Sign of the End Times

From Today's Papers on Slate.com, Sunday, June 15 (I quote en masse the second half of the article, seemingly dedicated to the demise of the intellect):

"On the TV page in Arts & Leisure, the NYT extols the "endless sunshininess" of PBS' Reading Rainbow above the fold and previews the Spike channel below. "Butterfly in the sky, I can go twice as high. Take a look, it's in a book" goes the Rainbow theme song. The new shows on Spike include Stripperella, with Pamela Anderson lending voice to animated stripper/superhero Erotica Jones. On Rainbow, LeVar Burton invites his viewers to pause a few seconds to listen to a babbling brook. On Spike, you get Ride With Funkmaster Flex, a show about hip-hop stars and their customized cars. Rainbow recently lost its funding; Spike premieres tomorrow.

The WP fronts the rush of philanthropic (and some might say opportunistic) corporate sponsors stepping up to plug the fiscal holes in public education. Vying for fat cash prizes for their schools, kids put their thinking caps on and come up with, say, the most creative use of SweeTarts or the best song in celebration of Oscar Mayer Lunchables. (Kids in Maryland dressed up as dancing pieces of bologna, ham, and cheese, and walked off with 10 grand.) Even schools that don't finish in the money (i.e., the losers) are eligible for other "benefits"—such as a visit from the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile.

In the NYT Magazine, the Ethicist (Randy Cohen) responds to a high-school English teacher who wants to offer $20 to the student who scores highest on the next exam. Surprisingly, Cohen embraces the idea, though he warns that the "reward seems too small and its eventual arrival too remote to be a goad to learning. But that's a question best left to the teacher, and to the state legislators, who will no doubt be delighted to allocate adequate funds for the next round of 'Name That Nabokov Character.'

It beats making a life-size car out of SweeTarts."