The world sometimes gets better even as it gets worse:

#1: Author Clay Shirky’s interesting ideas on how the death of the sitcom (among other things) has freed up tons and tons of time and effort in our world, and some of those newly-liberated resources are being devoted to worthwhile projects (like Wikipedia, for instance).

#2: About. Freaking. Time.

I been said dat!

From the Clay Shirky Article:

Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan’s Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don’t? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn’t posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it’s not, and that’s the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it’s worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.