Richard Cohen’s appearance as the first symptom of this deadly ailment might have been missed by some observers, but even a first-year med school student could recognize that the Post is knocking on heaven’s door after examining Robert Samuelson’s latest emission:
If I could, I would repeal the Internet. It is the technological marvel of the age, but it is not — as most people imagine — a symbol of progress. Just the opposite. We would be better off without it. […]
I don’t know what’s better: the use of the word “repeal”, which would indicate that we all got together in the mid-80s and voted to start this newfangled “Internet” thing, or the notion that we’re all imagining that the half-dozen Internet-connected devices in every home are some indicator of progress.
bill d
Old man yells at cloud…memory.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
He still haven’t recovered from the advent of movable type.
Schlemizel
The world has been going to hell since they allowed movies with sound! Nobody acts any more. Color is just a fad and please don’t get me started on this tele-vison gimmick.
Thlayli
And those kids with their “rock and roll”!
AHH onna Droid
This shit parodies itself. Internet has some negative externalities, far outweighed by the many goods… Young ppl could tell you that. Even internet addiction (true addiction seems to be online games not social media despite how we talk about it) is way less negative a behavior than drinking. Both are ways to avoid certain thoughts or to try to fend off anxiety. At least in social media you can actually meet people, far cry from drinking at home.
SP
Dear Mr. President, There are too many computers nowadays. Please unplug them. PS I am not a crank.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Obviously I’m Snowden’s ghost writer since I can’t get my verbs correct.
gogol's wife
Oh, great, another ageist post.
Certified Mutant Enemy
These damn kids and their you-faces and my-twits!
prufrock
@SP: Damn, beaten to it!
Rob in Buffalo
Robert Samuelson’s continued appearance in WaPo’s editorial pages and syndication among other local papers is one of the mysteries of the last 20 years. I. Don’t. Get it.
eric
Egalitarian and empowering. When used right the Internet is the very best tool to solve the collective action problem — it allows like minded people to circumvent traditional and well-circumscribed venues of communication to generate a “critical mass” of concern that can spur and communicate real action in ways never done before. I think the example that comes most readily to mind is the Wisconsin protests. But, then again, that is de-stabilizing and decentralizing, so that the old guard is very nervous.
ETA: We can’t bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell ’em stories that don’t go anywhere – like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ’em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you’d say.
Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones…
the Conster
Robert Samuelson is just mad that everyone now knows he’s no Paul Samuelson.
jeffreyw
We should repeal some of the Laws of Physics. I will note that Gravity has some uses but I am at an age where it seems counterproductive.
SRW1
Hey Robert,
greetings from the weavers in Silesia.
Technology is hard on Luddites.
Helmut Monotreme
Yeah, it’s terrible how the internet can expose vacuous gasbags posing as pundits for being the know nothing blowhards they’ve always been. It’s terrible how the daily fish-wrapper can’t skate by on 80% AP and Reuters content, with just enough stenography of the local government’s press releases to make it look like it’s a local paper, and not just another national media conglomerate’s local franchise. It’s just heartbreaking that no one wants to pay to get 20 pages of ads and 5 pages of content, 3.5 pages of which is ‘lifestyle’ celebrity reporting, when anyone can get on line and get it all for free, with more detailed reporting and fewer ads- that because of browser cookies have at least an even chance of being for a product or service you might actually want.
Punchy
I once repealed a banana. And an orange. Never the intertoobz.
jeffreyw
I joined Facebook yesterday and was, again, PO’d at the intrusiveness of their information demands. They insisted that I list a “friend”. I have none, but knowing that Mrs J is enrolled I used her to fill in this line on the form. I managed to dodge the other questions but am nagged by the fact I have listed a “friend” Can I unfriend her? Would she take this as an affront?
Sibling Nonspecific Firearm of Random Adjective Followed by a Noun That Describes a Mental State (fka AWS)
@Punchy: don’t hurt yourself.
