Hello Again!

So, this is the longest I've gone without an entry since I first set up this blog back in '07. Did you miss me?

It's not that I wasn't thinking about good old Blog Time Passing, I did now and then. I kept saying I need to get back into the swing of things. I just never could seem to find the...

...time.

My last post was July 3rd, 2018, and the reason I stopped  blogging was that it was at that point that my mother went into a steep decline, and she passed away less than two weeks after that, on July 16th. While this was not unexpected, she had been slowly declining for a number of years, and she was quite elderly, still it was a difficult loss for me.

I wanted to tell her story here, and hopefully I will in another post later on, but for now, I just wanted to say, I'm back, and I hope to get back to blogging regularly now. Of course, there's the old Yiddish saying that translates to, man plans, God laughs, and the John Lennon quote, life is what happens to you while you're making other plans.

So no guarantees or promises, just an expression of hope and intent, and we'll see where it goes. Certainly, one of the advantages of the medium of blogging is that you can stop and start whenever you like, end and begin and again, pick up where you left off, leave off where you picked up, and all that. So, thanks for reading, and we'll just see what the future holds for us, won't we?

Summer Reading for Roy Part 1

So, for several years now, Roy Christopher has asked me to contribute to the Summer Reading List post on his blog, as one of a number of scholars and intellectuals who provide a list of books that we intend to read over the summer. And in the past I've reposted that list here on Blog Time Passing because, well, why not? Here now is a list of my previous entries:

• 2012: Some More Reading List 
• 2013: S'more Reading Listed 
• 2014: Some More Reading for the Summer
• 2015: Another Non-Listless Summer

And now, if you're chronologically minded, you may notice that there's no entry for 2016 on the above list. And the reason for that is not that I didn't do one, and if you don't believe me, you can check out Roy's post from last year, Summer Reading List, 2016. It's just that last summer I was hard at work finishing up my new book (see my previous post: Media Ecology: Some Details Regarding My New Book) and just didn't have time to do much blogging, and by the time I got back into the swing of things, summer was long over, and I just plain forgot about the summer reading list.

So, fortunately there's no statute of limitations on this sort of thing, so before sharing this year's list with you, let me fill you in on last year's summer reading list because, after all, the books are still worth listing, and reading.

Summer Reading List 2016

Here in New York, the Broadway musical Hamilton has been all the rage for the past year, so I have decided to start my summer reading off with The Federalist Papers, authored by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay (New York: Signet Classics, 2003, originally published 1787-1788 under the pseudonym of Publius). While we're on the subject of authors with the initials A.H., my list also includes Ends and Means: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Ideals by Aldous Huxley (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2012, originally published 1937).

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I recently received a copy of The Book of Radical General Semantics by Gad Horowitz with Colin Campbell (New Delhi: Pencraft International, 2016), and I would want to read it under any circumstance, but all the more so because I recently became president of the New York Society for General Semantics. I also plan on rereading Lewis Mumford's The Condition of Man (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1944). And I have heard great things about the recent book by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence (New York: Schocken Books, 2015), so that's on my list as well. 

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For scholars in the field of communication and media studies, Arthur Asa Berger is a familiar name, having authored many books on media and popular culture, and I look forward to reading his newest, Writing Myself into Existence (Seattle: NeoPoiesis Pres, 2016). Regarding communication, I also have on my list Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age (New York: Penguin, 2015) by Sherry Turkle, a scholar often included in media ecology circles. And on the related topic of the study of time, I am also including Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's Stone: An Ecology of the Inhuman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015). 

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Poetry books play a prominent and pleasant role regarding summertime reading (and the rest of the year as well), and this year my stack includes a collection by David Ossman of Firesign Theatre, Marshmallows and Despair, (Seattle: NeoPoiesis Pres, 2015), and Rupi Kaur's Milk and Honey (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 2015). 

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My son has recommended the work of playwright Jenny Schwartz, so I'm also including two of her plays, God's Ear (New York: Samuel French, 2009), and Somewhere Fun (London: Oberon, 2013). Finally, there's a mystery novel I just have to read, Death by Triangulation by John Oughton (Seattle: NeoPoiesis Pres, 2015). 

