Favorite student stories

 A friend recently told me about a news story about a remarkable person:  Alice Herz-Sommer.  She's a survivor of the Holocaust, and celebrated her 107th birthday a couple of weeks ago.

What's really astonishing about her isn't just that she lived to see her 107th birthday, or even that she survived the Holocaust.  What's amazing is her wonderful attitude toward life.  She was a concert pianist in Prague, during the fateful years of WWII, was sent to Auschwitz, and none of her family survived except her son.

But what an attitude of love and kindness she has.  Here's what she says about the Germans:   "I have pity for the entire German people. They are wonderful people, no worse than others. ... [What they did] was a terrible thing, but was Alexander the Great any better? Evil has always existed and always will. It is part of our life."

She says she eats chicken stew most days, doesn't drink coffee, tea or alcohol, and plays the piano for up to three hours a day.

But here's the most important thing, according to her:

"In a word: optimism. I look at the good. When you are relaxed, your body is always relaxed.  When you are pessimistic, your body behaves in an unnatural way. It is up to us whether we look at the good or the bad. When you are nice to others, they are nice to you. When you give, you receive."

I'm almost always writing, in this blog, about adult learning at Granite State College.  And I think we all have something to learn from this adult!

Here's a link to the story, with a short video interviewing her - even showing her playing the piano so beautifully.

http://tinyurl.com/26c9sph

It's that time of year, and you hear it from everybody:  They're so busy.  I hear it from my adult learner students at Granite State College even more at this time of year- in addition to the pressures of the holidays, they juggle writing papers and finishing up the end-of-the-term work for their courses.  They're amazing and I never fail to be impressed.

I was talking yesterday to another faculty member at Granite State College, and she said one of her students referred to herself as a "scholar."  I loved that!  I love the idea that my students can go from having only had a high school degree to starting to feel that they're SCHOLARS!  (And they are!)  That's a good indicator of the difference in how you can feel about yourself once you decide to take the bull by the horns and start taking adult college classes.  There are lots of adult education resources available to help you too.  We do everything we can to guide you on the path to getting your degree.

One of the most rewarding things I do is to go to the graduation ceremony every year.  There are so many tears:  tears from the graduating students, their proud families, and of course, from me.  I'm so happy for them and proud of them that it always brings me to tears.

I always bring plenty of tissues.

I've been reading a fascinating book that was suggested by one of my students in my adult online Human Development class at Granite State College. It's called, Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language:  Hereditary Deafness on Martha's Vineyard, by Nora Ellen Groce.  It's about hereditary deafness on Martha's Vineyard, but most remarkably, no one thought of them as handicapped, AND it seems that everybody knew sign language.  This hereditary deafness affected hundreds of people on Martha's Vineyard for about 250 years.  The last deaf person in that group died in the 1950s.  

Here are some statistics: In the United States in 1854, only one person out of every 5728 was deaf.  But on Martha's Vineyard, an astounding one person in 155 people were deaf.  At that time, no one knew what caused these people to be born deaf.  Theories abounded, from the "unusual geography" of the particular part of Martha's Vineyard where these people lived (around Chilmark) to their mothers being frightened when pregnant. Of course, all of these explanations were wrong.  The real reason was that there was a recessive gene for deafness that showed itself when both mother and father had the gene.  And since the island of Martha's Vineyard was small and, at that time, relatively isolated, people who were even distantly related, married and gave the gene to their children.

But the most wonderful part of the book was summed up in this quote by the author:  

"Perhaps the best description of the status of deaf individuals on the Vineyard was given to me by an island woman in her eighties, when I asked about those who were handicapped by deafness when she was a girl. 'Oh,' she said emphatically, 'those people weren't handicapped.  They were just deaf.' "

This is the kind of thing we learn about in the adult online class I teach at Granite State College.  And I love that it was one of my adult students who told the class about the book, and I went right out to get it!

Nope, I didn't suddenly embrace a new philosophy or religion.  I was given a seaplane ride for my birthday!  It was the coolest birthday present I've ever gotten.  It was my 64th birthday, so the Beatles song was in my head.  You can click on it here and have it play in the background while you read about my fun seaplane ride...www.youtube.com/watch

Bright and early, the seaplane from Lakes Region Seaplane Tours landed right at our dock!  