Megan
Did anyone read the article? His point isn’t about the impact of the Internet on society, but that the potential for disaster has potentially been hugely increased by widespread adoption of electronic everything. As in: months of no electricicty for some regions if key electric grid components are hacked. The potential that the journalist who was killed was killed by someone hacking his car. We are at the point where a serious hacking attack can lead to many lives lost plus widespread chaos.
So this man is throwing out the idea that maybe the gains aren’t worth the risks. I personally don’t agree, but I don’t think the question is so mock-worthy.
Eric U.
I thought the internet would kill the op ed page first. Unfortunately, papers like the wapo and nytimes have doubled down on the oped pages and starved their news gathering operations, but I’m sure the impending demise of the newspaper has some of these opinion writers worried. It’s no wonder people that make their money writing op eds would hate the internet, there are many better places to get opinion now. The professional oped writers have been exposed for the poseurs that they always were.
Shakezula
A person in the publishing biz bitching about the internet is like a blacksmith complaining about the automobile.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this one.
Linda Featheringill
@gogol’s wife:
You’re right, of course. It is ageist. Mistermix could have talked about what a Luddite the writer is, but no, he has to make yet one more jab at older people.
Maybe he hopes he’ll die before he gets old.
Linda Featheringill
@jeffreyw:
:-)
Jerzy Russian
How much does a subscription to the paper copy of Balloon Juice cost? I want to be sure and get one so I can keep reading this fine blog after the internets go away.
dewzke
it is not ageist…it is pointing out dumbasses
jeffreyw
@Linda Featheringill: A partial repeal, perhaps? I would like to keep the part that lets me pour coffee!
mistermix
@Linda Featheringill: You forgot to point out that it is also reverse racism.
geg6
Nothing ageist about it. I’m over 50 and my John is 65. And we make fun of old people all the time. Sometimes those “old” people are decades younger than we are.
amk
@SP: ftw.
reflectionephemeral
I’d seen people making fun of his “repeal the internet” column, but it didn’t occur to me that it could be a verbatim quote.
I’m actually pretty open to Nicholas Carr-style arguments about possible negative consequences of the Internet. But “repeal it”? Wow.
The Pale Scot
What ’bout drinken’..Hic! and using the Internet?
Percysowner
Also, too get off my lawn! and turn down that music. As it happens I’m turning 60 this month. Many of my friends are several years older and we all have IPads and use them and love them. I just hate it when people act like the stereotype of ascertain group. It just helps to perpetuate the image.
mistermix
@Megan: True, but the part I quoted is the first couple of sentences of his piece. When you prefix the discussion with a “get of my lawn” lede like that, then you lose your target audience.
amk
@The Pale Scot:
cole has that corner covered. All by himself too.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Samuelson’s last paragraph exposes the deep thinking and attention that he put into the entire piece:
Both electricity and cars have been around for more than one hundred years. Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928. The Internet only started widespread public use in the mid 1980s. Great comparison, Bob.
Jim C
@mistermix: So tell us how you would have written it to keep your target audience.
Shakezula
@Eric U.: Follow the $$$. Opinions are cheaper than facts. So get rid of your skilled reporters, keep a skeleton crew on hand and pull most of your news from AP. Turn over the rest to opinions.
Profit!Repeat as necessary or until the Koch Bros. buy your rag.Linda Featheringill
@mistermix:
You’re right. I forgot.
Citizen_X
Some of you people are also mocking those without a sense of humor. Damn you all and your confounded humorism!
Citizen_X
Some of you people are also mocking those without a sense of humor. Damn you all and your confounded humorism!
Citizen_X
And now WP is doubling my posts, just to mock!
Keith
I couldn’t get past the pornstache.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
I think that word you’re looking for is “excretion”, not “emission”.
Redshirt
To the sickos at Modern Bride Magazine….
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Actually, I think the loss of Wikipedia would be major.
