Something remains constant. We still 'turn the page' when we read digital books.
But on social media, we can scroll and scroll. During the pandemic, the summer of Black Lives Matter and the American election, it has been called 'doomscrolling'.
That seems to sum up our figurative meaning for social media's value. It is the opposite of the figurative meaning of turn the page - to move on to new involvements or activities, to make a fresh start.
So we literally and figuratively turn the page on a new month tomorrow as we move into February - the month of chocolates and Valentines. We get to leave Trump doomscrolling behind. I'm not sure about the Pandemic, though.
Let's get out the great 'turn the page' joke. It goes by a few different titles because it is so good. Here it is.
A prominent orchestra was performing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. At one point in the final movement of the symphony, there is a long stretch--over 20 minutes--where the bass violins don't play a note. So, rather than just sit there, the section leader suggested that they sneak out of the orchestra and go across the street to the tavern. The other bass players agreed that this was a splendid idea, and a few minutes later, the basses were in the bar, knocking back drinks at a prodigious rate.
This went on for some time, with all the bass players becoming rather inebriated. One of them happened to look down at his watch and exclaimed, "We'd better get back to our seats or we're going to miss our cue!"
"Relax," said the section leader, "I've got it all taken care of. You see, before the performance started tonight I anticipated this problem, so I took a piece of string and I tied the conductor's score shut. He won't be able to turn the pages when he gets to that part. He'll have to stop the orchestra for a few minutes so he can get it untied. We'll have plenty of time!"
The other bass players praised his inventiveness with one final round of drinks. Then they made there way back across the street to the concert hall, and staggered drunkenly to their seats.
Sure enough, about this time the conductor started to have trouble with his score. He tried to fidget with it, hoping he could solve the problem without having to stop the performance. Unfortunately, he couldn't get the pages to turn, and at last he had to stop the orchestra and spend a few minutes untying the string that held the last section of the score bound. The conductor was clearly annoyed and not a little frazzled.
This, of course, did not go unnoticed by the audience. One woman in the crowd remarked to her husband, "That conductor looks upset and rather nervous." "Of course he's nervous," the husband replied. "It's the bottom of the Ninth, the score is tied, and the basses are loaded."
Have you wondered about Google the company? I use its search engine every day.
So I went to the Alphabet site - it's the company that 'owns' Google. Its domain name is www.abc.xyz. (They couldn't get the domain name of alphabet.com as it was taken by a BMW fleet management division).
These founders are known to be creative and crazy. Alphabet came about after Google, through a complicated restructure so that Google could be a subsidiary of Alphabet. And Alphabet could get on with experimentation in all kinds of areas. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted Alphabet to be able to engage in a diverse range of activities. Pictures of the pair show them as relaxed people with open smiles that have a little mischief showing, and often doing silly things for the photographer.
We know about the Google car, so here are a few more:
"What do we mean by far afield? Good examples are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related."
Such an interesting pair to profile - CNET's article on them is HERE
Do you know that both Page and Brin are "burners" - avid attendees of the "free-wheeling" art festival Burning Man? I've covered this festival in the past.
The theme for Burning Man 2018 is "I, Robot". Here is the introduction on the Burning Man website:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
— Isaac Asimov, I, Robot
Along with developments in robots, there are a lot of events expected in 2018. You can find theme HERE. Many of these are outer-space related - for example the expectation of the first picture of a black hole and the launch of the transiting Exoplanet survey satellite.
My pictures today apply the Flaming Pear India Ink filter first, and then Flexifly to get images that remind me of Escher's abstract drawings.
