When I read stories like this one, about a man who "sees" without being able to see, I'm filled with a kind of joy and wonder that is difficult to accurately describe.
There's so much that we still need to understand about how our brain works and one of the best ways to learn is to study truly bizarre cases like that one, or like the "split brain" cases.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
The problem with opposition to health care reform by reasonable americans
Maybe I'm stating the obvious. But here it goes.
It is my experience that reasonable americans (not the real crazies who shout like idiots at those town halls, but the ones that might nod in agreement when someone else does), these regular people who are, generally but not always, conservative leaning and happen to have a problem with "the government option" to health care reform; these generally decent reasonable americans who are kind and usually thoughtful and that don't really think Obama is Hitler or some other crazy hyperbolic thing like that, these people typically haven't given a lot of consideration to the current system in America.
I've had a chance to interact with these reasonable people who think that a public option will cost too much money, and that a large chunk of the population is very corrupt and will game the public system and not play by the rules and cause it to cost more money, and that a public option will make their private plan (which they are happy with) turn to shit, and so on. I think a lot of these worries are grounded in reality, but that's not the point.
These interactions have taught me that, in order to have a meaningful conversation with these reasonable americans, it is useless to try to just simply defend a public plan. To defend a public plan is to defend a hypothetical, to collect evidence from nothing more substantial than a thought experiment (what happens in other countries is generally inconsequential to many of these reasonable people). In order to have a decent, intelligent conversation about truly changing health care, and to set up a good reason to incorporate the government/public option, we all first need to get educated about the current system.
Everyone involved first needs to understand the absolute horrible state of the health care PAYMENT industry as it currently stands. People need to understand that, even though their situation appears to be just fine, that there are problems in the system that are going to potentially affect their individual, "fine" situation negatively.
It is my experience that when people really consider the problem with making health-care a commodity, when people truly understand how the BUSINESS of paying for health care works, when people put themselves in the shoes of an insurance company executive and think about how he/she has to deal with share holders AND NOT SICK PEOPLE, when people are made aware of the actual stories of poor bastards with pre-existing conditions who are denied coverage, then they begin to understand why the current American system is not necessarily the best we could do. They begin to understand why a standard capitalist model is not really compatible with providing access to healthcare, just like it isn't compatible with providing education, and fire/police departments, etc. It is my experience that when a person understands this, then they become open to thinking about what we might do to FIX the current system. That doesn't mean they will be any more keen on the public option. But they'll at least realize that there's a problem and it needs to be fixed FAST. And what we need in this country now is to get everyone on the side of REFORM.
The problem as I see it is that there is an opposition to any kind of reform in the health care payment industry because all reform is being characterized as socialist. The whole discussion should have started with making every single american understand why the current system is unworkable, how it is broken. Once the vast majority of the country is on this same page, then we can take an incremental step toward fixing it.
Instead, what's happening is that these reasonable americans, who are busy trying to keep their jobs and doing other things and so don't have time to educate themselves about the status quo, these reasonable americans who are getting their information from sensationalist and piss-poor reporting by the 24 hour news channels, these reasonable americans are being (and letting themselves be) consciously and sub-consciously turned against any kind of reform.
If you have an opportunity to communicate with these reasonable americans or if you happen to be one of these reasonable americans, I suggest you start fresh. Forget all that you may have learned about the current state of the health care payment system and research the basics for yourself. Use what you learn to form the basis of your conversation, when you're discussing health care reform.
Here is an example of how this strategy is used explicitly to promote the government/public option:
It is my experience that reasonable americans (not the real crazies who shout like idiots at those town halls, but the ones that might nod in agreement when someone else does), these regular people who are, generally but not always, conservative leaning and happen to have a problem with "the government option" to health care reform; these generally decent reasonable americans who are kind and usually thoughtful and that don't really think Obama is Hitler or some other crazy hyperbolic thing like that, these people typically haven't given a lot of consideration to the current system in America.
I've had a chance to interact with these reasonable people who think that a public option will cost too much money, and that a large chunk of the population is very corrupt and will game the public system and not play by the rules and cause it to cost more money, and that a public option will make their private plan (which they are happy with) turn to shit, and so on. I think a lot of these worries are grounded in reality, but that's not the point.
These interactions have taught me that, in order to have a meaningful conversation with these reasonable americans, it is useless to try to just simply defend a public plan. To defend a public plan is to defend a hypothetical, to collect evidence from nothing more substantial than a thought experiment (what happens in other countries is generally inconsequential to many of these reasonable people). In order to have a decent, intelligent conversation about truly changing health care, and to set up a good reason to incorporate the government/public option, we all first need to get educated about the current system.
Everyone involved first needs to understand the absolute horrible state of the health care PAYMENT industry as it currently stands. People need to understand that, even though their situation appears to be just fine, that there are problems in the system that are going to potentially affect their individual, "fine" situation negatively.
It is my experience that when people really consider the problem with making health-care a commodity, when people truly understand how the BUSINESS of paying for health care works, when people put themselves in the shoes of an insurance company executive and think about how he/she has to deal with share holders AND NOT SICK PEOPLE, when people are made aware of the actual stories of poor bastards with pre-existing conditions who are denied coverage, then they begin to understand why the current American system is not necessarily the best we could do. They begin to understand why a standard capitalist model is not really compatible with providing access to healthcare, just like it isn't compatible with providing education, and fire/police departments, etc. It is my experience that when a person understands this, then they become open to thinking about what we might do to FIX the current system. That doesn't mean they will be any more keen on the public option. But they'll at least realize that there's a problem and it needs to be fixed FAST. And what we need in this country now is to get everyone on the side of REFORM.
The problem as I see it is that there is an opposition to any kind of reform in the health care payment industry because all reform is being characterized as socialist. The whole discussion should have started with making every single american understand why the current system is unworkable, how it is broken. Once the vast majority of the country is on this same page, then we can take an incremental step toward fixing it.
Instead, what's happening is that these reasonable americans, who are busy trying to keep their jobs and doing other things and so don't have time to educate themselves about the status quo, these reasonable americans who are getting their information from sensationalist and piss-poor reporting by the 24 hour news channels, these reasonable americans are being (and letting themselves be) consciously and sub-consciously turned against any kind of reform.
If you have an opportunity to communicate with these reasonable americans or if you happen to be one of these reasonable americans, I suggest you start fresh. Forget all that you may have learned about the current state of the health care payment system and research the basics for yourself. Use what you learn to form the basis of your conversation, when you're discussing health care reform.
Here is an example of how this strategy is used explicitly to promote the government/public option:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Estonians rock?
There was a time, once, when I thought absolutely nothing good could ever come out of the republic of Estonia (except, of course, Brandon Fraser via Encino Man which also starred a young, de-hobbitized Samwise Gamgee, but I digress...).
That is no longer the case thanks to Opium Flirt.
