Students of Museology like to quote Mirriam-Webster's (online collection of) definitions:
museum: an institution devoted to the procurement, care, study, and display of objects of lasting interest or value; also : a place where objects are exhibited
Fred, sniffs the museologist on air, can hardly be counted on to enlighten us about art. It's the old high brow low brow debate with intrepid interneteers chafing at the experts.
Today the paper reports another debate. This one's about whether the present collection of global conflicts qualifies as World War III. Newt Gingrich and George Bush say it does. Academics ponder various definitions.
When people today talk about World War III, what they mean mainly is that there is a great threat or ideology that transcends national boundaries and brings nations together to fight it.
-- Jennifer Delton, associate history professor at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY
We live in a world of war, rather than a world war. But nothing's connected. The world is so regionalized.
-- Donald Miller, history professor at Lafayette College in Easton, PA
The world war is a war not of nation-states, it's the rich against the poor, it's men against women.
-- Donald Goldstein, professor of public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh
What do the low brows say? Ask Talia, who's 2 and too young for college. She lives in Nahariya, Israel. Her parents, wanting to calm her, say the bombs are only falling eggs.
When two rockets suddenly landed back-to-back in the distance, Talia offered her own analysis: 'The Eggs are breaking, the eggs are breaking.'
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