A fun article from Popular Science sends the writer back 50 years, before cell phones, personal computers and decent coffee: “When friends heard about my foray into the simple life, they were evenly split as to whether the lack of e-mail or cellphone would break me first. Both camps were wrong: It’s the bad coffee that’s killing me.” Note how almost all the technology changes mentioned in the article since 1954 are from the market, (with the notable exception of zip codes). And don’t skip the informative footnotes, for example from a note on psychanalysis: “Freud first lectured in the U.S. in 1909; in 1943, U.S. intelligence officers commissioned a psychoanalysis of Adolf Hitler…”

The Best of Stephen W. Carson