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So, in case you were wondering, The Federalist Papers, Ends and Means, The Condition of Man, and Reclaiming Conversation, all played a role in the writing of my new book. And Stone was the subject of a book review I wrote for KronoScope, the official journal of the International Society for the Study of Time. 

And, now that I've taken care of last year's list, I'll get to this year's selections in my next post.

An Inspirational Video

So, for a number of summers now, I've been teaching an online class at Fordham, on Writing for Online Media, mainly about blogging. The students get to create and write for their own blogs, on themes and topics of their own choosing. And one of my students this summer has been blogging about art, including galleries museums, and special exhibitions. A recent post on her blog, which is called Mona Lisa by the way, was on A Blog that Inspires: Colossal, which in turn directed me to check out another blog on art and design called Colossal, and specifically a post entitled Where Do Ideas Come From? A Short Film by Andrew Norton Tackles the Nature of Inspiration.

If you're following me so far, well then, that blog post featured a video by a filmmaker named Andrew Norton on the nature of creativity, inspiration, and the source of original ideas. The video, Where Do Ideas Come From?, can be found over on Vimeo, the YouTube alternative favored by many serious and professional videographers. And it's also embedded over on the Colossal blog, so why not include it here on Blog Time Passing, I thought to myself. And so, here it is:


Where Do Ideas Come From? from Andrew Norton on Vimeo.


And you can rightly infer from the fact that I've included it here that I think it's pretty nifty, and worth a look-see. Oh, and here is the write-up from the Vimeo page:

A short film about the mysteries of inspiration.

Featuring thoughts on the subject by:
David Lynch
Robert Krulwich
Chuck Close
Tracy Clayton & Heben Nigatu
Ray Barbee
Lulu Miller
Susan Orlean
and a couple of kids named Mason and Ursula

Presented by transom.org
With funding from The National Endowment for the Arts
For more about this video, visit:
transom.org/2017/where-do-ideas-come-from/

The Transom site is run by Atlanta Public Media, and identified as "A Showcase and Workshop for New Public Radio" in case you were wondering. It's based on an idea by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben, whose work is well-recognized in media ecology circles. And it looks to be an excellent resource for anyone interested in public radio and media, podcasting, audio production, and creative endeavors more generally. If you have those sort of interests, I think it's worth checking out.

Whither Obama?

So, I know many of us are missing Barack Obama more and more every day, and he did say he was taking an extended, and well earned vacation. And he also said that when he gets back to work, he wants to help the Democrats do better in local and statewide politics, a badly needed effort, to be sure.

But this post looks back to an item that appeared right before the 2016 presidential election, courtesy of the UK's Independent. Dated November 4, 2016, the title of the article is, How much money could Barack Obama earn after leaving the White House? And it is followed by a subtitle that says, Mr Obama will receive an annual pension of $203,700. And it is always important to acknowledge the author, which in this case is Matt Payton. So, you know the drill, you can click on the title of the article to read it on the newspaper's website, or stick around are read it here.

The article is more or less informational, starting off with the following:

Barack Obama leaves the White House, the third President in a row to have spent two full terms as commander-in-chief.

Before winning the the 2008 Presidential election, he served three years in the US Senate (2005 to 2008) and seven years in the Illinois State Senate (1997-2004).

Following nearly 20 years in public office, there has been much speculation in regards to his post-Presidential career.

Regarding the next few years, Mr Obama has stated he will remain in Washington DC until his youngest daughter, Sasha, finishes high school.

As standard, every former US President since 1958 receive a pension, with Mr Obama set to receive $203,700 (£162,798) per annum.

Other than his repeated intention to play more golf, the 55-year-old leader of the free world has a number of options:

At this point, the article moves into a speculative mode, listing six possibilities, starting with the following:

1. The political memoir

A traditional first project of former Presidents looking to sculpt their own legacy.

Bill Clinton reportedly received a $10 million (£7.9 million) advance for his presidential memoirs with George W. Bush allegedly receiving $7 million (£5.6 million) for his memoir, Decision Points.

Mr Obama already made millions with his two previous memoirs Dreams of My Father (1995) and The Audacity of Hope (2006).

Publishers have described his presidential memoirs as the most hotly anticipated with advances estimated between $25 million (£19.9 million) and $45 million (£35.9 million), reports The New York Times.

