Still Brewing on Branding

I haven’t had much time to write in the last couple of weeks, but I still wanted to capture this train of thought somewhere.
At the turn of the month, I made my rounds to Talking Philosophy, where Jean Kazez had just written (competently, I feel) about the perils of caring too much and the virtue [...]

Drinking Age Debate

To some, it’s simply ”to drink or not to drink.” To others, it really is “to [die] or not to [die].” For the first time in twenty-five years, it seems now is the time to rehash the question. But, before considering whether or not the current drinking age of 21 years should be adjusted, it is [...]

Reading Notes on Loh’s “Class Dismissed”

In the March 2009 issue of The Atlantic, writer and performer Sandra Tsing Loh reviews Paul Fussell’s Class: A Guide Through the American Status System on its 25th anniversary. She finds it prescient and relevant, despite the two and a half decade gap between its publishing and now. Apparently American society hasn’t changed too much [...]

Happy Birthday: Now Spill All Your Secrets.

What were you doing at midnight on February 4, 2009? Sleeping? Chomping down a late-night snack? Facebooking? If the latter, you were unwittingly celebrating Mark Zuckerberg’s creation on its fifth birthday.

Five years and 150 million users later, Facebook is still the topic of heated debate. What does this construct say about our society? What impact [...]

The Last Professors? This is Not a Rhetorical Question.

Yesterday a friend of mine pointed out Stanley Fish’s review of Frank Donoghue’s The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities. According to his publisher, Donogue, a professor at The Ohio State University, uses this book as an opportunity to take “a clear-eyed look at American higher education over the last [...]

Count Your Marbles

Take any given person (even yourself, if you’d like), and ask the following:
Does he/she exhibit traces of

Impaired social skills (social interaction),
Impaired communicative abilities,
Restricted interests, and/or
Repetitive behavior.

If you answered yes to a majority of those characteristics, you are either

A modern, “connected” individual
Autistic

As Janet Maslin points out in a book review entitled, “So Plugged in, Yet So [...]

Religion: Chicken Soup for the Soul…or Just Chicken Soup?

The JanuaryFebruary 2009 issue of The Atlantic points out an article which begs the question: is religion a spiritual quest alone, or could there be something more physical, more mundane behind it?
“Assortative Sociality, Limited Dispersal, Infectious Disease and the Genesis of the Global Pattern of Religion Diversity” published by the Royal Society in Proceedings B [...]

Reconsidering Your Value (Online)

“On a social network, you’re the product rather than the customer.” That’s a blurb I took from Chris William’s article, “Facebook in Goldmine Potential Deficit,” published at The Register.
Does this describe the relationship between you and your social network(s), as you perceive it? No? Does the idea make you uncomfortable, then? Can you dispute [...]

Creating (and Destroying) Realities

At thirteen years of age and living just four-doors apart from each other, Sarah Drew and Megan Meier were your typical girl friends in your typical Missouri town living their typical teenage lives. Megan and Sarah even experienced a typical falling-out, when chats about boys turned into name-calling, bickering and, eventually, silence.
If only that [...]

Mobile (banking+politics+connecing)=?

You may have noticed a good deal of hullabaloo in the press about the advent of Mobile Banking: the new technology enabling consumers to control their financial assets from their mobile phone (texting to transfer funds, schedule a payment, check balances, et cetera).

As exciting as that is, banking is not the only activity people engage [...]