BrockLi Soup

Ever read a book (required or otherwise) and upon finishing it thought to yourself, “Wow. That was terrible. I totally feel dumber after reading that.”? I know I have. Well, like any good scientist, I decided to see how well my personal experience matches reality. How might one do this?

I came across the Booksthatmakeyoudumb project thanks to Kottke, and it’s pretty entertaining. Virgil Griffith compared the top 10 favorite books for college’s on Facebook to the average SAT scores for those colleges. On the high end, you’ve got Catch-22 and Freakonomics. On the low end, The Holy Bible and “I don’t read.”

I found it interesting to look at the list of schools. RIT is number 183, in average SAT score, but I was surprised to see that The Bible is the top book for the school. If you’re logged into Facebook, you can see all our stats and learn, like I did, that Boondock Saints is the most popular movie at RIT.

I’ve been meaning to write a post about how much I hate MySpace, but I really don’t see the point - I couldn’t possibly say anything we don’t all know already. It just boggles my mind that such an awful site has built up such a huge user base, even as everyone complains about it (guilty).

One of the biggest complaints lately has been all the spam (as if the on-page ads weren’t bad enough). I was just checking out The Walkmen (they’ll be opening for The Kaiser Chiefs tonight), and their comments are drowning in it. Other services, like Facebook, do a better job of keeping it at bay; I’ve been on Facebook a lot longer than MySpace, and I’ve never seen a single bit of spam anywhere. I’m not really sure what they’re doing different - maybe they validate your e-mail when you sign up, I don’t remember now - but it’s working. More people are moving away from MySpace to Facebook and other sites like it.

And this makes me happy. I mostly use MySpace to check up on bands, or hear music from new ones. I’ll miss that when it’s gone, but some other service will surely rise to fill that hole. There are a few people with whom I only have contact through MySpace, and the sooner they get off there and into Facebook or whatever, the sooner I can just leave the damn thing behind - and I certainly won’t be the only one leaving.

Just so we’re all on the same page:

Facebook has implemented new features. These new features quickly tell you what updates your friends have made lately.

Everyone is freaking out about it.

In a matter of six hours, I’ve become so tired of hearing about and being invited to groups condemning it that I’m ready to forego the “Poke” feature in favor of the “Punch In The Neck Even If It Means Driving Nine Hours To Your House” feature.

Seriously, if you’re that worked up about it, DON’T USE THE SITE. The collective sense of my generation would make me weep for our future, if I were the weepy type, or if I thought it had a chance in the first place.