In “Brodie’s Report,” a story by Borges, the master of the form, the titular anthropologist is studying a tribe in the wilds of some Pacific Island. He begins to notice something unusual about them; namely, that they can see into the future. Not very far – just glimpses, sometimes with clarity, sometimes all jumbled up. […]
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When will work end? I don’t mean when will it end for you today; I can only assume that you are breathlessly checking for updates on this site as soon as you roll into work. I mean overall: will there ever be a time when our technology becomes so efficient that, for the most part, […]
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In Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, mankind was threatened not just by the titular apes, nor from an outbreak of repeating prepositional phrases, but by a simple virus. The “simian flu” wiped out most of mankind, allowing the hyper-intelligent apes to flourish and take over the world – especially the Bay Area. As […]
READ MOREA little more than 20 years ago, my family won a giant TV at some kind of local charity raffle. It was the newest model and it was enormous. Between the box and the screen, it was more than six feet tall, seemingly weighed 900 pounds, and took an awkward gaggle of teenagers to maneuver […]
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“I am addicted to my phone. Seriously, I can’t even put it down. If I’m not checking Twitter or Facebook, I’m playing Candy Crush. Total addiction.” Appropriating very serious and meaningful terms as a way to describe fairly banal things isn’t new. Think of the person who says, “I haven’t eaten since lunch. I am […]
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The futurists had it wrong. For years, dystopians predicted that the grim future of work would be an endless line of mechanically punching in and punching out, with little separating the typical worker from a robot. It was gray and grimy and cruel, a world where personality was stomped out. Everyone was tied to a […]
READ MOREThere are few things more trivial and more important than manners. Some of them are incredibly trivial, such as not putting your elbows on the table. This came from how sailors ate – they would have to use their elbows to brace their bowls on a swaying ship, and it became associated with being coarse […]
READ MOREWhen the Supreme Court is deciding on the law, they are of course making their decision based on constitutionality, but that document is deliberately and wonderfully ambiguous. This open-ended nature can lead to interesting interpretations. One branch of jurisprudence where we see this is in interpretations of the 8th Amendment, which speaks against “cruel and […]
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Leading up to the year 1000, much of Europe was gripped by millennial terrors. Given that humans always look for meaning in round numbers and are always willing to quickly ascribe meaning to irrelevance, nearly everything was taken as a sign of the looming apocalypse. When a comet appeared in the skies over Europe some […]
READ MOREWhen it comes to health, there are two main categories (broadly speaking): there are things you can do to be healthier and there are things you have to do when something goes wrong. For instance, you should walk or run as much as possible. You should watch your calories and try to eat healthy foods. You […]
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