Best News In A Long Time

According to The New York Times, watching television can make you smarter. And when you watch as much television as I do, that is very good news indeed! Here's one of the great lessons from the article:

not having to think is boring. Many recent hit shows -- ''24,'' ''Survivor,'' ''The Sopranos,'' ''Alias,'' ''Lost,'' ''The Simpsons,'' ''E.R.'' -- take the opposite approach, layering each scene with a thick network of affiliations. You have to focus to follow the plot, and in focusing you're exercising the parts of your brain that map social networks, that fill in missing information, that connect multiple narrative threads.

The article is an excerpt from author Steven Johnson's forthcoming book Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. I can't wait to read this one! Or better yet, watch the TV series.