Seeing the beautiful mountains, with the changing color of the trees looking like a carpet below us, made everything look so different from when we're poor earthbound mortals.  The pilot, Dave French, gave a very official introduction to the specifics of the wonderful little plane.  If I had just the tiniest doubt about the safety of this plane ride, it was erased after five minutes with Dave.  And he was so enthusiastic about how lucky he is to have a job like this.  He loves being a pilot.  (His website says he's been flying for 34 years and has logged over 12,000 hours.  And now he can add my birthday flight to his log!)

Here's a photo of me in the "co-pilot's seat."  (Of course, I didn't touch a thing!!)


So now, I can't help but think how looking at the world differently is always a treat.  And - wait for it, you know it's coming! - how differently might you look at the world if you are a college graduate?  Of course it will change your life, and will change who you are.  Although we don't offer any pilot's courses at Granite State College (who knows?  maybe someday!), we offer hundreds of others.  Start with just one that interests you, and you'll discover a new you.  Even from the ground!

I've been thinking a lot lately about what inspires us.  Like what inspires us to run a marathon...not give up on a project...try something new...try to fix something you didn't think you could fix...or (of course) go back to college?

But I'm going to digress here to write about something I never thought I'd experience:  This summer, I went to a week-long workshop in Maine for musicians - mostly harpists - and I had the time of my life.  Now, you may have seen that startling billboard I wrote about a few weeks ago, which features me playing a violin on which I'd only been taking lessons a few months. (They told us to bring something we liked to do.  I couldn't bring my harp because it was pretty big, so I dragged my new violin along.)



 And I've been bumbling along on my harp only a little longer.  But this workshop wasn't just for professional musicians (which I'm not).  It was for people who are inspired by music, who just like to think about what inspiration really means and want to play around with how you can use the inspiration of music to enrich your life.

More about that in a minute...

So what inspires you?  Is it something your mother or father said to you?  Or your grandmother?  Or something you read?  Does it seem to come from inside you?

The concept of inspiration is a fascinating topic in psychology, because we try to examine it when we're looking at motivation.  If you've taken an Introduction to Psychology course, you probably remember Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs."  But even if you haven't, it's pretty cool, and looks like this:



The idea is that the basic things you need, like food, water (and oxygen) must be met before you can go on to less basic needs, like making sure you're safe from being gunned down in a war, etc.  Okay, so where would playing a musical instrument fit?

Wow, think about it.  What if you're the life of the party and love to play your guitar for everyone around to sing along?  Well, it seems that might fit the third level:  It would help you feel a sense of belonging.

But what if you only like to sit all by yourself and play your flute?  Well, that wouldn't fit your social needs, or your sense of belonging, would it? Because you're playing all by yourself.  Ah, maybe you just love music.  It might fit your self-esteem needs!  But more likely, especially if you don't play your flute for anyone else, it might just fit your self-actualization needs:  You feel like you are who you want to be when you play your flute.  (Remember the recruitment slogan for the Army from a few years ago?  "BE ALL THAT YOU CAN BE...IN THE AAAA--RMY!")

So I want to share a little about that amazing workshop for musicians, where I "had the time of my life."  

It was held at The Celebration Barn in South Paris, Maine.  http://www.celebrationbarn.com/  Most people at the workshop stay at the Barn, and meals are there too.   Here's one participant's description:

"The Barn was a great place to 'incubate.' Put twenty performers from around the world together in the Maine woods, mix vigorously day and night for truth in movement and improvisation, then fine tune the results in performance on the weekends."

Deborah Henson-Conant (a world-famous harpist who plays a hip electric harp she straps on!) and Karen Montanaro, a mime and a ballerina, ran the workshop.  http://www.celebrationbarn.com/w-music.html

It was a fun, fun experience.  And when I came home, I felt like I really COULD play the harp and the violin, and have fun with them.  Here's me at my harp...  But it especially reminded me how important inspiration is to all of us.  

Pay attention to what might be inspiration.  You might just surprise yourself.  Take a look at Granite State College's offerings.  Is a college education in the future, for you to have "the time of your life"?

 
I've fallen in love with the stories people tell in a new project called "Story Corps."  I first heard them on NPR's Morning Edition.  They have their own website and today are being featured on youtube.

