Our species has become so well adapted to constant, relentless change that it has lost the ability to see just how weird much of the world has truly become. New things--a male sporting a nose ring, people talking into cell phones on busy street corners between swigs of bottled water--grab our attention and then quickly fade into the wallpaper of contemporary life. That is why the Rip van Winkle story and its many variants remain so appealing. We need, occasionally, someone who's been out of the loop for 20 years to point out everything we've long stopped noticing.
And that is...
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