text stringlengths 0 3.86k |
|---|
In its original American broadcast , " Fear of Flying " finished 48th ( tied with Dateline NBC ) in the ratings for the week of December 12 to December 18 , 1994 , with a Nielsen rating of 9 @.@ 6 . The episode was the third highest rated show on the Fox network that week , beaten only by Beverly Hills , 90210 , and M... |
Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood , the authors of the book I Can 't Believe It 's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide , said it was " a good Marge @-@ centric episode with plenty of clever set pieces β the tributes to Cheers and Lost in Space are fantastic " , and noted that " Marge 's father looks susp... |
Colin Jacobson at DVD Movie Guide said in a review of the sixth season DVD that it was " another show I didn β t recall fondly but that works exceedingly well . I hadn β t realized how many quotes I β ve stolen from this one : the name ' Guy Incognito ' , the dog with the puffy tail , ' a burden coupled with a hassle ... |
= = Merchandise = =
|
The episode was selected for release in a 1999 video collection of selected episodes titled : The Simpsons Go To Hollywood . Other episodes included in the collection set were " Flaming Moe 's " , " Krusty Gets Kancelled " , and " Homer to the Max " . " Fear of Flying " was again included in the 2003 DVD release of th... |
= Harold Innis =
|
Harold Adams Innis ( / ΛΙͺnΙͺs / ; November 5 , 1894 β November 8 , 1952 ) was a Canadian professor of political economy at the University of Toronto and the author of seminal works on media , communication theory , and Canadian economic history . Despite his dense and difficult prose , Innis was one of Canada 's most o... |
Innis 's writings on communication explore the role of media in shaping the culture and development of civilizations . He argued , for example , that a balance between oral and written forms of communication contributed to the flourishing of Greek civilization in the 5th century BC . He warned , however , that Western... |
Innis laid the basis for scholarship that looked at the social sciences from a distinctly Canadian point of view . As the head of the University of Toronto 's political economy department , he worked to build up a cadre of Canadian scholars so that universities would not continue to rely as heavily on British or Ameri... |
As the Cold War grew hotter after 1947 , Innis grew increasingly hostile to the United States . He warned repeatedly that Canada was becoming a subservient colony to its much more powerful southern neighbor . " We are indeed fighting for our lives , " he warned , pointing especially to the " pernicious influence of Am... |
Innis also tried to defend universities from political and economic pressures . He believed that independent universities , as centres of critical thought , were essential to the survival of Western civilization . His intellectual disciple and university colleague , Marshall McLuhan , lamented Innis 's premature death... |
= = Rural roots = =
|
= = = Early life = = =
|
Harold Adams Innis was born in 1894 on a small livestock and dairy farm near the community of Otterville in southwestern Ontario 's Oxford County . As a boy he loved the rhythms and routines of farm life and he never forgot his rural origins . His mother , Mary Adams Innis , had named him ' Herald ' , hoping he would ... |
The strict sense of values and the feeling of devotion to a cause , which became so characteristic of him in later life , were derived , in part at least , from the instruction imparted so zealously and unquestioningly inside the severely unadorned walls of the Baptist Church at Otterville .
|
Innis attended the one @-@ room schoolhouse in Otterville and the community 's high school . He travelled 20 miles ( 32 km ) by train to Woodstock , Ontario , to complete his secondary education at a Baptist @-@ run college . He intended to become a public @-@ school teacher and passed the entrance examinations for te... |
= = = University studies = = =
|
In October 1913 , Innis started classes at McMaster University ( then in Toronto ) . McMaster was a natural choice for him because it was a Baptist university and many students who attended Woodstock College went there . McMaster 's liberal arts professors encouraged critical thinking and debate . Innis was especially... |
Before his final undergraduate year at McMaster , Innis spent a summer teaching at the Northern Star School in the frontier farming community of Landonville near Vermilion , Alberta . The experience gave him a sense of the vastness of Canada . He also learned about Western grievances over high interest rates and steep... |
= = = First World War service = = =
|
After graduating from McMaster , Innis felt that his Christian principles compelled him to enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force . He was sent to France in the fall of 1916 to fight in the First World War . Trench warfare with its " mud and lice and rats " had a devastating effect on him .
