point is this: In Old Who, knowledge and the scientific mode of thought is a Good Thing, and it's an Even Better Thing when it's shared; it's a thing to make you happy. But in Russell T. Davies' Who, knowledge is a Dangerous Thing, Best Kept in the Priviledged Hands of the Special People, and even then, the Knowledge breaks them.
This is also a follow-up, on what I started to express here, regarding the punditosphere's reaction to Barack Obama's recent speech on race relations in America, but now with the added (and shiny) context of
ionlylurkhere's musings, with backup from parrotfish, attitudes toward science and knowledge in New Who (contains "sorta spoilers for all transmitted DW and Torchwood to date depending how you look at it").**Does anyone on my f'list remember the NBC TV series The Pretender (originally aired 1996-2000)? Did any of you watch it?
( In a nutshell, the subtext of the show was: 'Super intelligence is unnatural and dangerous,' further rantings cut for length )
Of course, my understanding of this subtext may have been colored by the fact that my aide at the time was terrified of going into the library with me. She would drop me off at the front door, and then wait for me, outside in the van (once, she even drove off to do errands, and left me waiting there for an hour or so). And during The Pretender's final season, of course, presidential candidate Al Gore's intellectualism was ruthlessly mocked by The Press, while Bush's "folksy" ways were celebrated as the best thing since bottled barbecue sauce...
(And then, after Bush became president, he came up with "No Child Left Behind," where the teaching of critical thinking skills was replaced with teaching of how to mark off the right answers in a multiple choice test -- again, the process of learning is removed from the equation... And we wonder why we're falling behind other nations in innovation and engineering)
And now, I'm seeing that same script beginning to play out between Obama vs. Clinton ("Yes, he's drawing the bigger crowds, but he's still appealing 'only' to the college-educated types; the working-class are yet to be convinced"), and
:::Sigh:::
*For those of you who see your friends' LJ pages in your own style, that subtitle is: The songs that are stuck in my head.
**For those who wish to avoid spoilers, and/or don't want to read the whole post, his point is this: In Old Who, knowledge and the scientific mode of thought is a Good Thing, and it's an Even Better Thing when it's shared; it's a thing to make you happy. But in Russell T. Davies' Who, knowledge is a Dangerous Thing, Best Kept in the Priviledged Hands of the Special People, and even then, the Knowledge breaks them.
