The Essayification of Everything. I have had enough of irony. The ultimate faux-pas is not laughing at someone's artfully told joke.
Magazine - Host. [Click the phrases within the colored boxes to read the commentary.]
Mr. John Ziegler, thirty-seven, late of Louisville's WHAS, is now on the air, "Live and Local," from 10:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. every weeknight on southern California's KFI, a 50,000-watt megastation whose hourly ID and Sweeper, designed by the station's Imaging department and featuring a gravelly basso whisper against licks from Ratt's 1984 metal classic "Round and Round," is "KFI AM-640, Los Angeles—More Stimulating Talk Radio.
" This is either the eighth or ninth host job that Mr. Ziegler's had in his talk-radio career, and far and away the biggest. A Timothy Leary for the Viral Video Age - Ross Andersen - Technology. Meet Jason Silva, the fast-talking, media-savvy "performance philosopher" who wants you to love the ecstatic future of your mind.
I want to introduce you to Jason Silva, but first I want you to watch this short video that he made. It will only take two minutes, and watching it will give you a good idea if it's worth your time to read the extensive interview that follows: If you ever wondered what would happen if a young Timothy Leary was wormholed into 2012, complete with a film degree and a Vimeo account, you have your answer: Jason Silva.
The Joke’s on You. Steve Almond [from The Baffler No. 20, 2012] Among the hacks who staff our factories of conventional wisdom, evidence abounds that we are living in a golden age of political comedy. The New York Times nominates Jon Stewart, beloved host of Comedy Central’s Daily Show, as the “most trusted man in America.” Jack Whelan: Can Humanism Prevail Over the Technocracy? - Living in Dialogue. Laughter Without Humor: On the Laugh-Loop GIF - Fran McDonald. When is Natalie Portman's laughter not Natalie Portman's laughter?
An Object Lesson. At the 68th Golden Globe Awards, a visibly pregnant Natalie Portman ascended the stage to collect the Best Actress award for her work in the psychological drama Black Swan. Her earnest three minute speech is standard Hollywood fare; she thanks her grandparents, her parents, her manager, her co-stars, and her director. What is it we're longing for? Psychological study. Why Are Easy Decisions So Hard? Our Age of Anxiety. By Elaine Showalter Jonathan Barkat for The Chronicle Review In his controversial book American Nervousness: Its Causes and Consequences (1881), the neurologist George M.
Beard proclaimed that Americans in the 19th century led all civilized nations in their susceptibility to nervous, anxious, and depressive disorders. Beard named the mixture of negative emotions "neurasthenia" and attributed it to five developments in "modern civilization"—steam power, the periodical press, the telegraph, the sciences, and the mental activity of women. In those major signs of modernity—and dozens of related ones, such as buying stocks on margin—the United States, he argued, was both "peculiar and pre-eminent" among advanced societies. Beard claimed that American nervousness "is the product of American civilization," and that this "distinguished malady" was seen most often among the cultural elite and the "brain-workers.
" Falling Men: On Don DeLillo and Terror, Chris Cumming. New York Police officers are seen under a news ticker in Times Square in New York, April 16, 2013.
(REUTERS/Brendan McDermid) Some terrorist attacks become cultural obsessions, while others are forgotten completely. There were three bombings in New York City in 1975, none of which I’ve ever heard talked about, each of which would probably shut down the city if it happened now. Imagine no heaven. Dear little Six Billionth Living Person: As one of the newest members of a notoriously inquisitive species, it probably won't be too long before you start asking the two $64,000 questions with which the other 5,999,999,999 of us have been wrestling for some time: How did we get here?
And, now that we are here, how shall we live? Oddly - as if six billion of us weren't enough to be going on with - it will almost certainly be suggested to you that the answer to the question of origins requires you to believe in the existence of a further, invisible, ineffable Being "somewhere up there", an omnipotent creator whom we poor limited creatures are unable even to perceive, much less to understand. That is, you will be strongly encouraged to imagine a heaven, with at least one god in residence. This sky god, it's said, made the universe by churning its matter in a giant pot. Many of these stories will strike you as extremely beautiful, and therefore seductive. A World Without Copyright - House Absolute(ly Pointless) In discussions on Hacker News I’ve said several times that I think copyright should be abolished.
Some people agree, but I often get a reply asking how I expect programmers, musicians, or authors to make a living in such a world. Before I address that question, I’ll take a brief digression. Do You Really Want to Live Forever? Imagine you are offered a trustworthy opportunity for immortality in which your mind (perhaps also your body) will persist eternally.
Let’s further stipulate that the offer includes perpetual youthful health and the ability to upgrade to any cognitive and physical technologies that become available in the future. There is one more stipulation: You could never decide later to die. Would you take it? Metaphysician and former British diplomat Stephen Cave thinks accepting such an offer would be a bad idea.
In Praise of Leisure - The Chronicle Review. By Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky Imagine a world in which most people worked only 15 hours a week.
The 'Busy' Trap. Anxiety: We worry. A gallery of contributors count the ways. If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” Refined dining. Shaped in an age of scarcity, our appetite for sugar, fat and salt now torments us. But there is hope. On Being Nothing. Editors' Note Appended Anxiety: We worry. A gallery of contributors count the ways. Every man looketh that his companion should value him at the same rate he sets upon himself. –Thomas Hobbes. The Clutter Culture - Feature - UCLA Magazine Online. Global Capitalism with a Human Face? « AC VOICE. The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Photo. Pinterest, Tumblr and the Trouble With ‘Curation’
Haterade. Correlation does not imply causation: How the Internet fell in love with a stats-class cliché. Photo by Wikimedia Commons. Depressed people send more email. James Howard Kunstler on Why Technology Won't Save Us. Public Influence: The Immortalization of an Anonymous Death - - News. Cover design by Andrew J. How reality caught up with paranoid delusions – Mike Jay. Clinical psychiatry papers rarely make much of a splash in the wider media, but it seems appropriate that a paper entitled ‘The Truman Show Delusion: Psychosis in the Global Village’, published in the May 2012 issue of Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, should have caused a global sensation. Its authors, the brothers Joel and Ian Gold, presented a striking series of cases in which individuals had become convinced that they were secretly being filmed for a reality TV show.
The Rise of the New Groupthink. The History of Boredom. Now Hear This! Most People Stink at Listening [Excerpt] Harry Frankfurt's "On Bullshit". Revisiting why incompetents think they’re awesome. Liberals Are Ruining America. I Know Because I Am One. Fear of cannibalism drives us to look at this 'monstrous' image. And that's OK. Please Don't Learn to Code. Rebecca Solnit · Diary: Google Invades · LRB 7 February 2013.
Pinker, Foucault and Progress « Utopia or Dystopia. Paul Kingsnorth. If you think we're done with neoliberalism, think again. In Defense of Autobiography. The Age of the Essay. Relations. About New York; Sharing Baby Proves Rough On 2 Mothers. Inequality and the Modern Culture of Celebrity. Column: Our collective obsession with the trivial. The Quest for Permanent Novelty. I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet. Tragedy's decline and fall. The Death of Postmodernism And Beyond.
The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Chemistry Set. The Theory Generation. Thinking About Futurism. Zeitgeist 2012 – Google. How to Live Without Irony. Sincerity, Not Irony, Is Our Age's Ethos - Jonathan D. Fitzgerald. On Smarm. Rejoice! Believe! Be Strong and Read Hard! Conan O'Brien's Farewell Speech.