America has been “dumbed down” by 40 years of lamentable Least Common Denominator public schooling and mass media. Here is some evidence: Ezra Klein’s imbecilic punditry [1]. I suggest reading the book: The Dumbest Generation [2]
.
Here are the current top-most items on my perpetual bedside pile:
- I just finished Lucifer’s Hammer [3]
by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. It was a great read, and quite thought provoking. One thing that struck me is society’s dependence on a handful of high technology specialists, rather than generalists with a broad set of skills and knowledge. People tend to specialize in just one particular field, and then look to experts in other fields for guidance. Its a sheeple mentality that our government through the media and public education have fostered during the past fifty or so years. In the event of a major disaster, very few people will have the the skills to survive a return to pre-grid technology.
- I’ve just started reading Survivors [4]
by Terry Nation. This novel was the basis for two British television series, produced in the 1970s and in 2009. The more recent series [5]
is now available in the United States on DVD. For readers in the UK and possessions only, it is also available as free streaming video from the BBC web site. (The BBC web site’s software allows file downloads only to servers in England and the Commonwealth.) I’ll post my comments after I finish the novel.
- Jim and I recently watched the Mel Gibson movie Conspiracy Theory [6]
. It was a movie with a very good fast moving plot starring Mel Gibson as Jerry and Julia Roberts as Alice. It was a classic good guy versus bad guy film. The outstanding screenplay was written by Brian Helgeland. It had a very complicated plot, and I had to have Jim explain a couple of things about the intelligence “spook” world to me. Jerry had been a mind-control experiment subject who had been trained as a one-time-use assassin in the CIA’s rightfully maligned MK-ULTRA program. The villain, Dr. Jonas, was expertly portrayed by veteran Shakespearean actor, Patrick Stewart. (Best known to American audiences as Captain Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation.) Jim’s favorite line in the film was from Agent Lowry: “If the intelligence community is a family, think of us as the uncle no one talks about.”