Thursday, July 5, 2012

Carl Jung, The Borgs & Twitter


Carl Jung believed in a collective unconscious shared by all members of a species. This idea echoes in Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance where he posited that acquired changes in one individual of a species will instantaneously benefit other members of the same species.

Subsequently, wouldn't it make sense to think that Twitter is a new medium capable of broadcasting the collective unconscious to the world and can therefore modify humanity as a whole through our sharing of conscious & unconscious thoughts?

One may argue that Tweets aren't unconscious but many Twitterers will answer that most of their tweets are either semi-conscious or at least less censored by their super-ego than oral speech.

I can't help but think about the Borgs in Star Trek that are connected to "the Collective" via a subspace link in a somewhat similar fashion than my favorite aforementioned social network. They are all inter-connected but this network deprives each individual of their freedom. Call me an optimist, but I believe that Twitter is, on the contrary, a powerful liberating tool that will enable us to better understand our neighbors as well as our species in its entirety.

Let the little bird tweet and liberty will certainly ring!

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Behold The NiederBurger


Not content with being the hypest food in France at the moment, the burger is also subject to various Alsatian takes on its recipe.

The French love to do things differently (is that the reason why Steve Jobs would very often refer to France in his keynotes?) and the Alsatian people take pride in setting themselves apart from France. You might ask yourself if that is a good thing in the realm of burgerness and here I come to give you the ultimate answer (which differs from 42): IT IS A GOOD THING.

I had the extreme pleasure of sampling two different Alsatian burgers in less than a week and can only conclude that although they both strayed away from the Classic Burger that I love, they were both excellent and very original. The former is featured in my previous blog post here while the latter is the subject of the post you are reading now (isn't that logic?).

I loved the idea of creating a very tasty and juicy burger using a custom-baked pretzel and crusty and thick patty. The result was absolutely great and I can only advise every single one of you to pay a visit to l'Atelier du Sommelier in Niederbronn-les-Bains (Alsace, France) to try other delicacies (I'm not 100% sure they have the burger on their menu so call in advance should you wish to sample it).

And of course to set things right, my delicious burger was preceded by a fantastic and genuine Caesar salad (in the American sense of the term, not the usual French interpretation of the Caesar salad):