Tomorrow could be one of the biggest days in what will be our generation’s history. I talk about it too much already, so I promised I would keep this one brief (I lied). Also please don’t assume I’m jumping on some sort of endorsement bandwagon here, as I totally don’t care about endorsements outside of entertainment and I think it’s important for everyone to talk about this crap with everyone.
It is important that everyone makes time and goes to their polling place and sticks four fingers into the system that has been fucking up their lives for the past few years. The only way to beat this system is to use it; this is a basic fact of American civics.
I want to also note that it is particularly important for anyone under 25 to get the hell off of their lazy asses and just go to their polling places tomorrow and vote. Look up where it is, stop whining about it, and go do it. If you are an older person that cares about the horrors of government and interact with the 18-25s regularly, inspire them. Make it happen.
As for me, I will be representing my home state and the man whose birthday I stole next week (who understood the concept of inspiration as catalyst) by voting for the guy that announced his candidacy in the same place as some of the most eloquently backhanded speeches ever have been delivered.
I have been talking about this quite a lot over there on the twitter, but it’s not about buzzword bingo or hot shit trends or bandwagon bumblefuck. This is about reform that will relieve the poor of the rich’s burden (without empty leftist rhetoric promises). It is about technology not scaring off the elderly Washington geriatrics. It is about SERIOUSLY TECHNOLOGY IT’S THE FUTURE. It is about taking our country back from companies and stockholders by using it against itself. It is about diversity and proving to Negative Nancies™ that our country really has come this far.
I am a skeptic leaning far into the realm of cynicism. That cynicism is a result of the past seven years, and I don’t consider it permanent. I looked into this guy and the whole behind the scenes mess, and I said fuck libertarianism for a couple years if this will actually improve life. I genuinely think it will, and that is after excessive cynical review. I am much more surprised than I am proud to report that the state of Georgia agrees.
It is time to move on and up. This rutwalking can finally end with thinking positive, and I say that with the most respectably desperate tone possible. I already voted for this guy in Illinois, watched what he did after that, and now I’m going to vote for him again. Thank you for listening.
So this crazy shit about what day is the most depressing of the year. There’s this theory about “blue Monday” which is basically:
…calculated by Dr. Cliff Arnall…and has been quoted in the popular press, although there is little if any scientific basis to his methods…”the fact is that Cliff Arnall’s equations are stupid, and some fail even to make mathematical sense on their own terms.” The date was calculated by using many factors…weather conditions, debt level, time since Christmas, time since failing our new year’s resolutions, low motivational levels and feeling of a need to take action…typically falls on the Monday of the last full week of January. This would make 21 January the Blue Monday of 2008.
Aside from the fact that Arnall’s theory has been discounted by many in the academic community, I’ve got a better way of finding the true nadir of depression: Look to our search behavior. If we think we’re suffering from a real bout of the blues or a mental crisis, we’re likely to Google the symptoms. In fact, online searches for “depression” are among the most popular searches sending traffic to the 5,900 sites that we track, but the peak is not in January. According to our Internet behavior, our depression spikes reliably in mid-November every year, right in time for Thanksgiving, the launch of the holiday season.
That’s true too! Holy shit!
Or maybe we’re just all crazy. I know I am blessed with my own manstrual cycle that tortures me every four weeks. Serious.
The doctor guy says the best day of the year is in the 24ish part of June also.
If you have the kind of brain aids that makes you constantly need to feed it more things, you might be interested in oddly detailed, guided tours through history. If you’re interested in that or learning how we learned how to learn, you’ll like this:
I know some people could be sensitive and call it dry, but James Burke is a pretty serious cut-up considering his field of study, and I’ve worshiped his books for years. Note that this is part 2 of 5 of episode 1 of 10. This can be a serious fast track to general knowledge of the history of science, and is almost an eerily appropriate primer for skeptical thought and understanding of the scientific process and how it effects history, all under the umbrella of chaos! This is multi-threaded teaching and thinking.
In the closing scenes of The Day the Universe Changed, Burke suggested that a forthcoming revolution in communication and computer technology would allow people all over the world to exchange ideas and opinions instantaneously. Subsequent events seem to have proven him right. His views of the connected nature of history have also been substantiated by recent research in chaos/complexity/network theory.
Essentially anything here is going to be similar or have an even wider berth, but I definitely suggest Connections as it caused a bit of an educational revolution that logically played out to its fullest form on the internet.
