Giant, Man-eating ants have infested Europe (post unrelated)

TV has become a very popular form of entertainment. In my opinion, television is not a good form of entertainment compared to other recreational activities. Not only is TV a convenient medium for advertisers to get their messages to us, it is also the most passive form of entertainment around, which is why it is so popular. Unlike other forms of entertainment, which stimulate your brain by making you think, most TV watching requires no thinking at all. The reason TV is so popular is that most people don't want to think; they are more than happy to sit and watch their shows depicting trite love and the lives of shallow people.

Similarly, people care more about watching reward shows for the latest pop-culture icons than they do about the development of knowledge and of the human race as a whole. And the reason for this, I suppose, is the same as the reason people watch TV so much: not much thinking is involved. The reason people don't care about nobel prizes in physics and similar intellectual awards is that they would have trouble understanding what the award is for (most people can't understand even basic physics, much less the complex modern physic that wins someone a nobel prize) and don't want to take the time and effort to try. It's much easier to watch an award for things you understand (so and so starred in your favorite low-brow entertainment program). This just shows that people in our society, like people in the past and probably people in the future, are lazy and don't want to think.