Not being a computer person myself, I keep forgetting that computer people are just people, meaning they’re no less silly, cliquish, and fad-chasing than the rest of us. Meyers-Briggs seems like a very short step above astrology to me — do I really need a long questionnaire to tell me I’m an extrovert? — but I shouldn’t be surprised that computer people like it. In my experience, “psychology” is to computer people what “computers” are to psych majors — randomly blinking ooga booga boxes that do some cool things, but are mostly a terrifying mystery. Liberal Arts people (of which Psych Majors are the most liberal) love Apple products not least because they promise to bury all that blinky ooga-booga stuff under “the user experience”; thus it shouldn’t surprise me that a quick-and-easy “test” that promises to unlock the secrets of the psyche appeals to the other sort.
Severian, “For Future Historians’ Benefit…”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-02-21.
January 6, 2024
QotD: “Computer people are just people”
January 5, 2024
QotD: Hong Kong and the “league table” of world economic freedom
The same countries typically appear at the top from year to year, and are separated mostly by microscopic, irrelevant differences. For 2017, whence the data in the new report come, Canada sat in eighth place just a hair above Australia and a hair below the U.K. Ascending to the top, we meet other siblings of the English-speaking world, Ireland and the U.S.; the Swiss Republic stands in its typical fourth; the relatively wild child of the Commonwealth, New Zealand, remains third; and then, in the top two places, you have the twin beacons of radical economic freedom, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Ah, yes, Hong Kong. The Special Administrative Region seems, for now, to have won a short-term victory in its struggle to preserve the conditions of its reunion with mainland China. This has not, ostensively, been a struggle over economic freedom per se, but it is not a coincidence that the rioting ultimately originated in a conflict over bookstores. It is mighty hard to draw a line where “economic” freedom stops and purely personal or civil freedoms begin, and the design of the index reflects this. It has a large basic rule-of-law component, includes mobility rights under the free trade factor, and takes points away for imposing military conscription. (This is surely a tiny tribute to the shade of Milton Friedman, who was one of the originators of the index.)
Even if Hong Kong’s immediate quarrel with China has been resolved for now, it is only a manifestation of what is likely to be a longer game. Clever columnists always like exoticizing talk about how the Chinese think in generations, but when it comes to Hong Kong, the cliché has weight. The 2019 riots, in showing how attached young HKers are to their distinct identity and to the English-speaking world, have revealed a nightmarish, even delegitimizing failure by the Chinese Communists. Mainland influence on Hong Kong education and politics has been used with the intention of prolonging and deepening the spirit of ’97; China, so often deemed the super-country of the future by admiring or fearful intellectuals, has tested the results of this effort in the eyes of the world and been made a laughingstock.
Colby Cosh, “Hong Kong’s still king in economic freedom rankings … for now”, National Post, 2019-09-17.
January 4, 2024
QotD: Displays of intelligence as a status good
And then that changed, in what is a cultural eye-blink. Forget the crazy slogan. Humans don’t like change. Particularly they hate change that challenges their status. Unable to actually increase their net worth (within the prescribed realms in which noblemen could do such) or stop spending, the nobility instead went for displays of wealth. Big and extravagant ones. And the wigs were … quite, quite insane.
So what does that have to do with Facebook?
For a few generations, since the left captured the academia, entertainment and the industrial-news complex, aka, the opinion makers, to be a leftist has been synonymous with being smart.
And being smart, since the renaissance, but definitely since the world wars has been the greatest social “good” there is.
No, I’m not saying the left was smart. Increasingly, most of them weren’t, because as it became a matter of social display, the easily led started imitating it.
No, I’m saying that to parrot leftist ideas was to be considered smart. Partly because of the left’s conceit that Marxism was “scientific” there has always been, attached to the modern left the idea that to believe as they do is “rational” and “smart” and that their opponents are stupid.
Not only did they hold onto this while their ideas were proven wrong by reality over and over again, but having captured academia, they pushed leftist ideas as synonymous with being educated. I mean, if you’d attended an elite school, you received these ideas, and the way to signal you’ve attended the school is to parrot it. Thus leftism became the old school tie (mostly around the neck of our economy, but never mind.)
While they had full control of the media, be it entertainment or informational, they could reinforce the message, as well as revile anyone who challenged them as stupid, wrong and illiterate, and GET AWAY WITH IT.
