Via Helpful
A blind gentleman, complete with white cane, asked me for directions just now. Of course, I pointed in the direction he should go. Anything I can do to help.
Things I tripped over on my way to the internet
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Tagged as “sociology”
Trends from Friends - The Steve Rubel Lifestream »
Interesting observations about social media trends. Here’s the key quote:
“However, as everything becomes more social I believe there will be a boom in curation technologies that help us find the signal in the noise. These apps will help us spot trends from friends.”
Whopper Virgins. I don’t think it needs to be said that this short is an advertisment for Burger King. It also however is a very fascinating short documentary about exposing people who’ve never experienced western culture to the hamburger. It’s worth definitley worth a watch. It’s advertising that I don’t mind consuming at all. It’d be great to see ads get more creative like this in general.
Agreed. This is good stuff and fascinating to watch.
“Trust him little who praises all, him less who censures all, and him least who is indifferent about all.”
“People have generally three epochs in their confidence in man. In the first they believe him to be everything that is good, and they are lavish with their friendship and confidence. In the next, they have had experience, which has smitten down their confidence, and they then have to be careful not to mistrust every one, and to put the worst construction upon everything. Later in life, they learn that the greater number of men have much more good in them than bad, and that even when there is cause to blame, there is more reason to pity than condemn; and then a spirit of confidence again awakens within them.”
“He who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers, and ceases when he has no more to say, is in possession of some of the best requisites of man.”
“The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit.”
strangely not sourced in the book Many Thoughts of Many Minds via DailyLit. Quick Google search says Sir William Temple.
“Merry Official Holiday Month. It’s begun in earnest now, and the holly-tsunami will only build and build until it smashes us into cranberry-red emotional jam in three weeks.”
“So often in my literature classes students told me what they “felt” about a novel, or a particular character in a novel. I tried, ever so gently, to tell them that no one cared what they felt; the trick was to discover not one’s feelings but what the author had put into the book, its moral weight and its resultant power. In essay courses, many of these same students turned in papers upon which I wished to—but did not—write: “D-, Too much love in the home.” I knew where they came by their sense of their own deep significance and that this sense was utterly false to any conceivable reality. Despite what their parents had been telling them from the very outset of their lives, they were not significant. Significance has to be earned, and it is earned only through achievement. Besides, one of the first things that people who really are significant seem to know is that, in the grander scheme, they are themselves really quite insignificant.”
Via heart in a cage
Printers
You know what I don’t understand? Almost every (office) printer now takes a full ream of paper. Why do people only put part of a ream in the printer and leave the rest for later?
How big is Sacramento?
I was trying to figure this out a week or two ago and now it’s come up again in a reference to Sacramento being a “top-20 media market”. Sacramento is the 26th largest Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) (see also CSAs and CBSAs). It’s also the 37th largest city in the US.
This “media market” or Designated Market Area (DMA), defined by Nielsen Media Research rather than the US Census Bureau, is yet another way to measure the Sacramento area’s influence. It’s defined as an area where everyone can receive common television and radio station programing. While it was once #18, it looks like it’s slipped to #20.
How Shy Became Sick | Chicago Reader »
On how misanthropy and shyness became official disorders, with drugs to cure them:
‘Lane tells me the process, which was supposed to establish psychiatry as a solid science, was itself “highly unscientific.” The task force spun out one new disorder after another, sometimes “knocking out the list of symptoms in a matter of minutes… . Almost overnight, shyness and many other routine moods and ailments became bona fide disorders.” ‘
Interesting.
Via China As An Island « Strange Maps »
This is fascinating.
“A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets.”
“She did as well as expected – second place in the soccer-ball kick, a “participant” in the 500-yard-dash. Adults use that word to boost self-esteem, but the kids know what it means. “I got a loser ribbon,” she said.”