MattF
It’s pretty dumb, even with the most generous possible interpretation. I can just picture him saying to himself “I’m gonna debunk that Internet-thing.” Harder than it sounds, FYI.
cmorenc
The real threat the internet poses is to a functional democracy, because of how well it facilitates isolating people into closed universes of information so ideologically lensed and filtered as to amount to a constant stream of self-reinforcing propaganda. We as a country no longer have any sufficient common ground of what is fact and what is fictional disinformation to be able to compromise, agree, and cooperate. Of course, that wasn’t what the political impact of the internet was thought to be in its earlier stages, when many thought it signified expansion of information and a better-informed body politic. True, it has enormously expanded the scope of information readily available to anyone on just about every conceivable subject, but the expansion of intellectual and social value has mainly occurred on nonpolitical planes, to take a couple of arbitrary examples you can find all manner of how-to advice on home improvement, gardening, astronomy, and geography.
But let a conversation with an otherwise friendly compatible neighbor of sharply different ideological stripe wander even into the shallowest edges of political subjects, and it’s not just the difference in political perspective that becomes apparent, but very quickly there will appear unmistakable signs your neighbor’s basic information about the subject is coming from some alternative alien universe where even the governing laws of physics and reality seem different than in the universe of facts you inhabit.
Shakezula
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: He also misses the fact that the internet (and attendant technology) have lead to radical changes in things like health care. To take the easiest example, I’m sure R.S. would much, much, much rather be critically ill or injured in the internet age than before. If he doesn’t … he’s just stupid.
But when thinking of the Internet, we’re supposed to think of it as this discrete thing that has had no impact on any other facet of life. But when thinking of the invention of the combustion engine (or cars as he puts it) and the discovery of electricity he wants us to think of all the infrastructure and benefits that go with them.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
The loss of Wikipedia would be, for me, a big deal. Samuelson’s take seems to be “I don’t use these aspects of the internet so they aren’t important to anyone.” Maybe he was cranky because his 300 baud phone modem wouldn’t handshake with the router.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@cmorenc: We’re people ever really talking that much anyway? As it’s been pointed out before, the “cooperation era” – Post WW2 to the late 80s – was more an anomaly than normal US behavior.
I think about the only thing it’s done is allow white supremacists in Alabama talk to those in Minnesota.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Minority of one here. I agree with him. Not for the same reasons, but I’d “repeal” the entire thing in a second if I could.
@cmorenc: This is but one reason. It’s a good one. There are a lot more, at least in my book. Probably not in everyone else’s.
Another Halocene Human
@Helmut Monotreme: that because of browser cookies have at least an even chance of being for a product or service you might actually want.
How I wish this were actually the case.
Google adWords has scored a few times when I was browsing my email but other than that, oh, and Facebook simply because a local business hit everybody in the zip code, but hey I get that in the mail too … what REALLY works on FB is when people I know start posting stuff about a business and no, just hitting “like” is like whatever, FB, get a clue.
Yeah, but generally, say on blogs and stuff, or news websites, I am not getting the targeted ads I was promised.
I wish a muthafucka would advertise to me the shit I’m looking for instead of having to scour the internet getting more and more frustrated!!!
Redshirt
The Internet saved me from my obsession of buying reference books on every conceivable subject. Thanks, Internet!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Redshirt: This.
Another Halocene Human
@Redshirt: Oh yeah… I’m there.
I remember watching LCARS on TNG as a kid and thinking I want that. I want it nao.
I just wish Wikipedia didn’t suck so fucking hard. The founder ran off most of the academics and science people so for science topics I have to search elsewhere. Generally anything about biology is infused with hardcore woo. Dumbass editors will citation needed articles that state common knowledge as fact but let idiotic statements sit there, god, I saw a dumb one yesterday. But generally, I can find just about anything I’m looking for these days. It’s sweet.
