Victor Luckerson, Time magazine:

Text messaging is on the decline, according to a new study by mobile industry analyst Chetan Sharma… During the third quarter of 2012, the average American sent 678 texts per month. That’s a big number, but it’s actually the first time America’s texting habit has declined, down from a peak of 696 texts per month over the summer. Experts say the decrease is likely a sign of a permanent shift away from SMS messaging carried over the same network we use to make phone calls. “With social networking and other platforms, they really take the messaging feature away from that usual channel,” says Wayne Lam, a wireless communication analyst at IHS Technology. “Consumers are messaging, but text messaging as a whole is competing with other forms of messaging.” 

And remember, phone years are like dog years. If you haven’t upgraded yours in the last 18 months, there’s a good chance you’ll be looked on as some kind of contrarian throwback to the Dark Ages. A couple of months ago I ventured into a popular high street phone shop to get a new SIM. A greasy young man in bad trousers looked at my old BlackBerry as if it had been unearthed in the ruins of Xunantunich. “Wow,” said he with just a hint of amused contempt. “Old school. I haven’t seen one of these in years.” Greasy Teen then struggled in vain to open the casing, as if eager to behold its clockwork innards. The device was indeed four years old, before human history began, so obviously the locking mechanism was inscrutable to him, involving as it did the pushing of one button. Then came the inevitable, shame-inducing question. “Have you thought about upgrading?” 

And since you ask, yes, I did.

Sshhh. This hummingbird is sleeping. // Sonic booms and bending light. Wait for the ripples near the end. // I’m sure that isn’t really the title of the book. // The biodiversity of belly buttons. // The photography of Jay Mark Johnson. (h/t, Dr Dawg) // Collectors and their collections. // At last, a machine that will sort your Skittles by colour. // The rigours of academia. // Origami chair. // Idleness defined. // Edible gum party python. // Panoramic dentistry. // Panoramic washing machine. // Vibrative virtual keyboard. // Tiny violins for when you’re really, really sad. // “This is a visualization of over 100,000 nearby stars.” // The infinite jukebox. 

Or, Correcting Wrongthought. Bill Whittle on campus censorship and the narrowing of minds:  

65% of the 392 top colleges surveyed maintain speech codes and other restrictions on expression that violate First Amendment principles… No wonder a study of 24,000 students conducted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities in 2010 revealed that only 30.3% of college seniors strongly agreed with the statement that, “It is safe to hold unpopular opinions on campus”… The students were downright optimistic compared to the 9,000 campus professionals surveyed. Only 18.8% strongly agreed that it was safe to hold unpopular opinions on campus… As the sociologist Diana C. Mutz discovered in her 2006 book Hearing the Other Side, those with the highest levels of education had the lowest exposure to people with conflicting points of view, while those who have not graduated from high school can claim the most diverse discussion mates. In other words, the most educated among us are also the most likely to live in the tightest echo chambers. 

Background on three of the incidents mentioned in the video can be found here, here, and here. See also this demonstration of “social justice education” and just how creepy it can get. And if you can, make time to watch this eye-opening lecture by David Horowitz.

Rummaging through my images files, I found this.

It’s one of the less baffling signs from Zombie’s report on Occupy LA, May 1st, 2012. Zombie’s caption reads, “Narcissistic personality disorder, coupled with delusions of grandeur.” Which seems fair enough. I suppose the placard might have been a little more honest if it had said, “I expect to be paid for a job that doesn’t actually exist and which no-one has asked me to do.” Or, “I’ve decided I’m an artist and therefore you owe me money.” Or, “I’m not prepared to do any of the things that you unenlightened people would be willing to pay me to do, but I’m still going to demand that you give me your earnings anyway because, yes, I’m that important.” Though admittedly the last one might be a little wordy for a slogan. Readers may wish to devise captions of their own.

Thomas Sowell on some popular misconceptions: 

The media misconception today is that what we need to speed up economic recovery is to end gridlock in Washington and have bipartisan intervention in the economy. However plausible that may sound, it is contradicted repeatedly by history. Unemployment was never in double digits in any of the 12 months following the stock market crash of 1929. Only after politicians started intervening did unemployment reach double digits – and stay in double digits throughout the 1930s. 

There is nothing mysterious about an economy recovering on its own. Employers usually have incentives to employ and workers have incentives to look for jobs. Lenders have incentives to lend and borrowers have incentives to borrow – if politicians do not create needless complications and uncertainties. The Obama administration is in its glory creating complications and uncertainties for business, ranging from runaway regulations to the unknowable future costs of ObamaCare and taxes. Record amounts of idle cash held by businesses and financial institutions are a monument to the counterproductive effects of Barack Obama’s anti-business policies and rhetoric. That idle money could create lots of jobs – net jobs – if politics did not make it risky to invest. 

Complication, regulation and uncertainty – yes, shocker, all of it costs. 

Via Protein Wisdom, Tyler Durden on Big Government economics: 

Obama has already laid the foundation for his next four years of Presidency – more green jobs, tackle global warming, raise taxes on the rich and create jobs for the poor. That will come at a hefty price of further government spending. In the first four years of his term Obama increased the Federal Debt by more than 45%; however, with more than $5 trillion spent in promoting everything from solar panels to housing, the economy only grew by 7.1% during the same time frame (or a total of $905 billion.) In other words it took more than $5.60 of debt to create $1 of economic growth… The amount of debt required today to create a single dollar’s worth of GDP today is clearly unsustainable. 

Or as Mark Steyn puts it: 

In the course of his first term, Obama increased the federal debt by just shy of $6 trillion and in return grew the economy by $905 billion. So, as Lance Roberts at Street Talk Live pointed out, in order to generate every dollar of economic growth the United States had to borrow about five dollars and 60 cents. There’s no one out there on the planet – whether it’s “the rich” or the Chinese – who can afford to carry on bankrolling that rate of return. 

Meanwhile, tick, tock. 

Feel free to add your own links and snippets in the comments.