Several years ago, I downloaded the title track from Opium Flirt's first album "Saint European King Days" and thought it was pretty good (I found it on the very decent music blog "said the gramophone"). So I saved it along with the rest of the mp3s that I download weekly from the internets. As often happens, these single track downloads get lost in that sea of mp3s that fill up my hard drive. And because I've got my itunes playlists set so that I only listen to music that I haven't heard in the past 6 months, it was at least a year or two after I downloaded it that this Opium Flirt track pleased my ears again.
But upon a second listen I became mesmerized. Opium Flirt's "saint European King Days" is a hauntingly wonderful song. So I checked out some more songs by the band and discovered that they are all over the place (in terms of style). This is a sure plus for any band, in my book. You might be able to categorize Opium Flirt as "ambient psychedelic", but then you'd only be accurately describing about half of their songs.
Anyway, I highly recommend taking a listen. Three words of warning:
That is no longer the case thanks to Opium Flirt.
Several years ago, I downloaded the title track from Opium Flirt's first album "Saint European King Days" and thought it was pretty good (I found it on the very decent music blog "said the gramophone"). So I saved it along with the rest of the mp3s that I download weekly from the internets. As often happens, these single track downloads get lost in that sea of mp3s that fill up my hard drive. And because I've got my itunes playlists set so that I only listen to music that I haven't heard in the past 6 months, it was at least a year or two after I downloaded it that this Opium Flirt track pleased my ears again.
But upon a second listen I became mesmerized. Opium Flirt's "saint European King Days" is a hauntingly wonderful song. So I checked out some more songs by the band and discovered that they are all over the place (in terms of style). This is a sure plus for any band, in my book. You might be able to categorize Opium Flirt as "ambient psychedelic", but then you'd only be accurately describing about half of their songs.
Anyway, I highly recommend taking a listen. Three words of warning:
- listen to the whole song and not just the intro (their intro's are often long and can be monotonous)
- listen to more than one track
- the song "Saint European King Days" would make me want to cry, if I wasn't such a manly masculine man
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
porn on the floor? possibly knotcaphe fourwirk
Is this the greatest music video of the current generation? Probably not. But it's still frickkin awesome.
Major Lazer "Pon De Floor" from Eric Wareheim on Vimeo.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Singlish + comedy = singlish comedy?
This is what a lot of my in-laws sound like when they speak English:
It's pretty awesome.
It's pretty awesome.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
You and me, in the nude, if that's what you're into
Further evidence of the supreme greatness of Flight of the Conchords.
(old clip, but one of my favorite songs)
(old clip, but one of my favorite songs)
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Lewontin wrote a book with Chomskey and it has fuck-all to do with linguistics
Nicely put: "Humans and chimpanzees are nevertheless very similar in their proteins, on the average, but vastly different in the sizes of their brains and their ability to write books about each other.”- R. Lewontin 1998. Very clever, so long as you pick the appropriate referents for the reciprocal expression.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Science can be creative (and fun)
Events in my life have conspired to create an interesting state in my academic life. It appears that I will be spending a good portion of my near future designing an experiment which studies human gesture and the development of phonology (or sub-lexical compositionality) using a fucking WII-mote.
There's a small, but significant part of me that is giddy at that proposition. That is the WII-msical side of me which causes me to spend a good part of my free time playing video games. The serious, pragmatic, scientist part of me is apprehensive, concerned about the aspect of these events that leads to the future state in which I'm, potentially, publishing the results of such a study (under, what is likely to be, a very clever title).
One really awesome aspect of my recent work is that it's actually involving a lot more creativity than I've experienced in much of my previous academic work. I love doing simple research, but there's something really appealing about stepping in new territory, the kind of territory where a linguistically trained graduate student is programming an unintuitive input/output mapping from a fucking WII-mote to a three dimensional space represented in a computer screen. If you would have asked me in my undergraduate days whether I thought that computer programming for academic purposes would become one of the few creative outlets of my future career, I may have laughed at the question.
Speaking of creativity: I'm just loving the band "Immaculate Machine". At their best, they sound like an interesting mix between "the new pornographers" and a classic rock cover-band. At their worst they sound like a classic rock inspired folk rock group (which actually doesn't sound so bad).
Even though it doesn't sound anything like what I just described, I'm particularly taken by the song "Dear Confessor" from their 2007 release "Fable" (see video).
They later re-recorded that song in what I think is Mandarin Chinese (see Wo Xian Tanbai below, from "wont be pretty", their 2008 7-inch EP) which I think is really awesome because, up till now, the vast majority of music I've heard in Mandarin has been boring top 40 adult contemporary.
It's always fun to hear foreigners sing rock (see l'aventurier for an example of how cool the 80's were for France, though I prefer the more recent ska version made by a bunch of CANADIANS) (I'm being tongue-in-cheek condescending here. No hate mail please).
Anyway, Immaculate Machine, along with "Fanfarlo" and a few others, are setting up 2009 to be the year of group-chanty-folk rock for me.
There's a small, but significant part of me that is giddy at that proposition. That is the WII-msical side of me which causes me to spend a good part of my free time playing video games. The serious, pragmatic, scientist part of me is apprehensive, concerned about the aspect of these events that leads to the future state in which I'm, potentially, publishing the results of such a study (under, what is likely to be, a very clever title).
One really awesome aspect of my recent work is that it's actually involving a lot more creativity than I've experienced in much of my previous academic work. I love doing simple research, but there's something really appealing about stepping in new territory, the kind of territory where a linguistically trained graduate student is programming an unintuitive input/output mapping from a fucking WII-mote to a three dimensional space represented in a computer screen. If you would have asked me in my undergraduate days whether I thought that computer programming for academic purposes would become one of the few creative outlets of my future career, I may have laughed at the question.
Speaking of creativity: I'm just loving the band "Immaculate Machine". At their best, they sound like an interesting mix between "the new pornographers" and a classic rock cover-band. At their worst they sound like a classic rock inspired folk rock group (which actually doesn't sound so bad).
Even though it doesn't sound anything like what I just described, I'm particularly taken by the song "Dear Confessor" from their 2007 release "Fable" (see video).
They later re-recorded that song in what I think is Mandarin Chinese (see Wo Xian Tanbai below, from "wont be pretty", their 2008 7-inch EP) which I think is really awesome because, up till now, the vast majority of music I've heard in Mandarin has been boring top 40 adult contemporary.
It's always fun to hear foreigners sing rock (see l'aventurier for an example of how cool the 80's were for France, though I prefer the more recent ska version made by a bunch of CANADIANS) (I'm being tongue-in-cheek condescending here. No hate mail please).
Anyway, Immaculate Machine, along with "Fanfarlo" and a few others, are setting up 2009 to be the year of group-chanty-folk rock for me.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
11 year old alcoholics
I used to think that having a drinking age, denying 18 year olds the ability to imbibe, played a big role in creating the allure of alcohol and thereby being largely responsible for causing alcohol related troubles like binge drinking.
Today I heard this headline on BBC radio: Milan to enforce teen drink ban. The article talks about the problems with underage drinking in Milan. To my (mostly) american ears, that meant that 18 or 19 year olds are overdoing it. But Italy's drinking age is 16. The underage problems the article talks about involve 11 year olds. 11 year olds with drinking problems...
