In which our hero discusses avocado toast, the merits of the Unabomber Manifesto, and the effects of Facebook.
Day 7 of 40 day Facebook Fast…
I’m making some good headway on establishing a pattern for my time. Definitely reducing the delays in getting to the keyboard, and… quite frankly… absent the incessant flow of news tidbits and gleaming objects, my “boredom hormones” are converting steadily into nervous creative energy.
But first, Avocado Toast. You Hipsters think you invented something, but I’ve been eating this fruit of Nirvana (No! Not the band.) since Grandma Strange first slathered a piece of white toast then added just the right amount of salt, back in 1970. We’d get them maybe 5 times a year, “back in the day” when we had to rely on the California crop, in season, instead of having every imaginable fruit year-round courtesy of globalization and excessive carbon-footprint shipping. So, yeah, you’ve got it pretty good. (Chef’s Note: Haas Avocados only. Jerusalem Avocados are too watery. Blecch.)
I’m also reading more. Catching up on bedstand queues, I finished “The Electric Edge of Academe,” a 400 page combined biography of L.L. Nunn, and history of Deep Springs College. The author is a friend’s father: a really nice man and a solid academic. Met him nearly 30 years ago at his daughter’s wedding. The book is good stuff, if you’re into iconoclastic, Utopian educational theories aimed at creating people dedicated to serving the common good.
I bet L.L. would approve of my 40 days away from Facebook:
The desert has a deep personality; it has a voice. Great leaders in all ages have sought the desert and heard its voice. You can hear it if you listen, but you cannot hear it while in the midst of uproar and strife for material things.
— L.L. Nunn, 1923
It’s a great read, about a man barely remembered, but who played a major role in the electrification of America, the advancement of the industrial age of progress!
Which brings me to the Unabomber Manifesto. I watched the Netflix dramatization, “Manhunt,” a very well done retelling of the true story of Ted Kaczynski, Montana mathematician (and convicted serial killer/bomber) with his own iconoclastic ideas about what makes a Utopian society. Got me thinking, “I haven’t read the Unabomber Manifesto. It’s sharp in places, astoundingly prescient in others (for a doc written in 1993). Like this excerpt. How did he know we’d have a President Trump and EPA Administrator Ryan Zinke?
I bet L.L. Nunn and Ted Kaczynski could have some great conversations. I fear Ted would not resolve disagreements with the same equanimity, and reverence for democratic self-governance as Nunn.
Finally, I continued yesterday’s Googling, and started looking at auto-complete Google and Siri suggestions for things like, “Facebook effects…”, “Facebook ruins…” and “Facebook reduces…” 
Judging by the results, this Facebook thing is bad. Mmmkay?
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