Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at UCLA, argues that people are losing the ability to think deeply about writing. That doesn’t mean they are forgetting how to decode individual words. Rather, they are losing the higher-order abilities of comprehension and synthesis. America, in other words, isn’t illiterate. It’s postliterate.
~ Rose Horowitch via The Atlantic
:::
In our zeal, we refuse to understand past generations as they understood themselves. We expect them to have organized their mental categories the way we organize ours—and we are greatly disappointed when we discover that they did not.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
:::
Empires of the past were built upon the idea that conquest was the divine right of great powers. There was no legal distinction between the acquisition, occupation and takeover of foreign territory. The Portuguese did as they wished in Angola, and the British did as they wished in India.
~ Linda Kinstler via The New York Times
:::
Charles Q. Brown Jr. – the American four-star general who serves as the 21st Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and previously served as the 22nd Chief of Staff of the Air Force – was born on this day – August 27, 1962 – in San Antonio, Texas.
He is a graduate of Texas Tech University, Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University, and the Air Command and Staff College.
:::