Steeplejack (phone)
Sitting in the dentist’s waiting room and liking that Atlanta Rhythm Section’s “Spooky” just came on. I am old because I like Muzak now. And it’s not even called Muzak any more
dslak
@cmorenc: Not so much, actually. The evidence thus far is that polarization is largely independent of people’s sources of information.
Another Halocene Human
@Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.): to be fair, it could be both.
Shakezula
@Megan:
I stopped reading closely when he started the fear mongering that made it less funny and more contemptible. Did he repeat the conspiracy theory B.S. surrounding Hasting’s death? That’s just disgusting.
The other day I had to calm an easily alarmed friend who was concerned the MERS outbreak in the ME was the precursor to a biological attack in the U.S. (We’d also had a measles alert at a local international airport.) His reasoning ran as follows: What’s to stop someone from intentionally getting a virulent illness, hopping on a plane and spreading it far and wide before he dropped dead?
Honestly? When you really get down to it? Whether or not the disease is so fast acting that he can’t make it to the airport. High-speed international travel has been a God-send for infectious diseases that want to get out and see the world and it doesn’t even need a host who is intentionally spreading the disease. But no one is arguing we should shut down international air travel because the disruptions to daily life far outweigh the risks.
muddy
@Rob in Buffalo: While I was at WaPo I also got to read Charles Lane saying we should abolish food stamps. Whatta valuable rag it is.
Another Halocene Human
@cmorenc: But hate radio had already accomplished that by the 1990s.
The internet seems to be exposing the extremist clowns a lot more thoroughly than the old subscription newsletters to anti-extremist groups and the old newspaper’s embargo did in the past. (If we don’t print it, maybe it will go away.)
We know this extremism is old. It just looks sharper because the party realignment is almost (but not quite) complete.
muddy
@Shakezula: Well, it worked in 12 Monkeys! Not even time travel could save them.
muddy
@Shakezula: Well, it worked in 12 Monkeys! Not even time travel could save them.
Randy P
@Percysowner: No, no, your line is supposed to be “My iPad has just been blinking 12:00 for the last six months since I bought it. I need to borrow my neighbor’s 5-year-old to program it.”
As a 50-something who has TAUGHT web technology to 20-somethings, those jokes have always irritated me.
Felonius Monk
Every era has a crank like Samuelson. When automobiles started to outnumber the horse-and-buggy, the cranks said that the auto would be our damnation. Then television when it started to become affordable and popular. The cranks said TV would be our damnation — we’d be better off without it. Now Samuelson and his ilk show up with the same tired old song.
The newspapers are useless. Most have gone to the small format which makes them pretty much unusable to line the cat boxes — so I quit buying.
OTOH, Mr. Samuelson would do well to keep his opinions to himself.
Another Halocene Human
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): I think about the only thing it’s done is allow white supremacists in Alabama talk to those in Minnesota.
You mean talk more easily because they were subscribing to the same newsletters and magazines and those publications had reader letter sections and classified ads.
I feel like for people trying to push back against extremists that the internet has been a massive boon. It used to be much tougher. I mean, look at how Twitter has ripped the facade off of the patriarchy/dominionist groups. These clowns were able to push the envelope for years and years. They didn’t need internet to grow because they already had a church network. Opponents felt outnumbered and outgunned–disparate minority groups like gays, atheists, Jews and other members of minority religions in extremely Christian areas, people who thought religion should get out of politics, people who were worried about reproductive autonomy during the “chillax, we won” era. It was so hard to find like-minded people and so hard to do anything to help.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Steeplejack (phone): Oh yes it is. They’re still in business and doing just fine. Unlike the old days, they’ll play anything. Like “Spooky”.
You should check out their website, it’s kinda terrifying.
schrodinger's cat
Unfortunately for Mr. Samuelson, there is no cure for his case of stupid
Redshirt
Just wait till we have direct access to the Internet via implants, and can Tweet simply by thinking it. Then you’ll all wish we listened to this sage advice and burned down the Internet now, while we still can.
hrumpole
I read that piece in the dead-tree version. I thought he was going to bemoan the way that the web gives folks like me ADD, and how the virtual world takes over. Instead, it was about a new boogeyman. YOU CAN”T HAVE ANY PRIVACY IN YOUR LIFE BECAUSE OH MY FUCKING GOD CYBERWAR!