I always mention them in my psychology classes, because these slices of life often hold a nugget of inspiration, especially when considering human lifespan development - a course I teach often at Granite State College.  (In case you'd like to see what a course like that is all about here's the syllabus for an intensive course that I taught recently, that covered the whole course in just five weeks.)

Here's a favorite Story Corps story of mine, where a young woman interviews her mother, who was an immigrant.  Her parents cleaned offices at night, and she and her brother remember going to the offices with their parents, since they couldn't afford a babysitter.  The best is at the end, where she asks her mother if she would do anything differently, and her mother answers she wishes she'd spent more time with her when she was a child, but there was so little time with working, raising children and going to school.  Her daughter replies that seeing all that her mother did to get an education helped make her determined to go to college and get her degree.

Reading the comments at the end of the clip, I'm betting it will inspire a lot of people to get that college degree.

Summer is over?  Yes, fall is here....classes at Granite State College will be starting in just a few days.  Putting the finishing touches on my online classes is only part of what happens for me in the fall.  Hearing about my grandchildrens' new teachers reminds me that my own students will be meeting their new teacher too - me!  (Some of them have been in my classes before, so I'm not new to them.)  But there must be a lot of questions in their minds these last few days.

But if you're just starting college classes, you should know that you're not alone.  And you're NOT the only one who is at least a little scared.  One student told me recently that he sometimes still has the dream he had when he first started his classes at Granite State College, "Where someone shows up at my door and tells me I can't go there anymore."  (Incidentally, he just finished his last class, is now a college graduate, and has begun graduate school!  I hope he won't be having that bad dream anymore!)

If your dream is to go to college, I hope you'll give your dream a chance!

I'm starting to feel like a 21st century Reader's Digest because I often discuss something interesting I've read.  You have probably heard of Reader's Digest but maybe aren't familiar with it, even though it's still going strong.  (Well, I don't know how strong it is, but it is still going.) Here's their logo... 

Anyhow, I digress, but what they have been known for is that they pull together a sampling of magazine articles that seem like they might be interesting to their reader base.  People have loved it over the years; people didn't have to subscribe to twenty magazines because Reader's Digest's editors checked out lots of magazines and published the "best"articles that they thought readers would like to read.  To give you a real inside scoop:  for decades it was a favorite magazine in the bathroom, craftily left in place on the back of the toilet for brief reading.

Well, here's where I was going:  Once again I've found a new, interesting article: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/summer-must-read-for-kids-any-book/  It seems that kids from low-income families read "few, in any, books during the summer break from school."

But wait!  There's hope!!   "In a three-year study, researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, found that simply giving low-income children access to books at spring fairs — and allowing them to choose books that most interested them — had a significant effect on the summer reading gap."

Teacher education programs must be cheering this research.  And teacher education is a huge priority at Granite State College.  A teacher certification program is a popular one.   Here's a link to this popular program:  http://www.granite.edu/academics/teacher-education/

So maybe my little corner of Reader's Digest might just make its way from the bathroom to somebody's future!!

I love the sound of the cicadas in New Hampshire.  You know that whirring, buzz-saw sound you can hear on hot summer days?  I always thought they only came every 17 years.  

But apparently the kind we have come every year.  (How did I not notice that?  Well, actually, I thought they were just batches born in different years, so every year we had a new batch of 17-year-cicadas.)

The kind we have is called the "dog day cicada."  How sweet is that?  Here's a cool little story that was on New Hampshire Public Radio last year:  http://www.nhpr.org/node/26369

I love the whole idea of "emoticons."  You know, those little punctuation marks that convey an emotion online.  ;-)  But I kind of don't like them too.  :-(

For one thing, at least in the most basic ones, you have to turn your head to appreciate them.  Or at least, metaphorically, you have to.  Now how can that be simple communication?  It's exhausting to read and then do all that head-turning.  Okay, JK.

But they're getting fancier now, and you have to be cool to keep up with them.  Below are some new ones that I learned from Wikipedia.  (I'm a huge Wikipedia fan, even though I point out to my students at Granite State College that it's not a good research source, but not a bad place to use for some ideas about a topic.  Even I could at least try to write an article on particle physics, about which I know drearily little, and until some smart volunteer Wikipedia editor looked at it and realized it was unutterable nonsense, it might be online as a credible source for, well, maybe a few minutes anyhow.)

