Posted by
David C. Innes on Monday, July 20, 2009 8:44:56 AM
I saw a commercial for Bing.com today, the new Microsoft search engine.
(It also bills itself as a "decision engine," which horrified me. But
since I have some decisions to make, I went there immediately.)
"Bing"
is a good choice of name. Everyone likes Bing Crosby. It's a name
people warm to, no matter who has it. And it can easily become a
transitive verb, as the name "Google" did, but as Yahoo did not.
The
first thing I did was a video search. I wondered, will it come up with
YouTube, and nothing else? Here is my first search result. It is Harvey
Mansfield explaining his discovery of the thought of Leo Strauss and of
the joys of ancient political philosophy. He explains the difference
between the ancients and the moderns. "The modern political
philosophers--even those like, say, John Locke who look rather
conservative to us today--were all fundamentally revolutionaries."
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Harvey+Mansfield&qs=n&docid=884465795117&mid=CBD66E67094150C7E302CBD66E67094150C7E302&FORM=VIVR5
Yes,
this is a YouTube video (I found no embedding), but there are also
videos from AmericanAcademy.de, Boston College, and Comedy Central (I
kid you not).
The photo is that of Leo Strauss (1899-1973), German émigré, University
of Chicago professor, and the political philosopher who rediscovered
the careful reading of great books, and radically confronted the
problem of modernity.