In otherwords, NSA puff piece. You know, I wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with what the government did. Let’s say they Hoover the internet. Fine. Pass a statute excluding ALL of that evidence from use in a courtroom against American citizens. No exceptions. If they need other evidence, they have to get a warrant. If it’s truly “war” that they’re worried about, there’s no need for a warrant anyway.
hrumpole
I read that piece in the dead-tree version. I thought he was going to bemoan the way that the web gives folks like me ADD, and how the virtual world takes over. Instead, it was about a new boogeyman. YOU CAN”T HAVE ANY ONLINE PRIVACY IN YOUR LIFE BECAUSE CYBERWAR!
What the government did was legal, and you know, I wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with what the government did if it was more broadly tied to the exclusionary rule. Let’s say they Hoover the internet. Fine. Pass a statute excluding ALL of that evidence from use in a courtroom against American citizens. No exceptions. If they need other evidence, they have to get a warrant. If it’s truly “war” that they’re worried about, there’s no need for a warrant anyway; those kinds of attacks would constitute an “exigent circumstance”. What am I missing?
Neddie Jingo
@Felonius Monk:
I believe that in the 1850s we had “experts” telling us that the railroads were the sure sign of wholesale destruction because any travel over 15 MPH would disenplotzify the bilious humours and put the righteous geflävenung on the delicate spleens of the ladies.
Turned out to be totes true, of course, but we just didn’t notice because we wuz zoomin’ and zippin’ all over the place with the baseball games in St. Louis and the loads of coal from western Pennsylvania and the ability to commute to and from somewhere pleasant to somewhere really unpleasant for work.
Well, ladies? Am I lying? How’s your spleens?
Just pull out your WikiWhosises and look up the relationship between the advent of the railroads and the outbreak of the Civil War. The tribes were not meant to mix. It’s a historical fact.
PS: Like Bobby Samuelson, I am also not a crank.
Neddie Jingo
But I should mention, I’m really not a fan of cars. That is all.
Redshirt
Cities should be filled to the brim with horseshit by now, according to predictions from 1900.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@Redshirt:
They are. It’s just that the politicians took up where the horses left off.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
Asked the dentist and found we were grooving to SiriusXM “The Bridge.” Upscale.
Another Halocene Human
Here’s the thing about the internet: when you meet someone in person, you judge them before they ever open their mouth. It’s not a terribly conscious process although some of your thoughts about it may be verbal. It just happens. And it’s very, very powerful.
When you meet someone on the internet on, say, a forum or blog comment thread (OKCupid & Facebook with its IRL connections is not really the same), you don’t know if they’re Black, white, male, female, gay, straight (or anything else) until they “come out” as such to you.
IRL there is a lot of cliquiness and lack of crossover even among groups that form part of a common coalition, but when it’s an online meetup suddenly you get people with very different views and backgrounds rubbing shoulders (and arguing).
There’s been a big change that I’ve seen for example on liberal sites in how they talk about women. Jokes that would have been tolerated even a few years ago are getting more and more unacceptable (even bannable). Even though in the 1990s we were all about PC and safe spaces it seems like with anybody from anywhere finally being able to get heard on an equal platform and say, “Hey, stop that, that is painful and offensive” it’s starting to drive greater understanding.
Of course there are racist trolls out there who won’t shut up and that is one of the hazards. Some websites are very proactive and others let it slide too much. I prefer to hang out in spaces where that stuff gets nuked from orbit.
grandpa john
@Redshirt: Well some of them, like DC are, but they can be thankful that it is now only verbal bullshit
balconesfault
Is there some kind of anti-Pulitzer contests I’m unawares of that awards OpEd writers great sums of money for getting the most incredibly stupid things imaginable published in highly regarded print outlets?