With intelligence being the highest status-good in our society, the left had secure status. Forever, they thought.
The change has been very rapid. The fall of the USSR and [the rise of] talk radio were the beginning, and since the internet took off, they’ve been trying to hold on to the tail of the comet, as it streaks away from them.
I’ve said it before and I maintain it. If Mr. Obama had been president in a country where the information tech was the same as in the 30s, all his failures would have been hidden, and people would believe him a staggering genius, instead of the little man who wasn’t there. Because that’s how the industrial-media complex presented him.
And then … And then they went all in for Hillary! They were “With her” 300%.
Unbelievably, it didn’t work.
I think they’d suspected, before, that things had changed. But they could still tell themselves stories, dismiss the opposition, preen on having all the power. And then … it failed.
Since then they’ve been running scared with social insecurity. They display their “brilliance” for all the world, and it didn’t work? Oh. Must signal louder, larger, crazier.
All the “Wokeness” over everything possible (and mostly imaginary) in the last few years? That’s social signaling by a social group losing power and trying to regain it.
The less it works, the more extravagant it will get. I am in premonitory awe over what will happen should Trump beat the margin of fraud in 2020. You thought the Democratic Socialist meeting was funny? You ain’t seen nothing yet. They won’t be able to open their mouths without announcing “point of personal privilege” and their pronouns, and interrupting each other with ever finer intersectional victimhood.
If you think having a woman who won an SF award malign the person the award is named after with a bunch of ahistorical nonsense, and seeing the institution cave within days was peak wokeness, you’re deluding yourself.
Soon and very soon the “Wokeness” displays will be the equivalent of having live birds in your hair.
Because in their subconscious, if they just signal loud enough they’ll regain their status as “smart” and “educated”.
Meanwhile, we’ll be buying popcorn stocks and saying “Is that a ship on your head, or are you that insecure?”
Sarah Hoyt, “Is That A Ship On Your Head?”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2019-09-01.
January 3, 2024
QotD: Iron and steel
Compared to the other materials available for tools and weapons, high carbon “spring steel” was essentially the super-material of the pre-modern world. High carbon steel is dramatically harder than iron, such that a good steel blade will bite – often surprisingly deeply – into an iron blade without much damage to itself. Moreover, good steel can take fairly high energy impacts and simply bend to absorb the energy before springing back into its original shape (rather than, as with iron, having plastic deformation, where it bends, but doesn’t bend back – which is still better than breaking, but not much). And for armor, you may recall from our previous look at arrow penetration, a steel plate’s ability to resist puncture is much higher than the same plate made of iron (bronze, by the by, performs about as well as iron, assuming both are work hardened). of course, different applications still prefer different carbon contents; armor, for instance, tended to benefit from somewhat lower carbon content than a sword blade.
It is sometimes contended that the ancients did not know the difference between iron and steel. This is mostly a philological argument based on the infrequency of a technical distinction between the two in ancient languages. Latin authors will frequently use ferrum (iron) to mean both iron and steel; Greek will use σίδηρος (sideros, “iron”) much the same way. The problem here is that high literature in the ancient world – which is almost all of the literature we have – has a strong aversion to technical terms in general; it would do no good for an elite writer to display knowledge more becoming to a tradesman than a senator. That said in a handful of spots, Latin authors use chalybs (from the Greek χάλυψ) to mean steel, as distinct from iron.
More to the point, while our elite authors – who are, at most dilettantish observers of metallurgy, never active participants – may or may not know the difference, ancient artisans clearly did. As Tylecote (op. cit.) notes, we see surface carburization on tools as clearly as 1000 B.C. in the Levant and Egypt, although the extent of its use and intentionality is hard to gauge to due rust and damage. There is no such problem with Gallic metallurgy from at least the La Tène period (450 BCE – 50 B.C.) or Roman metallurgy from c. 200 B.C., because we see evidence of smiths quite deliberately varying carbon content over the different parts of sword-blades (more carbon in the edges, less in the core) through pattern welding, which itself can leave a tell-tale “streaky” appearance to the blade (these streaks can be faked, but there’s little point in faking them if they are not already understood to signify a better weapon). There can be little doubt that the smith who welds a steel edge to an iron core to make a sword blade understands that there is something different about that edge (especially since he cannot, as we can, precisely test the hardness of the two every time – he must know a method that generally produces harder metal and be working from that assumption; high carbon steel, properly produced, can be much harder than iron, as we’ll see).