|
Innis 's role as an artillery signaller gave him firsthand experience of life ( and death ) on the front lines as he participated in the successful Canadian attack on Vimy Ridge . Signallers , or spotters , watched where each artillery shell landed , then sent back aiming corrections so that the next shells could hit ... |
Innis 's war was over . His biographer , John Watson , notes the physical wound took seven years to heal , but the psychological damage lasted a lifetime . Innis suffered recurring bouts of depression and nervous exhaustion because of his military service .
|
Watson also notes that the Great War influenced Innis 's intellectual outlook . It strengthened his Canadian nationalism ; sharpened his opinion of what he thought were the destructive effects of technology , including the communications media that were used so effectively to " sell " the war ; and led him , for the f... |
= = Graduate studies = =
|
= = = McMaster and Chicago = = =
|
Harold Innis completed a Master of Arts at McMaster , graduating in April 1918 . His thesis , called The Returned Soldier , " was a detailed description of the public policy measures that were necessary , not only to provide a supportive milieu to help veterans get over the effects of the war , but also to move on wit... |
Innis did his postgraduate work at the University of Chicago and was awarded his PhD in August 1920 . His two years at Chicago had a profound influence on his later work . His interest in economics deepened and he decided to become a professional economist . The economics faculty at Chicago questioned abstract and uni... |
Innis was influenced by the university 's two eminent communications scholars , George Herbert Mead and Robert E. Park . Although he did not attend any of these famous professors ' classes , Innis did absorb their idea that communication involved much more than the transmission of information . James W. Carey writes t... |
While at Chicago , Innis was exposed to the ideas of Thorstein Veblen , the iconoclastic thinker who drew on his deep knowledge of philosophy and economics to write scathing critiques of contemporary thought and culture . Veblen had left Chicago years before , but his ideas were still strongly felt there . Years later... |
Innis got his first taste of university teaching at Chicago , where he delivered several introductory economics courses . One of his students was Mary Quayle , the woman he would marry in May 1921 when he was 26 and she 22 . Together they had four children , Donald ( 1924 ) , Mary ( 1927 ) , Hugh ( 1930 ) and Ann ( 19... |
= = = History of the CPR = = =
|
Harold Innis wrote his PhD thesis on the history of the Canadian Pacific Railway ( CPR ) . The completion of Canada 's first transcontinental railway in 1885 had been a defining moment in Canadian history . Innis 's thesis , eventually published as a book in 1923 , can be seen as an early attempt to document the railw... |
Innis argues that " the history of the Canadian Pacific Railroad is primarily the history of the spread of Western civilization over the northern half of the North American continent " . As Robert Babe notes , the railway brought industrialization , transporting coal and building supplies to manufacturing sites . It w... |
Communications scholar Arthur Kroker argues that Innis 's study of the Canadian Pacific Railway was only the first in which he attempted to demonstrate that " technology is not something external to Canadian being ; but on the contrary , is the necessary condition and lasting consequence of Canadian existence " . It a... |
= = Staples thesis = =
|
Harold Innis is considered the leading founder of a Canadian school of economic thought known as the staples theory . It holds that Canada 's culture , political history and economy have been decisively shaped by the exploitation and export of a series of " staples " such as fur , fish , wood , wheat , mined metals an... |
= = = " Dirt " research = = =
|
In 1920 , Innis joined the department of political economy at the University of Toronto . He was assigned to teach courses in commerce , economic history and economic theory . He decided to focus his scholarly research on Canadian economic history , a hugely neglected subject , and he settled on the fur trade as his f... |
Thus , Innis travelled extensively beginning in the summer of 1924 when he and a friend paddled an 18 @-@ foot ( 5 @.@ 5 m ) canvas @-@ covered canoe hundreds of miles down the Peace River to Lake Athabasca ; then down the Slave River to Great Slave Lake . They completed their journey down the Mackenzie , Canada 's lo... |
Everywhere Innis went his methods were the same : he interviewed people connected with the production of staple products and listened to their stories .
