Joe Moody’s Web Adventures

Dozens of meteors per hour are expected. If the skies are clear, you could catch small fragments of Haley’s comet finally reaching Earth, full story:
Get Out: Orionid Meteor Shower Peaks Overnight

The Internet is a tool for the mind, so it’s no surprise that it’s affecting how we think — and may enhance cognition according to a new study from UCLA. “The results suggest that searching online may be a simple form of brain exercise that might be employed to enhance cognition in older adults,” Teena D. Moody, the study’s first author and UCLA researcher, said in a statement. Check out the comparison’s of brain waves after just a little Internet use:
UCLA Study: The Internet Is Altering Our Brains

This sunflower reminded me of something van Gogh would’ve painted, radiance slowly waning against the ominous autumn sky … from Central Lake, Michigan.

As a big fan of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the brainchild of Larry David who previously helped write and produce Seinfeld, I was completely let down by the season premier.

It showed signs of what happens when writers run out of new ideas so instead they get more extreme in their plot points.

First, Larry’s fictitious manager Jeff has sex with a mentally impaired person on the drop of a dime (Larry goes to the bathroom and comes back to find Jeff in her bedroom romping away.)

Second, Larry tries to race home to break up with his girlfriend before she’s told she has cancer, reasoning that you “can’t break up with someone who has cancer.” But apparently it’s perfectly OK to break up with someone a few minutes before they are diagnosed.

Not believable and not funny.

I was accustomed to laughing out loud at least several times at Larry’s often mundane but hilarious social faux-pas. But during this first episode of Season 7 I didn’t laugh out loud once. I even tried but it came out more like a forced cough.

Of course we are also getting ready for the Seinfeld reunion episode of Curb, but after seeing this first installment I can only guess it’s just another ploy to keep viewers watching as the true hilarity of Larry David now seems like a parody of itself.

The actors too often were smiling at their own cleverness, another sign of how success can spoil authenticity.

Now for a word about the nature of true comedy, it’s supposed to be uniting and affirming of the goodness of human nature, often by allowing us to laugh at the bad. But if the characters are making decisions that are so inherently wrong that is destroys any possibility of a truly happy ending, then we might as well be dealing with tragedy.

I will watch the next episode and if things improve, I’ll be back here with an update.

Today, it would raise more than a red flag if a flight school student said he didn’t need to learn how to land a plane.

But what we’ve learned goes beyond the added vigilance. Our evolution went something like this:

9-11: Denial
9-12: Anger until the end of 2004
2005 to present: Acceptance

We accept there will always be those who hate us, no matter how much we either bomb or appease.

We accept we can’t convert the world to democratic capitalism, but that America was founded on such principals and should remain that way.

We accept that the Cold War is over unless we behave like it still exists, then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We accept that world power isn’t in how many nation-states we have influence, but in how much the nation-states and their people respect us.

We accept that that no matter how much bad America has ever done, the good outweighs it. We’re the most charitable country in the world.

We accept that leading by example is the best way to hinder the propagation of our enemies.

We accept that the founders didn’t want an expanding empire, they wanted a free country protected by safe and secure borders.

We’re still struggling with this acceptance, but at least we’ve reached that stage.