I think we can pretty much count on this one, given Obama's intellectual acuity, track record in publishing, and communication skills. Next up we have a topic familiar to longtime readers of this blog:

2. Lecture circuit

Another popular post-Presidency side-line, former White House residents can net millions making paid speeches at universities and corporate venues across the world.

While his father, President George H.W. Bush reportedly earns $10,000 (£7,990) per speech, George W. Bush earns between $100,000 (£79,900) to $175,000 (£139,840) per appearance.

Bill Clinton was reportedly paid $225,000 (£179,795) for an appearance in February 2014, reports Fortune. Communications professor at Fordham University, Lance Strate said: "The speech is kind of secondary to… just being able to have a big name at your event.

"It might get reported on some form of TV or cable news, which further adds to the prestige and the publicity of the event."

So, there I am, being quoted, and actually this is another case of being re-quoted, a quote in an older article being used in a new article. In fact, I have a whole history on this subject, and you can see it unfold via my previous blog posts, first Giant Speaking Fees-Fi-Fo-Fum, then Of Fees, Futility, and Mike Huckabee, and A Fortune in Speakers' Fees, and then Long-Shot Candidates in the Marketplace, and its follow-up, Why Run & Other Answers to Political Questions. Funny how something small like that just keeps echoing and re-echoing around the digital canyon.

All right then, that's how this article came to my attention, as you might have guessed. But while we're at it, let's see what else comes up on the list, shall we? And the next item demonstrates, if nothing else, that someone doesn't know how to count, as it's mislabeled number 2, and far be it from me to change the quote and correct it:

2. Buy a sports team

President Obama has mentioned his dream of part-owning an NBA basketball franchise⏤his first sporting love. The advance for his memoirs could make this a realistic proposition.

He told GQ last year: "I have fantasized about being able to put together a team and how much fun that would be. I think it’d be terrific."

His predecessor, George W. Bush had owned a stake in the Major League Baseball team, the Texas Rangers, before selling up in 1998 for a cool $14.9 million.

Considering he made an initial $606,000 investment in 1989, that's a decent level of profit.

Maybe the mistake in numbering was due to the farfetched quality of this item? Whatever the reason, the misnumbering continues, as we move on to the fourth item:

3. College professorship

The hottest contender for his post-Presidential career, Mr Obama has spoken frequently about returning to teach law at College.

In an interview with The New Yorker, Mr Obama said: "I love the law, intellectually. I love nutting out these problems, wrestling with these arguments.

"I love teaching. I miss the classroom and engaging with students."

As to where, there are three obvious choices; Columbia where he was an undergraduate political science major, Harvard where he graduated from law school or the University of Chicago where he taught previously.

Columbia is seen as the front runner after the college's president said at the 2015 convocation he was looking forward to "welcoming back our most famous alumnus... in 2017."

Mr Obama would not be the first politician to return to academia, former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice returned to Stanford University as a politics professor.

At some of the wealthiest and most prestigious American colleges, top professors can earn six figure salaries⏤tempting enough for a former President?

Also, former Vice-President Al Gore taught at Columbia after losing the 2000 presidential election. Speaking on behalf of my profession, I do have to say that Obama's sentiments are admirable, and I bet he's dynamite in the classroom. Of course, this option seems to be more in line with the intellectualism of recent Democratic presidents, as opposed to the Republicans. Not that it has to be that way, although the ivory tower does lean a bit towards the left, making it a context more conducive to liberals than conservatives. But maybe there's some reluctance on the part of folks on the right to have their views challenged and tested? Anyway, the fifth item is also an option that seems to go with a particular political inclination:

4. Social Activism

Probably the least remunerative option but one that holds attraction to both Barack and Michelle Obama.

After graduating from Columbia, Mr Obama spent three years as a community organiser in Chicago.

Both have stated they are committed to their grassroots initiatives such as My Brother's Keeper⏤a mentoring programme for young minority men.

And finally, something that probably would not have been considered as an option until the Clintons:

5. Public office

Mr Obama has made it very clear that neither he nor his wife would ever seek public office after leaving the White House.

