Trendspotting

Here is the opening sentence of an essay by Alfred Stieglitz , from 1897, called "The Hand Camera - Its Present Importance":

Photography as a fad is well-nigh on its last legs, thanks principally to the bicycle craze.

I feel like Alfred Stieglitz wrote that sentence expressly for the Millennial Crier.

That is all.

LOL: Part II

Speaking of jokes, I was reading about Renaissance historiography today and I came across this little gem. It's a joke by Francesco Patrizi (1529-97), who was the Dane Cook of the Renaissance, and it goes like this:
Q: What would you call the writer who told you about effects without looking for any causes?
A: A historian.
Cue laughter as endless and pure as that of the YouTube baby; the laughter of men and women all across the Renaissance.
Thinking about old-timey humor often makes me believe the Enlightenment analogy of national history to the progress of a human from infancy to mature adulthood. But then I think of Dane Cook and Robin Williams and my beautiful narrative falls apart. It's like Dane Cook:humor::shocking and unprecedented violence of WWI-Holocaust:history.