That said, our ancient – or even medieval – smiths do not understand the chemistry of all of this, of course. Understanding the effects of carbuzation and how to harness that to make better tools must have been something learned through experience and experimentation, not from theoretical knowledge – a thing passed from master to apprentice, with only slight modification in each generation (though it is equally clear that techniques could move quite quickly over cultural boundaries, since smiths with an inferior technique need only imitate a superior one).
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Iron, How Did They Make It, Part IVa: Steel Yourself”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2020-10-09.
January 2, 2024
QotD: Cigarette smuggling and the powers-that-be
At that point, the Powers That Be were in trouble. Butt-smuggling was cutting into their projected tax revenues — tax revenues which, being governments, they’d already spent several years in advance. That’s bad.
Much worse, though, was the realization that, the more people bought their smokes off the back of a truck in Weehawken, the more those people realized that 99% of law “enforcement” is really “convincing people to voluntarily comply with the law”. As they should’ve realized from Prohibition back in the Twenties, and would soon have the opportunity to learn again with the War on Drugs, 1980-present, lifestyle laws are effectively unenforceable. Not even the most draconian techno-fascists, armed with 100% realtime surveillance, can stop people from getting high off something.
And that’s the worst knock-on effect of all, because the attempt turns “getting high” into a rebellious little thrill. You’re not just getting drunk / burning one down / smoking a Mob-supplied cigarette, you’re sticking it to The Man. If you don’t believe me, watch what happens to pot consumption in college towns once it’s fully legalized. Hint: It’s the same thing that happens to college kids’ alcohol consumption after they turn 21 — now that the cheap little thrill of being the rebel with the fake ID is gone, drinking loses a lot of its charm. Similarly, 99% of the “legalize it!” crowd’s “arguments” are just virtue signaling — they’re letting you know what rebels they are by breaking the pot laws. If you really want to cut down the consumption of intoxicants in a college town, at least, simply legalize ’em all. Your few true addicts will provide a spectacular lesson in Darwinism to the student body, but the vast majority of kids will be all but straight-edge.
Severian, “The Mob, Faux-tism, and the Ever-Rising Costs of Compliance”, Founding Questions, 2021-02-02.
January 1, 2024
QotD: The Panto
What made it worse was that I was about 14; I’d almost managed to get through childhood without experiencing this strange British tradition and then, just at the age when you’re most vulnerable to cringe, I got dragged in. Anyway, I think I’m over it now.
Pantomime is one of those very British things that makes me feel a strange sense of alienation from my countrymen, like celebrating the NHS or twee. I’m glad that other people enjoy it, and that it brings a lot of work to actors and to theatres during the Christmas period. I just personally don’t get it.
For those who don’t know about the ins and outs of our island culture, panto is a sort of farcical theatre featuring lots of sexual innuendo and contemporary pop culture references; I think when I watched it there must have been one or two ex-Neighbours stars because they all finished by singing the theme tune.
A key part of this British institution is drag, with men playing the roles of Widow Twankey and the Ugly Sisters. Drag is quite an established tradition in England, such a part of popular entertainment that there is even a photograph of British soldiers in dresses fighting in the Second World War.
Pantomime is thought to have evolved from the medieval Feast of Fools, a day of the year (around the Christmas/New Year period) when social norms would be inverted; laymen would be elected bishops, lords would serve their retainers drinks, and men and women would even swap roles. Social norms could be temporarily broken, which continues today in the often risqué humour incongruously aimed at family audiences (hilariously portrayed in the Les Dennis episode of Extras.)
This kind of drag is obviously humourous, the aim being for the men to look as ridiculous as possible; think of the ungainly Bernard Bresslaw in Carry on Doctor. It is very different to the later pop culture gender fluidity pioneered by David Bowie in which males might be presented as beautifully feminine, even alluring; that was aimed at challenging and disturbing the audience, while panto is aimed at amusing and reassuring. Indeed, the whole point of spending a day inverting social norms is that, by doing so, you are implicitly accepting and defending those social norms.
