Ignorance, or simply being unaware, is a good thing sometimes (you might even call it bliss).  But only if you're ignorant.  When you're ignorant, you don't know things, and you don't even know that you don't know them.  And as they say, what you don't know can't hurt you.  But as soon as you find out, you're no longer ignorant; you're aware.  And once you're aware of your ignorance, you can't go back.  You can't un-know something.  So really, we should be celebrating and protecting our ignorance, instead of constantly doing things to destroy it.  Things like learning and reading and such. 

The iPod is a wonderful piece of machinery.  I was a late adopter, but I'm a full convert now.  I've used some other mp3 and video players, and nothing is quite as sexy as the iPod.  My only complaints are the following: 

1. Navigation.  The clickwheel was a novel concept, and it's good for moving quickly through long lists of albums and songs.  But it doesn't have fine-tuned control, and that's a problem.  Pretty much every time I try to navigate to a specific item in a list, I accidentally overshoot it by one, then I overshoot it again on the way back.  A solution would be to give the user some tactile feedback so he/she could "feel" each item in a list, kind of like the volume dials on many car radios.
2. Scratches.  The screen gets scratched easily, but oh well.  The more easily-fixable scratchable surface is the beautiful stainless steel on the back of the device.  I realize a scratched back surface doesn't affect the functionality of the iPod, but it's the thought that counts.  One solution would be to use titanium, or some other light, hard metal.  I would say tungsten, but it's heavy (unless that's what you're going for).

That's really it.  Otherwise it's the best device ever invented, besides the Xlerator. 

I watched a little bit of the Oscars the other night, and I felt like I was from another planet.  I have no clue what movies they're talking about or who the presenters are.  You see, I don't watch many new movies.  Especially ones that win awards or have the tendency to do so.  It's the same with new music.  I don't know who Lady Gaga is, or T-Pain, or whatever else the young kids are playing through their fancy mp3-doohickeys.  I've pretty successfully removed myself from pop culture, and I don't really see that as a bad thing. 

I recently traveled for work for a week and didn't have much access to a computer.  When I got back, I was overloaded with things to read and catch up on.  Nothing important, of course.  Just entertainment and time-wasters like Not Always Right and IMMD.  But I think I finally reached the point of content over-consumption.  It's no longer even enjoyable.  I just do it to do it.  So I went through and unsubscribed from about 15 things in my feed reader.  Here's to less content overload! 

This just in from the Onion Radio News: 

Rules grammar change:  English traditional replaced be new syntax.  The Onion Radio News it's, Redland Doyle I'm.  The US Grammar Secretary that no more will rules English follow announced today.  The changes verbs, verb clauses, and adjectives placing involved frequent with random shuffling or elimination conjunctions and prepositions of.  Grammar Secretary to according:  "Is new structure loosely on obscure 800-year-old pre-medieval Anglo-Saxon syntax based."  This week beginning American across all dictionaries, highway signs, and other books or objects writing upon revised to fit new syntax will be.

This is one of my favorite Onion things ever.  It's almost identical to a story they published over a decade (!) ago. 

The British city of Portsmouth offers its taxi driver application in large print, audio, and Braille. 

Bimbo is an American slang word that means, "A woman regarded as vacuous or as having an exaggerated interest in her sexual appeal."  Imagine my surprise when I found myself driving behind a truck with this logo: 

It turns out Grupo Bimbo "is the biggest Mexican food corporation and the largest bakery in the world" and they make Bimbo Bread. 

Newark Airport is and has always been the geographically closest airport to me.  And the older I get and the more places I travel to, the more I realize that Newark Airport is hell's armpit.  To summarize my thoughts, here's a table: 

The one thing that always gets me is the pace of life at Newark Airport.  It's chaos.  All the time.  No matter what.  But I'm pretty much used to it by now because there's Jersey in my blood (literally, arsenic, petroleum, and Axe Body Spray runoff).  The thing that scares me is what non-locals must think when they fly into and attempt to drive out of Newark Airport.  Crazy taxis, confusing roads, endless construction.  It's like a bomb just went off, all the time. 

The Omnivore's Dilemma has a lot to say about the reproductive qualities of corn plants: 

"Maize is self-fertilized and wind-pollinated, botanical terms that don't begin to describe the beauty and wonder of corn sex ... The mechanics of corn sex, and in particular the great distance over open space corn pollen must travel to complete its mission, go a long way toward accounting for the success of maize's alliance with humankind." (p. 28-29)

And I thought corn was a modest plant. 

Of the very few funerals I've attended, I've always felt improperly dressed.  As everyone knows, the dead would like us to wear nice black clothes, of which I own none.  I always show up in something like khakis and a green shirt, and I never fit in.  My clothes are too happy.  I own no sad clothes.  The closest I have is gray, and you'd be surprised how happy and exciting gray clothes look when compared to black.  I have every intention of eventually buying proper funeral clothes, but every time I'm at a store and see something that the dead would enjoy, I can't think of anyone I know who has recently died or might soon bite the big one, and so I put it off.  That's the problem with death.  So unreliable.