thoughts on things

I just preened at being told I look younger than I actually am... this is a first...

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 16:51:00 -0700

Today, with 26 glorious and fun-packed years behind me, I was told that I look younger than a friend who is actually a year younger than me.

My response really, really surprised me. I actually beamed! I preened! I flicked my frickin' hair!

It wasn't like I was being paid a compliment either -- they were just making a fleeting comparison. 'Who's older, you or him?'- 'Me' - Oh, you look younger than him...'

I can't believe I responded so strongly... perhaps I am more vain than I thought... or maybe I really am worried about growing old...

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Montenegrin exports

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 05:09:00 -0700

Zoom in on a little, diesel Volkswagen, buzzing and sputtering across the sparse, orange Croatian scrub. It's a taxi, though there are no signs or licenses or anything like that. Thinking back, I probably shouldn't have entrusted my life to a man with only a fistful of teeth, a vibrating dashboard and no taxi-driving license. But still, when you have to catch a flight, what are your options?

So, there we are, bouncing quickly across a rough Croatian road. It's safe to say that the Croatians don't look after their roads as well as their Montenegrin brethren. The road was hazardous -- you know, the kind where your car can jump left or right into the ditch if you don't keep a firm grip of the wheel -- which wouldn't normally have been a problem, but unfortunately the taxi driver was a SHOUTER and GESTICULATOR. Seriously, what were the odds? Not only was my taxi falling apart, but every time the taxi driver spoke he turned his head, leaned close so that his lips were only a few inches from my ear, lifted one hand off the steering wheel and BELLOWED into my EAR.

He didn't even speak English! I thought speaking slowly... and... loudly... was a British... tourist... thing... but no! So he's shouting Montenegrin into my ear. I'm keeping my eyes on the road, my hand within striking distance of the wheel or handbrake. From my limited grasp of the language, I can tell he's talking about Montenegro (Crna Gora), about how he's proud of his nation. "CRNA GORA!" he shouts and I can feel spittle landing on my earlobe. He makes a kind of wobbling gesture with his hand, accompanied by whooshing noises. "Airplane?" -- "Da! AIRPLANE!" -- "Crna Gora...exports?" -- "DA! DA! EXPORTS!"

At this point, he takes both hands off the steering wheel. I don't know if the car stuck to the road by magic, or whether it just happened all too quickly for anything bad to happen. He starts counting on one hand, while gesticulating Montenegro's main exports with the other.

"VINO!", a finger up on one hand, and a swigging motion with the other.

"MASLINOVO ULJE!", another finger up, and a sprinkling motion with the other.

"PIČKA!", whereupon he balls both hands into fists and makes a monumental thrusting motion with his hips. The car veers quickly to the left and I, with protean dexterity, grab the steering wheel. He doesn't even say thank you, just nods and smiles.

So there you have it, the three main exports of Montenegro, according to a crazy taxi driver are wine, olive oil and pussy.

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Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 09:57:21 -0700

via ted.com

Who knew that a woman could be so well spoken?!

I kid, I kid...

But no, seriously, who knew that life, culture and political geography, could be so accurately described using circle-shaped metaphors?!

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Paul Romer's radical idea: Charter cities

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:14:47 -0700

via ted.com

I'm filing this one under 'cool things I should try out when I'm emperor'.

I really lack the economic background to comment properly on this, but it sounds really cool.

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Is left-handed masturbation juicier?

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 07:17:00 -0700

I've been told before that my brain and its thought processes work in weird yet wonderful ways.

The truth is, I only share a tiny fraction of what actually goes on in this wacky head of mine. Most of it gets contemplated, researched and then filed away, only to be brought up in relevant conversation. But not this time! This time you get the raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness.

So, there I was... sitting... as one does. I wasn't actually masturbating, but I was thinking about masturbation. (This often happens when I look at my hands, for some reason.) I was wondering what percentage of right-handed people masturbate with their left hand.

Without being gratuitous, I think everyone can appreciate that some flexibility is necessary when it comes to gratification. But, at the end of the day, everyone has a favourite hand. So I got to wondering: is there a statistically significant number of right-handers that consider their left land the primary go-to tool for tickling the bits?

And if so, why? (I told you I think about weird things...)

Being the scientist that I am, I immediately thought of brain lateralization, where each half of your brain (we think) controls specific functions. The left hemisphere is considered to be the 'routine' half, where repetitive actions (speech, wiping your ass) and 'linear reasoning' (maths, calculation) are performed. The left hemisphere also controls your right hand. The right hemisphere is thought to be in charge of creative thinking and reasoning through novel (unexpected, new) experiences. The right hemisphere processes audio and visual stimuli. The right hemisphere controls your left hand.

You can probably see where this is going, but I'll continue anyway. When we use our left hand, our brain's right hemisphere is more active. It's believed that left-handers are generally more creative and artistic -- well, what if, by masturbating with our left hand, we momently become more creative, more attuned to our audio and visual stimuli?

I could be wrong -- it might simply be that we need our right hand to push the mouse around -- but, well, I think I need to put my theory into practice and get some empirical evidence.

Feel free to help me with this scientific endeavour, and please report your findings.

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Psychiatric diagnosis? Pah! Here comes neurological diagnosis!

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:37:00 -0700

via ted.com

Watch it, it's only 7 minutes. I think you'll find it unsurprising that most people have tagged it as 'jaw-dropping'.

She makes an incredibly good point, and one that strikes very close to some ideas that have been whizzing around my brain recently. Why do we use physical manifestations to diagnose mental pathology?

We actually diagnose things like depression, ADHD and autism based on observed behaviour. No proof, no science, just... interpretation of physical manifestation. It's crazy. It's barbaric. It's like using leeches to suck out your melancholia. It really makes no sense, when you think about it -- as the speaker says in the video: we don't diagnose a heart condition without first using the technology available! In fact, you'd probably get a medical malpractice suit if you did -- yet psychiatrists continue to diagnose children with reckless abandon.

As you can see from the talk, we now have the technology to scan the brain and deduce any extant mental maladies with excellent accuracy. It's safe, it's quick and it's non-invasive. Look at those happy children in the video! Marvel (or glumly gawp) at how many kids with autism, ADHD or any other learning disability might be suffering from something else -- something that can be remedied with non-psychoactive drugs.

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Schools kill creativity

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 09:07:00 -0700

via ted.com

Look! Another TED talk that agrees with me exactly!

It's always weird, when you have very strong prevailing ideologies, to find someone that thinks or writes or speaks in exactly the same way.

In this talk, he probably spends too much time being funny (but he is funny), but by the end he builds a fantastic case; a case that I think almost every sensible being will agree with.

My earliest rant on education focused heavily on empowering teachers -- something that I later refined into depoliticizing of education and school specialization. Ken Robinson's anecdote about the ballet dancer at the end of the speech is perfect, to say the least.

I had never considered the 'education is a 19th century construct for the sole consumption by the burgeoning industrial sector' point of view though. Now I can see that it's not so much that education has been politicized -- more that our societal values (or at least those extolled by politicians?) need to be reworked.

For further reading (or watching), check out Charles Leadbeater's recent talk on 'education innovation': http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_leadbeater_on_education.html. Basically, our current model of teaching with teachers doesn't scale to a world with billions of Indians, Chinese, