Monday, March 22, 2010

Plato Quote, the fallacy of political apathy.

“Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.”

Too many times I've heard people describe politics as being for "the masses." What these people don't understand is that politics will affect them, no matter how apathetic they are. I'm not necessarily saying to vote, but at least make the effort to be educated about current issues and how we can resolve them.

Around the Web

I really just need somewhere to share random web-pages happened upon through Stumbleupon, emailed links from friends, and the end results of my meandering through the web. To that end, I have added a new category: Around the Web.Without further ado, onto the first set of Random & Interesting.

Stumbleupon gifted me with  this gem, a list of the "56 best/worst anthologies of high school students". It was really a great idea for a contest, and several of the entries certainly made me laugh.

Support Details solves a very important problem: If you are a proficient computer user in the 21st century, it is nearly guaranteed that at some point a computer-illiterate friend or family-member will request that you play the role of tech support for whatever issue it is that they have. Unfortunately when a problem is encountered while installing software, the user may not be able to tell you what OS they're running, or is Javascript is turned on, but they can probably type in your email address.

I recently was looking for an exact quote from Beowulf, and unfortunately, I don't own a copy, digital or otherwise. Digital Classics to the rescue. I couldn't download any of them (anyone have any info about that?) There are over 100 literary classics, and they're all free, legal, and high quality.

For quite a while now I've been wondering about the future of print material: it seems quite likely that most newspapers and magazines won't be around for two much longer, but I'm really more concerned with books, and found a great post about "Why E-books will not replace paper-bound books (at least anytime soon)"  Along the same lines, I dug up aGlobe & Mail article: A lament for the bookshelf, which is both well-written and entertaining.


Contact me, or comment if you think you have anything to add to a future list.