Curing RSS addiction and continuous partial attention
My experience with making and using Instapaper to help cure feed abuse and read more high-quality content than I ever have before.
![merlin:
Plane crashes in to the word trade center. | MetaFilter (Comment 128648, Rebecca Blood)
[via]](http://media.tumblr.com/34GrgyzUscs27k6xYJvDXdF6_400.jpg)
For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time
Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:
First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn’t meet the goal. We will call the goal a “BA.”
Computer beats pro at US Go Congress.
For AI researchers and go players this is significant.
“In a historic achievement, the MoGo computer program defeated Myungwan Kim 8P Thursday by 1.5 points in a 9-stone game.”
Hamlet- Facebook News Feed Addition
Horatio thinks he saw a ghost.
Hamlet thinks it’s annoying when your uncle marries your mother right after your dad dies.
The king thinks Hamlet’s annoying.
Laertes thinks Ophelia can do better.
Hamlet’s father is now a zombie.
- - - -
The king poked the queen.
The queen poked the king back.
Hamlet and the queen are no longer friends.
Marcellus is pretty sure something’s rotten around here.
Hamlet became a fan of daggers.
- - - -
Polonius says Hamlet’s crazy … crazy in love!
Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and Hamlet are now friends.
Hamlet wonders if he should continue to exist. Or not.
Hamlet thinks Ophelia might be happier in a convent.
Ophelia removed “moody princes” from her interests.
Hamlet posted an event: A Play That’s Totally Fictional and In No Way About My Family
The king commented on Hamlet’s play: “What is wrong with you?”
Polonius thinks this curtain looks like a good thing to hide behind.
Polonius is no longer online.
- - - -
Hamlet added England to the Places I’ve Been application.
The queen is worried about Ophelia.
Ophelia loves flowers. Flowers flowers flowers flowers flowers. Oh, look, a river.
Ophelia joined the group Maidens Who Don’t Float.
Laertes wonders what the hell happened while he was gone.
- - - -
The king sent Hamlet a goblet of wine.
The queen likes wine!
The king likes … oh crap.
The queen, the king, Laertes, and Hamlet are now zombies.
Horatio says well that was tragic.
Fortinbras, Prince of Norway, says yes, tragic. We’ll take it from here.
Denmark is now Norwegian.
(via McSweeney’s)
Mom, Dad, I'm Into Steampunk.
“Remember when I was crawling around the attic, looking for my old Planters-peanut-man Halloween costume? I didn’t donate it to the children’s theater, like I told you. I salvaged the monocle, top hat, and cane, combined them with a swallowtail tuxedo, and stole away to a midnight screening of the underrated masterpiece The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Don’t get me wrong; I still live in your world. In this very house even. But now I exist between two eras: an Edwardian past and a quixotic future where dirigibles can travel through space and time. “
Well worth the wait
Stephen Fry’s Dork Talk column — about the only thing worth reading in the Guardian, most of the time — is back. It’s pretty much just a standard fare article about the iPhone, but it’s worth reading just for Fry’s writing. I think I learn a new word every time I read something of his. This time: ineluctable.