Thomas Education

 When staunch adherents of an exclusive philosophy get confronted with the reality of their false predictions, they undergo some similar reactions.    The recent collapse of the elaborate bizarre theories of the Qanon conspiracy network produced a rude awakening (as reported by News Literacy here ) in its followers -- the conspiracy theories adapted to continuing real-life rebuttals, until the final blow on January 20th.  To the end, they believed their putative savior would swoop in and make the radical change to society that they dreamed of. I saw a similar response firsthand in 2011 -- May 22nd, to be precise.  A close family friend (children's classmates) was an adherent of Harold Camping Family Radio, and was sure that the Judgement Day would occur on May 21st.  This had caused a rift in that family, though he maintained close relations with wife and sons.  On May 22nd, he checked himself into the nearby hospital, in a great depression, telli...

The Fall of Language in the Age of English by Minae Mizumura My rating: 3 of 5 stars After reading Mizumura's "A True Novel", I wanted to read this treatise. I taught in Japan, I studied the language, and retain a vivid interest in the culture. These two works certainly incorporate a Japanese sensibility, and make me yearn to read them in the original, to catch the nuances and the allegorical representations, as well as the class/gender distinctions built into word choice and verb endings. This treatise is a great conversation started for a linguistics class, as Mizumura includes not only a reasonable history of Japanese educational/literary policy, but is not shy about presenting her definite opinions about the dumbing down of modern society -- of course we should retain the beauteous complex elitist literary system that requires years of study to even ...