I guess no matter what you do, what laws you pass, what limits you arbitrarily install, there will always be people taking things a bit too far. I guess that in itself doesn't come as a shock. But paired with the notion of drunken 11 year olds publicly urinating: oh yeah, shock.
Today I heard this headline on BBC radio: Milan to enforce teen drink ban. The article talks about the problems with underage drinking in Milan. To my (mostly) american ears, that meant that 18 or 19 year olds are overdoing it. But Italy's drinking age is 16. The underage problems the article talks about involve 11 year olds. 11 year olds with drinking problems...
I guess no matter what you do, what laws you pass, what limits you arbitrarily install, there will always be people taking things a bit too far. I guess that in itself doesn't come as a shock. But paired with the notion of drunken 11 year olds publicly urinating: oh yeah, shock.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
300th post: revisitng intuitiveness and sports science
Talk about counter-intuative:
When I was a young'un playing baseball, on the on-deck circle I would practice swinging a bat with a weight on the tip. When I was up to bat, the weight-less bat felt incredibly light and I felt like I could swing much harder.
Well, someone went ahead and actually tested whether practicing with a weighted bat actually made a difference to your swing in the batter's box. It turns out that it actually slows you down rather than speeds you up. If you want to swing faster, you actually have to practice with a lighter bat, not a heavier one.
Now, swinging faster doesn't necessarily mean you'll hit better. It may, for example, be detrimental to your accuracy. But, what I find fascinating is that, from personal experience, it certainly feels like you're swinging a normally weighted bat twice as fast if you've just practiced with a weighted bat. And this is likely why baseball players have practiced on the on-deck circle with weighted bats since... well who knows since when, but they do it all the time (see photo above).
I fucking love science, and I'm especially becoming enamored with Sports Science. I heard on the BBC radio station earlier this week an obituary for one of the first Sports scientists in the UK. A fellow, whose name I forget, who did his PhD in the sixties on how football (soccer) players injure themselves. He was also an expert on altitude effects on athletes, which is on a lot of Europeans' minds these days as the world cup next year will be held in South Africa, where many of the stadiums are significantly above sea level.
Sports science doesn't even have to be psycho-physical or biomedical in nature. It can be about counter-intuitive statistics as the 60 minutes video below will explain:
I suspect there's a general intuition that academics who excel in the science fields are likely to be nerds who care little for sports. Maybe that intuition is accurate of the mean, we'd need more data to find out if that's true, but some of the most interesting things happen when science moves into new territories which are typically not noted for drawing scientists.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
science v culture multiplied by infants
I often joke around about all the crazy psycho-social experiments I'm going to put my children through. I kid about how I'll make a conscious effort to fail to invert auxiliary verbs in the appropriate contexts, or that I'll only read adult science fiction for their bedtime stories, or that every weekend they'll be getting training on how to 'cheat' on IQ tests.
Today I stumbled across this story. The scientist with me is intrigued while the human in me is horrified. I'm fairly certain that both of those reactions are inappropriate.
Leave it to the swedes, I guess.
Today I stumbled across this story. The scientist with me is intrigued while the human in me is horrified. I'm fairly certain that both of those reactions are inappropriate.
Leave it to the swedes, I guess.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Sybiotic birds
Usually, when you see a symbiotic relationship between birds and large mammals, it is a mutually beneficial one, such as the case with the oxpecker and large grazing mammals in africa.
Not this time.
That is scary. I would not want to be a whale who's getting eaten alive by seagulls...
Not this time.
That is scary. I would not want to be a whale who's getting eaten alive by seagulls...
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
How things are done on one side of the Atlantic
In order for me to get 24 hour access to the academic building I'm currently making use of, I had to go through a 'fire induction tour'. This was an event that sounds more interesting than it actually was. I pictured some kind of hazing ritual, or at least something which required the use of a torch. However, a 'fire induction tour' is actually inherently interesting to someone who has never experienced one before.
Basically, since I would be given stewardship of the building on those odd cases where I might be the only one within it, they had to teach me what to do in case of all kinds of emergencies (such as if I were to suddenly bite into my own flesh with my teeth, accidentally, and needed something to staunch [the blood] with).
The tour was interesting in that it showed me the locations of the departmental dish washer and oven (why don't we have those?), the departmental first aid boxes (they've got one or two on every floor), the departmental printers, copiers, and supply cupboards (they've got armfulls of all kinds of stationary and stationary related products, none of which is under lock and key), and the departmental showers (that's right, 2 of them, about 20 feet within walking in from the front door of the building, you know, in case you walk, run, or cycle from home).
Basically, since I would be given stewardship of the building on those odd cases where I might be the only one within it, they had to teach me what to do in case of all kinds of emergencies (such as if I were to suddenly bite into my own flesh with my teeth, accidentally, and needed something to staunch [the blood] with).
The tour was interesting in that it showed me the locations of the departmental dish washer and oven (why don't we have those?), the departmental first aid boxes (they've got one or two on every floor), the departmental printers, copiers, and supply cupboards (they've got armfulls of all kinds of stationary and stationary related products, none of which is under lock and key), and the departmental showers (that's right, 2 of them, about 20 feet within walking in from the front door of the building, you know, in case you walk, run, or cycle from home).
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Artificial languages on 70's television
I just learned that the late Vicky Fromkin was hired by the producers of the 1974 television series "land of the lost" to create an artificial language for that tv show's characters "the Pakuni" people.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Jack Churchill was a badass
Jack Churchill. He did more than just invent a new kind of surf board. When I first heard about him I assumed that Neal Stephenson had based his 'Shaftoe' characters (from cryptonomicon and the baroque cycle trilogy) on him.
Total badass.
Total badass.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
You have to be rich to be poor
This is one of those articles where, if they're even only accurate on about half of what they claim/suggest, things look pretty bleak indeed.
Things cost more in poor neighborhoods.
I have no idea what can really be done about that. One of those cogs in the perpetual cycles.
Things cost more in poor neighborhoods.
I have no idea what can really be done about that. One of those cogs in the perpetual cycles.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Komodo Dragons are still cool, just less so
I remember how giddy I was when I first learned about Komodo Dragons. (yes, I was probably a geeky teenager) They were these prehistorically scary lizards that could kill and eat even humans, those who were silly enough to decide to live on the island upon which Komodo Dragons existed.
The coolest thing about the Komodo Dragons was that they killed their pray, not with poison, or sheer strength of their jaws. No, what they did was something totally crazy: They cultivated killer strains of bacteria in their mouths and, upon biting pray, would transfer that killer bacteria to the poor animal, killing it in a relatively short time. At which point, the komodo dragon would simply have to track the dying animal and feast. It sounded pretty crazy, but totally cool. Symbiosis on a killer-cool level (much cooler than the human-ecoli crap we get).
Well, it turns out all that is bullshit. Komodo Dragons use venom. I hate it when herpetologists get their shit wrong.
I guess it'll be up to me to prove that you can kill prey with a bio-bite.
