more on communication

Joel Stein from the Los Angeles Times wrote a lovely--I mean, scathing--critique of the "25 Random Things" Facebook trend.

Patrick Reardon at the Chicago Tribune writes a nicer article.

I still haven't posted mine, nor do I think I'm going to.

OK--maybe I'll post the first five here, just for fun. Even though Stein hates them, he still posts 25 of his own:

1. I am currently obsessed with blood oranges, dark leafy greens, hearts of palm, cheesy grits, and vanilla tea. Or, really, any kind of black tea with milk. But especially vanilla. I never liked—or tried—any of these things before I moved to the Midwest.

2. I still can’t believe sometimes that I live, and have lived for quite sometime now, in the Midwest. It often pains me that I live so far away from family and friends, but I’m pleasantly surprised that I’ve created such a nice makeshift family for myself here. Having this doesn’t make it quite so difficult and, I really do like living here and the independence it encourages.

3. I do miss nature, though.

4. I like to drink caffeine in the form of black tea with milk almost every morning, and sometimes, if I’m cold or bored, every afternoon. Despite this, I refuse to become dependent on caffeine. I don’t know whether it’s this refusal that has made me not become dependent on it, or it’s that I’ve unknowingly keep my intake sporadic enough to counteract addiction, but I have thus far managed to avoid dependence.

5. Incidentally, I stick to tea because I refuse to become dependent on coffee. Every once in awhile, I have a love affair with coffee or espresso (recently, I discovered the wonders of café au laits), but I always go back to tea (more recently I discovered the wonders of tea lattes). Mostly because I can’t handle the caffeine in coffee. Someone—I don’t remember who—once told me that I couldn’t be a journalist if I didn’t drink coffee all the time. I’m not sure if I can be called a journalist, but even so, I think I’ve done OK without it.