February 8th, 2010
Random shit from my feeds this morning:
SciAm: Rapid Thinking Makes People Happy – key here is fast and varied thinking; fast and repetitive tends to lead to anxiety. (This one courtesy of Mark Seifert).
NYT: Kindle Books in Snack Sizes – firm called FT Press is producing shorter digital-only works for $2.99 or less, mostly professional information. Be interesting to see if the shorter format for digital stuff takes hold.
New Scientist has a fucking fantastic article titled Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge.
In 2008, for instance, it emerged that the US had “forgotten” how to make a secret ingredient of some nuclear warheads, dubbed Fogbank. Adequate records had not been kept and all the key personnel had retired or left the agency responsible. The fiasco ended up adding $69 million to the cost of a warhead refurbishment programme.
What’s in a name? Look at Fogbank.
Also thinking: one of the points made is that the more copies there are of something, the more likely it is to survive global catastrophe. This, my friends, is the argument I’m going to use to justify torrenting for now and evermore (or until a better argument comes along). I’m just helping prepare for an infopocalypse!
Next threat: Surgically implanted suicide bombs.
Tags: apocalypse, digital publishing, happiness, information, kindle, neurology, postapocalypse, publishing, terrorism, thinking
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January 18th, 2010
“I don’t do this kind of work,” I told the CIA Domestic Station Chief. “I’m a journalist.”
“Bullshit! It’s the same thing, except this time you’re just publishing to a more exclusive audience.” He had been sitting on my couch when I got out of the shower. Strolling naked toward the bedroom to find some rags to throw on, I didn’t bother covering up when I saw him. Getting an eyeful of me was fitting punishment for breaking in.
“That audience being your agency?”
“Precisely. It’s either that, or we drop you naked and slathered in butter in the middle of Baghdad.”
What could I say to that?
So the next day there I was nude and sporting a shiny butter sheen in the middle of what used to be the Green Zone…
Tags: Fiction, hiroshima jones, writing
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January 16th, 2010
This is what I want to do. I want to start a worldwide prepaid cellphone company where you get a certain number of minutes for using the company’s integrated “Strangerline” and talk to a complete stranger for a few minutes. Running low on cash and cellphone minutes? Dial “STRANGER” and you get credited one minute to your account for every minute you talk to a stranger. The system’s randomized, so you might be talking to someone a block over or across the ocean.
Small worldism. Bringing people together. Making it attractive and useful, a good time investment for people concerned along those lines.
Lots of problems, I know, especially people who might abuse the system to harass or offend. But I dig this idea. Do you?
Tags: communicating, Ideas, technology
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January 14th, 2010
Or more precisely, wants you to go vote for her profile here: http://www.artistswanted.org/KatieWest (the page loads somewhat slowly, but please be patient with it!). Preferably five stars, if you’re so inclined.
Katie’s an incredible photographer (especially with her self-portrait work) and great writer, and all-around awesome person, and I’d appreciate it muchly. You’ll get a gold star for the day AND a kiss. If you want one. If the kiss is a dealbreaker consider it stricken. You’ll get a cookie instead, or something. You want a cookie? We all want a cookie. Go vote.
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January 5th, 2010
So, New Year’s Eve (and consequently, the moon that took us into 2010) was a blue moon. According to Philip Hiscock, one of the earliest known references to blue moons connects them directly to absurdities and impossibilities.
The earliest references to a blue moon are in a phrase remarkably like early references to the moon’s “green cheese.” Both phrases were used as examples of obvious absurdities about which there could be no argument. Four hundred years ago, if someone said, “He would argue the moon was blue,” the average sixteenth century man would take it the way we understand, “He’d argue that black is white.” This understanding of a blue moon being absurd (the first meaning) led eventually to a second meaning, that of “never.” To say that something would happen when the moon turned blue was like saying that it would happen on Tib’s Eve (at least before Tib got a day near Christmas assigned to her). Or that it would be on the Twelfth of Never
I don’t know how your year has started out (and I’d love for you to tell me in comments below), but mine’s gone incredibly weird already. Not bad, not tragic, just peppered with absurdities. All modern studies I’ve read about full moons tend to dispel the notion that they’re harbingers of craziness; mental hospitals don’t see higher admission, for example. Working in emergency services I admit that we fear full moons, because anecdotally we do see stranger events and higher call volumes. If I apply a similar premise to this blue moon business it means that even if there’s no global effect I can still expect to see an individual one along my eye level.
