thinkness - November 2003 Archives

November 2003

I am nothing more than a Googling monkey - Just wanted to give a quick shout out to Google and its impressiveness. In preparing to write that previous post about the study showing people underestimating their actions, I had no idea where to find any article about the study.... Posted in | 9 Trackbacks | 196 Comments

The Rashomon Effect - I'm reading this interesting book called The Hungry Gene by Ellen Ruppel Shell, which is about the biological causes of obesity. The subtitle of the book is actually 'The inside story of the obesity industry'. Either that's really misleading or... Posted in psychology & consciousness | 1 Trackbacks | 296 Comments
Bushlisted - Time for my weekly post! [Ugh. Not happy with that fact.] Yesterday I saw the show Trumbo, about a Hollywood screenwriter blacklisted during the Red Scare. Richard Dreyfuss ably played Dalton Trumbo, while some other shmoe not so ably played... Posted in political currents | 0 Trackbacks | 243 Comments

Labeling hypocrisy - OhmiGod I just thought of the biggest, most annoying hypocrisy ever. One potential weakness to the modern political school called 'liberalism' is that it can, at times, verge on arrogant preachiness, particularly when it gets to criticize somewhat aesthetic consumer... Posted in | 0 Trackbacks | 311 Comments
Color -- Rules of the dance - Another good example from this weekend, in regard to politicians' relationships with their campaign contributors: 'You gotta dance with them what brung you.' Sad but true.... Posted in color , language | 5 Trackbacks | 176 Comments
Color -- Looking down the barrel of the press - At a long meeting this weekend, someone, referring to taking on the media, said, 'Don't get into an argument with the guy who buys ink by the barrel.' Great saying, but we were talking about this in close proximity to... Posted in color , language | 0 Trackbacks | 175 Comments
McD's bitching -- a Kroc of shit - McDonald's is complaining about the Merriam-Webster dictionary's addition of McJob, meaning dead-end drudgery. They say it's a slap in the face to thousands of employees, and possibly a violation of the company's trademark on 'McJobs', a decade-old program to give... Posted in language | 0 Trackbacks | 205 Comments

Personalized earfoolery - So I figure that Nirotek, the company that makes the one-speaker surround-sound system, has some very complicated algorithm that translates conventional waveforms designed to go to five farflung speakers into direction-specific waveforms coming from one speaker unit located in one... Posted in | 9 Trackbacks | 165 Comments
Earfoolery - In college, I took a class in which I learned about this particular practice called binaural recording where 'they' put microphones inside the ears of fairly detailed, simulated human heads. What the mics measure is how sound waves arriving at... Posted in | 0 Trackbacks | 405 Comments

Pastime politics - Mickey Kaus brings up an interesting comparison of the presidential election to game 7 of the American League Championship Series between the Yankees and Red Sox. The important point here, if you're not a baseball fan, is that Pedro Martinez... Posted in political currents | 7 Trackbacks | 206 Comments

Color -- homosexual dilettantism - According to this article on how society has viewed homosexuality, Voltaire once experimented with homosexual sex, just to see what it was like. When his devoted-homosexual partner entreated him to repeat the experiment -- surely for the sake of science... Posted in color , language | 4 Trackbacks | 215 Comments

The meaning of umami - My interest in umami wouldn't be an obsession if it stopped there [see previous post]. There's so much more to the story. First of all, I suspect that umami is of particular importance to vegetarians. As a pretty long-time veggie,... Posted in ooh mommy | 3 Trackbacks | 231 Comments
Umami - I'm obsessed with umami. What is umami, you ask? Why, it is the world's most newly discovered flavor! You know how there's salty, sweet, bitter, and sour? There's also umami. Umami was identified as a flavor by brilliant East Asian... Posted in ooh mommy | 0 Trackbacks | 367 Comments