In a previous post, I responded to the recent discussion going on in Internet-land about snark vs. smarm by essentially declaring a plague on both their houses, lumping them together into the category of “snide.” Still, I didn’t feel like I’d quite gotten across what my problem was with snark and snideness, and then today I read Gary Olmstead’s take at The American Conservative, and I think he’s nailed it: The problem with snarkers is not their truth-telling—what would society... Read more
I have a longish piece up at Friendly Atheist today on the future prospects for blogs as a prime medium within the atheist movement. I am bullish on the form. A pinch: Will skepto-atheists still be relying so heavily on blogs in ten years? I’m guessing yes. The main reason is that we are a movement and a community based largely on proving Some Big Point that most or far too many people still don’t agree with. To be extremely... Read more
Maybe, like me, you’re not all that great with big family get-togethers during the holidays. Maybe, like me, you find yourself a little overwhelmed by all the reuniting, all the catching-up, all the big expressions of emotion. And maybe you’re even a “sullen teenager,” as I was many years ago, who is still figuring out how to behave around this weird mix of adults and children. Maybe you don’t always feel like you really know them, or know yourself, and... Read more
And the pendulum of gadget satisfaction has swung the other way. Previously, I dismissed the Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Folio for iPad Air for its flimsiness in typing mode and its bizarre key-conflations. Still determined to find a suitable external keyboard for my beloved electro-slab, I decided to try out something familiar, Logitech’s Ultrathin Keyboard Cover. This, unlike the Folio, is not a “case” for your iPad, something that would cover it front and back, but more like a faceplate with keys, attached by... Read more
Because it’s not really a thing. Here’s Ferris Jabr at Scientific American: No one has ever managed to compile a set of physical properties that unites all living things and excludes everything we label inanimate. There are always exceptions. Most people do not consider crystals to be alive, for example, yet they are highly organized and they grow. Fire, too, consumes energy and gets bigger. In contrast, bacteria, tardigrades and even some crustaceans can enter long periods of dormancy during which... Read more
I was kind of on the same page with Tom Scocca and his anti-smarm essay at Gawker for the first chunk of it. He has some great zingers and I’m a sucker for a skillful thumb-biting at the successful intelligencia, for whom of course my envy is a deep, rich forest-green. But maybe 800 or so words in it dawned on me that, spirited as this essay was, it was getting out of hand. To say Scocca paints with too broad a brush is... Read more
No doubt you’ve seen some manifestation of a species of essay wherein the author goes cold turkey on the Internet for some length of time, and proceeds to discover themselves anew or some such. The proliferation of these pieces, and the moral or revelatory high ground they often claim often makes me roll my eyes so far back that I can read my own thoughts. That’s why this piece by Nathan Jurgenson was such a breath of fresh air. (Well,... Read more
I remain fascinated by the emergence of Google’s Chromebooks, not because I’m in the market for one, but for what they bode for the future of the PC industry. Microsoft is also clearly thinking very hard about them, and I think for good reason. But not everyone thinks so. Tom Warren at The Verge comments on Microsoft’s new ads which ham-fistedly diss the Chromebook: Microsoft appears to be targeting a threat that doesn’t really exist yet. The only part of... Read more
I ought to be typing this on a physical keyboard right now, but I’m not. I’m using my iPad’s software keyboard as usual. It should have been a real keyboard because thanks to a generous Amazon credit from my parents for my recent birthday, I got me a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Folio for the iPad Air, and I was psyched about it. (See my iPad Air review here.) I had owned a Logitech keyboard cover for my previous iPad, and liked it... Read more
On an episode in May of this year of the podcast The Incomparable, which is a great panel discussion show about whatever bit of culture, entertainment, or literature strikes their fancy, the topic was Iron Man 3. Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, Guy English takes the temperature of the group concerning the introduction of Tony Stark’s panic attacks, a symptom of his PTSD following the harrowing events of the previous film, The Avengers. There was general agreement that,... Read more
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