He recently said: She will never run for office, she is as talented and brilliant a person as there is, and I could not be prouder of her, but Michelle does not have the patience or the inclination to actually be a candidate herself.

"That’s one y’all can take to the bank.”

The First Lady has categorically backed these sentiments despite groundswell support for her to enter frontline politics.

Mrs Obama said at the South by Southwest festival in March: "I will not run for president. No, nope, not going to do it.

“There is so much that I can do outside of the White House… without the constraints, the lights and the cameras, the partisanship.

"There’s a potential that my voice can be heard by many people that can’t hear me now because I’m Michelle Obama the First Lady, and I want to be able to impact as many people as possible in an unbiased way."

And as much as many of us may admire Michelle Obama, and regard her as having strong potential were she to enter the political arena, dynastic politics is generally not the best thing for democratic government. Growing up, there was this longing for another Kennedy, and while Teddy matured into an excellent elder statesman, his directionless flirtations with running for president were not helpful. His brother Bobby might have been a great one, there is no way of knowing. But John Quincy Adams was not one of the good ones. As for Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt, they were fifth cousins, so they don't count. And of course I'd rather have seen Hillary Clinton as president, and for that matter Jeb Bush, but as a basic principle, we are better off without any kind of political aristocracy.

Bernie Sanders as Joe Lieberman's Revenge

So, if you've been reading my blog for the past year or so, you my have noticed that every so often I post an entry about an op-ed piece of mine published in the Jewish Standard, a weekly periodical serving the northern New Jersey area, along with New York's Rockland County. I've been asked to supply something for the paper about every six weeks or so, and I do my best to oblige. The op-ed also would be posted on their website, and afterwards I would eventually share it here on Blog Time Passing.

Well, this past spring I was informed that the Standard was partnering with one of Israel's English language newspapers, the Times of Israel, and would use their blogging platform to simultaneously publish entries on both sites. And would I be interested in participating? Being an old hand at blogging, I said sure, so I am now officially a Times of Israel blogger as well. Here's the link to my blog there. And in fact the  Jewish Standard's new site is entirely in partnership with the Times of Israel, so they really are changing with the times.

So, my first post on this new blog consists of my most recent op-ed for the Standard, originally published in the July 17th edition of the paper, and entitled Lieberman's Revenge. Click on the link if you want to see it on the Times of Israel blog, where it was posted on July 20th. Right now, as I look at the post, the third paragraph appears to be wrapping around a non-existent image. That's not my doing, and I'm told an ad appears there some of the time. Hopefully this glitch will be ironed out soon. In the meantime, yes, of course I'll post the op-ed here as well.

But before I do, let me explain that this op-ed is a commentary on the current race for the Democratic Party's nomination for president, and the emergence of Bernie Sanders as a viable alternative to Hillary Clinton. Sanders' sudden popularity brought to mind, for me, the question of whether there could ever be a Jewish POTUS (an acronym that sounds like it could be a Yiddish word, but stands for President Of The United States, a product of Twitter's telegraphic discourse). On that topic, I noticed an interesting meme being sent around on Facebook by his supporters, and it appears that it originated on Twitter:

An interesting point that no doubt would be lost on all those social conservatives who decry the "war against Christmas" (waged by the secular-humanist left). But holding political persuasion aside, the question is a complicated one for Jewish-Americans, more so than for other minority groups, who typically view the candidacy of one of their own as a matter of ethnic or religious pride. Our long history of being strangers in strange lands means that we were excluded from being a part of hereditary ruling classes, and from having any established status at all. Viewed as foreigners, we were allowed limited autonomy, internal to the local Jewish community, to govern our own affairs, subject to the external authority of the state. While the modern nation-state opened the door to full citizenship, the tradition of exclusion from leadership positions carried over well into the new era. And with the long history of being subject to prejudice, oppression, and persecution, during which time keeping a low profile was the only real defense, the question of could is inextricably linked to the question of should.


