Assorted Awesomeness

After an intense week of posting some dour and dire thoughts on the web, I thought I’d take a step back, take a deep breath and relax by providing some assorted links to remind us all that the web isn’t always a mean and scary place.  For example, the Internet can be used to happily and humorously disarm the most virulent of political extremists:

The Internet can expose laughably provincial and narrow-minded people to the world, and it can bring attention to something provincial that deserves wider audience of appreciation.  And it can connect you with people who give you new, sometimes uniquely local, perspectives in enjoying the world you already know and love.  E.g.,

Indeed, the narrow and refined expertise of one person can be shared without regard to scarcity or geography, and can help everyone penetrate incredibly complex works of art.  E.g., Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals, broken down sample-by-sample.

That’s why we get so addicted to the Internet in the first place.  It is the ultimate hub of communication and content-sharing, and this blog would be a pretty abysmal failure at making the Internet a better place if it didn’t wasn’t regularly touched by some of those better angels of our nature.  Catholics, relax.  That wasn’t a crack at the clergy; “touched” was Lincoln’s phrase, not mine.

Speaking of uncomfortable love, apparently OKCupid has a fantastic sense of humor.  OKCupid’s founder makes a compelling case for his site, with the data to back it up, so I guess if I was going to join a dating site, it would be OKCupid.  I mean, where else can you figure out if your potential partner has STDs or mind-bogglingly stupid beliefs (Note: I’m not sure which is worse).

The only thing worry is the possibility that our love for the Internet begins to totally replace our real-world relationships.  It’s easy to get lost in all that awesomeness that can be called up and filtered down to the best use of your time when the real world has a much more standard range of deviation.