The coolest thing about the Komodo Dragons was that they killed their pray, not with poison, or sheer strength of their jaws. No, what they did was something totally crazy: They cultivated killer strains of bacteria in their mouths and, upon biting pray, would transfer that killer bacteria to the poor animal, killing it in a relatively short time. At which point, the komodo dragon would simply have to track the dying animal and feast. It sounded pretty crazy, but totally cool. Symbiosis on a killer-cool level (much cooler than the human-ecoli crap we get).
Well, it turns out all that is bullshit. Komodo Dragons use venom. I hate it when herpetologists get their shit wrong.
I guess it'll be up to me to prove that you can kill prey with a bio-bite
Thursday, May 14, 2009
English is English, except when it's not
Susan Boyle. If you don't know who she is, you can google her to find out. The minimum you need to know is that she's from an area in Scotland near Edinburgh
She appeared on Oprah, with subtitles. I don't really know what to think about that. The linguist part of me says that this is acceptable as the phonological differences can be very difficult to parse and would make comprehension difficult even though the syntax might be familiar. But there's a part of me that wishes that Americans had more experience TRYING to understand (learn to listen to) the myriad of world Englishes that exist out there.
I wonder what it's going to be like, communicating with Edinbrughers.
She appeared on Oprah, with subtitles. I don't really know what to think about that. The linguist part of me says that this is acceptable as the phonological differences can be very difficult to parse and would make comprehension difficult even though the syntax might be familiar. But there's a part of me that wishes that Americans had more experience TRYING to understand (learn to listen to) the myriad of world Englishes that exist out there.
I wonder what it's going to be like, communicating with Edinbrughers.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Seriously: Jonathan Coulton
I don't remember when it was that I first heard of him, but I'm pretty sure the first song I heard was this one:
 | Jonathan Coulton - First of May |  |
 | ||
 | Found at skreemr.com |  |
It was love at first sound. This guy, JoCo, was a computer programmer who stopped being a computer programmer to try his hand at writing music:
| Jonathan Coulton - Code Monkey | |
| | ||
| Found at skreemr.com | |
His lyrics are witty and absolutely relateable to a 28 year old geek. His music, though 'campy' in style, displays a knack for writing some pretty amazing melodies. Case in point is "RE: your brains" a song about an office worker turned zombie trying to debate with an ex-colleague about whether the zombie hoard (of which he is a part) should be let into his mall fortress.
| Jonathan Coulton - Re Your Brains | |
| | ||
| Found at skreemr.com | |
JoCo is best known for his "thing a week" project, where he attempted to write. produce, and record one song per week throughout a 52 week period (sept '05 to '06 for a total of 52 songs)--quite an amazing feat, if you ask me. You can read about that here.
| Jonathan Coulton - Tom Cruise Crazy | |
| | ||
| Found at skreemr.com | |
The best part was that he released all of the songs, for free, on the internet. And he still ended up making more money than he had working as a programmer (at least by 2007, he did). Oh, and Valve paid him some money for writing the ending song to their hit game "Portal"
| Jonathan Coulton - Still Alive (J.C. Mix) | |
| | ||
| Found at skreemr.com | |
JoCo is playing a show at a local watering hole this Thursday. I can't wait:
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Zombies and the absurd
If you know me well, you also know that I'm a big fan of zombies. In addition to my zombie fandom, I'm a fan of absurdist comedy. What do you get when you put them together. Well, the answer was not clear until Andy put the following bit together:
Art
If there is one piece of art that I would like to own in my future home it is the time fountain.
Judge Antonin Scalia needs to pay attention to that modern-fangled technology
I do have respect for justice Scalia, even though I probably disagree with most of his views about interpreting the constitution and about government in general. I don't know him personally, but I've read and seen enough interviews of him to know that I respect his intelligence and his tenacity.
But it's always great to read stories like this. (Scalia [possibly?] has previously stated in a public forum that he doesn't think the government should be making more laws to protect privacy)
More on this interesting character known as Scalia.
But it's always great to read stories like this. (Scalia [possibly?] has previously stated in a public forum that he doesn't think the government should be making more laws to protect privacy)
More on this interesting character known as Scalia.
Monday, May 4, 2009
euler and the pitfalls of foreign surname pronunciation
When I first came across the name Euler, I pronounced it as it would be pronounced in English from its spelling: /ˈjuːlər/ or EW-lər. I was quickly corrected and told that it was actually pronounced /ˈɔɪlər/ or OY-lər. This led me to crack stupid nerd jokes about how the mathematical value known as 'e' which I believe is named after the mathematician/physicist L. Euler, shouldn't be pronounced /ii/ as the alphabetic letter is pronounced, but instead should be pronounced /ɔɔ/ (the vowel sound in 'fought or cough' which is the sound Euler's name begins with). To this day, when I have to use 'e' in some equation I think of it as /ɔɔ/. HYUDG NURD ALLURT!
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Thursday, April 30, 2009
When politics, religion, and health crises clash
Egypt is trying to slaughter all of the country's pigs. Is this because they are trying to prevent swine flu from getting a foot-hold in the country?
That's what the government is telling people. But I wonder if this decision wasn't made easier by the fact that the pigs are raised for consumption by the Christian minority (being considered 'unclean' and therefore not consumable by the Muslim majority).
Of course, the Christians are going to have no trouble surviving without pork chops or ham for a few months. But those poor pig farmers are going to hurt. They're not even given compensation... Ouch.
This story made me think of the possibility that this flu outbreak can be seen by radical (and some not so radical) muslims as clear evidence that god disfavors the decadent pig-eaters from the west.
The WHO tells us that we're at threat level 5. I guess the religious wars are over. Muslims win. Oh wait, The other chosen people are still in the game.
Oh pigs... why'd you have to go an be so damn tasty!
Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.
That's what the government is telling people. But I wonder if this decision wasn't made easier by the fact that the pigs are raised for consumption by the Christian minority (being considered 'unclean' and therefore not consumable by the Muslim majority).
Of course, the Christians are going to have no trouble surviving without pork chops or ham for a few months. But those poor pig farmers are going to hurt. They're not even given compensation... Ouch.
This story made me think of the possibility that this flu outbreak can be seen by radical (and some not so radical) muslims as clear evidence that god disfavors the decadent pig-eaters from the west.
The WHO tells us that we're at threat level 5. I guess the religious wars are over. Muslims win. Oh wait, The other chosen people are still in the game.
Oh pigs... why'd you have to go an be so damn tasty!
Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Paper Hearts
This is not a documentary (although everyone seems to be playing themselves).
I'm not sure if it is because of my love affair with michael cera, or maybe it just plain looks like a fun movie, but I can't wait to see it.
I'm not sure if it is because of my love affair with michael cera, or maybe it just plain looks like a fun movie, but I can't wait to see it.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
How we (liguists) roll.
A parable in several, unlabeled acts.
A zoologist goes out into the field, maybe even a literal field, and finds a brand new species of rabbit. He captures that rabbit and brings it back to his university/zoo (they are often hard to tell apart, universities and zoos).