Jennifer Rubin must be green with envy …
White Trash Liberal
It’s remarkably shallow to limit the Internet to social media. Networking and creating information systems is such an evolution to society that the only comparison I can make is to the printing press.
The ability to instantaneously share research alone makes the Internet of inestimable value.
Pockets of rudimentary consciousness are even developing, “single cell” information organisms formed of primordial marketing ooze.
If we don’t destroy our habitat, the future is bright…
Another Halocene Human
@Neddie Jingo: Ya ever notice how “progress for the sake of progress” (instead of being driven for humanist reasons) always has corporate sponsorship?
That car/Futurama thing is a case in point. In fact, back then they didn’t try to hide it–crowed the sponsor’s name from the hilltops.
Kind of got that vibe listening to Nice Polite Republicans yesterday when this “computer learning” shill started going on about some technology in classrooms chit.
Nobody, of course, mentioned that kids fall through the cracks less when you have smaller class sizes. Nope, making a vendor rich will bring on the utopia!
Another Halocene Human
@Forum Transmitted Disease: Er, not quite:
nytimes.com/2013/02/05/business/muzak-background-music-to-life-to-lose-its-name.html?_r=0
KmCO
Damn right we should repeal the Internet! Both the singular Internet and the more sinister plural Internets! Just like we should refudiate answering machines and doorbells. Also too, electric skillets must go.*
*Whoever gets the reference wins the dreaded Intertoobz
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Another Halocene Human: Go check the website. They’re still using it. So are all their delivery vans here.
I find that their branching into things like smell is a bit scary. Although inevitable.
balconesfault
I seem to remember from past George Will discussions that the WaPo doesn’t fact check their OpEd writers.
Wonder if that’s just to intentionally allow them to do things as stupid as conflating GPS with the internet?
Neddie Jingo
@KmCO:
[select “electric skillets must go”] [open new tab] [paste “electric skillets must go”] [Google returns 12 examples of somebody’s .sig from OhNoRobot.com]…
…Probably not it, but looks promising…
Scan further down…
A-ha!
[alt.tv.mst3k | Google Groups]… Sep 29, 2003 – … Merlin sent in his trained flatulence to scout the room for him. Mike: Electric skillets must go! Servo: I bid you lick me! Merlin: “Heed my words!”
I’ll take my Toobz delivered by a brown-shoed square, in the dead of night.
(One obscure pop-culture ref. deserves another…)
Yeah. T’ Internet. Do you have any flippin’ memory of when that wasn’t possible at all, and you had to simply live with the niggling obscurity? I sure as hell do.
Neddie Jingo
@Another Halocene Human:
Now this one, I admit, has me stumped. Eh?
thalarctos
Considering that GPS has exactly zilch to do with the internet, I regarded the rest of his screed as satire–and not very good satire at that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Rob in Buffalo:
He’s a stalwart defender of the parasite overclass. Of course they’ll give him column inches to do that.
KmCO
@Neddie Jingo: All’s fair, sir. Take your duly won ‘toobz before the repeal vote is cast.
It’s funny. I technically do remember such a time, but I was young enough that my Internet-browsing was done on a shared family computer, and I never knew when my Dad was stealthily trying to catch a glimpse of what I was perusing. Yeah, I’m a young, but even those older than myself (such as my mother, who is a self-described Google-addict) can barely abide the idea of not having the world at their fingertips.
El Cid
We got around just fine without wheels or even these ‘canals’ meant to make dangerous water travel all easy-like. We should repeal it.
Tone in DC
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
I knew I was done when I heard that version (complete with synthesized strings and woodwinds) of “Who can it be now?” in a doctor’s office, years ago.
GambitRF
Best part is when he describes the Y2K glitch as “disabling computer chips.”
Tone in DC
LULz.
I need to see Nemo, Tom Sawyer and M from “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” disenplotzify anything, especially bilious humours.