But my point in this op-ed was to note the ironic connection between two Jewish-Americans presidential contenders, Joe Lieberman, who sought the Democratic Party's nomination in 2004, and Bernie Sanders today. Connecting the two, even though they differ dramatically in their political leanings, is how I came to view Sanders' candidacy as Lieberman's revenge. That's not to imply anything like a conspiracy (God forbid!) or anything intentional about it, just a bit of poetic justice maybe? Well, you can make up your own mind. Here it is:

Could there ever be a Jewish president of the United States? That was a question that was raised repeatedly as I was growing up back in the sixties. On the one hand, we were told that here in the USA, anyone could grow up to be president. That idea was emblematic of the egalitarian foundation of American society, the basis of our democratic system of government. On the other hand, there was the practical reality that everyone who had been president came from a very limited demographic, all of them men, all of them white, most of them Anglo-Saxon with the occasional Dutch or German representative (e.g., Martin Van Buren, Dwight Eisenhower), and all of them Protestant.

So when it came to the question of whether we would ever see a Jewish president, the conclusion we typically came to was that it was possible, but unlikely.

This is not to discount the significance of the 1960 election, when John F. Kennedy, a Roman Catholic of Irish ancestry, defeated Richard Nixon. No doubt, the advent of our first Catholic president made the idea of a Jewish president seem at least a little possible, and served as a spur to the discussions that took place within Jewish circles about whether it could happen, and if it did, whether it would be good for the Jews or bad for the Jews. In some ways, we were more comfortable with a figure like Henry Kissinger, who became the 56th U.S. secretary of state, or more recently Rahm Emanuel, who served as the 23rd White House chief of staff. That sort of advisory or ministerial role has a long precedent in our history, reaching all the way back to Mordecai in the Book of Esther, and Joseph in Genesis. By way of contrast, we have the 19th-century example of Benjamin Disraeli, who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom, but only after converting to the Anglican Church as a child.

Rahm Emanuel

And, as is well known, Kennedy tragically was assassinated before completing a full term in office, and while there have been several other Catholics who have seriously vied for the presidency, including his two brothers, the nine presidents who followed all have been affiliated with one or another Protestant sect. It is worth noting that the first Greek Orthodox presidential candidate was nominated by the Democratic Party in 1988, and had former Massachusetts governor Mike Dukakis defeated George H. W. Bush, his wife, Kitty Dukakis, would have become the first Jewish first lady of the United States. Here, too, we could find a precedent in the biblical personage of Esther.

Then came the year 2000, when Al Gore chose the U.S. senator from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman, to be his running mate on the Democratic party ticket. And while Lieberman was the first Jewish vice presidential candidate to win the popular vote (albeit riding Gore’s coattails), the conservative-dominated United States Supreme Court decided the election in favor of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Gore and others harbored a degree of resentment towards Lieberman for not going all in, and running simultaneously for re-election as senator, a race he won. But in truth, with the economy still going strong under the Clinton-Gore administration, the election was Gore’s to lose. And he did.

Joe Lieberman

Lieberman became a presidential candidate in his own right in 2004, and for a brief moment we came closer to the possibility of a Jewish president than ever before. But he was identified as a centrist at a time when the Democratic party was moving to the left, as the shock of 9/11 began to recede and the reality of Bush’s occupation of Iraq began to take hold. Consequently, Lieberman’s candidacy was not very successful, and the United States senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kerry, a Roman Catholic just like the other JFK, gained the Democratic nomination, only to go down in defeat against Bush’s re-election bid. Whether Lieberman would have done any better or any worse than Kerry is hard to say.

Kerry’s defeat did not slow his party’s leftward tilt, which posed serious problems for Lieberman, especially given his somewhat hawkish stance on foreign policy issues. This came to a head in 2006, when he lost the Democratic primary in Connecticut, and decided to run for re-election to the Senate as an independent. While he won the election, he lost the support of many former colleagues in the Democratic party, including Gore and Hillary Clinton, who abandoned Lieberman and endorsed his rival. And while he remained more or less affiliated with the Democrats during his final term as senator, which ended in 2013, Lieberman in turn endorsed Republican John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, and spoke at the Republican National Convention that year. Rumor had it that he had been considered a potential running mate for McCain as well, and perhaps might have served McCain better than former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.

Of course, the 2008 election was extraordinary, in that we elected the first African American president. And back in the sixties, conversation about whether there would ever be a Jewish president would sometimes also turn to the question of what would be more likely, that there would be a Jewish president or an African American president? The answer was far from clear, as both possibilities seemed altogether improbable. The fact that Barack Obama was elected and then re-elected is a great testament to the progress we have made as a society, and also a reflection of significant demographic changes within the population of the United States.

