I think that the news* is corrupting my mind, competing for brain cycles that could otherwise be used for more important things, like trigonometry.

*News meaning sources of information like CNN, local television news, etc. News does not include Slashdot or other blogs, because they’re really sites that carry metadata on the news itself. Viewing these sites is likely to be considered cheating, which is something I can live with. As a compromise, I’ll make sure to skip past the mainstream news on Slashdot, and anything DMCA related (because it makes my blood boil). I will only look at pure, separated from the world, only-important-to-geek news of the kind that usually inspires me to be more geeklike.

The whole thing about news from sources like CNN for me is that it’s pretty mindless. It grabs my attention long enough to distract me, but only leaves me with weird little pointless facts. That combined with the fact that I never dig much deeper into the story makes it pretty pointless, and a waste of energy.

It all started after 9/11 when I was glued to at least two news sources at once, getting ready to don my gas mask the second CNN told me to. Ever since then, checking CNN has been an annoying ritual which stops now.

Are you obsessed with the news?

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