This is TL;DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read) Tuesdays, where I summarize two interesting articles from the InterWebs.  Slightly different than roundups on other blogs, I’ll tell you what you need to know about the article and discuss its significance.

This concept is inspired by my father, who sends everyone in the family articles links by email, by my older brother, who sends articles so long I never read them, and my wife, who became tired of me sending her articles, and has been telling me “TL;DR” for years.

The first article will be from other bloggers, to highlight the writings of interesting people you otherwise may not discover.  I’ll also provide a link to another article of theirs, because I want you to visit their site to find the rest of their great content.

The second summary will be from “traditional” news outlets.  I read news voraciously — I have online subscriptions to 3 major newspapers (conservative and liberal — WSJ, NYTimes, WaPo) and most non-news junkies will not regularly read all three.  I’ll also sneak in articles from other “traditional” news outlets.

I plan to do this 1-4x/month. If no one reads these or cares for it then I’ll scrap it.  Click here to read all of them over time.

#1

Source: Waffles on Wednesdays

Title: The Cost Effective Time Machine

Summary: I ran into Mr. and Mrs. Wow on Twitter, and then when they commented on my blog it cemented my desire to feature them here.  In this piece, Mr. Wow discusses the benefits of riding a motorcycle.  Apart from the risk of death if you fall off, they are amazing.  Outrunning the police, better gas mileage, blasting through tollways without paying, easier maintenance, access to the carpool lane, free parking in garages, and you get to look like a boss if you have the right equipment.  The only real question is, why are you NOT using one?

Conclusion: My main experience with motorcycles is from reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in high school.  Ever since then one of my best friends and I have planned to go on a chautauqua to discover our spiritual selves.  Actually, this friend and I went on a 3-week trip to Europe in college, and by the end we decided we should never do that again.  We were so sick of each other by the end of it that we didn’t speak for weeks.  We just went on a trip to Vegas last month (with a few other close buddies), and other than his constant snoring and cell phone alerts in the middle of the night, we got along great.  🙂  I’ve only ridden on a motorcycle once — in Pakistan, with a relative, when I was a kid, and without a helmet.  Families of 5 routinely ride on a single motorcycle in Pakistan (and many parts of Asia) — makes me feel guilty for buying a minivan.

Read This Also: Rethinking the Thought That Counts – read this because it’s the holidays and you need to stop buying stuff.

#2

Source: The New York Times

Title: The Importance of Dumb Mistakes in College

Summary: Smartphones, social media, and our inability to handle the feeling of boredom means we’re chronicling almost every aspect of our lives or almost always trying to delve into someone else’s life.  As a result, thoughts and actions that in the past were the growing pains of teenagers and young adults as they emotionally matured are not becoming weights around their necks.  It’s no longer possible to do something stupid, learn from it, and move on.  Any mistake can quickly become public, as such when we make a mistake, we have to learn from it while also shaming ourselves or being shamed.  The author is not talking about serious criminal offenses, but rather expression of thoughts that may be immature while in the process of trying to understand life, or stupid offenses such as graffiti where harm is done but in a much more reparable way.

Conclusion: Somewhere there are pictures of me from dressed as a witch during a high school performance Macbeth.  There is also a picture of me when I had to wear a dress when initiated into the Thespian Society.  There is not a picture of the time I wore a dress in front of my entire high school as part of a skit my acting teacher made me participate in.  There are no pictures from the many times when I worked as a camp counselor and let the campers paint my nails or put that facial goop on me.  I’m not going to lie — the facials felt good, but I’m happy there are no photographs.  Some things are meant to be part of your memory — not everything we say or do is meant to be  carried forward forever in time.

Share your thoughts in the comment section below.  If you find value in these TL;DR posts, please let me know — comment, share, email me, or otherwise let me know you want to see more of them!