Why Do People Assume that if Someone Is Cloned Their Minds and Lives Will Be the Same?

We don't assume that if identical twins who were separated at birth should meet one day they would be exactly the same. How could they? What if one was adopted in Ireland and the other in Italy?

So enough with the clone skits and jokes that assume cloning humans creates a carbon copy of their minds. There is no way this could happen. 

young steve jobs looks like aston kutcher

Young Steve Jobs looks like Aston Kutcher.


Uncanny, or get out of here?!

Best opening sentence to an article in a long time: The tenderness of the delicate American buttock from The Guardian

"The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country's love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners."

Wonderful. I love the not-so-tongue-in-cheek comment here.

Here's the full article.

Where is our intelligentsia? Where is our lost generation going to alight?

Where?

If we are the lost generation, then why can't we be lost together? So who will climb out of the dregs and drugery of despair and find the place to sit and grin and collect more grinners, who have no need for affected poverty or disadvantage?

Songs I seem to always hear while drinking at bars: Fleetwood Mac's "Dream"

 

My most recent trips to the bar have developed an internal pattern of their own. One element of this pattern is the songs that seem to always play while I sit and drink. One of these is Fleetwood Mac's "Dream."

I suppose this is a standard jukebox playing song, but this song makes its appearance with such regularity as to suggest an orchestrated sagacity on the part of the muses, or the bartender, or the dj.

Southwest Pilot Rants on his dismal partying while mic is on; rails against "gays" "grannies" "grandes" "fags"

Here's another video featuring an oblivious person saying things which would make people cringe.




A pilot for Southwest airlines unwittingly broadcast his conversation regarding his crummy party experiences and the amount of "gays" and "fags" he encounters. I imagine this will go viral within the next couple of days. The recording is nothing extraordinary.  Southwest airlines suspended the pilot; he returned after completing diversity classes.

I realize many people will address the homophobic aspect of this recording, which is fine and understandable. But this pilot is not speaking publicly, and in no way is representing his profession or his airline.

A bigger issue I see here is the ever increasing phenomenon of having people's every actions captured and made public on the internet.

It is quickly looking as if it is better to assume you are always being watched and recorded. My what a brave new world we are living in!

Woman on Metro North is well educated: Woman gets asked to quiet down while using mobile phone; phone video captures her loudmouth reaction

Sweet Benedict, whilst thou art young,
And knowst not yet the use of tongue,
Keep it in thrall whilst thou art free:
Imprison it or it will thee.
            --John Hoskyns

Riding the train or bus to work can be a hassle if you live in a big metropolitan area. You have to learn to put up with a lot of stuff. Sometimes sitting on gum can ruin a good day; sometimes sitting on gum can be the least of your problems. A video is going viral as I type this (only 1654 views!) of a woman who gets upset over being asked to quiet down and stop using profanity while talking on her mobile phone. Again? you say. What's new? Well this video is more entertaining--and somewhat uncomfortable to watch--for the attitude the woman takes. She decides to defend herself by claiming how "well educated she [is]." The moment anyone uses this tactic, you know they lose all credibility of whatever social standing the think they have because of their schooling.



From the youtube description: This woman was talking too loud on the train when the conductor politely asked her to keep it down and stop using profanity or to take it to the vestibule. She jumped up and started yelling about how "educated" she is, proving the exact opposite.
There was an announcement a minute later asking all passengers to please not use profanity on the train, "especially those people who went to Harvard or Yale or are from Westport."

I like the part where she asks "do you know what schools I've been to" and where she asks for her money back.

Just how well educated is she?
Here is her linkdin profile, which  is also making the rounds.

E.A. Robinson's "The Mill": a poem capturing todays I can't find a job / life's a bitch mood

I thought and googled: The best I can't find a job poem is e.a. robinsons's "the mill"

"Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even can enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind" (Thomas Babington Macaulay)

I will not pretend that poetry can be accessed and sought out by all people to find some solace like music or movies or even fiction. At least not today.

But hear me out those of you who think poetry is boring or hard: Reading E.A. Robinson's better poems, you understand how poems matter. I remember reading Robinson's "The Mill" as an undergraduate. I read him along with other Modern poets. Robinson, along with many other early modernists, wrote the kind of poems that outlined modernism's entire principles of mood and subject matter. Early modernist poets like Robinson (along with Housman and Hardy to name a few), made it so that poems could contain layers of ambiguity while attending to the readers' demand to literal meaning. This is no easy task. Later poets failed to achieve this duality of meaning and discovery.

Like I mentioned in an earlier post about poetry, there is no point debating the cultural utility and viability of Poetry in our age: it simply does not register as a cultural force or art form.

Notice something new? Google launches +1 "plus one" and further joins the clutter and fray

Google +1 (plus one)

In its continuing effort to rival Facebook, Google launched its own version of the ubiquitous "like" button.  Google, of course, says that their +1 (pronounced "plus one") feature is better because its recommendations will contextualize information thus making them more relevant.