A really funny cartoon by Dan Piraro, who draws the series called "Bizarro" shows a mother on the phone, saying, "Okay, dear, see you tomorrow.  Colon, dash, parenthesis."  Her daughter says, "Mom, emoticons are only for email."

So here are the new ones that I have to try to learn so I can be cool:  (^_^)/   (That means "Hurrah!")  Here's another one:  (^_-) is a wink. 

Maybe I should stop trying to be artistic with a keyboard and just take one of the art courses we're famous for at Granite State College. Here's information from a recent newsletter about awesome courses Star Island and the Art of Granite State College
How cool would that be?  Maybe I'd be better at drawing than I would be trying to describe particle physics.  (^_-)

I've read several articles about a word that's apparently popular in Northern California, but not too much anywhere else - yet!  It was originally used to be a contraction of "hell of a" and meaning really, totally or a lot; used primarily with an adjective.  So you might say, it was a hella hot summer in 2010.

Now there's a new petition going around on Facebook to make it an International Systems prefix designating 10^27.   I always enjoy learning about the birth of a new word and love thinking what it means, from a psychological standpoint, to think of how quickly it will spread until it becomes a common term. They've already designated "yotta" to mean 10²⁴.

But that said, I'm kind of doubtful that I'll ever be in need of a word to designate 10 to the 27th power....or even of 10 to the 24th power...

 Will cars come screeching to a halt?  Will the accident rate at four spots in New Hampshire increase substantially?  Will more people start reading Granite State College's blogs?

I hope the answer to the first two questions will be "NO!" and the answer to the last will be "YES."

The new billboards for Granite State College are up, and I'm there (on the far right).  Here's what it looks like:  

My other "partners in crime" are (left to right) Wayne Churchill (a student at Granite State College), Sherilee Poisson (also a student), Nicole MacMillan (a coordinator in Rochester), and Leslie Bowering (another student).  Yep, that's me on the right with my violin.

So if you're interested, here's where the billboards are located:  
Portsmouth:  Rte 1 north, near Lago’s Ice Cream
Conway:  Albany S Rte 16 
Newport:  near McDonalds
Manchester:  293N, Near the MillWest building, on top of Ray the Mover building

 Ah, social psychology.  Have you heard of it?  Maybe not.  But you might have heard of social networking.  And you might have heard of Isaiah Mustafa.

The Old Spice commercial in which he appears advertising Old Spice's body wash, which originally appeared in the Super Bowl, has gone viral.  As of June 29th it had been viewed by 7,166,140 people - a great example of social networking.  And the new twist is that the "Old Spice guy" responds to tweets (and nope, I'm not being paid by Old Spice, nor by Typhoo Tea [see an earlier blog], but I love seeing everyday examples of things we learn in social psychology classes, like the ones we have at Granite State College.)

The Old Spice commercial takes advantage of some very clever marketing ideas - and marketing ideas are best understood when you study social psychology.  Procter and Gamble figured out that women were most likely to be the ones who would buy Old Spice Body Wash for their men.  So the ad begins with a jacked bodybuilder, who coos, "Hello, Ladies...."

But this example doesn't end with how clever the marketers are.  It's also an example of social networking.  A social network depends on people who have some relationship with other people.  So if, for example, you like something you see on youtube.com, like the Old Spice ad, and forward it, you will be most likely to forward it to people whom you like, to whom you're related.  Or maybe you're one of those (annoying?) people who forwards it to everyone in your email address book.  (If you are, I hope you know to hide those addresses in the "bcc" box, which hides the addresses from others so you don't have to look at pages of email addresses, which can be annoying, but can be a boon to those who are looking for email addresses so they can send spam ads for things like, well, you know...)  But even if you are, the people in your email address book are still people with whom you have some kind of relationships.

The  also offers the possibility of joining "us" on Facebook and Twitter.  So once you click on those links, you start to feel that you are joining others like you.  Social connection!  Social psychology at its most basic!


Okay, I digress....What I'm getting at is how, as my students often comment, as soon as you learn about what's behind marketing and ads, you look at them with a whole new understanding.  It's so cool.

Okay, here's the Old Spice ad, but I hope you'll also check out the exciting things we have to offer you at Granite State College.  We'll help you understand how these ads work, what persuasion and marketing are all about, and help you be an educated person.

