please pass the BlackBerry

Tim Egan is right: compared to the world of "Mad Men," we’re clearly better off in most regards. He mentions personal health, race relations, and the dampening of socially-sanctioned sexism. (Frank Rich has interesting thoughts on the subject too.)

But nostalgia for all those years ago is not wholly misplaced: "Breakfast without a BlackBerry next to the blueberries... no rush to tweet or post every idle thought."

Right. Excuse me while I tweet that.

(For the record, and in a belated attempt to avoid the most blatant hypocrisy: I love my new iPod.)

No Greater Challenge

Captain Picard would've been a good NASA philosopher.

This is the scene in which young Ensign Wesley Crusher tells Picard that "William James won't be on my Starfleet exams." Picard answers, "Nothing really important will be. Open yourself to the past—history, art, philosophy—and all of this might mean something."

Out of nostalgia (I guess) I've been following Wil ("Wesley") Wheaton's tweets. But I'm going to have to let him go. He actually thought it worthwhile, the other day, to inform the universe that he hates (literally) biting his tongue.

He won't miss me, he'll still have 968, 790 followers to regale with such riveting bits of ephemera from a mid-scale ex-celeb's stream of consciousness.

What would Jean-Luc say?

Recovered time

I finally set up email filters to sort my incoming email into folders, including a really big one that catches all the traffic from school. It being summer, days passed as I forgot to look at my school mail. I was pleasantly stumped as to why I seemed to have a lot more time on my hands. Then I remembered. Then I made myself “forget” again. It's really not healthy to be online all the time, even though Steven Johnson thinks Twitter is the greatest thing since, what, Facebook? "What your friends had for breakfast is more interesting than it sounds." (Ironically, he says this in Time.) No, it's really not. I agree that there's something positive in the phenomenon of trying to find new ways to connect and communicate, but there comes a time when it's healthier to push away from the keyboard and maybe even pull the plug. That time comes daily, repeatedly, and coincidentally with the draining of my coffee mug. Time to walk the doggies. Later it'll be time to hit the hammock. Soon it'll be time to hit the road. Somewhere in there I'll find the time to get some work done, I promise.

More twittering

from Arlo and Janis

You can learn a lot from watching birds too, not just squirrels.

"A penny for your tweet"

Liza Donnelly.

Almost too true, but still funny. (At least they're in the same room.)