He then proceeds to skin the rabbit, gut it and put all of it's different inner bits into separate jars. He then sends the carcass, the pelt, and each organ to the respective fur/carcass/organ specialists. He does this in the hope that, some day soon when the results of each specialist's analyses come back, we will understand something about the rabbit, something that we wouldn't be able to understand from observing the living rabbit itself as well as everything that we could. (that last, difficult to comprehend sentence involves what linguists call grammatically questionable ELLIPSIS)
But the zoologist doesn't wait for the results. In fact, there's no one waiting for the results.
The gallbladder expert gets his sample and then analyzes the rabbit's gallbladder (do rabbits have gallbladders?). He publishes his results, which are then read by a small handful of gallbladder experts who use what he learned from the rabbit's gallbladder and apply it to other gallbladders. The heart expert does the same, as does the fur expert, etc. Once in a while, the stomach expert chats with the intestine expert and, together they learn something new about the digestive system of all the animals they've seen. A few people get excited, but they all soon go back to work since the toe-nail, eyeball, and ulna experts aren't quite sure what to make of that exciting new research. The spleen expert hasn't even heard of it.
In the meantime, the zoologist goes back out to the field and gets a mouse and repeats the process.
Certainly, to some extent, real world biology works this way, or at least it does in my twisted mind. But the critical difference is that zoologists exist not to feed anatomical biologists' grisly need for carcasses (although it would be fun to picture Dr. Frankenstein's Igor as a zoologist). There are several scientists in the field of biology who study whole, living rabbits: their diets, environments, sexual habits (perverts), etc.
The problem in linguistics is that no linguists are studying the sexual habits of the Ob-Ugric language family. And what I mean by that is, as hard as it might seem, more linguists need to attempt to make a career out of designing clever ways to put all that shit together, or fuckin' stop tearing up rabbits.
This hyperbole was brought to you by Coffee and viewers like you.
A zoologist goes out into the field, maybe even a literal field, and finds a brand new species of rabbit. He captures that rabbit and brings it back to his university/zoo (they are often hard to tell apart, universities and zoos).
He then proceeds to skin the rabbit, gut it and put all of it's different inner bits into separate jars. He then sends the carcass, the pelt, and each organ to the respective fur/carcass/organ specialists. He does this in the hope that, some day soon when the results of each specialist's analyses come back, we will understand something about the rabbit, something that we wouldn't be able to understand from observing the living rabbit itself as well as everything that we could. (that last, difficult to comprehend sentence involves what linguists call grammatically questionable ELLIPSIS)
But the zoologist doesn't wait for the results. In fact, there's no one waiting for the results.
The gallbladder expert gets his sample and then analyzes the rabbit's gallbladder (do rabbits have gallbladders?). He publishes his results, which are then read by a small handful of gallbladder experts who use what he learned from the rabbit's gallbladder and apply it to other gallbladders. The heart expert does the same, as does the fur expert, etc. Once in a while, the stomach expert chats with the intestine expert and, together they learn something new about the digestive system of all the animals they've seen. A few people get excited, but they all soon go back to work since the toe-nail, eyeball, and ulna experts aren't quite sure what to make of that exciting new research. The spleen expert hasn't even heard of it.
In the meantime, the zoologist goes back out to the field and gets a mouse and repeats the process.
Certainly, to some extent, real world biology works this way, or at least it does in my twisted mind. But the critical difference is that zoologists exist not to feed anatomical biologists' grisly need for carcasses (although it would be fun to picture Dr. Frankenstein's Igor as a zoologist). There are several scientists in the field of biology who study whole, living rabbits: their diets, environments, sexual habits (perverts), etc.
The problem in linguistics is that no linguists are studying the sexual habits of the Ob-Ugric language family. And what I mean by that is, as hard as it might seem, more linguists need to attempt to make a career out of designing clever ways to put all that shit together, or fuckin' stop tearing up rabbits.
This hyperbole was brought to you by Coffee and viewers like you.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Hidden Camera's are one of humanity's greatest and worst invention
I had a great time with this website (no it isn't porn). In my very short life I have maintained a 100% success rate at job interviews (7 interviews, 7 job offers). I think, now, I'm realizing why.
[Updated] where the hell did that apostrophe in the title come from?
[Updated] where the hell did that apostrophe in the title come from?
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
They were this really funny comedy troupe
at long last, my DVD collection will finally be complete.
The State is finally coming.
I just hope that it's as good as I remember it.
The State is finally coming.
I just hope that it's as good as I remember it.
Shenanigans
Shenanigans! I declare shenanigans!
PS. I've always wanted to declare shenanigans. I think I'll do it more often from now on.
South Park Shenanigans:
Supertrooper shenanigans:
PPS. While the OED doesn't seem to have an entry for 'shenanigans', M-W does. But M-W doesn't seem to know where it came from. I'd put the word Shenanigans on my top ten list of coolest words in English. Sesquipedalian would be on there too. I'm still waiting for a good opportunity to use sesquipedalian.
PS. I've always wanted to declare shenanigans. I think I'll do it more often from now on.
South Park Shenanigans:
Supertrooper shenanigans:
PPS. While the OED doesn't seem to have an entry for 'shenanigans', M-W does. But M-W doesn't seem to know where it came from. I'd put the word Shenanigans on my top ten list of coolest words in English. Sesquipedalian would be on there too. I'm still waiting for a good opportunity to use sesquipedalian.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
God protects us, don't you know
You know what? Maybe this guy (a congressman) is right. Maybe the bible is all the evidence we need to know, without doubt, that there is no reason to fear global climate change.
Then again, maybe this is about as sad and pathetic as irrational, unquestioning, blind devotion can get.
Then again, maybe this is about as sad and pathetic as irrational, unquestioning, blind devotion can get.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Sunday, March 29, 2009
I used to respect the UN
WTF?
They urge member nations to enact legislation to make illegal the criticism of religion?
Not that I'm a fan of everyone criticizing everyone else, but this kind of crap is why people don't respect the UN.
They urge member nations to enact legislation to make illegal the criticism of religion?
Not that I'm a fan of everyone criticizing everyone else, but this kind of crap is why people don't respect the UN.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Kings
Kings.
A Shakespearean Drama, with biblical intrigue and the technical sensibilities of Battlestar Galactica.
It's got good characters (and decent actors portraying them). It's a good show and you should watch it.
A Shakespearean Drama, with biblical intrigue and the technical sensibilities of Battlestar Galactica.
It's got good characters (and decent actors portraying them). It's a good show and you should watch it.
Work and Play
Susan Garnsey is a really awesome professor of Psychology at the U of I. When I was there I had the wonderful experience of being a lowly undergrad worker in her Language & Brain lab (I ran ERPs for a comparison study of Japanese and English on garden path sentences).
I remember one of those stereotype shattering moments in my early academic career when I was sitting on the couch next to Gary Dell and some graduate students at one of Susan's Parties. We were talking about some such crazy thing related to sentence processing when I looked over to Susan's CD collection and was struck by her musical tastes. I pulled out a copy of the Magnetic Fields' 69 love songs which spun the group's conversation into a totally different (and totally awesome) realm.
