Just when a jaundiced view of humanity was about to infect my soul with cynicism and resentment, fate dealt me the opposite hand to mess yet again with my worldview. The contrasts I regularly deal with would be so much more fun if I could just learn to roll with them.

Just because someone doesn’t have a grasp of English doesn’t mean they don’t have a grasp on disparagement.

Dehumanizing service workers looks to me to be mostly about insecurity.

This is one of the sweet spots where, as anyone who has done repetitive manual labor understands, the single minded focus, concentration, and hard physical work combine to form a sort of temporary nirvana.

Books are completely disappearing. Remember in Fahrenheit 451 where the fireman's wife was addicted to interactive television and they sent fireman crews out to burn books? That mission has been largely accomplished in middle-class America and they didn't need the firemen. The interactive electronics took care of it without the violence,