Matt Yglesias chronicled the mindless procedures required to rent out an apartment in DC.
What Postman was hitting on was the totally mindless participation required of a viewer.
And Frank Miller has done Occupy Wall Street a service by reminding us that our allegedly democratic political system, which increases inequality and decreases class mobility, which is mostly interested in keeping the disenfranchised where they are, requires a mindless, propagandistic (or "cryptofascist") storytelling medium to distract its citizenry.
A depressed teenager is more likely to seek out emo music or watch a mindless television show than read a book, which requires more creativity, Primack said.
Your ability to focus in on yourself - to self-reflect - requires you to let go of the mindless messages from your environment, the people, places and things that are energy drains and the attachment to technology.
If you get political news, you'll manufactured outrage at a candidate's latest statement, followed by three mindless bobbleheads speculating on its impact - a "journalism" that requires no actual "journalism" or expertise.
But the Supreme Court, worried about the tender vulnerabilities of the fat cats and their prey, seems to be requiring a mindless (and unlikely) spelling-out of the details.
The solution, as I argue in The Rule of Nobody (out in April), requires a fundamental rethinking of how law is structured: People need to be accountable for the reasonableness of their actions, not mindless compliance with detailed rules.
To do so requires breaking into locked barns at 3 a.m., tracking down and interviewing reluctant workers, and -- no small point -- grappling with one's own self-loathing for ever having participated in such a system as a mindless eater.
In 2008, Brian Wansink, author of "Mindless Eating," found that boys required to clean their plates also asked for large portions of food outside the home.
