This blog is now cleaner looking and located at links.wnstn.com.
My main blog has been redesigned and cleaned up at wnstn.com.
And I’m planning some changes for my video site at winstonhearn.com.
Ok, back to the stuff that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with me.
From the cover story of this month’s Atlantic - ” How a New Jobless Era will Transform America.”
The full paragraph that contains the quote:
Jean Twenge, an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University, has carefully compared the attitudes of today’s young adults to those of previous generations when they were the same age. Using national survey data, she’s found that to an unprecedented degree, people who graduated from high school in the 2000s dislike the idea of work for work’s sake, and expect jobs and career to be tailored to their interests and lifestyle. Yet they also have much higher material expectations than previous generations, and believe financial success is extremely important. “There’s this idea that, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to work, but I’m still going to get all the stuff I want,’” Twenge told me. “It’s a generation in which every kid has been told, ‘You can be anything you want. You’re special.’”
Thanks to that Best Journalism of 2009 list I linked earlier, I have about 40 unread long-form articles queued in Instapaper. That’s awesome, I expect to learn a lot by reading them.
But, I typically read Instapaper stuff using the excellent iPhone app. And I don’t want to read 40 articles on my iPhone. I guess I could steal Freya’s laptop, but I hate reading on laptops, they are so awkward in your lap, or you have to sit at a desk or table, and who likes reading at a desk or table? If only I had a device that were halfway between an iPhone and a laptop. If only.
This has been a recurring though since late January. Strange.
I love the handful of blogs that do this already, but my web design skills are small and antiquated right now. No problem, one day I will find the mythical Fountain of Free Time and proceed to learn all the awesome things that are currently in my Moleskine under the heading “Things to Learn More About.”
I read this article the day it came out, then lost track of it, and finally found it again. I like it. I’m a fan of the good old-fashioned book. A big fan, the type who walks into a used bookstore and takes a long, big breath through my nose, so that I can find out exactly what type of used-bookstore it is. The type who can imagine selling all of my possessions EXCEPT for my books; those, well, it would be really hard and I’d probably still hide some. I would totally pull that thing in Acts where the two people sell some property, and donate some of it to the church but claim they are donating all of it and so God struck them down because they were lying about a voluntary act of charity and if I made a commitment to sell or give away all of my books I would definitely be those people because I just can’t, no I can’t give away my books.
Which is to say, the idea of a Kindle is cool, and an iPad even cooler, but if you’re so excited about the technological revolution that you wish to get rid of your books so you can buy e-books, well, give me a call, because I might be interested in buying some of them. Or all of them.
Oh right, the article. Books vs. E-Books.
In case your Instapaper account is feeling thin, I present to you The Best of Journalism, 2009.
Lots of links. Lots to read. I can’t wait. I love excellent journalism.
Also, if you don’t know about Instapaper, you should find out.
From the opening scene of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a film that I think is near the top of my favorites list.
Also, I love the thought of finding creation slightly more than one can accept. I think if you combine that idea with the ending of the Einstein story recently posted, that of always ““Opening up yet another fragment of the frontier of beauty,” then I am slowly finding the words to explain the things that drive me.
Commenting on why one person chose not to go to CPAC, Tony Woodlief defines his understanding of the roots of American conservatism.
A real American conservative, to me, is someone who understands that markets are the best means of allocating resources, that liberty is essential to human thriving, and that man is sinful and in desperate need of checking and elevating institutions like the Church and marriage and childrearing. A real American conservative believes in aspiring, at the very least, to truthfulness and humility and thoughtfulness, which means he can’t help but cringe when he hears the likes of an Ann Coulter bellowing about her enemies being traitors. A real American conservative understands that the ills of mankind will not go away if we could only just have a lower tax rate and less regulation. A real American conservative is not, I’ll submit to you, at home in the maneuvering and manipulation of state capitols, and certainly not in Washington, D.C. A real American conservative does not trust large government or mass democracy or even himself, certainly not himself, which is why he wants to keep undivided power out of any man’s hands, including his own.
There’s a lot in that paragraph that rings true for me.
I’ve been in Urban Outfitters ten minutes and addressed twice as if I work here. This is utterly disheartening. Because this is the “being sold back to them” type hipster place that below-linked article was referring too. Also, I’ve never shopped here before.
Barely a day into this Twitter/FB fast I’m doing for Lent and I’ve realized two things:
I wonder what other things I could fast from to change how I think…
