"‘All man’s miseries,’ wrote the French mathematician Blaise Pascal, ‘derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’ Silence can do sinister things to a human being. In fact the quietest room ever, at -9 decibels, drove anyone who attempted to stay inside mad in under a half-hour. Even ‘normal’ quiet rooms, hovering at roughly 30 decibels, are enough to drive people bat-sh*t. The Art of Sitting Around is a skill most avoid. Yet, as comedian Louis C.K. recently remarked on Conan O’Brien, replacing that art with smart phones drives us a different kind of crazy. As a young reporter in 1999 I asked George Carlin why he chose comedy as his preferred method of delivery, given his political inclinations. If you can make people laugh, he told me, they’ll listen to you. They let down their guards, let you inside. Once they’re listening, you can inform."
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