The other day I saw in a New York Times article that Alvin Toffler had died last month. The article wasn’t really an obituary so much as about Future Shock, the book Toffler wrote back in 1970. If you’re around my age, you may remember him and the book; both were a bit of a big deal.
I hadn’t thought about that book since back then, but as the Times writer points out, “it seems clear that his diagnosis has largely panned out, with local and global crises arising daily from our collective inability to deal with ever-faster change.” Truer words! Even in 1970, the technological pace was starting to affect people in bad ways, and it certainly hasn’t gotten any better since.
The article really struck a chord! I’ve been thinking quite a lot lately — and have written a few posts — about the growing disconnect between people and their grasp of the technological modern world.
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10 Comments | tags: Alvin Toffler, Carl Sagan, eduation, Future Shock, modern life, Technology | posted in Life, Politics
Here’s something that caught my eye: Researchers at the University of Vermont, in the Computational Story Lab (!), did an interesting word content analysis on 1,700 stories downloaded from Gutenberg. Each story had been downloaded at least 150 times by readers.
The researchers used “sentiment analysis” that measures the positive or negative emotional impact of words. Using a sliding window, they attempted to characterize the “emotional arcs” of each story. Their goal was to see if there were common patterns.
Turns out, there are!
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26 Comments | tags: emotional arcs, printed word, seven plots, stories, story plots, storytelling, text, words | posted in Books, Writing
Not that there was any doubt, but CNN proved it is nothing but a cable whore by hiring Cory Lewandowski, the guy who man-handled reporter Michelle Fields on camera and nearly got charged with assault.
I urge you to join me in boycotting CNN, especially during the November election. Remember: these are the idiots who brought you reporter holograms in 2008!
They’re also the guys (definitely guys) who put Erin “Cleavage” Burnett on an elevated platform so the cameras can get a good shot of her legs.
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20 Comments | tags: Anderson Cooper, CNN, Cory Lewandowski, Erin Burnett, Michelle Fields | posted in Politics, TV
While I’m in a meta mood, there’s a post I’ve been meaning to write for months. It’s particularly apropos as a follow-up to this year’s Blog Anniversary post, especially as it’s a follow-up about Followers.
Specifically, the 2,642 of you supposedly following this blog. Often the proper term might be lurkers, but in this case I lean more towards absent drive-bys. There would be more, over three-grand, but ever since WordPress gave bloggers the ability to delete Followers, I’ve been removing obvious spammers (meaning anyone selling anything).
I’ll give you the punchline so you can stop reading: I’m about to remove nearly all of you.
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20 Comments | tags: blog, blogger, blogging, Followers, lawn, meta | posted in Life
Five years. (And 602 posts.) Literally a handful of years. (And a heartful.) There is a theory that the Roman numeral V represents a human hand, and the numeral X symbolizes two V hands set point-to-point. It seems obvious that “prisoner’s hash marks” — counting the days in groups of five — owes much to our five-fingered hands.
Five is a human number. Small enough to seem fundamental; big enough to be interesting (two and three are so boring; four is kinda square). Five puts the prime in prime! It’s also part of an easy trick for making large right angles (for laying out fields and building pyramids), and it’s the first substantial anniversary gift (paper, cotton, leather, silk, wood).
Five years ago I started this blog…
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9 Comments | tags: Anniversary, blog, blogger, blogging, Followers, July 4, meta | posted in Life
My poor Minnesota Twins are having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad season of epic proportion. It famously ain’t over ’til it’s over, but here at the one-third mark, after 54 games, it ain’t lookin’ good.
Put it this way: If the Twins continue to play at the abysmal .296 rate they have for the first two months of the season, they’ll win only 48 games. Which means losing 114! Which beats their previous worst (102 in 1982) by a good long margin.
Suffice to say we Twins fans are all feeling a bit stunned.
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8 Comments | tags: baseball season, Jose Berrios, Major League baseball, Minnesota Twins, MLB, Pat Dean, Twins 2016 | posted in Baseball
In the last quarter of the 19th century — USA-centrically, call it 139 years ago — we began to experience having the sound of strangers’ voices in our lives, even in our homes. Not just voices, but music from concert halls and clubs. And other sounds, too: the clip-clop of horse feet, the slam of a door, a gunshot. Less than 100 years ago, those sounds went electric, and we never looked back.
At the beginning of the 20th century, we started another love affair — this one with moving images on rectangular screens, a dance of light and shadow, windows to imaginary worlds. Or windows to recorded memories or news of distant places. When sound went electric, those moving images took voice and spoke and sang. No one alive in our society today remembers a time when moving images weren’t woven into our lives.
Here, now, into the 21st century, in an age of streaming video and music, from cloud to your pocket device (with its high-resolution display and built-in video camera), I can’t help but be impressed by how far we’ve come.
A long way, indeed.
18 Comments | tags: analog recording, audio recording, digital recording, internet, interweb, iPad, iPod, OnDemand, streaming audio, streaming video, video recording | posted in Books, Computers, Movies, Music, Science, The Interweb, TV
I’ll Make Mars Great Again!
In a surprise move today, GOP front-runner The Donald Trump announced his resignation from the presidential race claiming it was all “just a tremendous joke — amazing! I never thought anyone would believe it for a second… but I pulled it off perfectly, of course.”
Mr. Trump said he would devote his time now to building a Great Wall of Mars, which he said would be “way better than China’s so-called Great Wall; it’ll be tremendous, and it will look amazing!” He claims the Martians will pay for the wall, and that it will make space “great again.”
Two former Republican candidates for the highest office, Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, told reporters they wished Mr. Trump every success and offered their assistance in hastening his departure for the red planet. Both Floridians said they’d be glad to personally strap him to any of NASA’s larger boosters.
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31 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, April Fools, bat-shit crazy, Donald Trump, election 2016, funny, GOP, humor, Mars, psychopath, Republican Party, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster | posted in Politics
Bernie Sanders receives an endorsement from Finches!
So… The week began with a bomb in Brussels and a baseball game in Cuba. On one side of the Earth, images of terror and oppression; on the other, images of joy and freedom. It forms a literal global Yin-Yang reflecting the best and worst of human goals and actions.
From such high stakes and matters of import, the week quickly descended into the sewer, as the National Embarrassment led the Republican Party to new lows this election cycle.
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5 Comments | tags: Anyone But Trump, Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, birds, Brussels, Cuba, democracy, Democratic Party, democratic society, election 2016, finches, freedom, GOP, politicians, President Obama, Republican Party, Trump is a loser, Trump is a monster | posted in Politics
The First Family planting seeds of democracy.
To those who would disparage President Obama’s comportment (or even just presence) at the historic baseball game in Cuba yesterday, might I suggest there is, perhaps, no greater expression of American freedom, liberty, and values, than the simple joy of a baseball game?
What better way to flip the bird to those who would destroy our way of life than to take a moment to say: Nope, not afraid of you, not gonna let you own this — or any — day!
At first I thought maybe there was a point to be made regarding his comportment. Was the wave necessary? How dare he enjoy himself so much!
But what better response to horror and tragedy is there but joy and love?
And, oh, by the way: Not so much just a “baseball game” as planting the seeds of freedom and democracy with our neighbors. What you might call the opposite of terrorism, so nah-nah-nah-nah-nah.
After all, baseball is one of those things you can be “as American as!”
3 Comments | tags: Barack Obama, Brussels, Cuba, democracy, democratic society, freedom, President Obama, social change | posted in Baseball, Politics
Logos con carne 