2010 started off in Never, pregnant with absurdity. The manifestation of an impossibility, according to ye olde lore. Which kind of makes sense to me. I’ve heard more in the last few weeks of 2009 and first week of 2010 from people determined to manifest things they previously considered impossible. Resurrect dead projects, create new ones, make things that weren’t there before. Seek out avenues they considered closed off, talents they figured they couldn’t learn, skills they thought beyond them.
2010 is a Neveryear born from an absurdity. Maybe it’s just telling us to get absurd with it, create our own impossibilities. And maybe it’s telling us that it’s going to through in a few absurdities of its own.
I’m looking forward to it.
Tags: lunacy, me, physics
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January 5th, 2010
From the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology comes a study based around the question “Why are narcissists so charming at first sight?”:
First, narcissism leads to popularity at first sight. Second, the aspects of narcissism that are most maladaptive in the long run (exploitativeness/entitlement) proved to be most attractive at zero acquaintance. Third, an examination of observable verbal and nonverbal behaviors as well as aspects of physical appearance provided an explanation for why narcissists are more popular at first sight
(I should note that the link to the study provided doesn’t work not because I’m a lazy fucker but because the APA fails at life and never provides working hyperlinks.)
And from the same journal came a study about perceived resource depletion. People who perceived themselves as less depleted, regardless of the actual state of their resources, were more successful in self-regulation of those resources. This is kind of problematic. The conclusion drawn is that the less resources you think you have, the more likely you are to decide to say “fuck it” and whittle away what you have left. Hopefully I don’t have to draw a map leading you to what this means about environmental self-regulation (however, it’s important to note that this was an individual-based experiment, and things may work out very different on a group level).
The Journal of Forensic Sciences covered the identification of a human skull seized from an Ebay sale. Mostly about sediment and particulate analysis, but still worth a quick look.
There’s been a lot of chatter about a study showing no validity to the theory of auditory versus visual learning.
And finally, SciAm interview with a noted professor, author, and high-functioning schizophrenic.
Tags: character, psychology, research
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January 5th, 2010
Mind Hacks relayed some stunning graphics from the American Journal of Roentgenology, MRI images from a patient whose hairstyle was bound into a bunch of separate twists and coated in beeswax. The beeswax had iron oxide in it, which the MRI reacted to and showed this incredible flame-aura around his head. I’m gonna stare at this image for a while and try and decide just how many story ideas I can pull out of it, I think.
Tags: neurology, science
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December 26th, 2009
Tags: images
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December 22nd, 2009
Hah. Psych.
I do a retrospective post just about every year, right before New Year’s. Because everyone else does. And then I generally do another right around my birthday, which is only two more months away. How much fucking wasted time and energy is that? (More on that, in a decade-analyzing context, from Ariana Osborne.)
I could bitch about 2009 here. I could ruthlessly dissect and deconstruct everything that’s happened this year, analyze and overanalyze my role in all of it. Angst over what I could have done better. Self-congratulate on what I did well. But you know what? Fuck that.
Like a thread on one of the forums I’m part of (Whitechapel), I’m setting 2009 on fire. No bitching, no complaining. I’m setting some magnesium or maybe some thermite on the fucker and burning 2009 down to its core. And using that molten core and the twin bellows of my imagination and willpower, I’m forming an epic 2010. And then pissing on it to cool it down, or maybe just to get it good and mad.
Tags: me
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