Word: thingness
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Well, that's a good segue into another thing you write about, which is boredom. What is the best way to deal with someone who is boring you in a conversation? That is absolutely one of the hardest questions. The basic structure of a conversation with a boring person is that you have to entertain yourself. They're not going to do it. Most people respond to [being asked], "Are there people whom you really just don't talk to?" It's a strange topic of conversation. But I found that it's almost foolproof. Of course...
...said, "No, I just throw it out the window. Obviously if someone is flagrantly neurotic or OCD, I'm going to notice it as a professional. But generally I manage to keep my social life strictly social." I would say what's happened with me is the same thing. People say, "How am I doing?" Or, "You better be sparkling!" I find that within about two minutes, I can jettison all that, and the other person does too. Generally speaking, I don't take out a scorecard and start grading the other person. That would be exhausting...
...Interactions like these are the hallmark of the increasingly popular website ChatRoulette. In and of itself, the site is just a platform for live, face-to-face conversations with total strangers, with few rules and no guidelines. It takes anonymous online chatting (not a new thing), adds webcams and lets users have at it. You don't need a user name, a profile or a friend request to participate - there's an immediate connection to a random stream of total strangers from all around the world. Bored by what you see? Click "Next," and someone else is waiting...
...foray into the video streams with "an open mind and an eager soul," seeing the Whitmanesque potential in the "ecstatic surrender to the miraculous variety and abundance of humankind." Sorry, Sam, but I'm no Internet naïf. I've plumbed the depths of the Web, and one thing I've learned is that when you give anyone an open platform with anonymity and no moderating, it inevitably gets overrun by the lowest common denominators: trolls, exhibitionists and an endless stream of hopeful men prodding women to take off their clothes. (It's worth noting that...
...South African system that meant not only segregation, but a denial of citizenship to a whole category of people. And so it was ironic that a key Israeli leader warned his people that the status quo on the territories conquered by Israel in 1967 amounts to the same thing. Barak's point was to warn that unless the Palestinians are given an independent state of their own, the world will eventually notice that their lives are controlled by an Israeli state that denies them citizenship, raising the specter of the sort of international isolation and sanctions that helped change South...