The 2008 primaries were also significant in regard to some of the other primary candidates. For example, for the Republican party, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had been a contender, and could have been the first Italian-American elected to the White House (many urged Democratic New York State Governor Mario Cuomo to run back in the 80s, but to no avail). Mitt Romney came close to taking the nomination away from McCain, and then became the Republican candidate in 2012, making him the first Mormon to come close to winning the presidency (whether Mormons are considered Protestants, or even Christians, is open to debate). Back in 2008, former United States senator from New York Hillary Clinton was considered the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, and had Obama not overtaken her in the primaries, she might have been the first woman to serve as president.

And so we come to the present moment, and the impressively diverse set of major party candidates set to run in the 2016 primaries. On the Republican side, this includes New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Roman Catholic; former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, a Roman Catholic convert; United States senator from Florida Marco Rubio, a Roman Catholic of Cuban descent; United States senator from Texas Ted Cruz, whose father also was Cuban; retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, an African American; and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from India.

On the Democratic side, we have former first lady, senator, and secretary of state Hillary Clinton once again running as the heir apparent; former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, a Roman Catholic; and the United States senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, born and raised, and bar mitzvahed, in Brooklyn, New York.

Although their politics are quite distinct, in tossing his hat into the ring to compete in the Democratic primaries, Sanders is following in Lieberman’s footsteps as a Jewish candidate for president. And the amazing thing is that Sanders is suddenly mounting a credible challenge to Hillary Clinton. I find this somehow ironic, given that Clinton and others turned their backs on Lieberman when he was down on his luck, because Lieberman was seen as too conservative. Now, along comes Sanders, who like Lieberman has independent party affiliations while remaining associated with the Democrats, but whose politics is significantly to the left of Clinton, to the extent that he identifies himself as a democratic socialist. So now it is Clinton who is losing ground among the party faithful because she is seen as too conservative.

Bernie Sanders

I imagine that the success Sanders is achieving in the polls and in the all-important activity of fundraising is starting to give Clinton some cause for concern, maybe even an upset stomach? That’s why I would call what’s happening right now, with apologies to Montezuma, Lieberman’s revenge.

Could Sanders win the Democratic nomination next year? And if he did, could he beat whomever the Republicans pick out of their extremely crowded field, thereby becoming the first Jewish president of the United States of America?

It’s possible, but unlikely. But the really nice thing about all this is, it’s unlikely because of his politics, and not because he’s Jewish.

Où est la BiblioTech?

So, the title of this post is a nod to the fact that I took French in secondary school, starting at Russell Sage Junior High School in Forest Hills and continuing at Hillcrest High School in Jamaica (that's in the New York City Borough of Queens, in case you don't know). I am not all fluent in the language, but I do recall a thing or two from those days, I'm happy to say. And one of the phrases that has stuck with me for all of these years (more than I care to count, or recount) is: Où est la bibliothèque?

It's a classic phrase used for beginning French students, which is why it wound up as part of the lyrics featured in this music video from The Flight of the Conchords, Foux Da Fa Fa:


 




Now, it's not that I remembered that sequence from the short-lived HBO comedy series, even though I did do a blog post on it way back in 2007, when Blog Time Passing was not even 6 months old (you can read that post, Laughter from New Zealand, if you like, but all of the videos I included no longer work, broken links being one of the pitfalls of writing on the web). No, I just did a Google search on Où est la bibliothèque? and that video, a parody of French film circa the 1960s, popped up.

So, why was I doing that search? Because I wanted to check on where exactly do all of the accent marks go in that sentence, and that's because I do remember a bit of my French lessons, but far from perfectly. And now, thinking about it, while that French sentence, which translates as, Where is the library?, makes perfect sense for a class being taught at school, it was hardly the most useful of questions to imprint on students' memories. Wouldn't, say, Where is the restroom? or Where is the American embassy?, for that matter, be much more relevant for someone traveling in a foreign land?

