Bryan J’s recent post on The Law of Social Media (which could not have been a more apt primer on the subject) looks into a TED talk given by Sherry Turkle, an M.I.T. professor and author of Alone Together, who has become something of a clarion caller upon the state of our lonely lives as a result of the technologies we have become conditioned to need. Most of her research focuses on the loss of the art of relating due to the immediacy and detachments available with technology. She references, both in her TED talk and her interview with Colbert…
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Another Week Ends: Monastic (Olympic) Masochism, Successful Children, Justified Paranoia, Mumford and Sons, Edward Gorey, Creedal Colbert and the Return of PZ’s Podcast
1. As the Olympics wind down (and Morrissey gets his London back), we would do well to read Heather Havrilesky’s jaw-droppingly insightful piece “The Loneliness of the Person Watching the Long Distance Runner” that appeared in the NY Times Magazine last week. She absolutely nails the religiosity at the heart of much contemporary athleticism. And she even touches on how we instrumentalize suffering in a distinctly theology-of-glory-like way, i.e. as a means of self-salvation. Which is a bit ironic, since as far as cultural commentators are concerned, I consider Havrilesky a gold-medalist:
If the ’70s and ’80s were marked by a…
Something Comes From Nothing: Colbert the Apologist
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Another Week Ends: Reddit Confessionals, Influencing Nick Cave, Deciphering Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Gospel-Centrism, Reinhold Bieber, White People Problems, Bat-Staches and Haidt on Colbert
1. Last week I mentioned a recent study exploring the physical impact of keeping secrets, and by implication, the biological necessity of confession (to say nothing of absolution). This week, that study has become manifest in an alarming way. A Reddit thread which asked the question, “What Secret Could Ruin Your Life If It Came Out?” has turned into a stomach-churning tour of the darkest recesses of the human heart and experience, with people anonymously confessing to things as innocuous as petty theft and faking an illness (e.g. “I once helped out my a female friend’s family by taking care…
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