Guys claim to be knowledgeable about almost everything, but show them a bobby pin or a tube of mascara and suddenly they become imbeciles, rendered inept by an imagined assault on their masculinity.
160
I wonder if Justice Department officials, after a long day of berating Lance Armstrong for his use of performance-enhancing drugs, rolled down to a local happy hour to grease the wheels for their own negotiations.
159
In the same way that rival sports teams make effigies of their opposition and destroy them to the delight of fans, do you think Microsoft, Facebook and Google sit around eating apple pie and drinking apple cider. Maybe they take target practice with fresh apples or peel them and put them on stakes around the office.
158
In the 1960s, there were people who considered the Beatles to be the Rebecca Black of their day, that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was as equally poppy and distasteful as “Friday.” You know there was some dude watching the Ed Sullivan Show grumbling, “‘Money can’t buy me love?’ Oh yeah, that’s real fresh.”
157
Exactly what year in human history did “exercise” become a thing? I want to know when a member of our species first uttered the words, “I’m fat,” and voluntarily decided to expend some biologically precious energy.
Smahrt Fones
Language has allowed us to transmit knowledge across generations, and is arguably the single most important factor in our progress as a species as we’re able to learn from the hard work (and mistakes) of our ancestors. What happens when we need not acquire wisdom, but rather rely on a lazy ability to manipulate an access tool? Our intelligence becomes dependent on something external to us – a computer – and is therefore vulnerable to being “out of service” or running out of battery power. Do deeper understandings of the world emerge from instant access to answers, or is labored and careful concentration central to increasing our intelligence?
156
Tech world protesters find themselves in the awkward position of relying on the very companies they hate. To paraphrase Mitch Hedberg: “I’m #againstTwitter, I just don’t know how to show it.”
The Problem With Old Faith
Oh, the shackles of tradition. Scholars are quarreling over an 8th century papyrus fragment which references Jesus’ wife and its implications for women’s role within the church. Why let our lives and societies be dictated by dusty proclamations? We don’t practice medicine or commerce by 8th century conventions, but rather we continually improve our efficacy. Shouldn’t morality be held to the same standard of testing, evaluation, and improvement?
155
Let March Madness and the Buffett Challenge be a lesson to all of us in statistics/probability.
Sober Reflections From Worm-Food-in-Waiting
Like a mosquito in the dark, I wrongly maintained that my life would make an impact. The scores of poetasters and young ballerinas that had danced before me learned quickly that dreams are, with rare exception, to remain unfulfilled. The optimism of youth stems from our comfortable grip around these illusions and the assumption that they would one day materialize. With age, more and more doors close and that painful, but inevitable realization sets in: we’re unimportant, uninteresting and doomed to be just like everybody else.