Joel (Macho Man Randy Savage)
We can’t bust heads like we used to…
Neddie Jingo
@KmCO:
It was an astonishing thing when it hit me, ca. 1997: suddenly, you never had to ask a stupid question ever again!
About then, with the advent of the All-Music Guide, my online reputation as an Oscure-Rock-Guru grew by leaps: “What — do you mean the Sordid Lip-Balms which they were a garage band in Flint, MI, from early 1975-76, and whose single “Count my Shoes — Go On — Count Them!” showed coruscating lead guitar work by “Elbows” O’Malley, who would then go on to found the seminal postpunkers Brazen Bidet? Yes, they were a fine band, but nowhere near as groundbreaking as their crosstown rivals, The Achilles’ Wheels….”
Neddie Jingo
@Tone in DC:
Yep, yep, yep.
I’m wandering through the bread aisle of the local Giant, around 2003 or so, and suddenly my ears perk up: “Jesus,” I said to my long-suffering paramour, “That’s fuckin’ XTC’s “Ballet for a Rainy Day”!
Only a sweet death and a good-looking tombstone await…
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Neddie Jingo:
Well done! Kudos for the plausible band names. For a minute there I was sure I saw the Sordid Lip-Balms on their ill-fated Chapped and Swollen mini-tour.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@GambitRF:
That is funny although minor compared to the BS about Y2K. The one that frosts me is “They made a big deal about Y2K and nothing happened!” Right, because there were hundreds of us who worked our asses off to ensure that nothing did happen.
schrodinger's cat
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Samuelson has proved that he is the stupidest (is that a word?) columnist with a mustache, he snatched that title from right under MoU’s nose. MoU must has a sad.
It is obvious that he knows nothing about what he is writing. Facebook and Twitter != Internet. Idiot.
JustRuss
Indeed, if only we had established, highly regarded institutions that sought out truth and relevant information and presented them in a thoughtful, intelligent manner….instead of corporate whores that give us non-stop OJ, Balloon Boy, and Zimmerman trial. Clearly the Post is helpless to do anything about this.
Waldo
Shorter Samuelson: I wish the Internet didn’t exist because someone might use it to shut down the Internet.
Older
@geg6: Right. Old is as Old does. we are in your age group only more so. I mean, I am, really and truly, Older. We usually refer to people as “old folks” when they do things that old folks typically did when we were young, but that we don’t do now ourselves. My favorite rantable “old” behavior used to be people who said “Oh, I don’t text, I’m too old to learn how!” But anymore I just think “some folks don’t text, and they want it to be a virtue. Whatever.”
Anyway, what could this possibly mean, other than “I can’t spell and I didn’t read the manual, so I don’t know about predictive spelling”? (ie, “I’m a lazy old fart.”) If they only knew that most people who text can’t spell!
MC Simon Milligan
Now imagine life without some earlier breakthroughs: electricity, cars, antibiotics.
The Warmacht blitzkrieg (not to mention the environmental catastrophe that cars and electricity have gifted us all with) pales to insignificance next to the existential danger that financial chicanery over the intertoobs poses.
Seriously, his argument is that cheap-ass unregulated capitalist hucksters can’t be trusted with internet technologies that have enriched the lives of the masses: So lets get rid of the internet.
mclaren
Samuelson aimed too low. He should’ve agitated for the repeal of the wheel and fire.
I mean, think about it… All the trouble started after they invented that pesky fire stuff…
mclaren
@Another Halocene Human:
How dare you criticize Google AdWords!
I’ll have you know that when I searched for info on werewolves online, Google AdWords helpfully provided an add that suggested KICK-START YOUR CAREER WITH EXTRA TRAINING — BECOME A WEREWOLF TODAY!
TheWatcher
@Megan: You could say the same thing about the automobile, or anything that runs on petroleum. I know! Let’s repel the 20th Century!
The guy is a jackass, plain and simple.