June 16 - Blooms Day

See today's Times op ed on Blooms Day, (June 16 from Joyce's Ulysses) - The ‘Learning Knights’ of Bell Telephone - where corporate leaders felt they needed people with liberal arts education:
"The sociologist E. Digby Baltzell explained the Bell leaders’ concerns in an article published in Harper’s magazine in 1955: “A well-trained man knows how to answer questions, they reasoned; an educated man knows what questions are worth asking.” Bell, then one of the largest industrial concerns in the country, needed more employees capable of guiding the company rather than simply following instructions or responding to obvious crises."

"The capstone of the program, and its most controversial element, came in eight three-hour seminars devoted to “Ulysses.” The novel, published in 1922, had been banned as obscene in the United States until 1933 and its reputation for difficulty outlived the ban. The Bell students “found it a challenging, and often exasperating, experience,...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/opinion/16davis.html?ref=opinion

Afterburn
I never read Usylsses. The only time I read Joyce was in freshman English - and barely survived.