Zack Wendling of In the Agora links to a story about British researchers who think Internet downloading and MP3 players are lessening our ability to appreciate songs or musical performances:
"The accessibility of music has meant that it is taken for granted and does not require a deep emotional commitment once associated with music appreciation," said music psychologist Adrian North on Tuesday.
[. . . ]
What Walter Cronkite recalls as one of his proudest moments is actually one of the worst moments of modern journalistic history:
After I went away to the military and college, my parents got a new house, but it had all the furniture I grew up with. Visiting them, during my first years of working at Indiana newspapers, was like going back to childhood in some ways. I could ease whatever workplace stress I was going through just by closing my eyes and reliving some of those earlier times. Apparently, even the pope sometimes feels the need for that kind of mental getaway.
So, my heating bills are going up, and the fast-food joints are responding with cheap hamburgers? That's one of the silliest pieces of economic analysis I've ever seen. Things go in cycles, and people got tired of not getting what they mostly expected at the drive-thru: cheap food, fast. Now that they're getting back to the cheap, would it be too much to ask that they work on the fast a little bit?
This boneheaded move by Maryland isn't just anti-Wal-Mart. It's fundamentally anti-business:
The measure approved Thursday requires companies with more than 10,000 Maryland employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on employee health care or pay the difference into the state-supported Medicaid program. Of the state's large employers, only Wal-Mart spends less than 8 percent on health care.
I'm surprised film isn't already gone. (Then again, I thought rap would be a one- or two-year phenomenon, so what do I know?) There will be a certain amount of nostalgic pining from those who miss the aesthetics of film, but it's hard to argue against the versatility and power of digital photography. One thing I've noticed, which is a little surprising, is the number of people I know who have even given up getting prints of photographs, being perfectly content to pass them around digitally.
It's good to live in the Midwest, where traditional values save us from the wretched excesses visited upon other parts of the country by Godless libertines. There, wicked female-teacher temptresses prey upon their 12-year-old students. Here, they only seduce 17-year-olds, practically over the hill.
A group of minority voters are becoming disenchanted with the political party they think is taking them for granted. No, not blacks and the Democratic Party. Cuban-Americans and the Republican Party:
"It was a total abuse, how all these Cubans were treated. They landed on our territory only so that we can send them back to hell," said Armando de Cristo, a city employee, 66, who fled Cuba 30 years ago.
An Oprah's Book Club recommendation can send a book soaring on the best-seller lists. The club has been getting some bad publicity because an "autobiography" it recommended is alleged to have been largely fabricated. The Smoking Gun Web site alleges that author James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" might be as much fiction as life story.
We should be glad that 55 percent of Americans still think the best way to get a lot of money is "to save something each month for many years." But 21 percent said the best way is to win the lottery, and 11 percent said "inheriting it."
Stephen Brobeck, executive director of the Consumer Federation, said it was of "some concern" that so many people thought the lottery was their best chance at wealth.
No kidding.
