In December, [Megan Phelps-Roper, formerly one of the Westboro Baptist Church’s most vocal members] went to a public library in Lawrence, Kansas. She was looking through books on philosophy and religion, and it struck her that people had devoted their entire lives to studying these questions of how to live and what is right and wrong. ‘The idea that only [[Westboro Baptist Church] had the right answer seemed crazy,’ she says. ‘It just seemed impossible.’
Metafilter member “the man of twists and turns” said: I’m going to stick this quote into every discussion of why libraries are important.
(via notational)
6304I rarely answer my telephone, often forget to check voicemail, and can take a shockingly long time to return phone calls.
So sue me.
The telephone is intrusive, especially for introverts, whose brains don’t switch gears all that quickly. When we’re deep in thought, a ringing telephone is like a shrieking alarm clock in the morning.
And we often give bad phone—awkward, with pauses. We struggle without visual cues, and our tendency to ponder before we talk doesn’t play well on the telephone. Being stuck on a too-long call makes me want to chew off my own leg to escape.
Sometimes, if I’m feeling devil-may-care, I’ll pick up calls from far-flung friends who want to catch-up, But I more often let them go to voicemail and then make a date (via email) for us to talk. My friends understand.
Dislike of the phone is often presented as a moral failing. But honestly, it’s not the people on the phone we dislike, it’s the instrument of delivery.
Sophia Dembling, Nine Signs That You Might Be an Introvert, The Huffington Post
Yes. Anecdotal evidence indicates that impromptu phone calls are already a social faux pas in middle class London circles.
(via doesyourcatknow)
The reality of millions of years of adaptation to a ruggedly physical existence will not just go away because desks were invented
Mark Rippetoe
(Source: dissenterested)
How did this group of Nigerians become Jewish?
“Through a history of colonialism and proselytisation through Christian missionaries. Most Igbos became Christian. Some of them in the 1970s, 1980s, were proselytized – from the United States, actually – by what in the American setting would be often called Jews for Jesus, what in Nigeria they still call Messianic. Now, having practiced Messianic Judaism for many years, which is all of the customs and the practices of Judaism – Sabbath, prayer on Saturdays, wearing of the tallit, the prayer shawl – but they also believed in Jesus, which for normative Judaism, regular Judaism, just doesn’t fit. And after some years of questioning – because Nigerians are really religious people, they take religion seriously, they go to bed thinking about it – some of them started to say, ‘this doesn’t compute. If we’re supposed to believe in one God, then this theology of a son of God in addition to God doesn’t make sense.’ And then the Internet arose and they were exposed for the first time to world global Judaism.”
The world’s first “Internet Jews”
“They had exposure to Hebrew language, to how Jewish ritual is practiced throughout the world. The Internet arrived in Nigeria at the same time that many of these Igbos were breaking away from Messianic Judaism, as they thought of it, and were able to learn and had this great access to whatever is out on the Internet. And everything is out on the Internet! Including Rabbinic Judaism.”
A Growing Community Of Jews In Nigeria, Here & Now
(via new-aesthetic)
We left the boxes in the village. Closed. Taped shut. No instruction, no human being. I thought, the kids will play with the boxes! Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, but found the on/off switch. He’d never seen an on/off switch. He powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs [in English] in the village. And within five months, they had hacked Android. Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera! And they figured out it had a camera, and they hacked Android.
– Nicholas Negroponte, Ethiopian kids hack OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction DVICE
(Source: protoslacker)
Ask yourself: Why is it so vital that I be smoothened? There’s no functional advantage to eliminating clothing wrinkles—unless you are competing in a timed event that favors reduced drag coefficients. What you’re really doing when you leave your house in ironed clothes is engaging in an elaborate signaling ritual. You demonstrate that you have devoted time and resources to ironing (or to compelling other people to iron for you), which in turn connotes respect for a (silly) social compact. You use your crisp clothes to advertise yourself as a rule-follower, and you hope that in turn you will derive benefit from being perceived as one who follows rules. “Oh, he took the time to press his shirt before he showed up for this job interview. So I guess he must be a reliable and trustworthy employee.” It’s thinking like this that encourages broad-based evil to fester.
The Tyranny of the Iron – Seth Stevenson, Slate
(Source: ayjay)