|
= = = Fur trade in Canada = = =
|
Harold Innis 's interest in the relationship between empires and colonies was developed in his classic study , The Fur Trade in Canada : An Introduction to Canadian Economic History ( 1930 ) . The book chronicles the trade in beaver fur from the early 16th century to the 1920s . Instead of focusing on the " heroic " E... |
The Fur Trade in Canada also describes the cultural interactions among three groups of people : the Europeans in fashionable metropolitan centres who regarded beaver hats as luxury items ; the European colonial settlers who saw beaver fur as a staple that could be exported to pay for essential manufactured goods from ... |
Unlike many historians who see Canadian history as beginning with the arrival of Europeans , Innis emphasizes the cultural and economic contributions of First Nations peoples . " We have not yet realized , " he writes , " that the Indian and his culture was fundamental to the growth of Canadian institutions . "
|
The Fur Trade in Canada concludes by arguing that Canadian economic history can best be understood by examining how one staple product gave way to another β furs to timber , for example , and the later importance of wheat and minerals . Reliance on staples made Canada economically dependent on more industrially advanc... |
= = = Cod fishery = = =
|
After the publication of his book on the fur trade , Innis turned to a study of an earlier staple β the cod fished for centuries off the eastern coasts of North America , especially the Grand Banks of Newfoundland . The result was The Cod Fisheries : The History of an International Economy published in 1940 , 10 years... |
= = Communications theories = =
|
Harold Innis 's study of the effects of interconnected lakes and rivers on Canadian development and European empire sparked his interest in the complex economic and cultural relationships between transportation systems and communications . During the 1940s , Innis also began studying pulp and paper , an industry of ce... |
One of Innis 's primary contributions to communications studies was to apply the dimensions of time and space to various media . He divided media into time @-@ binding and space @-@ binding types . Time @-@ binding media are durable . They include clay or stone tablets . Space @-@ binding media are more ephemeral . Th... |
Innis examined the rise and fall of ancient empires as a way of tracing the effects of communications media . He looked at media that led to the growth of an empire ; those that sustained it during its periods of success , and then , the communications changes that hastened an empire 's collapse . He tried to show tha... |
Innis argued that a balance between the spoken word and writing contributed to the flourishing of ancient Greece in the time of Plato . This balance between the time @-@ biased medium of speech and the space @-@ biased medium of writing was eventually upset , Innis argued , as the oral tradition gave way to the domina... |
Harold Innis 's analysis of the effects of communications on the rise and fall of empires led him to warn grimly that Western civilization was now facing its own profound crisis . The development of powerful communications media such as mass @-@ circulation newspapers had shifted the balance decisively in favour of sp... |
The overwhelming pressure of mechanization evident in the newspaper and the magazine , has led to the creation of vast monopolies of communication . Their entrenched positions involve a continuous , systematic , ruthless destruction of elements of permanence essential to cultural activity .
|
Western civilization could only be saved , Innis argued , by recovering the balance between space and time . For him , that meant reinvigorating the oral tradition within universities while freeing institutions of higher learning from political and commercial pressures . In his essay , A Plea for Time , he suggested t... |
Although Innis remains appreciated and respected for the grand and unique nature of his later efforts regarding communications theories , he was not without critics . Particularly , the fragmentary and mosaic writing style exemplified in Empire and Communications has been criticized as ambiguous , aggressively non @-@... |
= = Academic and public career = =
|
= = = Influence in the 1930s = = =
|
Aside from his work on The Cod Fisheries , Innis wrote extensively in the 1930s about other staple products such as minerals and wheat as well as Canada 's immense economic problems in the Great Depression . During the summers of 1932 and 1933 , he travelled to the West to see the effects of the Depression for himself... |
Innis 's reputation as a " public intellectual " was growing steadily and , in 1934 , Premier Angus L. Macdonald invited him to serve on a Royal Commission to examine Nova Scotia 's economic problems . The next year , he helped establish The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science . In 1936 , he was appoin... |
Innis was appointed president of the Canadian Political Science Association in 1938 . His inaugural address , entitled The Penetrative Powers of the Price System , must have baffled his listeners as he ranged over centuries of economic history jumping abruptly from one topic to the next linking monetary developments t... |
Innis was also a central participant in an international project that produced 25 scholarly volumes between 1936 and 1945 . It was a series called The Relations of Canada and the United States overseen by James T. Shotwell , director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace . Innis edited and wrote prefaces f... |
= = = Politics and The Great Depression = = =
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.