Postby Technomancer » Wed Jul 21, 2004 4:01 pm
Bao Ninh "The Sorrow of War: A Novel of Noth Vietnam"
A very good book, and a much needed different perspective on the Vietnam war itself. It reminds me a bit of Erich Maria Remarque's "The Road Back" in its depiction of the rootlessness and confusion of the war's survivior's.
(from the jacket)
Bao Ninh, a former North Vietnamese soldier provides a strinkingly honest look at how the Vietnam War forever changed his life, his country, and the people who live there.
The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry—is not even a "subject"—but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning.
Neil Postman
(The End of Education)
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge
Isaac Aasimov