"Those despised millionaires who set up a university in the midst of a city that seems devoted only to what they had neglected, whether it was out of a sense of what they themselves had issued, or out of bad conscience about what their lives were exclusively devoted to, or to satisfy the vanity of having their names attached to the enterprise," (p. 244).
Bart Simpson, the main character of the animated cartoon series of the same name, created by Matt Groening. Bart was first sketched in 1987; the television series first aired in the winter of 1990.
Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores. Understanding Computers and
Cognition. A New Foundation for Design. Norwood NJ: Ablex
Publishing Corporation, 1986.
"Organizations exist as networks of directives and commissives. Directives include orders, requests, consultations, and offers; commissives include promises, acceptances, and rejections" (p. 157).
They state also: "In fulfilling an organization's external commitments, its personnel are involved in a network of conversations" (p. 158).
Ludwig Wittgenstein. Philosophical Investigations (Translation by
G.E.M. Anscombe of Philosophische Untersuchungen). Oxford: Basil
Blackwell. 1984 (reprint of the 1968 edition)
If a multiple choice test in World History (given in June, 1992 at Stuyvesant High School in New York City) asks whether the Holocaust is an Italian revolutionary movement, and if Mein Kampf was Hitler's body guard or his summer retreat, why should anyone be surprised that American students show no better choices than those they are supposed to choose from?
Steve Waite. Interview with Bill Melton, Journal of Bionomics,
July 1996.
Family: Discovering the Primitive Future
Statistics on family in the USA and the world are a matter of public record. The processing and interpretation of data, even in the age of electronic processing, takes time once data has been collected. The Statistical Handbook on the American Family (Phoenix AZ: The Orynx Press, 1992), for instance, deals with trends covering 1989-1990. The numbers are intriguing. Well over 85% of the adult population married by the time of their 45th birthday, but only around 60% are currently married. 10% are divorced and almost as many widowed. The general conclusions about the family are: There is a decline in marital stability with over one million children per year affected by the divorce of their parents. Less than 20% of the people see marriage as a lifetime relationship. The POSSLQ (persons of opposite sex sharing living quarters) is well over 5% of the population. The size of the average American household shrank from 3.7 persons over 40 years ago to 2.6 recently. Interracial marriages, while triple in number compared to 1970, include slightly below 2% of the population.