Suddenly, I was no longer in an intimidating professor's home in some nerve-wrecking conversation where, at any moment I was in danger of saying something stupid that was going to make evident how little my undergraduate brain knew about sentence processing. Instead, we were talking about the qualities of Stephin Merritt's voice and his multi-talented cast of friends, a conversation I may have been having with peers at some house party later that weekend.
I guess I should have probably taken advantage of my surroundings that day and maybe gained a little more insight on the wonderful world of psycholinguistics, but it was pretty cool talking about music with these people who spent a large part of their week lecturing to undergraduates like me and grading our homeworks, and doing cutting-edge research. In a very profound way, it made a carreer in acadamics actually seem within grasp. These people could be so well versed in the processing literature AND know about Stephin Merritt? They didn't have to spend all of their time with their nose in a journal?
Sometimes I feel like that's really not the case, that I was imagining that whole event, and that I'll spend the rest of my life in front of the computer, typing, committed to the reality that popular culture is going to escape further and further from my ability to know it, understand it. At times like these, I fire up my PS3 and play some video games, assuming netflix hasn't sent me my next movie yet.
I remember one of those stereotype shattering moments in my early academic career when I was sitting on the couch next to Gary Dell and some graduate students at one of Susan's Parties. We were talking about some such crazy thing related to sentence processing when I looked over to Susan's CD collection and was struck by her musical tastes. I pulled out a copy of the Magnetic Fields' 69 love songs which spun the group's conversation into a totally different (and totally awesome) realm.
Suddenly, I was no longer in an intimidating professor's home in some nerve-wrecking conversation where, at any moment I was in danger of saying something stupid that was going to make evident how little my undergraduate brain knew about sentence processing. Instead, we were talking about the qualities of Stephin Merritt's voice and his multi-talented cast of friends, a conversation I may have been having with peers at some house party later that weekend.
I guess I should have probably taken advantage of my surroundings that day and maybe gained a little more insight on the wonderful world of psycholinguistics, but it was pretty cool talking about music with these people who spent a large part of their week lecturing to undergraduates like me and grading our homeworks, and doing cutting-edge research. In a very profound way, it made a carreer in acadamics actually seem within grasp. These people could be so well versed in the processing literature AND know about Stephin Merritt? They didn't have to spend all of their time with their nose in a journal?
Sometimes I feel like that's really not the case, that I was imagining that whole event, and that I'll spend the rest of my life in front of the computer, typing, committed to the reality that popular culture is going to escape further and further from my ability to know it, understand it. At times like these, I fire up my PS3 and play some video games, assuming netflix hasn't sent me my next movie yet.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
do I or don't I double that L?
I'm having a real hard time figuring out what distinction, if any, is made by native speakers of English between the two spellings for modelling/modeling.
Is one British and the other English? if so, which is which?
Do they refer to different things? is modeling what fashion models do and modelling what scientists do?
The verb 'compel' gets an additional 'l' when derived (compelling and not compeling)
But the verb 'boil' doesn't (boiling and not boilling)
Does it have to do with how many syllables are in the root? It doesn't seem that way since:
Counsel becomes counseling and not counselling...
WTF? Are there any other -l ending words that have this dichotomy of spelling choice?
Either the internet is no help or my googling skills are becoming worthless in my old age. I'll be super embarrassed if it's something incredibly obvious that I'm too dumb to see...
Is one British and the other English? if so, which is which?
Do they refer to different things? is modeling what fashion models do and modelling what scientists do?
The verb 'compel' gets an additional 'l' when derived (compelling and not compeling)
But the verb 'boil' doesn't (boiling and not boilling)
Does it have to do with how many syllables are in the root? It doesn't seem that way since:
Counsel becomes counseling and not counselling...
WTF? Are there any other -l ending words that have this dichotomy of spelling choice?
Either the internet is no help or my googling skills are becoming worthless in my old age. I'll be super embarrassed if it's something incredibly obvious that I'm too dumb to see...
Thursday, March 19, 2009
I think it should be called FACE DANCE (or feesu daansu)
Yet another way the Japanese can be CrazyCool.
I think what's happening in the video below is: one of the four people rigged up a system that converts tones to electical impulses. Those electrical impulses are then sent to these poor people's face muscles. The music starts playing, and what you get is
FACE DANCE
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
That dream where you forget you signed up for that class and haven't gone to it all semester and a project/final is coming up...
Today's XKCD hits home.
I didn't realize other people had this dream.
I've had it countless times, at least once every semester during my undergraduate career. But I haven't had it so often since I've become a grad student. I can only remember having it once in the past 2 years.
I wonder if Randall is right about this dream haunting me for the rest of my life...
I didn't realize other people had this dream.
I've had it countless times, at least once every semester during my undergraduate career. But I haven't had it so often since I've become a grad student. I can only remember having it once in the past 2 years.
I wonder if Randall is right about this dream haunting me for the rest of my life...
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Damn
Brain decline begins at 27.
In related but lighter news, this week I calculated that I am nearly 342 months old.
In related but lighter news, this week I calculated that I am nearly 342 months old.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Take-off rap
If you are a flight attendant, this is how you get people to pay attention to you during those boring pre-flight instructions:
Yet another way Southwest is better than any other US airline.
Yet another way Southwest is better than any other US airline.
Critical Discourse Analysis and why I fucking despise it
Sohail Karmani forwards the following question (from some person named tom nagy) to a newsgroup interested in Critical Discourse Analysis:
And this is the response he received (if you're like me, you had a hard time making it past point #4, so if you want to know what I think of all of this, scroll all the way down):
"Is discourse analysis at the primative level of medicine 100 years ago when it could diagnose but not intervene successfully? If this is so, it would be critical to be aware of this dismal state of affairs."and he continues with his own point
This is precisely the problem I have with CDA. As I see it, the whole thing is based on the self-serving assumption that society desperately needs a vanguard class of experts who can unravel the encoded messages in a given text that elude the dumb and stupid masses. Only such a class is best placed to carry out this function because it exclusively possesses all the tools, jargon and "insights" that are even beyond normal capabilities of your average academic. Taxi drivers, builders, single mothers, cleaning ladies, janitors and so on just wouldn't have a clue what goes on in the marvellous world of CDA. Of course the whole thing (like other specializations in academia) is a total fraud! All you need all is a modicum of intelligence and a bit of critical awareness and anyone can unravel the "deep meanings" that reside in texts. The bottom line (as I see it) is CDA is embarrassingly straightforward stuff dressed up in layers and layers of self-serving unintelligible jargon.
And this is the response he received (if you're like me, you had a hard time making it past point #4, so if you want to know what I think of all of this, scroll all the way down):
1) The problem of human activity being "self-serving" isn't necessarily a critical point of contention here though.What a bunch of bullshit (the question almost as much as the 17-part answer).
2) In our quasi-solipsist existence, with no real access to the inner, word-defying (CDA-defying at that) flux of emotional appeal or subjective contemplation or whatever you want to call, humans can obviosly act little beyond their unavoidable "self-serving" ways.
