Category: ideas

The internet is all about niches, right? But with a billion people online, some of those “niches” are getting pretty darn big. “The Net is chockablock with special-interest sites and services you’ve never heard of but whose user base exceeds the print circulation of The Washington Post.”

Technology is being developed that claims to be able to tell if a person is lying. “In the pipeline are several cheaper, faster, easier-to-use brain-examining technologies, all intended as major improvements on the unreliable chicken-scratching polygraph we use now. Some seem to identify mental preparations for telling a lie even before the liar opens his mouth — verging on mind-reading. Another is meant to work from across the room, even if you do not wish to cooperate.”

“The main thing that sets the modern poor apart from the industrial age pauper is a sheer lack of interest in education. Today’s proletariat has little education and no interest in obtaining more. Back in the early days of industrialization, the poor joined worker associations that often doubled as educational associations. The modern member of the underclass, by contrast, has completely shunned personal betterment.”

Comedy is big business these days, but the art of making people laugh remains as mysterious as ever, particularly for those of us who don’t know how to do it. “Irony and detachment are not enough. Joke writing and performing is a craft, and while an all-encompassing theory of humour may elude us, it is possible to identify some of the basics in the building of a successful joke.”

A Canadian ecologist is on a crusade to preserve silence in his country’s national parks. Specifically, Gordon Hempton wants the government to legislate certain areas in which all kinds of man-made noise – airplanes, traffic, electric generators, even overly chatty campers – are forbidden.

“Wikipedia’s supporters often portray the site as a brave new world in which scholars can rub elbows with the general public. But doubters of the approach — and in academe, there are many — say Wikipedia devalues the notion of expertise itself.”

“Today, everybody should be able to enjoy music reproduced much better than a 1980 standard audio CD allows. Instead, people seem to be happy with music systems that are distinctly inferior to that, such as DAB radio and compressed music files. People care about picture resolution: they buy cameras with more megapixels, prefer DVD to VHS and are increasingly willing to buy hi-def TV sets. But they don’t seem to care about sound resolution – or not enough to spend money on it.”

“Pick any city, look at its newspaper, and you’ll find attention to classical music diminished to the basic minimum. It will focus on the ‘big ticket’ events — which, in the Bay Area, means the San Francisco Symphony, Opera, and Ballet, plus the most celebrated visiting artists. As is well-known to any person interested in classical music, such coverage just skims the surface. Who’s responsible? Newspaper publishers and their editors who have a hand in setting policy and then executing it. What to do about this downgrading of classical coverage?”

“Language is more than a tool for expressing ourselves. It acts as a mirror to our world, reflecting back to us the way we live. It reflects our attitudes about the way we see things and how we are seen by others: in public life; in politics and commerce; in advertising and marketing; in broadcasting and journalism. Yet the prevailing wisdom about language seems to be that anything goes.”