Primrose Road

Part I of White Noise: here's what my studentlekh came up with (ok, I threw in the "media skeptic" part, but they thunk the rest) --



Also, I learned that graduates of middle schools in the county where I teach still resent not being *told* what was happening on 9/11. They knew something was wrong because their teachers were mumbling fearfully to each other in the halls and then going back into the classrooms and telling the students that everything was ok. In the days and weeks afterwards, their teachers didn't mention anything about the event and its aftermath(s) because principals were afraid of upsetting students whose relatives had been involved in the disaster.

"Thus, poker is a game that has often been cited as the expression of all the complex attitudes and unspoken values of a competitive society. It calls for shrewdness, aggression, trickery, and unflattering appraisals of character. It is said women cannot play poker well because it stimulates their curiosity, and curiosity is fatal in poker. Poker is intensely individualist, allowing no place for kindness or consideration, but only for the greatest good of the greatest number -- the number one. It is in this perspective that it is easy to see why war has been called the sport of kings ... Kings can play poker with kingdoms, as the generals of their armies do with troops. They can bluff and deceive their opponent about their resources and their intentions. What disqualifies war from being a true game is probably what also disqualifies the stock market and business -- the rules are not fully known nor accepted by all the players. Furthermore, the audience is too fully participant in war and business, just as in a native society there is no true art because everybody is engaged in making art." --- Marshall McLuhan

There's an article on Chabad's website outlining a rabbinical debate about telephone communication and radio waves. When Jewish law requires that its adherents hear a reading, it asks, is it better to hear that reading over the phone or radio than to miss it altogether? The matter boils down to a spiritual question about radio waves, a concept you don't often encounter.

The major concerns expressed seem to deal with whether communications media can be thought of as (in Marshall McLuhan's words) "extensions of man." I wonder, are they afraid that telephone Torah suggests some sort of disembodied, pseudo-Deleuzian "machinic mitzvah"?

The issue is, like many, perhaps best explained with puppets.