We are material creatures who spend much of our lives on material pursuits (even building a cathedral or writing a novel requires stone and mortar or paper and ink).
We've gone from a world in which Starbucks set a cutting-edge standard for mass-market design to a world in which Starbucks establishes the bare minimum. If your establishment can't come up with an original look, customers expect at least some sleek wood fixtures, nicely upholstered chairs, and faux-Murano glass pendant lights.
Society needs both parents and nonparents, both the work party and the home party. While raising children is the most important work most people will do, not everyone is cut out for parenthood. And, as many a childless teacher has proved, raising kids is not the only important contribution a person can make to their future.
Scientists appear most often in horror movies. Through childlike curiosity or God-defying hubris, they unleash destructive forces they can't control - 'Forbidden Planet's Monsters of the Id.
In Shakespeare's world, characters cannot trust their senses. Is the ghost in Hamlet true and truthful, or is it a demon, tempting young Hamlet into murderous sin? Is Juliet dead or merely sleeping? Does Lear really stand at the edge of a great cliff? Or has the Fool deceived him to save his life?
Most of us cluster somewhere in the middle of most statistical distributions. But there are lots of bell curves, and pretty much everyone is on a tail of at least one of them. We may collect strange memorabilia or read esoteric books, hold unusual religious beliefs or wear odd-sized shoes, suffer rare diseases or enjoy obscure movies.
'The Matrix' is a movie that is all about glamour. I could do a whole talk on 'The Matrix' and glamour. It was criticized for glamorizing violence, because, look - sunglasses and those long coats, and, of course, they could walk up walls and do all these kinds of things that are impossible in the real world.
Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product and packaging seek to fulfill, the more coercive the force.
Grassroots techies - the mostly unknown people who write code and start companies that don't make the headlines - hate, loathe, and despise Microsoft. At technology conferences, it is the devil, or the guaranteed laugh line. Its products are mocked, its business practices booed.
Apocalyptic fiction, while ultimately about God's purposes, usually portrays an immediate, human world of competing conspiracies. Whatever happens is orchestrated, coordinated and planned in advance.
We know beauty when we see it, and our reactions are remarkably consistent. Beauty is not just a social construct, and not every girl is beautiful just the way she is.
The Y2K bug is a genuine technical concern, consuming the energies of many specialists. But the prophecies of doom represent a broader worldview using the bug as a news hook. In this vision, the good society is a stable society, undisrupted by innovation, ambition or outside influences.
Though designed as a mere convenience, clothing sizes establish an unintended norm, an ideal from which deviations seem like flaws. There's nothing like a trip to the dressing room to convince a woman - fat, thin, or in between - that she's a freak.
I think glamour has a genuine appeal, has a genuine value. I'm not against glamour. But there's a kind of wonder in the stuff that gets edited away in the cords of life.
Internet pharmacies return to consumers the choice promised by supporters of the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. That law established federal requirements for drug safety and labeling but exempted prescription medicines from the labeling rules.
Cosmetics makers have always sold 'hope in a jar' - creams and potions that promise youth, beauty, sex appeal, and even love for the women who use them.
Viewers don't care how big media companies are. They care whether they can dump those they don't like, whether because of lousy service or because of crummy shows.
Americans hate their cable companies - for bumbling installers, on-again-off-again transmissions, peculiar channel selections, and indifferent customer service. The only thing cable subscribers hate more than the cable company is not being able to get what it delivers: multichannel selection and good reception.
Cable companies aren't bad because they're parts of unwieldy media conglomerates. They're bad because they're monopolies (even where they are no longer legally exclusive) and because the government policies that made them monopolies rewarded lobbying over customer service.
We know we need bosses and deadlines to help us get work done. But sometimes we can also use an external push to make us have a good time. In both cases, our future self will appreciate the help.