This form of drag is obviously quite different to the more modern drag queen, a form of entertainment that can be far more explicit and which has in the 21st century become yet another one-of-those-talking-points, chiefly because people seem so keen on letting children watch it.
Ed West, “The last conservative moral panic”, Wrong Side of History, 2023-02-08.
December 31, 2023
QotD: Orwell as a “failed prophet”
Admittedly, if Orwell was aiming to prophesy, he misfired. Oceania is a world in which the ruling elite espouses no ideology except the brutal insistence that “might makes right”. Tyrannical regimes today still promote ideological orthodoxy — and punish public protest, organized dissidence, and conspicuous deviation. (Just ask broad swaths of the citizenry in places such as North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and mainland China.) Moreover, the Party in Oceania mostly ignores “the proles”. Barely able to subsist, they are regarded by the regime as harmless. The Party does not bother to monitor or indoctrinate them, which is not at all the case with the “Little Brothers” that have succeeded Hitler and Stalin on the world stage.
Rather than promulgate ideological doctrines and dogmas, the Party of Oceania exalts power, promotes leader worship, and builds cults of personality. In Room 101, O’Brien douses Winston’s vestigial hope to resist the brainwashing or at least to leave some scrap of a legacy that might give other rebels hope. “Imagine,” declares O’Brien, “a boot stamping on a human face — forever.” That is the future, he says, and nothing else. Hatred in Oceania is fomented by periodic “Hate Week” rallies where the Outer Party members bleat “Two Minutes Hate” chants, threatening death to the ever-changing enemy. (Critics of the Trump rallies during and since the presidential campaign compare the chants of his supporters — such as “Lock Her Up” about “Crooked Hillary” Clinton and her alleged crimes — to the Hate Week rallies in Nineteen Eighty-Four.)
Yet all of these complaints about the purported shortcomings of Nineteen Eighty-Four miss the central point. If Orwell “erred” in his predictions about the future, that was predictable — because he wasn’t aiming to “predict” or “forecast” the future. His book was not a prophecy; it was — and remains — a warning. Furthermore, the warning expressed by Orwell was so potent that this work of fiction helped prevent such a dire future from being realized. So effective were the sirens of the sentinel that the predictions of the “prophet” never were fulfilled.
Nineteen Eighty-Four voices Orwell’s still-relevant warning of what might have happened if certain global trends of the early postwar era had continued. And these trends — privacy invasion, corruption of language, cultural drivel and mental debris (prolefeed), bowdlerization (or “rectification”) of history, vanquishing of objective truth — persist in our own time. Orwell was right to warn his readers in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of Hitler and the still regnant Stalin in 1949. And his alarms still resound in the 21st century. Setting aside arguments about forecasting, it is indisputable that surveillance in certain locales, including in the “free” world of the West, resembles Big Brother’s “telescreens” everywhere in Oceania, which undermine all possibility of personal privacy. For instance, in 2013, it was estimated that England had 5.9 million CCTV cameras in operation. The case is comparable in many European and American places, especially in urban centers. (Ironically, it was revealed not long ago that the George Orwell Square in downtown Barcelona — christened to honor him for his fighting against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War — boasts several hidden security cameras.)
Cameras are just one, almost old-fashioned technology that violates our privacy, and our freedoms of speech and association. The power of Amazon, Google, Facebook, and other web systems to track our everyday activities is far beyond anything that Orwell imagined. What would he think of present-day mobile phones?
John Rodden and John Rossi, “George Orwell Warned Us, But Was Anyone Listening?”, The American Conservative, 2019-10-02.
December 30, 2023
QotD: Post-Christmas dining
Amanda (@Pandamoanimum), Twitter, 2021-12-29.
December 29, 2023
QotD: The Hanoverian “reverse takeover of the British monarchy by the Germans”
Music was a language that united the English and the Germans. The key figure was, of course, Handel — the first and pre-eminent but by no means the last Anglo-German composer. Born in Halle, Georg Friedrich Händel had briefly been George I’s Kapellmeister in Hanover yet had already established himself in England before the Prince Elector of Hanover inherited the British throne in 1714.
In London — then in the process of overtaking Paris and Amsterdam to become the commercial capital of Europe — he discovered hitherto undreamt-of possibilities. There he founded three opera companies, for which he supplied more than 40 operas, and adapted a baroque Italian art form, the oratorio, to suit English Protestant tastes.
