Fast food and cultural pursuits

People today read less, take fewer museum trips, and attend fewer concerts. Is that because these activities aren't as fun? The decline in the number and quality of our cultural experiences can be traced, at least in part, to unconscious stimuli that make us live faster. As [Sanford] DeVoe told me, "There are ironic consequences to time-saving devices. Fast food might save us time. But it also leads us away from the activities we might enjoy during the time we save.

Frank Partnoy, Wait: The Art and Science of Delay (New York: Public Affairs, 2012), p. 58

Amused by gadgets

The present generation is losing the capacity of enjoying life from within. They are sacrificing the delight in handicrafts born with every child to machine products. They want machines to sing, play, talk and read to them. They demand to be amused instead of amusing themselves.

Helen Keller, 1936 (quoted in Dorothy Herrmann, Helen Keller: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 263)

Why basic science? Entertainment!

Like art, music, and sports, basic science exists to provide a form of entertainment for the rest of humankind.

Menno Schilthuizen, Nature's Nether Regions: What the Sex Lives of Bugs, Birds, and Beasts Tell Us Abut Evolution, Biodiversity, and Ourselves (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), p. 184