http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/2010/07/amusing-ourselves-to-death/
Related: Trends • T.rippingThe Theory Generation If you studied the liberal arts in an American college anytime after 1980, you were likely exposed to what is universally called Theory. Perhaps you still possess some recognizable talismans: that copy of The Foucault Reader, with the master’s bald head and piercing eyes emblematic of pure intellection; A Thousand Plateaus with its Escher-lite line-drawing promising the thrills of disorientation; the stark, sickly-gray spine of Adorno’s Negative Dialectics; a stack of little Semiotext(e) volumes bought over time from the now-defunct video rental place. Maybe they still carry a faint whiff of rebellion or awakening, or (at least) late-adolescent disaffection.
Pretentious Is Not A Sexual Orientation ‘Sapiosexual’ has to be one of the stupidest sexual ‘identities’ to come along in years. New words with the suffix “-sexual” are like catnip for trendy straight people. In the late ’90s and early aughts, we collectively endured the “metrosexual,” a completely unnecessary term for a man who shaves and dares to have a few pastels in his wardrobe. And in the past year, we have watched the rise and fall of the “lumbersexual,” a completely unnecessary term for a man who doesn’t shave and wears flannel. Enter the “sapiosexual,” which Urban Dictionary defines as “one who finds intelligence the most sexually attractive feature.” Can we please skip this one?
25 Beautifully Illustrated Thought-Provoking Questions 405 Flares Facebook 137 Twitter 5 Google+ 194 StumbleUpon 1 Pin It Share 68 68 405 Flares × A question that makes you think is worth asking… At the cusp of a new day, week, month, or year, most of us take a little time to reflect on our lives by looking back over the past and ahead into the future. Planking (fad) and others meme A planking-like activity – called face dancing by its participants – was initiated in 1984 in Edmonds, Washington by Scott Amy and Joel Marshall.[2] The two high school age boys were walking in a park when they came upon a baseball game. They decided to lay face down in right field to see if anyone would react. No one did, but they had such a good time and laughed so much, they continued to do it for many years to come.
What happens when a digital writer tries a digital detox? My week of 'intentional' smartphone use If you've clicked on this story and read even just the first line, I've already succeeded in one goal. I'm a writer working in a digital world, so getting you to read stories online is part of my job. But I know attention wanes and within seconds, some of you will jump to something shinier, newer, prettier. You and I, we share this in common — we live in this digital space together. We read, we scroll, we consume. We carry the world in our back pocket, and there's always something to demand our attention.
An Essay by Einstein "How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. The Coronation For years, normality has been stretched nearly to its breaking point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter, waiting for a nip of the black swan’s beak to snap it in two. Now that the rope has snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids still further, to see what we might weave from them? Covid-19 is showing us that when humanity is united in common cause, phenomenally rapid change is possible. None of the world’s problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement. In coherency, humanity’s creative powers are boundless. A few months ago, a proposal to halt commercial air travel would have seemed preposterous.
A Fluoride-Free Pineal Gland is More Important than Ever (NaturalNews) There has been some controversy over the activity of adding synthetic fluoride to municipal water supplies and elsewhere, but not enough. The seriousness of this issue is more than what most realize. Fluoridation ranks with GMO's and tainted, forced vaccinations among the great crimes against humanity. Understanding the Different Fluorides
What You'll Wish You'd Known January 2005 (I wrote this talk for a high school. I never actually gave it, because the school authorities vetoed the plan to invite me.) When I said I was speaking at a high school, my friends were curious. What will you say to high school students? So I asked them, what do you wish someone had told you in high school?