“Twitter can make you immoral, claim scientists.” So reported the U.K.'s Daily Mail on April 14. Hardcore Register readers will see this merely as scientific vindication of Melinda Selmys.
Continues the mail: “A study suggests rapid-fire news updates and instant social interaction are too fast for the 'moral compass' of the brain to process,” says the report. “The danger is that heavy Twitters and Facebook users could become 'indifferent to human suffering' because they never get time to reflect and fully experience emotions about other people's feelings.
I signed up for Twitter last weekend, but not a single person I know uses it. The online introduction also told me that posts are limited to 140 words.
So what can you say in 140 words? Not much. It's intentional. Posts are intended to tell people what you're doing: going to the store, getting gas, buying a bag of weed. The, you know, inanities of life we all have to deal with . . . and precisely the thing I don't care to share with others or others to share with me. They say that Twitter is one of those things that seem stupid until you try it. I appreciate that sentiment, but I can't imagine that my opinion is going to change after I get going on it.
A fellow blogger told me that we need to Twitter and do Facebook because younger people are favoring Twitter and Facebook over blogs. Twitter posts are limited to 140 words and Facebook similarly defaults against lengthy posts. It suddenly dawned on me: "Holy Brevity! Blogs have become the new literary periodical genre!" Just five years ago, blogs were attacked for their superficial literary quality. It now looks like they're getting too heavy for the average young reader. Heck, at this rate, literature will devolve into smoke signals and grunts. We'll go back to caveman communication, but without the ability to draw.
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A little over the top . . . .
but it goes well with this quote that's making its way around cyberspace:
The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened.
Norman Thomas
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I don't know whether to panic or to build a bigger and better bong for mass production:
“Superweeds” are plaguing high-tech Monsanto crops in southern US states, driving farmers to use more herbicides, return to conventional crops or even abandon their farms.
It's known as "pigweed." When I was a kid, that was the marijuana that cops confiscated then smoked when their shift was over.
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When you're done with the pigweed: The 17 most-fattening foods in America.
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You'd think the Hapsburg bashing would get old after awhile, but it keeps coming:
A study of the extended family tree of the House of Hapsburg has found that the last Spanish Hapsburg king, Charles II, was the offspring of a marriage that was almost as genetically inbred as an incestuous relationship between a brother and sister or parent and child.
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Six hundred readers of a philosophy blog rank the top philosophers of the past 200 years. Here's the top ten:
1. Ludwig Wittgenstein
2. Gottlob Frege
3. Bertrand Russell
4. John Stuart Mill
5. W.V.O. Quine
6. G.W.F. Hegel
7. Saul Kripke
8. Friedrich Nietzsche
9. Karl Marx
10. Soren Kierkegaard
I can't say I'm impressed with the results, but then again, I can't say I've kept abreast with modern philosophy. With the exception of existentialist philosophers, I've read only one book on the subject, and I'm not even sure I finished it . . . and I know I didn't understand much of it. I was encouraged to see G.E.M. Anscombe (the modern Catholic philosopher that supposedly opened a can of whoop on C.S. Lewis) crack the Top 25.
The remarks in the comment box are unintentionally humorous: real egghead stuff--but also fairly interesting and enlightening.
