tune in and tune out

funny that i read frank bruni's column on how our devices help isolate us from the world on the same day when a facebook friend posted a shockingly racist and downright nasty post about president obama. it was supposedly written by a black journalist, which supposedly made it all better. it didn't. and i hid it from my feed, not wanting my world and my mind poisoned with such absolute vitriol and frankly, utter bullshit (the tea party crap about michelle not loving her country and obama being a communist). it crossed my mind to unfriend that particular friend.

i hide other posts on my feed - graphic pictures of kitties in need of eye medicine and scarred, wounded pitbulls in shelters. i don't want to see those things. i want cute pictures of healthy kitties and cake and scrubbed children on the first day of school and hilarious videos of clever bulldogs that can go get the milk out of the refrigerator. it's this curation (tho' i hate that word) of the content of the world around us that bruni is talking about. we narrow all of the information coming at us down to just what we want to see, rejecting anything that's of a differing opinion or world view than the one we already have.

i think this selecting is something we do instinctively to survive the onslaught of information coming our way. we don't go to facebook or twitter to hear good arguments or have our minds changed about anything, we go to relax, have a chat, check in on what's going on among our friends. it's today's telephone call. my friends or the pages i follow sometimes share something that opens my eyes or causes me to learn or think in a different way (the links below came to me via facebook pages i follow), but mostly, i laugh at wrongly attributed quotes, pithy aphorisms and photos of that poor grumpy cat. it's facebook, after all, not a paris salon in 1913.

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check out these amazing photos of the burning man festival in the nevada desert.

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if libraries are over, why do we keep building spectacular new ones?

maybe they're not so over.

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milk vodka?

the road ahead

i don't know if today's election results will enable anyone to bridge the gaps, but anyway i am breathing a sigh of relief today. i got up at 4:15 to watch the coverage. at 5:17 a.m. my time, CBS called the race for obama. CNN quickly followed. BBC seemed like they snapped out of a coma and called it a few minutes later. the new york times took nearly an hour. and despite the florida vote still not being in as i write this, obama was re-elected by a comfortable margin.

this whole race was ugly. and the aftermath, as it's played out on facebook at least, is even uglier. i saw some things written there today by bitter republicans that simply scare the hell out of me. the blatant racism and hatred in evidence is frightening. and the things with which they credit the president (the demise of their businesses, their cancer, their dog being hit by a car) are simply astonishing. i've been gone too long. i knew bush had destroyed my country and gave voice to all those extreme lunatics, but but i don't think i fully appreciated exactly how bad it was.

so despite being relieved that obama won, i wonder at what price?