And it's not just that Où est la bibliothèque? is less than relevant for a tourist visiting Paris, or that it reflects a distinctly academic bias. It's also that it is a remnant of a bygone age, a time when libraries played a much more significant role in our cultures than they do today, in our postliterate, electronic, digital, internetty (internutty?) age. Of course, that also means that Où est la bibliothèque? has taken on new and somewhat disturbing connotations, as in, where have all the libraries gone, long time passing?

And to acknowledge the decline and fall of the bookish world that those of us of a certain age knew and loved, and because I never met a pun I didn't like, or tried to find a use for, I turned bibliothèque into BiblioTech. And going even further back into the early history of this blog, back to its first month of existence, I had posted an entry entitled Medieval Helpdesk that featured another comedic video, this one a Scandinavian skit worthy of Monty Python. You can click on the link to see what I wrote about it back in 2007, but I'll include the Norwegian video here as well:







So, now, why all of this walking down memory lane, you might be asking? Or maybe not, or maybe you stopped reading this post after the first paragraph, in which case I'm writing to myself. And maybe that's just what blogging is anyway? But anyway, the reason all of this comes to mind is a recent video from another Nordic source, Ikea. Maybe you saw it online already, it's called Experience the power of a bookbook™ , and in case you haven't, or just want to see it again, here it is:






As you may have gathered, the video is both a parody of Apple commercials and a genuine ad for the Swedish furniture company. Now, here's the write-up that went with the video over on YouTube:

At only 8mm thin, and weighing in at less than 400g, the 2015 IKEA Catalogue comes pre-installed with thousands of home furnishing ideas. Join the revolution at http://IKEA.sg/bookbook (Singapore) or http://IKEA.my/bookbook (Malaysia).

Now, note the irony here, as they still direct you to a website (or two). And if you go to the website, you'll find the content of the video translated into a series of web pages So, even though Ikea is touting the virtues of a print medium, they are using new media to get that message out. Well, that's not at all unheard of. Going back to Plato, we have his criticisms of the medium of writing appearing in written works such as the Phaedrus, and Neil Postman among others went on television to criticize the very medium he was appearing on. You gotta find a way to get the message out, after all.

Not that Ikea's main concern was promoting a media ecological awareness. But even as an accidental by-product of the use of humor and parody in the service of persuasion and commercial promotion, it's good to see, if for nothing else than for a bit of comedy relief.

Speaking of which (and ignore the Swedish subtitles if you please)...








Where did that come from, you might ask? Well, another French phrase that stuck with me is, La plume est sur la table, which means, The pen is on the table. But when I did a Google search on it, it turns out that the more common phrase used in French class is, La plume de ma tante est sur la table, which means, My aunt's pen is on the table. And one of the search results that Google gave me was this video, Où est la plume de ma tante? And that of course means, Where is my aunt's pen? And that makes perfect sense, that following the disappearance of the library, wouldn't the pen be the next to go?

And it all just seems so very fitting, doesn't it? Où est la bibliothèque? Où est la plume? Où est le livre? That last one means, Where is the book? Where in the world have they all gone away to?

Je ne sais pas, je ne sais pas...

Future Sh(er)(l)ock

So, ok, maybe I overdid it with the poststructuralist style title for this post, with all those parentheses and all, but hey, I did publish an article about two decades ago with the title, Post(modern)man, about Neil Postman, a revised version of which appears in my book, On the Binding Biases of Time—and speaking of time, it's time for another plug:




So, now that we got that over with, what I want to relate is that while I was working on Amazing Ourselves to Death—oops, I think I feel another plug coming on...





So, as I was saying, while I was writing the book, I naturally went back over many of Postman's publications, including the often overlooked collection entitled Conscientious Objections—uh oh, here we go again:





Originally published in 1988, Conscientious Objections included one of Postman's most pointed critiques of the social and behavioral sciences and scientism, coupled together with an eloquent statement on the importance of media ecology, in the lead essay, entitled "Social Science as Moral Theology" (which alone is worth the price of the book). The subtitle, Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology, and Education provides a sense of the range of subject matter covered, including several essays that exhibit a general semantics orientation, including one on Alfred Korzybski.

Conscientious Objections also includes two essays that sum up the argument he makes in his two best known works critiquing the impact of television, The Disappearance of Childhood and Amusing Ourselves to Death (wait for it, wait for it, ok, here it comes)...





