We live in curious and confusing times, as have pretty much all our ancestors throughout all of recorded history. Some lines that once seemed clear are always starting to blur, and that is always going to make us uncomfortable to some extent, although we all have varying degrees of tolerance for such unease, especially when …
Category Archives: thinking about stuff
I always skip the Oscars
Okay, so I have very little to say about the Academy Awards tonight (or ever, really), but what little I do have I will say now. I have nothing against awards ceremonies per se, and while I know rather little about the film industry aside from what is common pop-culture knowledge (which feels like knowing a …
Going gaga over Google+
It’s hard not to feel at least a bit excited about Google+ right now. Most of us have complained at least once, at times strenuously, about the foibles and failings of Facebook. And as has been observed far and wide already, if anyone is going to build a better social networking mousetrap, it is going …
All Things Must End (Even This Year)
And so another year comes to a close, and with it the first decade of this much-vaunted third millennium. A lot has happened in these ten years. Some buildings got knocked down by hijacked airplanes in 2001: that was quite a dire start to the decade. As a result — or using that tragic event …
Bye-Bye Mousie
Since I so rarely offer an opinion on anything until it appears well-settled to me, it is very rare indeed for me to be able to say “Hah!” in reference to something previously declaimed in these pages. Yet that is exactly what I am now about to do. Three months ago I interpreted a new product …
Much Noise, To Little Effect
The value and importance of “social media” and “social networks” continue to be major topics in all sorts of discourse communities these days. Friend and fellow blogger Andrew Miller drew my attention today to a recent essay by Malcolm Gladwell (“Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted,” The New Yorker, 4 October 2010) …
Every Direction At Once
Lately, you cannot take a step in any direction without landing thigh-deep in social networking, talk about social networking, media reports about social networking, invitations to take part in social networking, or most likely some gumbo of all of the above. I’m not going to define social networking for you here: if you are reading …
Tillage (Day 67)
The soil is the land, and the land is the only thing that has kept people here all these years. Every time the crops are harvested and the surface is turned over yet again, the dark matter of this place exposed yet again to the unfeeling elements, I rejoice in the life that soil represents …
Did Apple Just Kill the Mouse?
What Apple giveth, Apple can also taketh away. At least they can try. This week Apple Computer rolled out the Magic Trackpad, a smooth polished hunk of a thing that is, plain and simple, a larger, freestanding version of the trackpad from the MacBook Pro laptop line. It is unquestionably elegant (as is everything that the …
Mmm, Meth (Day 51)
It was in the fall of 1999 that I first really heard of meth. I was reading an essay on the murder of Matthew Shephard in Harper’s while I was swiping cards at the campus cafeteria, a story I had paid little attention to since it had occurred nearly a year earlier. Whatever else may …
