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Pedagogy? No, this article is written in that modern style of popular non-fiction which is meant to entertain above all other concerns, including such silly things as pedagogy, clarity, rigor, or sometimes even factual correctness. This style is characterized by titles like "Catchy Phrase: The surprising tale of a subtitle that actually tells you what the book is about. Or does it?" "Catchy Phrase" tells the story of an single data point, or maybe three, with edge-of-your-seat tension provided by a jumbled chronology. It opens a generation before the main data point was born, then skips to the present day, before jumping into the middle of a tangential story. Then it's back to where we left the origin story of the data point, but this time we're in a different location looking at the second data point. Next comes some speculation about a possible rosy future and maybe a motivating example. Next we end the tangential story, which introduces the third data point, at it's funeral. The tangential story begins. As you read, you can see a complex theme slowly but deftly woven from the timelines of the several stories. It's a pattern that a knitter might call "felt". You can't help but be drawn in. It's so fascinating and intricate that you, like the author, sometimes have trouble distinguishing cause from effect, which adds an alluring air of mystery. The ideas must be Important. Despite the complexity, in the end the conclusions seem simple and obvious. You feel smart. You go to a dinner party and gush about it to your friends. They wake up the next day and, despite one-too-many cocktails, find that they remember the title of "Catchy Phrase". They look it up, and One-Click (tm) later, the life cycle is complete. You aren't the audience, you're the vector. |