Faith and Works at Apple

“The world-religion of the educated and prosperous in the twenty-first century is Apple, with its Vatican in Cupertino and its cathedrals in the light-filled Apple Stores that draw pilgrims gripping iPhones and iPads like rosaries. Apple’s flock is secured against heresy by censors who rule the online App Store; only applications with Apple’s imprimatur are allowed on an iPhone. Programmers risk excommunication—with all their works condemned to being listed in an Index of Prohibited Software—if they violate canon law by bypassing Apple’s banking system or ignoring its infallible doctrine. Rebellious heretics can ‘jailbreak’ an iPhone and induce it to accept software anathematized by Apple, but a heretic’s phone is refused communion when presented for repair at the Apple Store.”

Edward Mendelson, "Faith and Works at Apple," NY Review Blog - http://bit.ly/18pqI8E 

On A Secular Age

“I’m vastly oversimplifying a rich, complex book, but what I most appreciate is his vision of a ‘secular’ future that is both open and also contains at least pockets of spiritual rigor, and that is propelled by religious motivation, a strong and enduring piece of our nature.”

David Brooks, "The Secular Society" - http://nyti.ms/1awm75i

Milton Draws a Crowd

“Take Berkeley’s English department, hardly a bastion of intellectual conservatism. Our bedrock classes for the major are the three surveys that take students from Beowulf to Milton, the Puritans to the Victorians, the moderns to the present. Our most popular electives are courses like ‘The Bible as Literature,’ ‘Contemporary Literature’ and ‘The American Novel.’ ‘Milton’ manages to draw a crowd.”

"The Humanities in Crisis? Not at Most Schools"- http://nyti.ms/1bcP3kj

On Revising

“‘Much as I loathe the typewriter,’ W.H. Auden wrote, ‘I must admit that it is a help in self-criticism. Typescript is so impersonal and hideous to look at that, if I type out a poem, I immediately see defects which I missed when I looked through it in manuscript.’”

Craig Fehrman, "Revising Your Writing Again? Blame the Modernists" - http://b.globe.com/14I3NTd

Ken Robinson on Education

Artisanal Education

“If it is indeed time to ‘get big or get out’ — or, better put, “get online or get an identity”—then I’m for the artisanal, the local, the educational equivalent of farmer’s markets. The irony is that while most professors embrace the ideal embodied in farmer’s markets, they have supported the evisceration of local institutional educational identity. It’s time to insist not only on locally grown food, but on local knowledge. I’d rather make and share my own beer than encourage my students to guzzle Budweiser.”

Patrick J Deneen "We're All to Blame for MOOCs," The Chronicle  - http://bit.ly/12tceG3

On Books and Open Minds

Lonely Thinking in Film

“In one flashback with her teacher and former lover Martin Heidegger, Heidegger tells Arendt, “thinking is a lonely business.” Outside of a few intimates, Arendt is alone throughout the film, accompanied by nothing and no one but her thoughts and her ever-present cigarette. There is a danger that Arendt’s cigarette could become an empty cipher, an obvious symbol. Instead, it lingers there, pulsing with Arendt’s breath, as she remains silent, listening. It is her silent intensity, throughout the film, that strikes the viewer, propels us to think with Arendt about what she is observing and its implications. The audience is thus transformed, moving from observing Arendt to thinking with her. And when Arendt at the end becomes a speaker, her deliberations done, the film climaxes in her speech to students at a small liberal arts college. The seven-minute long monologue, a sort of closing argument in this film’s long accumulation of evidence, is gripping. Arendt concludes: ‘This inability to think created the possibility for many ordinary men to commit to commit evil deeds on a gigantic scale, the like of which had never been seen before. The manifestation of the wind of thought is not knowledge but the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly. And I hope that thinking gives people the strength to prevent catastrophes in these rare moments when the chips are down.’ The full speech is likely the greatest articulation of the importance of thinking that will ever be presented in a film.”

Roger Berkowitz "Lonely Thinking: Hannah Arendt on Film," Paris Review - http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/?p=53407

Why Do I Teach?

“College education is a proliferation of such possibilities: the beauty of mathematical discovery, the thrill of scientific understanding, the fascination of historical narrative, the mystery of theological speculation. We should judge teaching not by the amount of knowledge it passes on, but by the enduring excitement it generates. Knowledge, when it comes, is a later arrival, flaring up, when the time is right, from the sparks good teachers have implanted in their students’ souls.”

Gary Gutting, "Why Do I Teach?" The Stone - http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=144567

Newcastle Herald Op-Ed

“Recent census data in the United Kingdom and Australia indicates that rates of religious observance remain low. However, from marriage equality and reproductive rights to political radicalism and terrorism, religion remains ever visible in political life. So too, a quick pass through the cinema presents us with a popcorn of paranormal activity. The ghosts of religion haunt our secular societies, and this has prompted new research at the University of Newcastle.”

"Opinion: State of Religion in Politics" - http://bit.ly/17W0NaB​