Last week I was mistaken for a street dweller. I was walking home from school via my usual route behind buildings, staring a few steps in advance of my feet, oblivious to things not in my vision, wearing the large hood of my green winter cotton/wool coat. A man in the parking lot of one…
A good idea can come across as a bad idea if its supporter explains it poorly, and vice-versa. Numerous bad ideas have gained substantial support due to the articulateness of their backers. These sorts of social phenomena occur because we’re doing something we shouldn’t be. We’re assigning the human attributes of the person pitching the…
If there were an award for expressing simple, obvious things in the most long-winded manner possible, I’d win it: Aspiring writers of non-fiction, or of stories based on true events, might choose their subjects owing to the belief that if their writing concerns something which takes up considerable space in the public consciousness, then what…
People pay a premium for goods that exhibit prized characteristics. I’m curious how a consensus is established about what these characteristics are. Like the explanation for so many things, it’s probably a combination of learned behavior and instinct, the exact proportions of these two ingredients depending on the person and the good in question. I’m…
It’s a popular pastime of cynical disaffected youth to criticize small talk. I’ve done it myself occasionally. The type of thing where you mock how relatives greet each other at the airport “How was your flight?”. Depending on your reference point, the frustrating or funny thing about ridiculing small talk is that the criticisms are…
Some people maneuver through life in such refreshing ways that it’s as if they grew up in another world. It’s difficult to reconcile the facts that they are exposed to many of the same things I am and yet appear so untroubled. Of course, this is a lie. Everyone has troubles at some level, whether…
There are people who create work for themselves in an effort to stave off boredom. They mess things up so that they feel obligated to set things right again. Also people who cannot keep themselves from telling you the whole story, when they only intended to divulge a part of it. While drowning dishes in…
Physical attractiveness is not simply a function of physical features, but also depends on the relationship that exists between the person gauging attractiveness and the person whose attractiveness is being gauged. “Gauging” is an inappropriate verb insofar as it evokes the image of someone using a considerable portion of their attention to the task, when…
As usual, I welcome this political season with yawns of indifference. I seek out someone who intends to vote in a fashion directly opposing my own, such that our ballots would cancel each other and we can both save ourselves the trouble of having to go to the polls. Amid the rumble of pundits, rhetoric,…
When considering how small a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum visible light constitutes, it’s difficult not to feel cheated. I would like to additionally see ultraviolet and infrared. Technology could give me this ability now, but I’d much rather it manifest itself naturally through evolution, though it’s hard to imagine why such evolutionary developments would…
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