Kyle Banerjee's Blog

Lately, there’s been an enormous amount of news coverage about a guy named James Kim. He was driving home with his family and got stuck in deep snow on a remote mountain road. They waited for help in the car, but when no one found them after a few days, James went out looking for help dressed only in a jacket and tennis shoes. His family was rescued shortly afterwards, but he got lost and died of hypothermia.

I think reporting personal tragedies in the media is generally in poor taste. My general position is that news outlets should not profit off peoples’ misery or pander to voyeurism. Pointing a camera in someone’s face when they are in despair does both of these things.

However, there’s more to it than that. It occurred to me that when Brezhnev died, there was a surprising outpouring of grief in the Soviet Union. It’s easy to dismiss the coverage as communist propaganda, but having talked to people who where there, I think the sentiment was real.

The funny thing is that Brezhnev was not well loved. He was unremarkable as a leader and as an individual. Yet people who had never met him and didn’t even like him were crying. Since the vast majority of people who were upset to learn of James’ fate never knew him, I’m thinking a similar dynamic must be in play now.

I can only come up with two explanations for this strange behavior. The first is that humans are empathetic creatures. That’s why people become deliriously happy after seeing an athlete or musician overcome with emotion after delivering the performance of a lifetime, and why people fall to pieces after seeing someone grieving at a funeral. Feelings are contagious.

Empathy alone can’t explain the whole story. For one thing, it doesn’t explain why people get weepy at sad movies. Why should people get upset about something that didn’t even really happen to an actor pretending to be someone who doesn’t exist?

Which gets me to the second reason. I think that even when a stranger dies, it puts people in touch with how they feel about being deprived of life. In effect, they mourn their own mortality. Likewise, for other sad or happy events, people naturally reflect on how that same event would affect them. Whatever the case, I feel bad for James and the Kim family.

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The old adage of “beware of what you wish for” has finally come to bite me in the butt. Like everyone else, I have my idea of the ideal job, and that ideal job isn’t quite the one I have now.

Don’t get me wrong. I have a great job and I am treated well. The work environment is excellent, I like my coworkers, and I think my boss is outstanding. I’m not just saying to be a kiss up on the off chance the managers read the rubbish that I post. I really believe it, and it makes my job ten times more fun.

There’s a job I’ve been thinking about for years. It didn’t exist, but I was sure it would someday. Well, today an announcement for that job came out. This opportunity won’t come again for a long time and it’s the chance to do exactly what I’ve always wanted to. I believe I would be a competitive candidate.

The problem is that experience has taught me that status, responsibilities, and pay have practically nothing to do with how much I like a job — it’s all about how the place is run and who I work with. I fully expect the new environment would be pretty decent, but I can’t imagine it being as good as what I have.

However, I think it is good for people to do different things. I also think it is good for organizations to take on new people even though the ones that are currently there are fine. I’ve always believed that regular turnover promotes exchange of ideas and prevents intellectual inbreeding.

At the same time, the idea of applying for this job offends my sense of loyalty. The State Library took a risk on me years ago, and they’ve always been good to me. On the other hand, I’ve always promised both them and myself that I wouldn’t stagnate. This might be my best chance at preventing that.

Whatever the case, I have a couple weeks to decide. Normally, I make up my mind very quickly, but I could really use some time for this.

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Just in time for the 4th of July weekend, we finally got broadband installed — we went from a 56K modem (that normally connected at 44Kbs) to a 5MB/s fiber optic connection.

I like not having to wait forever to download photos or updates for my computer but I’m leery of making life too convenient. When ready made food is everywhere, people eat too much and forget how to cook — paradoxically causing everyone to be overweight even though there’s nothing good to eat. Email and instant messaging have altered the way people communicate so profoundly that many people don’t seem to be able to write a coherent sentence.

Although I think the internet is basically a good thing, it is also harmful if used excessively. One of the advantages of a crummy connection is that there’s no incentive to use the internet unless it’s really important — this forces me to live in the real world rather than in cyberspace.

Although the internet has allowed the world to share information at a level that was never possible before, it has also allowed society to fragment into zillions of tiny subcultures. Each has its own conventions, and it seems like too many people rarely venture outside the virtual groups they associate with. As a result, they prefer relating to machines rather than people have trouble dealing with those who are different from themselves.

The good news is that the internet allows you to contact almost anyone anywhere anytime and maintain contacts and friendships that would otherwise be impossible. In that sense, cyberspace is a good place to be so long as too much time is not spent there.

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I’ve decided to join the 21st century, so I mounted a blog which I hope to keep up to date. I’ve thought about doing this before, but didn’t largely because I figured that anything interesting that I had to say was likely to lead to trouble.

However, I’m also seeing people do some pretty creative things with blogging software so I thought I’d take a peek and see how it works.

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