WARNING: NONSENSE IS DESTROYING AMERICA

Reviewed 4/24/2006

Warning: Nonsense is Destroying America, by Vincent Ruggiero

WARNING: NONSENSE IS DESTROYING AMERICA
The Role of Popular Culture in America's Social Problems
Vincent Ryan Ruggiero
Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1994

Rating:

4.0

High

ISBN 0-7679-0628-4 291p. SC/BWI $14.95

Errata

Page 33: "Thus a critic calls Roshomon, a Japanese film that explores widely differing perceptions on a real (imagined?) rape, 'the classic statement of the relativism, of the unknowability, of truth'."
  Spelling: S/B "Rashomon".
Page 35: "Scientists were absolutely certain that the coelacanth had been extinct for millions of years. But when a bathyscape descended deep into the waters of the Pacific Ocean and the crew looked out, they saw a coelacanth..."
  This may be accurate (and it works fine as an illustration of the folly of relativism.) But the fact is that the first living coelacanth was discovered three days before Christmas 1938 in the South African coastal town of East London. Trawler fishermen hauled it up from about 40 fathoms in their nets and brought it to market, where it was recognized as an unusual specimen by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator of the local natural history museum. The entire fascinating story is recorded in letters she exchanged with J. L. B. Smith, a chemistry professor at nearby Rhodes University, and presented courtesy of WGBH.
Page 44: "...literary critic Harold Bloom argues that the earliest known tests of the Hebrew Bible were not religious writings but a work of literature..."
  Spelling: S/B "texts".
Page 92: "Scientists recognize the effects of hydrofluorocarbons on the atmosphere, of defoliation of rain forests on weather, of volcanic eruptions in one part of world on temperatures in others."
  Given the year when this was published, the first probably should be "chlorofluorocarbons". They diminish the Earth's ozone layer, a greater threat at the time than HFCs' contribution as greenhouse gases to global warming. The second error is a missing word: S/B "in one part of the world".
Page 133: (Footnote) "...the [ACLU] opposes laws restricting gambling, some narcotic use, homosexual conduct, pornography, abortion, suicide, the use of metal detectors in airports, and the distribution of child pornography."
  The ACLU opposes laws restricting the use of metal detectors in airports? That seems most uncharacteristic of them.
Page 133: "In Bogota, Colombia, Jaime Jaremio, a wealthy man, regularly visits the sewer urchins, those poorest of the poor children who live amid three thousand miles of stinking, flowing, typhoid-ridden excrement."
  Missing word: S/B "three thousand square miles of".
Page 175: "On the subject of biological evolution, which is widely assumed to have disproved the Judeo-Christian belief in the origin of human life, British scientist Chandra Wickrahasinghe offers sharply conflicting testimony. The research that she and Sir Fred Hoyle performed led them to the conclusion that biological conditions were never suitable for human life to have formed on Earth."
  Spelling: S/B "Chandra Wickramasinghe". The choice of pronoun is wrong too; for, as this picture shows, the student and collaborator of the late Sir Fred Hoyle is undeniably a male. His full name, incidentally, is Nalin Chandra Wickramasinghe.
Valid CSS! Valid HTML 4.01 Strict To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.
Copyright © 2005-2024 Christopher P. Winter. All rights reserved.
This page was last modified on 8 August 2024.