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The Native Tourist
reformed/biblical observations on Christianity and culture

Tuesday, July 29, 2008
The Loss of Reading
The quotes are taken from an article from the New York Times looking at the effect of technology on the way people read:

"What we are losing in this country and presumably around the world is the sustained, focused, linear attention developed by reading. I would believe people who tell me that the Internet develops reading if I did not see such a universal decline in reading ability and reading comprehension on virtually all tests."

-- Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts

"Reading a book, and taking the time to ruminate and make inferences and engage the imaginational processing, is more cognitively enriching, without doubt, than the short little bits that you might get if you're into the 30-second digital mode."

-- Ken Pugh, a cognitive neuroscientist at Yale

This makes me that much more thankful for the Classical Christian education my kids receive.

Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Thinking about Trees



Trees are surely one of the marvelous parts of God's creation. They figure prominantly in scripture both in the original garden and the New Jerusalem as well as the place (figuratively at least) of crucifixion.

Essayist Alan Jacob's has a really fine piece in Books and Culture on trees well worth the read.