"They had stopped thinking"

In the last sentence or two of Postman's book, he writes out these sentences: "For in the end he was trying to tell us that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking." In the last sentence, he makes a distinction that people in this world are now becoming stupid, they do not know what happens around them, they just find it all funny and they do not even think about it. This distinction matters because it is very true. People these days do not think about what they do, they just do it and think it is funny that they did it. Everything is a joke to people nowadays, no one takes anything seriously.

Dr. Postman ruins snow days

In Dr. Postman's novel "Amusing ourselves to Death" and his speech at Calvin College both relate to how dependent we are on technology. We use it everyday, whether its using our phones, making our food, or just going on to blogger.com to do some ridiculous assignment even tho we had two snow day in a row. He says in his speech that we have become so dependent on technology, that when we start talking to a door knob or a toaster, we won't find it strange or awkward, we will just go on with our lives like nothing happened, it will become irrelevant. The more and more technologically advanced we become, the more we become "pets" to technology. We are truly beginning to rely on technology too much. We don't even talk person to person anymore, its mostly on phones or texting instead of actually talking to the person. The point Dr. Postman is trying to make is that we rely to heavily on our technology, and that even talking to toasters, and door knobs, its still weird.

Civility Not Censorship

1. "Civility in public discourse is important" what Chavez means by this is that when we protest about some things, which we are given the ability to do so, we should do it in an orderly fashion without any maliciousness.
2. Bellicose - having or showing a ready disposition to fight. Chavez uses bellicose in her article to show that some people are using these terms in politics, to show that they are willing to fight for what they want.
3. A) Chavez is attempting to persuade the reader into believing that some words that may seem hurtful to hear, like Indian instead of Native American, or Hispanic instead of Latino, but it is instead what is meant behind those words. You cannot believe that every time someone says something maybe referring to race, ethnicity, sex, religion, sexual orientation or political party, that it is a threat or a word to bring down the person it is being said to.
B) The best example is probably the point she makes when some people may say "target" or "in the cross hairs" automatically means that they are referring to shooting or killing some important political person, when in actuality it is just a phrase used by the American public for a long time, just to get our points across, not to actually kill someone.

4. I completely agree with Chavez. She is right when she says that some people (mostly politicians) take everything that is being said, offensively. Were not saying were going to kill you we are just stating some kind of phrase, and when we refer to Native Americans as Indians, it is because that is how we were brought up, and it means no offense to them, that"s just what we have learned to refer to them by.