His coronation music, such as the anthem, “Zadok the Priest”, imbued the Hanoverian dynasty with a new and splendid kind of sacral majesty. But he also added to its lustre by providing the musical accompaniment for new kinds of public entertainment, such as his Music for the Royal Fireworks: 12,000 people came to the first performance.
Along with music, the Germans brought a focus on military life. Whereas for the British Isles, the Civil War and the subsequent conflicts in Scotland and Ireland had been something of an aberration, war was second nature to German princes. Among them, George II was not unusual in leading his men into battle, although he was the last British monarch to do so.
Still, the legacy of such Teutonic martial prowess was visible in the late Queen’s obsequies: uniforms and decorations, pomp and circumstance, accompanied by funeral marches composed by a German, Ludwig van Beethoven. Ironically, the German state now avoids any public spectacle that could be construed as militaristic, yet most Germans harbour boundless admiration for the way that the British monarchy enlists the ceremonial genius of the armed services.
Even more important was the German contribution to the uniquely British creation of constitutional monarchy.
Each successive dynasty has left its mark on the monarchy’s evolution: from the Anglo-Saxons and Normans (the common law) to the Plantagenets (Magna Carta and Parliament) and Tudors (the Reformation). Only the Stuarts failed this test, at least until 1688. Even after the Glorious Revolution, the Bill of Rights and other laws that conferred statutory control over the royal prerogative, the constitutional settlement still hung in the balance when Queen Anne, the last Stuart ruler, died in 1714.
Coming from a region dominated by the theory and practice of absolute monarchy, the Hanoverians had no choice but to adapt immediately and seamlessly to the realities of politics in Britain, where their role was strictly limited. Robert Walpole and the long Whig ascendancy, during which the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty embedded itself irrevocably, could not have taken place without the acquiescence and active support of the new dynasty.
George III has been accused of attempting to reverse this process. The charge is unjust. Rather, as Andrew Roberts demonstrates in his new biography, he was “a monarch who understood his extensive rights and duties under the constitution”. He still had the right to refuse royal assent to parliamentary bills, but in half a century he never once exercised his veto (the last monarch to do so was the Stuart, Queen Anne in 1708).
At a time when enlightened despotism was de rigueur on the Continent, the Hanoverians were content to participate in an unprecedented constitutional experiment in their newly acquired United Kingdom. It was neither the first Brexit, nor the last, but it happened courtesy of a Royal Family that was still very German.
Daniel Johnson, “Why Germany mourned our Queen”, The Critic, 2022-10-30.
December 28, 2023
QotD: Christmas movies
Bruce Bawer, “The Best Christmas Movies Ever”, New English Review, 2022-12-20.
December 27, 2023
QotD: “Healthy eating” after the holidays
So good to be eating healthily again. I feel fitter and better in myself alreadyDay 2 of healthy eating
I miss cheese so much I want to cry. I’ve forgotten the taste of chocolate. Vegetables taste of sadness and resentment. I’ve never known such miseryAmanda (Pandamoanimum), Twitter, 2022-01-04.
December 26, 2023
QotD: The economic lessons of A Christmas Carol
After all, Tiny Tim and the street children of London don’t run Scrooge out of town like a pariah. Nor does Scrooge abandon his business to dedicate his life to eastern philosophy. Rather, he learns to voluntarily spread his wealth around, not so differently than Bill Gates or MacKenzie Scott might do today.
One could draw the conclusion, therefore, that a businessman who has accumulated vast wealth can do many great things through charity. Today, the “Giving Pledge” signed by Warren Buffet and others, as well as elements of the “Effective Altruism” movement, adopt a model of this sort, which essentially says the best way to do good is to make a lot of money. Scrooge’s belated charitability never would have been possible if London had been home to communist breadlines.
The idea goes beyond charity. In The Constitution of Liberty, the great economist Friedrich Hayek argued that it’s socially beneficial to have a leisure class of wealthy individuals pursuing their idiosyncratic passions or even vanities. Today, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk plan to take us to the stars with SpaceX and Blue Origin. Will they make it to Mars or beyond? They might not beat the odds, but it can’t happen if they don’t try.
