Books vs the Internet

Will the internet ever replace books? Only if they’re able to replace a key and unique factor that up until now only books have successfuly been able to supply — linear concentration. Johann Hari has an article about the function of the book and how it will continue to persist in an age of distraction: 

And here’s the function that the book – the paper book that doesn’t beep or flash or link or let you watch a thousand videos all at once – does for you that nothing else will. It gives you the capacity for deep, linear concentration. As Ulin puts it: “Reading is an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction…. It requires us to pace ourselves. It returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise.”

[…]

Jean-Phillipe De Tonnac says “the true function of books is to safeguard the things that forgetfulness constantly threatens to destroy.”

(via Johann Hari: How to survive the age of distraction – Johann Hari, Commentators – The Independent)

Hunch vs. Gut Feeling

This passage from the David Means’ story “Tree Line, Kansas, 1934” has a fun explanation of the difference between a hunch and a gut feeling. 

A gut feeling finally becomes a hunch when it is transmuted into the form of clear, precise, verbal statements uttered aloud to a receptive listener—internal or external—who responds in kind. A hunch twists inside the sinews and bones, integrating itself into the physicality of the moment, whereas a gut feeling can only struggle to become a hunch, and, once it does, is recognized in retrospect as a gut feeling.

(via David Means: “Tree Line, Kansas, 1934” : The New Yorker)

River Shiver – Pomplamoose




(by PomplamooseMusic)

Butterfly Man – The Dark Net




(by evangelistjfox)

I saw this video at the Ave Maria youth conference this weekend, and am amazed it hasn’t gotten more attention. It is a very well done parody of Batman, re-imagined as if he were attacked as a child by butterflies instead of bats.