Everywhere I look, things are getting dumber. A "smart phone", maybe, but it's really just a small, dumb laptop with a phone in it.
Our country is getting dumber -- our blockbuster IPO's are fluffy stuff like "social networking", the Super Bowl and Desperate Housewives are the pinnacle of entertainment, while science is being slowly but systematically bred out of our youth.
Nobody can spell or write well any more. Our goods are not well made, sound bites have replaced thoughtful discourse, people say they want to "Fix America" when they really just want cheaper gas and more crap to watch on TV.
So-called Mountain Lion got me thinking about the Renaissance today, and how we are spiraling backwards by almost any cultural or intellectual measure.
It has been almost 500 years since Leonardo da Vinci died, at the age of 60. He contributed more to the world in one short lifetime than the rest of the world's population has managed in the subsequent several hundred years.
What the hell is going on, and we aren't we doing anything about it?
I'm with you on the bad writing. People are using commas to join sentences that don't belong together. "--" is being used in place of em dash (HTML entity mdash), and old people who've never appreciated the origin of the phrase "Bread and Circuses" are prattling on about it all. Heavens.
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