The Leaning Tower of Babel (b)

If it had been possible to build the Tower of Babel without climbing it, it would have been permitted. (Franz Kafka)

'Where's your common sense? None of those books agree with each other. You've been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel. Snap out of it! The people in those books never lived. Come on now!' (Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451)

 Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this. . . . The gods were bored, and so they created man. Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created. Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase of population. Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored together; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world increased, and the peoples were bored en masse. To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens. This idea is itself as boring as the tower was high, and constitutes a terrible proof of how boredom gained the upper hand. (Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or 1843)

Those who teach sacred texts as the word of God often dishonor the wisdom of our ancestors and distract us from self-awareness.  The stories are often cautionary tales about human ego - calcified into commandments, bones without flesh, which distort, misinform and mislead those with good intentions.  Examples include the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel, and are found in all religions.  These are about human nature - not God. (Earon Davis)

I am pleased to inform you that the Basic Skills Center is henceforth, to be known as the Center for Developmental Education. Dr. Andreach, Coordinator of the Basic Skill Center will be known as Coordinator of Developmental Education. Increasingly, colleges are dropping the basic skills connotation that goes with the kind of center we have established and are looking to the developmental aspects since they have more of a positive connotation than do basic skills. (Monmouth County Council)