3) Capitalist greed is reified and hits a certain bulwark (based in ordained careerism and defined sycophantism, etc.) telling it where to end; revolutionaries, on the other hand, are too greedy for greed.
4) Putting an end to these moronic vanguard thought specialists requires unpredented levels of greed based in the concept of self-management (we cannot manage ourselvves, attempt to act autonomously, etc. without facing, whether to our chagrin or not, the complete necessity to be greedy -- how else can we act for ourselves as opposed to how a certain elitist group of specialists might want us to act?)
5) http://www.point-of-departure.org/Lust-For-Life/RTBGreedy-v1_2_5-en.htm
6) We are necessarily greedy, this isn't really the problem -- to see the problem in CDA, we must go beyond this typical condescension for those "greedy capitalist pigs."
7) Nothing can be new which is already expressed, in that such an expression itself is already an unavoidable reification (including all of those popular greed concepts) even if it hasn't been extracted from the mind yet into the concurrence of linguistic reality; even if it hasn't come into a replication of its own outside of the individual's thought processes.
8) It takes on the form of a reification even at the point of becoming an object within consciousness.
9) Any sort of synthesized language, "subjective" or "objective" is already reified.
10) However, what is felt (the ineffable) can never be expressed in the same way that what is expressed can never be known beyond the concurring linguistic "fact" that it, in fact, isn't known outside of its pragmatic relationships or rational connections -- it isn't known within the mind of an individual subject, but merely represented or signified; it isn't felt or sensed in word-defying manner based in the infinite continuum of euphoria to chagrin (and everything in between), but merely projected in a boring, commensurable manner.
11) In a basic sense, the ineffability of subjective emotion, desire and sensation is the affirmation of our current solipsist reality (which is the reality comprised of human / object interrelation housing the existence comprised of unverifiable meaning outside of mind).
For the solipsist, it is not merely the case that he believes that his thoughts, experiences, and emotions are, as a matter of contingent fact, the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions. Rather, the solipsist can attach no meaning to the supposition that there could be thoughts, experiences, and emotions other than his own. In short, the true solipsist understands the word 'pain,' for example, to mean 'my pain.' He cannot accordingly conceive how this word is to be applied in any sense other than this exclusively egocentric one.
-- Stephen P. Thornton
12) When I touch briefly on solipsism, I basically mean it in a sense closely related to the well articulated and aforementioned excerpt -- in the sense that if we are to use the example of "pain," obviously, the dominant ideology (set up by the dictionary and other forms of CDAist mediated concurrence) used to define pain will never be able to define the arbitrary sensation of pain existing subjectively within an individual as such a sensation is inherently ineffable and simply cannot take on any genuine meaning beyond a reified description of what it once "felt" like at some point in the past and in concurrence with a grand, syncretistic, etymological narrative comprising descriptions of what certain types of pain might have felt like to certain types of people.
13) This sort of gathered, learned synthesis of what one might assume pain to be in terms of objective projections of past language will never be able to represent (although it would have you believe otherwise) its actualized, internal meaning for a peculiar subject, as such representations are always based in the past -- i.e. Phil Graham's boring Hilter references -- while what is felt is always based in the transient and elusive present.
14) The ever changing semantics of language simply cannot come close to comprehending the unknown regions of the mind born of "impressions" (as Hume -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hume#Ideas_and_impressions -- might say).
15) The more one assumes that one's past synthesis comprising spontaneously felt pain can ever hold its own as a truthful definition regarding the ineffable subjectivity of what pain actually is in the ephemeral moment existing just beyond the rationalized meaning of historical narratives, the more one is susceptible to the spectacle of "pain."
16) None the less, autonomous and ad hominem based attempts at interpreting the ineffable are important in that they represent the non-profit and explicit study of the transference of meaning (existing in a personal ambience of their own attempted autonomy and hence outside of the condescending commerce of "official" -- psychology, psychiatry, subsidized/curriculum-based philosophy, CDAist bullshit, etc. -- forms of such study which are almost always quite insidiously in the name of mere utility and workforce augmentation despite their pseudo-subversive claims in the other direction) -- an attempted transient acknowledgement of the emotions and content existing below and thrashing against, for relevant instance, Debord's concept of "spectacle."
17) We must be too greedy to accept the careerist-greed spectacle as a transient, subversive solution... it is the exact opposite and filled to the brim with little more than charlatans...
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
2 things I miss
One thing I really miss about japan is good, simple, japanese sushi.
Another thing I really miss about japan is the kindness of the people, their good nature. You didn't have to worry about most people trying to swindle or cheat you. You could feel pretty confident that if you forgot your jacket on a train station platform, you could go back on the same train line (in the other direction) and find it where you left it (or one of the attendants will have it safe and waiting for you).
So when I see videos like the one below (the second of its kind) it brings me back and makes me miss the place a bit more.
Another thing I really miss about japan is the kindness of the people, their good nature. You didn't have to worry about most people trying to swindle or cheat you. You could feel pretty confident that if you forgot your jacket on a train station platform, you could go back on the same train line (in the other direction) and find it where you left it (or one of the attendants will have it safe and waiting for you).
So when I see videos like the one below (the second of its kind) it brings me back and makes me miss the place a bit more.
Friday, February 27, 2009
John turturro
John Turturro is one of my favorite actors (I'd easily put him in the top three). I first saw him in the Coen Bros movie "Barton Fink" and, at that time I didn't think too much of him. But since then I've seen him play a lot of different roles (Miller's Crossing, Jungle Fever, Cradle will rock, Mr. Deeds, oh brother where art thou, you don't mess with the zohan). Despite having a very unique voice and look, he has managed to easily persuade me that each character was real.
By far, my favorite of his roles was 'the Jesus' from the big lebowski. Below is a video of him talking about how he made that character real.
By far, my favorite of his roles was 'the Jesus' from the big lebowski. Below is a video of him talking about how he made that character real.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
The thatcher effect
I'd never heard of the thatcher effect before I saw this video. It's pretty wild.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Interpret your dissertation through dance
This is the first I've heard of it, but it turns out that there's a contest for dancing your PhD dissertation.
I guess the following video is this year's postdoc winner. It's a neurolinguistics dissertation.
I guess the following video is this year's postdoc winner. It's a neurolinguistics dissertation.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Don't lay down on train tracks, especially when you are sleepy
Last year, a couple of girls fell asleep on some train tracks and, surprise surprise, they got ran over by a train (and, luckily, only suffered a foot and a leg amputation).
Yesterday, I saw this report on NPR "2 Teen Girls, Injured by Train, Cope With Change." I listened to it hoping that it would redeem my impression of these two children and their parents as complete fools. I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt in cases like these, but it was particularly difficult in this case: Even if they did not intend to take a nap, even if they held in their minds a belief that the tracks were unused, in what circumstances can you excuse two girls for laying down on train tracks?
Anyway, I listened to that story and, if anything, it actually made my opinion of these two girls and their parents worse then it was before. I don't like being judgmental. I sometimes find myself going out of my way to assume people are better, kinder, cleverer than they seem. But I'm having a really hard time with this story.
