http://dusk.org/adam Bursts of mental activity from a self-styled intellectual Sat, 06 Sep 2008 23:47:40 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en While traveling through France this summer, I had the opportunity to brush up on my French-speaking skills. One of my travel companions, who was also in the process of learning the language, commented that French is a more formal language than American English. The distinction isn’t visible in ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=213 An unusal tale of institutionalized sexism. http://dusk.org/adam/?p=212 “When I read a novel that I really like, I feel as if I am in direct, personal communication with the author. I feel as if the author and I are on the same wavelength mentally, that we have a lot in common with each other, and that we could ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=211 Saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona the other night, and really enjoyed it. As for the polyamory themes it contains, Lauren Wissot sums it up nicely: “Not only is [Woody Allen’s] latest celluloid psychotherapy session Vicky Cristina Barcelona a phenomenal work of intellectual porn, but it also happens to contain one of ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=210 “My creative beast is restless and hungry, and I’ve learned that if I starve it by arbitrarily limiting its routine, it’s not happy. It’s all well and good to cut the fat out of your life to make time for what’s important, but you can take it too far. By ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=209 Steampunk chat abbreviations. My favorites: -_Q Monocle. -O=O- Goggles. BTC By the cogs! WATT What’s all this then? I’m totally going to slip “By the cogs!” in my next conversation. http://dusk.org/adam/?p=208 “There is also the question of competitive advantage. Most nations gain their advantage by making things more efficiently, and at lower cost, than their competitors. To the extent that the French enjoy a natural advantage, it is in their inefficiency: They are the world’s most efficient producers of structured indolence. They ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=207 Plagiarism is a serious accusation. We’re taught this from an early age - copying an encyclopedia entry for your report on Zimbabwe, for example, is about as grave a crime as a 3rd grader can commit. Cultural episodes like the Milli Vanilli scandal reinforce this at an adult ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=206 Some other perspectives on stuff. Merlinn Man tackles the topic: “Ours is a culture based on the idea that whenever you run out of space, you should just pull up stakes and move five miles west. Then you can be happy. Is it any wonder that we seek organization rather than deletion ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=205 Still get phonebooks delivered to your house? Wondering what to do with them? One possible use: “Place under your monitor to raise it to the correct viewing angle when searching for phone numbers online.” http://dusk.org/adam/?p=204 My favorite new word: exonumia. Now I just need to figure out a way to slip it into casual conversation. http://dusk.org/adam/?p=203 “From basketball tickets to waterfowl-hunting rights to classic albums, once someone owns something, he places a higher value on it than he did when he acquired it - an observation first called “the endowment effect”. […] The endowment effect has been seen in hundreds of experiments, the most famous of which ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=202 Mismatched expectations are the source of all drama. http://dusk.org/adam/?p=201 All humans share a basic yearning: to connect with other people who care about the same things that they do. Perhaps this, more than any other factor, explains the rapid adoption of the internet. It’s a channel for people with unusual interests - interests too diffuse in the general population ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=200 Pluto is now classified as neither a planet or an asteroid, but rather a class of object in between the two: a plutoid. The debate over Pluto’s categorization is a reminder that labels are assigned as a way for us to divide the known world into meaningful chunks; but where we ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=199 Health insurance is seriously fucked up in the US. This supposed “free market” system is actually a perverted mockery of everything a true capitalist holds dear. And the link between health insurance and your employer is stupid beyond fathoming. Normally I show my dissatisfaction with a bad system via ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=198 Keep an eye out for filler phrases in your writing and speech. They dilute your message without adding anything. Here’s a few common ones: “so to speak” “in a sense” “at the end of the day” “to be honest” “for all intents and purposes” “without further ado” “at this point in time” “if you will” None of ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=197 Now that’s a pleasing graph. http://dusk.org/adam/?p=196 Forty years ago, the US supreme court ruled that a state law to bar interracial marriage was unconstitutional. Today we have a similar ruling, this time for same-sex marriage, from the California supreme court. The case for freedom marches steadily forward; I often wish it moved faster, but ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=195 “…if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done — I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul- ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=194 Web 2.0 seems to be trickling down to corporate America. I went to OfficeMax’s site today, and found myself kind of stunned when the page loaded up. Reasonable use of whitespace, decent typography, gradients, rounded corners. None of this would be out of the ordinary, except that ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=193 “If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would’ve come off the whole enterprise, I’d say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened–rising GDP per capita, rising educational ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=192 Wikipedia is turning people into rabble-rousing critical thinkers. I love it. http://dusk.org/adam/?p=191 I always enjoy Bob Cringley’s articles, but when he speaks of how schools are outdated, I’m especially impressed. Paul Graham has said that high schools are basically prisons, and I agree with that, but Cringley takes it further: all schools, from kindergarden straight up through med school, follow a ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=190 People around here love to honk. I used to honk, very occasionally, while driving in LA. In almost all cases it was to alert someone that they were causing an obstruction, if it seemed like they were unaware of it. This is not supposed to be unfriendly. ... http://dusk.org/adam/?p=189