Chance Favors The Connected Mind.

Most Of The Time, Criticism That Takes Pop Culture Seriously Involves Performing Some Kind Of Symbolic Analysis, Decoding The Work To Demonstrate The Way It Represents Some Other Aspect Of Society.

Some Great Minds Become Great By Turning The Rubble Of An Exploded Paradigm Into Something Consistent And Meaningful. Others Become Great By Laying The Gunpowder, Grain By Grain. Every Important Revolution Needs Both Kinds Of Minds To Complete Itself.

What You End Up Seeing When You Look At History Is That People Who Have Been Good At Pushing The Boundaries Of Possibility, And Exploring Those Frontiers Of Good Ideas And Innovations, Have Rarely Done It In Moments Of Great Inspiration. They Don't Just Have A Brilliant Breakthrough Idea Out Of Nowhere And Leap Ahead Of Everyone Else.

How Could So Many Intelligent People Be So Grievously Wrong For Such An Extended Period Of Time? How Could They Ignore So Much Overwhelming Evidence That Contradicted Their Most Basic Theories? These Questions, Too, Deserve Their Own Discipline: The Sociology Of Error.

The Economics Of Television Syndication And Dvd Sales Mean That There's A Tremendous Financial Pressure To Make Programs That Can Be Watched Multiple Times, Revealing New Nuances And Shadings On The Third Viewing. Meanwhile, The Web Has Created A Forum For Annotation And Commentary That Allows More Complicated Shows To Prosper, Thanks To The Fan Sites Where Each Episode Of Shows Like 'lost' Or 'alias' Is Dissected With An Intensity Usually Reserved For Talmud Scholars.