Sunshocked

We get the word “bedlam” from the world’s oldest psychiatric hospital, St. Mary Bethelem in London. Founded in 1247, treatment long consisted of shackling the mentally ill to the walls and letting them scream. Seven hundred fifty years later, a lot of businesses are finding success by making a place for noise and chaos.

Today is that grandest of holidays, OneWebDay. Billed as “Earth Day for the Web”, people everywhere thankful for what the world wide web has given us are engaging in little projects to improve and honor it. Here’s what I did…

For many years I’ve celebrated Lent. Why should the Catholics get all the fun of trying to do without something for 40 days, testing their relationship with desire and temptation, emerging less reliant on external definitions of identity? There are, in fact, a number of really excellent holidays “trapped” in this way. Here are the ones I’ve added to my own calendar, mythological heritage be damned.

Admit it. You secretly hate MySpace. Maybe not even secretly, maybe you wear the shirt everywhere. Still, you’ve been forced to respect it because it’s an unstoppable juggernaut with over one hundred million members. Well, let’s burst some bubbles.