Every time some university reasearchers come out with a whopping big survey designed to show us a great truth based on what several thousand people say they feel about things, it just underscores what a silly designation "social scientist" really is:
They say money can't buy happiness. They're wrong.
At least up to a point.
Bad news on the bookstore front. Borders has just posted a second-quarter loss of $46.7 million, the fifth loss in six quarters, and the chain is closing stores and selling more non-book items. Things aren't so hot at Barnes & Noble, either.
Well, tell me something I didn't know:
The Internet is transforming the news business into something different, but no one knows quite what, and only visionaries and hard-skulled business people grasp what could be. Like every revolution, this one is causing casualties, the guillotinings this time seen in lost jobs, even disappearing newspapers.
[. . .]
That corner around which we will have convergence -- and we can do everything with one smallish device -- is getting closer and closer. We can now call people directly on their phones from our Gmail accounts. And Dell has a combination netbook and smartphone; it's generally getting savaged by critics, but, hey, it's a start.
You remember the midlife crisis. I certainly remember mine, vaguely. A lot of 20-somethings today don't believe in putting things off, so they're having quarter-life crises. Well, actually, they do believe in putting things off: They're taking an awfully long time to grow up, A New York Times article informs us.
It has been said there are three kinds of lies -- lies, damned lies and statistics. Maybe we should add a fourth worse than the other three -- the "stolen valor" kind, which, at least as far as an appeals court panel is concerned, are not unconstitutional.
A three-year-old federal law that makes it a crime to falsely claim to have received a medal from the U.S. military is unconstitutional, an appeals court panel in California ruled Tuesday.
Every year at this time, Wisconsin's Beloit College releases its Mindset List to show the "cultural mindset" of incoming college freshman as a "reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references." Actually, it's an annual reminder that we're really getting ooooold.
This is a historic milestone we probably should not let pass without note:
Is cornpone humor acceptable if we pretend it isn't cornpone humor? I ask having attended the "Red Green Wit & Wisdom Tour" show on Saturday night. We were in the $10 balcony cheap seats, but that was OK -- no seat in the Scottish Rite is that far away from the stage. It wasn't necessary to see Red that clearly anyway; if you've ever seen his PBS show, you can easily fill in the facial-expression blanks somewhere below the hunting hat and above the plaid shirt.
