Only great minds can read this
This is weird, but interesting!

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr
the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

The rampant commercialization of the U.S. becomes powerfully evident whenever I return from an extended trip to a country where people don’t wallow in materialism (on this exact point, see this post by Mindy Carney).  Americans are professional buyers and horders of things they don’t need.  

Many people would argue that we can freely ignore advertisements. Therefore, it’s OK to make the all-American deal: allow as many ads as necessary to pay for news and entertainment. 

I disagree. Yes, we can ignore particular commercials or even dozens of commercials.  But the average person is exposed to two million television commercials by age 65.  In The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (2005), Barry Schwartz writes that “The average American sees three thousands ads a day.”  As advertising professor James Twitchell puts it, “Ads are what we know about the world around us.”  Just listen to Americans!  They have become the commercials they have been exposed to.   They just can’t stop craving the things they see advertised.  They recite skits they hear on commercials just like people often used to sing the melodies they heard on cigarette commercials from the 1960’s.  It is naive to assume that we can subject ourselves to this onslaught without ill effect.

Again, what harm can such advertising do?  Lots, according to some writers. We are afflicted with “affluenza,” an all-consuming epidemic, according authors of the 2005 book of that title.  The authors quote T.S. Eliot’s “We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men.”  What exactly is affluenza? “A painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more.”

I once asked a friend how it was that our government could be so corrupt and unresponsive to the citizens, yet I don’t see any mobs with pitchforks and torches in the streets.   He said that the people will never revolt as long as they have their television.   Sitcoms, sports and glamorous cops solving murders as opiate of the people. 

Our obsessions with advertised goods distracts us and makes us complacent as citizens.  It’s OK to let politicians take huge (mostly legal) bribes from corporations that then get huge amounts of public money.  Just walk up to someone on the street.  Compare how much they know about their own government with how much they know about commonly advertised products. Commercial media favors the manipulation of glitzy images over critical thought. Who cares about our soldiers dying or about the integrity of our voting system as long as we can watch clever commercials.

Again, how can we as a nation expect things to get better in the US if we are too preoccupied with entertaining ourselves with TV, buying the newest thing or latest gadget, or other worthless things? We need to take the time to be involved in our government both local and non-local and hold our elected officials accountable in order for things to get better.

Read the full article, here.

Videos to (hopefully) come later.

[Show as slideshow]

A common misconception about the word “introvert” is that it means someone who’s shy, withdrawn, afraid of crowds, or lacking in social skills. If you’ve ever seen me give a presentation to a large Mac user group, you’ll surely know that description doesn’t fit me at all! I will happily stand in front of hundreds or thousands of people, give a speech, answer questions, make jokes, and generally take charge of keeping the group interested and involved. If anything, I have a reputation for being long-winded in social situations, telling stories that go off on one tangent after another – and for being among the last to leave. I like people, and I think I’m reasonably competent and comfortable in a crowd of any size.

I strongly agree with the following statement he made in regards to multitasking and chatting online:

Now, I happen to think “multitasking” is a concept that should never, ever be applied to human beings (regardless of personality type), but be that as it may, I can certainly say that I’m easily distracted, and having more than one thing to think about actively at any given time is sure to make me both ineffective and grumpy. Chatting online while also working on another task, therefore, is unthinkable.

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I’m easily distracted, but I greatly value solitude and quiet when I’m trying to study something.

If you are interested in learning more about my personality, then read the article and you will get a fairly close representation of one aspect of it.

About this quiz

Unhappiness in relationships is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. It can be helpful to know what language you speak and what language those around you speak.

Tag 3 people so they can find out what their love language is.

Take the Quiz!
Check out the Book

 

 

Edit: I tagged Brittany, Jared, and Sarah

(05:18:39 PM) UnamedFriend: Hey, isn’t this YOU?? :S http://mainmsn.com/images/viewimage.php?=myusername@hotmail.com
(05:30:55 PM) Jordan: Are you there?
(05:35:35 PM) Jordan: I think you might be infected with a virus

I changed the above url to www.virustotal.com’s antivirus scan of the file.

Needless to say, I’m trying to contact that friend and let them know about their computer’s actions.

Update:

I attempted to contact the domain registrant of mainmsn.com via the whois contact info and the message bounced. I am now attempting to contact the company that mainmsn.com is using for its name servers. I also submitted the URL to Google’s Safe Browsing: Report a malware page

Cure Information Overload Using Google Reader

Google’s feed reader has an option to sort the feeds by relevance. It’s only available if you go to “All items” and select “Sort by auto”. The cryptic name should mean that Google Reader “prioritizes the items based on their importance to you” by analyzing your reading patterns. – googlesystem.blogspot.com

Wired is reporting that information overload is being predicted by some analysts as the problem of the year for 2008. “‘It’s too much information. It’s too many interruptions. It’s too much lost time,’ Basex chief analyst Jonathan Spira declared. ‘It’s always too much of a good thing.’ Information overload isn’t exactly new, but Spira said the problem has grown as technology increases societal expectations for instantaneous response. And more information available, he said, also means more time wasted looking for the right information, whether in an old e-mail or through a search engine.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/26/2038218

I just turned off the web clips in my Gmail account, and I’m going to unsubscribe from the high-volume news feeds and try to be very selective in the feeds that I have, and I’ll probably limit my weekly time spent on feed reeding and extraneous browsing to 2 hours a week or less (for starters)…