I was reading a musing by George Will that kind of explained the popularity of Reality TV and toyed with the notion that our electronic on-demand world may be giving the entire planet a case of ADHD.
I personally experienced something of a revelation on this this topic when my computer went blooey and was restored only to go blooey even better worse the second time, and as a result I haven’t had much access to the considerable amount of stuff I read on line daily nor did I read something and think I had to do a blog post about it and get it out right away, with the result that I had many, many fewer things to think about and I could think about individual items longer.
Great! Here I am in a post about reading the whole thing and I’m in the middle of a digression that you don’t really need to get the point. {Sigh.}
So I get to the end of a musing about how we become excruciatingly bored if we aren’t constantly stimulated and I come upon this right at the end.
There are, however, paragons among whom boredom flourishes. Valerie Jarrett, one of Barack Obama’s closest confidantes, says (as reported in David Remnick’s The Bridge), “He knows exactly how smart he is…He’s been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.” Even regarding boredom, he is a reproach to the rest of us.
You have to admit: that was worth it.
Oh! Yeah! Read the whole thing.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Tags: ADHD, Barack Obama, boredom, stimulation, Valerie Jarrett
Nimrod
This is no bull; why do you hide away in the corner?
This is another piece of brilliant observation. Blast it, I am going to advertise you amongst my friends. Your name will appear in large print:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, let me introduce you to one of the finest, one of only a few real People in Blogosphere, a man of exquisite taste, good kindly manners and he has a Mind. You have not lived until you have met [as has been my pleasure] this Great Spirit.
I now introduce you to:
NIMROD of NO LA
Read more about him in About in his Home Site.”
I dare you to stop me and warn you that you will have to act fast if you want to do that. Silence on your part about this comment will be taken as your approval to go ahead.
Stop you? How much do I owe you? Need any help?
I give up!
Sometimes it’s the only way.
By the way, I experienced another computer hiccough (hiccup?) and, while I can do some things, getting on the Internet isn’t one of them. The Linux install I’m using was put there by a friend and as a favor to me he left off the weird purple Ubuntu screen and made everything look just like Windows 7. So while there was no desktop learning curve it also means I don’t have a
painplain vanilla install so I can’t just get on a forum and ask a question and frequently he’s not available.What happened was that I got a firewall program. But I had to remember to invoke it each time I booted the machine. So I was futzing around and I right5 clicked on it. shazam! It asked Do you want to add this to the start up routine? So I did.
Then when I booted the machine I got a message about a problem with the menu and did I want to get rid of it. Thinking it meant the problem I said yes. Turns out it meant the menu. So now, instead of getting a menu with selections like Internet I get a screen with an icon of a file folder which gets me into the file system.
The Linux file structure is just like Unix and I don’t remember what goes into /dev and what into /usr etc. and I can’t find the browser programs. Naturally the one that is very readable and bonehead friendly is /games.
And remember the watchword of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe: Don’t Panic.