New Atlantis | lullaby pit

Has a college degree become a bad investment? Better question: is conservative rhetoric the worst investment in history?

Posted on 2009.07.07 by winterSmith 10 comments

Yesterday over at Future Majority, Kevin Bondelli responded to Jack Hough’s New York Post column “Don’t Get That College Degree!” Bondelli’s take led with one of the more terrifying titles I’ve seen lately: “Has College Become a Bad Investment?” Yow. When you dig the hole so deep that you can even use that kind of question as a rhetorical device,

LIFE and the long view: ideologies of science and technology since the Enlightenment

Posted on 2008.04.01 by winterSmith 7 comments

Part two in a series. As I suggested in Part One, the messianic/utopian view of science and technology attributed to LIFE Magazine is consistent with an ideological bent that traces its lineage to the dawn of the Enlightenment in Europe. Francis Baconâ€™s highly influential New Atlantis, first published in 1626, recounts the narratorâ€™s fictional shipwreck on the shores of Bensalem,