A student in one of my online classes, Deborah Ross, posted this on the Discussion Board in my online psychology class at Granite State College a few days ago.  (She gave me permission to share.)  She is enrolled in a fairly new thing we've been doing for a few years now:  a whole college class in five weeks.  (It's catchingly referred to as a "Five Week Intensive.")

She realized that she'd lost some weight and had some interesting insight into the situation:  

Due to the intensive nature of this class, I've given up my nightly habit of watching television for two hours and studying instead.   I've also lost three pounds recently.   I was wondering if it had anything to do with giving up the television.    I assumed that sitting and studying for two hours is just as sedentary as sitting on the couch watching television for two hours....So I am eating less by not watching television and by studying.   I've also observed that while studying, I employ my laptop and don't want to sully the pages or keys so I avoid eating while doing both.  

Who knew that going to college had such a side effect? 

Twice now, I've come across that question.  The first time was in a little book called, Who Moved My Cheese? that told a tale that was an allegory for embracing change.  The second time was in an article in a magazine about a woman who went to a weekend class to help her overcome her fear of flying.

It got me thinking about how fear can make us do things, but can also keep us from doing things.  If you're terrified of flying, it will put a huge dent in your ability to travel very far.  You might have to limit your experience of other places to what you can look at in travel magazines.  Or if you're afraid of talking in public, you may be unable to participate as well as you could in a meeting or in a classroom.  Which, of course, always reminds me of how so often students will say, "I was so nervous to go back to school, at first..."  What a waste!  Because they're almost always very surprised - and proud of themselves - that they "did it"!

I always remember the words of an advice columnist some years ago who was responding to a man who said he'd always wanted to be a doctor, but he's already almost 40, and medical school and an internship would take 5 years.  So by the time he finished, he'd be 45.  She responded:  How old will you be in 5 years if you don't go to medical school?  

Remember the recruiting slogan, "Be All That You Can Be!"?  You might be thinking it could take four or five years to get a college degree.  But how old will you be in four or five years if you don't get a college degree?  You'll be that much older and you still won't have a college degree.

So here's my pitch:  Give Granite State College some thought.  Are you just afraid you can't do it?  Try this:  Start with just one class.  Maybe even an online class.  You might just be surprised.

I find Netflix' recommendations for movies you might like, based on your previous choices of movies you've rented, a very interesting - but also kind of scary - idea, especially from the standpoint of social psychology.  And other DVD businesses such as Blockbuster have similar techniques to recommend further movies based on your interests.

In social psychology (you can take a course in it online at Granite State College!), we examine what influences people to make the choices they make.  Just think of all the things involved in your feelings about whether Netflix might be making good recommendations for you:  
1.  You chose to enroll in Netflix.
2.  You're paying to use it.
3.  They make an effort to appeal to you with user-friendly statements like this:
I have more questions about watching instantly on my PC. Where can I get answers?

So you end up feeling as though they really want to help you and somehow "know" you.  And you know what?  You're right about them knowing you!  They do know you.

But they're not really your "friend," of course.  (That can be the subject of another blog...whether "friends" on Facebook really are, well, friends.)  They're basing their information on carefully calibrated software that tracks your choices.

Lots of people are getting leery about having software seem to know them.  Once you take a course in social psychology (and you can do it entirely online.  Here's a link to Granite State College's behavioral science courses:  http://www.granite.edu/academics/degrees/bachelor-degrees/behavioral-sciences.aspx), you may be surprised at how much more you feel YOU know about what people are thinking, what you can know about other people, and even what advertising uses to influence your choices, from selecting DVDs to buying cell phones!

There are plenty of "Psychology Courses You'll " at Granite State College.

 That phrase - "Can you hear me now?" - is popular in ads for a cell phone server, and now even in jokes.  Everyone seems to recognize the phrase.

I think one of the interesting things is to consider it from a psychological viewpoint.  For example, if a person is in a group, even a noisy group, but hears his/her own name, why is it more likely that they'll recognize their own name, even if no one else does?  

You can ask your friends, "Did someone just call my name?"  And they probably didn't notice it.  But you probably did.   It's called the "cocktail party effect."  (Lots of research has been done on this, from the original by Colin Cherry in 1953 to more recent research by Adelbert Bronkhorst in 2000.)    When I teach this concept in the classroom to young twenty-somethings, I refer to it as "the keg party effect," since I don't think they're too familiar with the concept of a "cocktail party"!

