I have no time to waste this semester, a predicament that doesn't really prevent me from wasting time, though I probably waste less of it, mostly at work, surfing the web, where one happens upon "news" stories, verging on the nonchalant and astonishingly inane. This week I happened upon a report of survey results that accounted the U.S. and Americans the "coolest" of 15 national cultural options; Poles and Poland rated second to last, worsted only by Belgium and the Belgians. The survey, the method, the population hardly bear reference, even mention, so lax a research question, so spurious a method, so unrepresentative a population--a social network. Heavens. In what kind of universe does such an absurd exercise pretend to any meaning at all? (Answer: one in which Fox News [sic] does not spontaneously dissolve in its own vitriol.) The second least cool? False, stupid, categorically false, patently stupid, and yet, somewhat encouraging to someone as uncool as myself. Maybe I can get in.
