Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- In Defense of Difficulty (“A culture filled with smooth and familiar consumptions produces in people rigid mental habits and stultified conceptions. They know what they know, and they expect to find it reinforced when they turn a page or click on a screen.”)
- In Defense of Boredom (“To be bored is to be unafraid of our interior lives — a form of moral courage central to being fully human.”)
- The Confidence Conundrum (“On the surface, confidence appears to be an area where the rich get richer and the poor stay the fucking losers they are.”)
Blog Headline of the Week
Intelligent Statement of the Week Most Likely to Make Heads Explode
Bookish Linkage
- Digital world unfavorably pairs “reading” and “boredom” far too often
- The perils of re-reading
- Plotting literature’s prominent genres
- Bookish Lists: best novels about madness; 12 reasons book nerds pre-order books (I never have); books we read too soon; unusual library collections
Nonbookish Linkage
- Ignorant America
- Can a fake sickness become a real sickness?
- Online witches debate whether charging to cast a spell is ethical (It strikes me as fraud but there’s a lot of gullibles out there)
- Speaking of gullibility, rational people aren’t surprised by the news that “there are no health conditions for which there is reliable evidence that homeopathy is effective”
- I never would have imagined such a thing as “rare” Pez containers, let alone millions to be made in smuggling them
- Thirteen fascinating and free online courses for history buffs
- But is the way history is taught in high school misguided?
- Looking into how some Medieval maps were extraordinarily accurate
A well-stocked mind is safe from boredom.
Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End
