The Grilled Cheese

Eventually are these the only ones we'll have left? Does there come a time when all we can recall is the experience of remembering?

In light of the recent tall-bearded-asshole-killing events, I began thinking again about something that's run through my mind a few times over the last couple years.

Why is it that the vast majority of the news we see is bad? (I cannot cite any official studies or assessment of that, but for the purposes of this discussion perception is more relevant than the straight facts.) For me, and for many others I'm sure, this is especially the case for political, social, and economic news. The unending battles between ideologies, "unbiased" news networks, and politicians themselves have yielded little to smile about in a long long time. Even the good things we hear about often have significant and vocal losers.

In fact, in my experience, the death of Osama bin Laden is the only unilaterally (not counting his supporters, but fuck 'em) good news we have experienced in a long while. Even for those understandably uncomfortable overtly celebrating the death of a human being, this is also a story of American persistence, courage, ingenuity, planning, and most importantly long-awaited success. But eventually the excitement will fade, and news outlets will turn back to reporting on the poor state of the economy, the cynical political games in Washington, murders, and missing children. Yuck.

All this bad news is a big reason why Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert are so successful. People don't want to ignore the news, but they don't want to be get depressed every time they turn on the TV. The Daily Show and The Colbert Report tell us what's going on, but they let us to laugh at it instead of crying.

Sports news is another way to stay connected with the world without falling into a negativity spiral. In contrast to standard news, sports news is usually about good stuff. Occasionally we learn about steroids and cheaters, but mostly we get to see spectacular plays, recaps of great performances, and celebrations.

One medium for good news that has yet to take off is the show, blog, or channel that reports only on the good stuff. The babies saved from burning buildings, the recent medical breakthroughs that promise to save lives, the crops that terrible rainstorm helped grow, even, if they could get the footage, the scoop of ice cream that did NOT fall off little Johnny's cone.

This new tech seems equally promising for immersive gaming, Minority Report style workstations, and keeping psych experiment participants' eyes in the center of the screen for once!

The pico projector is motorized, so as the camera tracks a player’s line of vision, the view of the gaming world shifts to follow their gaze. It does not require them to hold anything, or have anything attached to them. The students have tested the system with a first-person shooter game, which this system seems perfectly suited for, as well as a flight simulator where the player controls the pitch and roll of an aircraft by moving their head.

Pop Sci via Gizmodo

I explored my neighborhood for the first time when I wasn't hurrying to get out of the cold. I stopped by some smaller shops and felt that warm neighborhoody feeling.

Then I saw the Borders plastered with "closing" and "everything must go" signs, so went in to check it out. What I saw was amazing. Still more signs hanging from every shelf (which were on sale too) and ceiling square. People scouring the store for books. I felt like I was in a special Capitalism version of a Discovery Channel wildlife show. We were vultures and carrion-eating insects picking at the company's gaping carcass.

But the most interesting part of that experience was this: I bought a book. Me, the guy who hasn't read a physical book in over a year (replaced with iBooks and audiobooks), bought one.

The irony: It took the closing of one of the biggest bookstore chains in the country to get me to buy a physical book.