The first of the two essays in Conscientious Objections is entitled "The Disappearance of Childhood" which appropriately enough summarizes the book of the same title. But the other essay, the one that provides the gist of Amusing Ourselves to Death, is entitled "Future Shlock" (which may come as a bit of a shock to you, I know).  And of course, it is a play on the title of Alvin Toffler's popular book of 1970, Future Shock. You know what's coming next here, now, don't you?





If you're not familiar with the book, it's a bit of popular media ecology, one that struck me as very profound when I was in high school and an undergraduate in college. The phrase future shock was itself a play on the established notion of culture shock, with the idea that the rate of change had accelerated so drastically in the postwar era that we easily fall victim to a form of culture shock without leaving home, a kind of temporal culture shock, as we are unprepared for the pace of progress we have been undergoing, and have no defenses or means of coping with all of the change that we are experiencing.

Of course, you no doubt recall my post here on Blog Time Passing back in 2009, entitled, Shockingly, The Future Ain't What It Used To Be, which included a bit more discussion of future shock than I am including here. The reason I wrote that post was that I had discovered that a documentary that was made back in 1972, based on Future Shock, and featuring Orson Welles, had been uploaded to YouTube. The film provides an interesting window on what we were experiencing at that time, and where we thought we might be headed. It's a bit of nostalgia for those of us of a certain age, and certainly a period piece, but not without its relevance for the present day.

So, in doing this post, I went back to YouTube, which has changed its policies since 2009 regarding the length of videos it allows (certainly a significant contribution to information overload), and I was not terribly shocked to find the movie now available in one piece, instead of chopped up into five segments as it was back in 2009, which is how it appears on my earlier blog post. So, let me take this opportunity to embed the full film here and now, for your viewing pleasure:





But all of this is a digression, so let me also explain that I sometimes teach a course entitled Writing for Online Media for Fordham University's School of Professional and Continuing Studies, a course that counts towards the Professional Studies in New Media major, offered by the Professional Studies in New Media program that I am director of. In fact I'm just finishing up a summer session section of the course, taught as an online class. And I also teach a graduate version of the class, Writing for the Internet, for Fairleigh Dickinson University's MA Program in Media and Professional Communication (being offered this Fall semester). And one of the assignments I give my students is to make an edit to a Wikipedia entry, and then blog about it.

So, after rereading Postman's essay "Future Shlock"which begins with him making the claim to have coined the phrase future shock prior to Toffler's use of it (without, I hasten to add, making any judgment as to whether Toffler took it from him or came up with it independently), I decided to take a look at the Wikipedia entry on Future Shock. It includes a section with the heading "Term" which read as follows:

Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a "super-industrial society". This change overwhelms people. He believed the accelerated rate of technological and social change left people disconnected and suffering from "shattering stress and disorientation"—future shocked. Toffler stated that the majority of social problems are symptoms of future shock. In his discussion of the components of such shock, he popularized the term "information overload."

His analysis of the phenomenon of information overload is continued in his later publications, especially The Third Wave and Powershift.

Nothing wrong with that. But I decided to add the following immediately after:

In the introduction to an essay entitled "Future Shlock" in his book, Conscientious Objections, Neil Postman wrote: "Sometime about the middle of 1963, my colleague Charles Weingartner and I delivered in tandem an address to the National Council of Teachers of English. In that address we used the phrase "future shock" as a way of describing the social paralysis induced by rapid technological change. To my knowledge, Weingartner and I were the first people ever to use it in a public forum. Of course, neither Weingartner nor I had the brains to write a book called Future Shock, and all due credit goes to Alvin Toffler for having recognized a good phrase when one came along" (p. 162).

 I actually made this change on March 13, 2013, and checking on the entry now, I am pleased to report to you that the addition remains unchanged, with the sole exception that the quote from Conscientious Objections was separated out and turned into a block quote, a reasonable enough modification.

So, that's my bit of detective work, which I hope justifies my inclusion of Sherlock in the title, along with shock and shlock, and maybe it is a bit of shlocky sleuthing on my part, but I don't think there's any issue here that might require the services of some Future Shylock, do you?