One might apply the same logic to cryptocurrencies. Like Scrooge’s wealth, they make some people uncomfortable, and at the moment they can resemble online gambling. But that doesn’t mean they should be banned or replaced by a boring, government-run alternative. Like Musk and Bezos’s space aspirations, there’s potential for the technology to revolutionize an aspect of life — in this case, financial transactions on the internet. That potential is just as-of-yet unfulfilled.
James Broughel, “The Hidden Economic Lesson in A Christmas Carol“, Foundation for Economic Education, 2021-12-24.
December 25, 2023
QotD: Washington Irving and American Christmas traditions
An even larger number may be unaware of how much they’re honoring Mr Irving in their Christmas jubilations. He it was who, in the 1812 edition of his History of New York, threw in a whimsical vignette in which St Nicholas flies over the treetops in a wagon while puffing on his pipe. No reindeer, but all the other elements of the American Santa are there.
Washington Irving loved the great village revelries of the old English Christmas, which the Puritans had left far behind them when they landed at Plimouth Plantation. The parlor games and community feasting and the notion of the Saviour’s birth as a cause of merriment all appealed to him. In his famous and bestselling Sketch Book of 1819-1820 five chapters are devoted to lovingly detailed scenes from an English family Christmas as observed by a young visitor, and they proved so popular that half-a-century later (by which time almost all the elements had been imported into American life) they were published as a stand-alone book.
Mark Steyn, “Dangling Hares and Rosy-Cheeked Schoolboys”, SteynOnline, 2021-12-20.
December 24, 2023
QotD: Dreaming of George Bailey’s world while living in Pottersville
This, the most enduring of the many works of Frank Capra, became the Atlantis myth of post-war America. That is, those who, over the course of the last half-century, saw It’s a Wonderful Life on television, knew well that the age of community and connection depicted on their screens had already passed into the realm of legend. Moreover, to add injury to insult, they also knew that, if they wished to enjoy the fruits of a middle-class existence, they would have to live in the manner of vagabonds.
In the movie, slum-lord Henry Potter tries, but fails, to turn the provincial paradise of Bedford Falls into a run-down haunt of spinsters, drunks, and floozies. In the real world, it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who put the kibosh on the original Main Street, USA. To be more precise, the principal achievements of America’s greatest tyrant, the Great Depression and the Second World War, undermined the financial, legal, and cultural foundations of the “wonderful life”. Thus, by the time this process had run its course, inflation had made a fool’s game of simple thrift, the replacement of law with regulation had hobbled private enterprise, and people who had left home for the sake of college, work, or military service found themselves lost in a sea of strangers.
In response to these changes, colleges and universities stepped up to the proverbial plate, happy to offer substitutes for the things that had been lost. They gave young people a chance to obtain certificates that would attest to both their suitability for service in the ranks of corporate minions and their social respectability. At the same time, these institutions gave older people a way to convert their value-losing cash into an asset that promised to pay dividends that would benefit their children (and, indeed, their grandchildren) for decades to come.
Thus arose the people I have come to call the MICE (Mobile, Individualistic, College Educated) people. Bereft of regional accents, productive property, and deep connections to friends and relations, they wandered the world, building networks, acquiring degrees, and padding resumés. However, after two generations of such peripatetic solipsism, the age of the MICE people is coming to an end.
Young men of parts, who realize that college has nothing to do with either liberal learning or vocational training, are simultaneously taking up skilled trades and stocking their MP3 players with learned podcasts. At the same time, young women of quality are beginning to think that the traditional troika of Kirche, Küche, und Kinder offers better odds of deep satisfaction than life as a hormone-hobbled, Starbucks swilling, girl boss.
So, if you know young people like the ones I’ve just described, do posterity a favor, and put them in contact with each other. After all, they deserve a life as wonderful as that of George and Mary Bailey.
Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson, “College, Class, and Christmas”, Extra Muros, 2023-08-06.
December 23, 2023
QotD: Multitasking
In short, we are all teenagers now. This was one of marketing research revelations of the 1990s: that teens could watch TV, take a phone call, do their home work, monitor a conversation in the other room, and ignore their parents all at the same time. But some 10 years later, it looks like kids were merely the early adopters.
Grant McCracken, “We are all teenagers now”, This Blog Sits at the, 2005-05-24.
