You know, William Shatner had a three-word phrase for these people a few years back (the third was “life”):
Mr. Veazie, a manager at Underwriters Laboratories, built the chair himself last year, and has been gratified to find, since installing it in the living room in May, that “when someone comes in, it’s the first thing they comment on.”
You don’t say.
But I thought they didn’t like the word “Trekkie.” Isn’t it supposed to be “Trekker”?
You know, short of the Simpsons cat lady, I’m as big a cat person as they come, but I would not wipe my hands on this thing.
Paul Spudis has some interesting ruminations (with a comment from Neil deGrasse Tyson).
…only outlaws will wax:
Cherry Hill salon owner Linda Orsuto said that women would “go ballistic” if the proposal passed. She said that some women would resort to waxing themselves, visiting unlicensed salons or traveling to other states, including Pennsylvania, in a quest to remain bare down there.
“The clients are going to freak,” said Orsuto, who owns 800 West Salon & Spa, on Route 70. “It’s a hot issue, and we’re going to have to do something.”
Isn’t it wonderful to have a government so solicitous of our welfare that we (well, they) are driven to back-alley waxing?
And as Jonah notes, it is interesting how many people didn’t want to discuss it.
Only after we come to see that additional goods add precious little to our happiness;
Nonsense and hypocrisy. Computers aren’t basic needs. E-mail isn’t a basic need. Who says so? Me. So this person’s life cannot possibly be happier by the addition of a device that lets him peruse the words and deeds of the world. As for me, base shallow grasping materialist that I am, let me spell it out:
My computers bring me happiness, for they are instruments of knowledge and art. My cameras bring me joy, yea, for they allow me to capture the fleeting shadows of the day or the laughter of my child or the happy romps of my old dog in the new snow, and fix them forever in a form whose quality exceeds the fond dreams of D. W. Griffith. My car gives me pleasure, for it gives me freedom and ease of movement, allows me to meet friends, gather food for the family, and drive to work with the glories of Beethoven crashing from the speakers. Or AC/DC, depending on the mood. For that matter the morning drive is made pleasurable by possessions like the coffee maker, which serves up a hot delicious beverage the moment I wake from a comfortable bed – and the waking, I should add, was gently occasioned by a machine that cost a bit more than one of those $19.99 alarms that sounds like someone tripped the perimeter alarm at Los Alamos.
Since I seem to be seeing possessions in terms of the flow of the day, let me go on: my computer, which is hardly a basic need, gives me freedom at work unchained to a veal-pen desk; my cellphone lets me write messages to a network of beloved strangers or listen to music from around the world – and take a picture of something, if I choose. Photography is art, right? Art is good, right? Yes, I know – if it serves the general weal in a spiritual burning-issue sense. If I use the camera to snap a picture of the Catholic-run men’s shelter down the street, do I get a pass if I buy a new camera this year?
Or would that be overshadowed by the bilious negativity that rolls in dark waves from my large TV? It’s not a basic need, I admit – can I still have one? Yes, if it’s not LARGE. People who grudgingly admit the usefulness of a TV for pedagogical purposes reserve the right to frown on your TV if it’s larger than it need be, for several reasons: 1) you probably went into debt to get it; 2) it uses energy that makes the planet die; 3) you watch the wrong kind of programs; 4) the size of the screen is regarded as a direct reflection of the stupidity of the viewer.
Unless we’re talking about careful, pained, exquisitely sensitive motion pictures about the horrors of life in the suburbs in the Fifties.
They really should have called the fight after the first round.
Amitai Etzione calls himself a “communitarian.” But there is nothing new about his beliefs. There’s an older, shorter word for them. It starts with “f.”
Actually, quite a bit, but not as much as it could in the future:
Scientists have therefore proved resourceful in using the web to further their research. They have, however, tended to lag when it comes to employing the latest web-based social-networking tools to open up scientific discourse and encourage more effective collaboration.
Journalists are now used to having their every article commented on by dozens of readers. Indeed, many bloggers develop and refine their essays on the basis of such input. Yet despite several attempts to encourage a similarly open sytem of peer review of scientific research published on the web, most researchers still limit such reviews to a few anonymous experts. When Nature, one of the world’s most respected scientific journals, experimented with open peer review in 2006, the results were disappointing. Only 5% of the authors it spoke to agreed to have their article posted for review on the web—and their instinct turned out to be right, as almost half of the papers that were then posted attracted no comments.
Actually, I think that climate science has gotten a lot of review, peer and otherwise, on the web.
Some thoughts from Orson Scott Card on HBO and anti-Mormon bigotry.
A random thought: will Ender’s Game
This is probably inevitable. As Glenn points out, all of the pensions are broken, and SS can’t continue on the current trajectory.
As only Lileks can:
A local columnist decided to go after Twitter today. (h/t Julio, via Twitter.) Now, we all love Joe around here, and his afternoon talk show is a ratings powerhouse that stands as the last remaining local example of how you create, build, and keep a radio audience without resorting to sports. No small feat, and detractors are advised to try it themselves before pitching rocks.
Now and again, though, even the zestiest observer of the scene can slip into onions-on-the-belt territory. I’ve come to expect two kinds of Twitter stories: one written for a mass audience by someone who gets the medium, like the Strib’s Randy Salas, and one written for people who still think the Morse Telegraph ruined the lovely art of hand-written letters.
You see any sealing-wax salesman downtown lately? ‘Course not. I remember when they’d come by with their cart, and you’d pat old dobbin on the nose while discussing Teapot Dome, and ‘ventually you’d get down to whether you wanted the new-fangled smokeless sealing wax or the old bituminous variety. I didn’t like the smokeless style – time was, a man felt his letter was done when the room was full of choking fumes, and when you wiped down the walls a few times a year with a real sponge, not one of those cellulite monstrosities, you felt like you were gathering up the spirits of all the letters you’d sent. Then Tony – that’s what we called him even though he had some other name – would offer to regrind your seal so you’d get a nice imprint, and he’d do it there on the spot. Kids today with their beep-beep-beep telegrams – what can you say in a medium that’s made up of long and short, and charges by the word? As the man said about the telegraph, “What hath God wrought?” Someone said that about the nuclear bomb, too.
Read the whole thing (because it really does describe Twitter and its utility better than I’ve ever seen it). I love the way he assumes that his readership will get the onion-on-the-belt reference. Not to mention five bees to a quarter.
[Mid-morning update]
I should note that one key point he makes that I hadn’t considered is that Twitter is a digital communications channel that hasn’t (yet) become spammified beyond recognition.
I particularly liked this one:
“My wife has a friend who has a license-plate holder that says ‘Change Has Come,’ plates that read ‘PEACE4U,’ and a bumper sticker that shows a picture of Obama, with rays sticking out on either side of his head.”
I wonder if her friend is Chris Matthews?
If these people could only see themselves through our eyes.