So if you're talking to friends, even if it's pretty loud, and someone calls your name, you're likely to hear it.  So why did YOU hear your own name?

Ah, time for social psychology to kick in.  (Yet another bump for taking an online psychology course - of course, ideally, at Granite State College!)  

Okay, here goes: We are more tuned in to things that are important to us.  It's called egocentrism.  It doesn't mean you're "stuck up."  It just means that  you orient yourself as the center of your own interests.  

Well, who doesn't?  And when do you not do this?

That's a huge challenge for psychology to dissect.  When is self-interest just - well - selfish?  And when is it explainable by considering the things we expect to consider with regard to ourselves?  Some current thought even suggests that the only way to get attention in the post 9/11 world may be to take extreme measures.  And of course, that also includes the actual 9/11 tactic of blowing up the World Trade Center to draw attention to a goal.  This was discussed in an interesting article by Neal Gabler, which appeared in the Boston Globe recently, entitled, "Screaming extremism."  (http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/04/24/screaming_extremism/_ 
The world of learning is an exciting world.  It never fails to challenge.  Maybe that voice inside is asking you, "Can you hear me now?"

 I read an article in the New York Times by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (article) bemoaning the fact that all too often, responses to one of her articles include ugly, mean-spirited comments. She described a piece she wrote for Salon about suffering from postpartum post-traumatic stress disorder after the traumatic delivery of her son.  A slew of nasty comments followed.  

She wrote:   
 "I don’t write this to say how hurt my feelings are. Rather, I’m confused. It’s O.K. if people would like to debate the merits (or lack thereof) of the opinions and facts discussed in my work. It’s also O.K. with me if people simply don’t like my work. What confounds me is why online commenters are so gratuitously nasty; why, when given the opportunity to have an educated disagreement with an author or other readers, they use the space allotted to spew venom instead of presenting a well-reasoned argument."

One of the thoughts she had was that perhaps it's the anonymity that allows such cruelty.  I completely agree.  Happily, for our Granite State College blogs, all responses are "vetted" by our enthusiastic and hardworking middle-person.  As a matter of fact, when first asked to write a blog, that was my first question, since I know how thin-skinned I am and nasty responses would be likely to crush me.  Kate B. assured me that all responses go through her first, so anything nasty would never see the light of the internet.  "Phew," I thought.

One of the things we know from studies in Social Psychology (which you can take in an adult online course at Granite State College - here's a list of online courses), is that being anonymous can contribute to people doing things they wouldn't be likely to do if they could be identified.  It's called "deindividuation."  Think of the actions of people in the Ku Klux Klan, for example: They wear white hoods to disguise their identities.   Negative behavior is also more likely to take place under the cover of darkness or in a crowd - when it's harder to identify someone.  You can probably think of a lot of things that people do if no one can actually identify that they are the person doing or saying it.

Kathleen Taylor, the author of Cruelty:  Human Evil and the Human Brain, is quoted in the article, and says, interestingly, “We’re evolved to be face-to-face creatures.  We developed to have constant feedback from others, telling us if it was O.K. to be saying what we’re saying. On the Internet, you get nothing, no body language, no gesture. So you get this feeling of unlimited power because there is nothing stopping you, no instant feedback.”

So the suggestion that people who respond online should have to provide their name is probably an effective one.  (Providing they use their real name!)  There are a lot of thought-provoking ideas you can learn in a psychology course!

What does it feel like to be in prison?

Wendy Covill can tell you how it feels from a couple of different angles.

She's been a student of mine in several of my adult online classes in psychology.  I finally met her a couple of years ago when she came to the Granite State College campus in Concord to accept a scholarship she had won.

Wendy graduated from Granite State College in 2009 and now teaches at a prison in Vermont.  I'm sure the prisoners have a particular respect for her...but more on that in a minute.

She told me how her "first day speech" to her students goes:

 After way "too much information" (TMI) about our near and dear, and even people-we-hardly-know, it sounds like Twitter may be dying out.  Have we actually gotten to the point where we really have had our fill of reading about the minute life details of people we semi-like or even know just know a little bit?  What a social psychology coup.  I can't wait to read about some research about how this phenomenon crashed and burned and what internet behavior it took to come to the conclusion that information about other peoples' minute-by-minute activities was, maybe boring.