Airport Observations, The Flight, And Amusing Ourselves to Death…
The three hour time difference between Vegas and DC can be a pain when talking on the phone, but right now I’m feeling it in person. It’s about 1:00 AM local time but only 10:00 PM Vegas time. Thankfully, I’m starting to get sleepy. Tomorrow, I’m going to a breakfast at Falls Church to hear Jerry Root talk about C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian. Needless to say, I’m excited!
Before I go to bed, I wanted to share snippets from my last 7 hours…
I got to the airport and made a few observations. I tried to post them using the McCarran free Wi-Fi, but a browser/connection issue. My observations are probably most thought provoking as questions:
- Why does the shoe-shine lady have on a short skirt and fishnet stockings?
- Why does the urinal use 3-4 gallons of water per flush when Las Vegas is in the desert?
- Regardless of where I sit, I’ll hear the slot machines… Will they sound different if somebody wins?
Those were a few of the questions I came away with during the wait for my flight. There was a slight delay getting on the plain (ie the people in front of me were caught using a fraudulent credit card or some sort), but other than that the rest of the trip went off without any problems. I slept till we hit ten thousand feet, then I broke out my iPod and turned on Gregorian chants sung on Pentacost for mass by a group of monks in Brazil. It was the perfect music for plowing through large chunks of “Amusing Ourselves to Death.”
It’s taken me a while to get through Amusing Ourselves to Death, but I worked through over half the book on my plane ride today. It still took me an average 2.5 mins per page, but Postman’s writing isn’t the easiest text out there. I was happy to read the entire second half of the book in one sitting. There is one thing I find funny though: I read the chapters out of order!
Either by nature or nurture, I am not a linear thinker, and reading books from cover to cover is difficult for me. I become so overwhelmed with keeping the argument straight that I slow down, get bored, and become sleepy. Books are also difficult because I’m a relational learner — I’m a verbal processor, and I enjoy rapid-fire conversation. I find that books which take a conversational tone are much easier for me to enjoy then books with complicated theses. Reading chapters out of order gives me a more conversational feel, and I believe it helps me understand the author’s implicit assumptions. In Ironic juxtaposition to the popularly habituated reading style, starting in the middle or at the end of the book and working my way backward or skipping around allows me to deconstruct and reconstruct the argument. Assessing the argument as a whole and breaking it down, instead of slowly building it up, is more conducive to my learning style.
If Postman were around today, he might ask me how TV and the Internet have influenced my learning style. I’m sure his questions would be far more articulate than the ones I could conjure up at this time at night, but underneath the questions would be the implicit tension between the natural and environmental development of my learning style…
Either way, I was glad to put such a big dent in a book. It has sparked more than a few questions as to the role modern media technology should play in the church. Those questions may come out in later posts, but for now it’s time to sleep… Goodnight.
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