Yesterday, I saw this report on NPR "2 Teen Girls, Injured by Train, Cope With Change." I listened to it hoping that it would redeem my impression of these two children and their parents as complete fools. I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt in cases like these, but it was particularly difficult in this case: Even if they did not intend to take a nap, even if they held in their minds a belief that the tracks were unused, in what circumstances can you excuse two girls for laying down on train tracks?
Anyway, I listened to that story and, if anything, it actually made my opinion of these two girls and their parents worse then it was before. I don't like being judgmental. I sometimes find myself going out of my way to assume people are better, kinder, cleverer than they seem. But I'm having a really hard time with this story.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
I was a nerd
If you were a pbs-watching geography buff/nerd growing up in the early 90's then this page on YTMND will make you smile.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Good ole Bernie always knows what to say to cheer me up
Bertrand Russell
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Brands
I don't know what brand of coffee beans I grind up and drink in the morning. I couldn't tell you what brand of napkins are sitting on my dining room table. If you asked me right now what brand of jeans I am wearing at this moment, I would not be able to tell you without bending awkwardly and looking at the tag by my ass (even then, they're probably so cheap and so old that the ink on that faux-leather patch is all worn).
Here's what I can tell you: I am currently using a microsoft OS and the firefox browser, I have an apple laptop, an apple i-pod, and a sony portable CD player, and my toilet paper is Charmin. I'm not immune to brand recognition but I guess I only pay attention to those of things that are truly relevant to me and my life.
Oh, and I love the in-and-out burger. I've begun to spot their signs more efficiently than the other big burger chains, even despite the jack-in-box rebranding campaign.
Here's what I can tell you: I am currently using a microsoft OS and the firefox browser, I have an apple laptop, an apple i-pod, and a sony portable CD player, and my toilet paper is Charmin. I'm not immune to brand recognition but I guess I only pay attention to those of things that are truly relevant to me and my life.
Oh, and I love the in-and-out burger. I've begun to spot their signs more efficiently than the other big burger chains, even despite the jack-in-box rebranding campaign.
At last, the circle is complete
No, there's no video in this post. Instead, I found a story on slashdot that I really enjoyed:
"Germany has a new minister of economic affairs. Mr. von und zu Guttenberg is descended from an old and noble lineage, so his official name is very long: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. When first there were rumors that he would be appointed to the post, someone changed his Wikipedia entry and added the name 'Wilhelm,' so Wikipedia stated his full name as: Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Wilhelm Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg. What resulted from this edit points up a big problem for our information society (in German; Google translation). The German and international press picked up the wrong name from Wikipedia — including well-known newspapers, Internet sites, and TV news such as spiegel.de, Bild, heute.de, TAZ, or Süddeutsche Zeitung. In the meantime, the change on Wikipedia was reverted, with a request for proof of the name. The proof was quickly found. On spiegel.de an article cites Mr. von und zu Guttenberg using his 'full name'; however, while the quote might have been real, the full name seems to have been looked up on Wikipedia while the false edit was in place. So the circle was closed: Wikipedia states a false fact, a reputable media outlet copies the false fact, and this outlet is then used as the source to prove the false fact to Wikipedia."It was only a matter of time before this happened. I guess when you don't want to pay for your newspaper (and therefore the news reporters) then you shouldn't be surprised when wikipedia becomes one of their major research resources.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Putin's a badass
So, how horrible would it be if the world found out you dig ABBA? Probably not so horrible, unless you're the ex-leader of Russia.
Even then, it probably wouldn't be so bad. But the BBC is reporting the story, so it must be important, right?
No, probably not.
Even then, it probably wouldn't be so bad. But the BBC is reporting the story, so it must be important, right?
No, probably not.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Man gets quoted cost of data download for his cellphone = .002 cents per kilobyte
Man gets charged .002 dollars per kilobyte
Man calls company to complain and it turns out that the company (Verizon?) thinks .002 cents per kilobyte is equivalent to .oo2 dollars per kilobyte
An actual quote from the video:
Customer: "Do you recognize that there's a difference between One Dollar and One Cent?"
Manager: "Definitely"
Customer: "Do you recognize that there's a difference between Half a Dollar and Half Cent?"
Manager: "Definitely"
Customer: "Then do you recognize that there's a difference between .002 Dollars and .002 Cents?"
Manager: "No"
If we can't get this right, then what hope is there for rational thinking?
The video
It's not a difference of opinion... sigh.
Man gets charged .002 dollars per kilobyte
Man calls company to complain and it turns out that the company (Verizon?) thinks .002 cents per kilobyte is equivalent to .oo2 dollars per kilobyte
An actual quote from the video:
Customer: "Do you recognize that there's a difference between One Dollar and One Cent?"
Manager: "Definitely"
Customer: "Do you recognize that there's a difference between Half a Dollar and Half Cent?"
Manager: "Definitely"
Customer: "Then do you recognize that there's a difference between .002 Dollars and .002 Cents?"
Manager: "No"
If we can't get this right, then what hope is there for rational thinking?
The video
It's not a difference of opinion... sigh.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Thursday, January 22, 2009
the obameter
It's awesome when the internet does all the work for you. Now, you don't need to do any remembering, or any research to know if Obama is screwing with you: The good people at PolitiFact are doing it all for you with the Obameter.
I'm going to assume that "Obameter" is pronounced with the same vowels and stress pattern as "odometer".
I'm going to assume that it is impossible for all 500+ promises to be kept. But we'll see.
I'm going to assume that "Obameter" is pronounced with the same vowels and stress pattern as "odometer".
I'm going to assume that it is impossible for all 500+ promises to be kept. But we'll see.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
I laughed out loud, several times
Superuseless superpowers.
It's still relatively young and fresh, and hilarious...
my favorite is "left side levitation", with "13th bullet bulletproof" as a close second.
It's still relatively young and fresh, and hilarious...
my favorite is "left side levitation", with "13th bullet bulletproof" as a close second.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Christvertising Inc
I think that this website is supposed to be a joke... but I really can't be sure.
more and more videos
I know I'm putting up a lot of videos lately. These two will be the last for a while:
I got a kick out of this one because it's so wonderfully produced. Brought me back to my younger days living in southern italy. I can barely understand what he's singing (the dialect is just odd, I'm not sure that it's napolitan).
and this one was hilarious because if you've ever spend a few minutes watching cspan you know it just feels like the realm of possibility is being scratched (hat tip to klinton):
Congress Debates Adding Elaborate Dance To Obama's Inauguration Ceremony
I got a kick out of this one because it's so wonderfully produced. Brought me back to my younger days living in southern italy. I can barely understand what he's singing (the dialect is just odd, I'm not sure that it's napolitan).
and this one was hilarious because if you've ever spend a few minutes watching cspan you know it just feels like the realm of possibility is being scratched (hat tip to klinton):
Congress Debates Adding Elaborate Dance To Obama's Inauguration Ceremony
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
the fine line between scientist and a-hole
These pranksters are actually good socio-cognitive researchers.
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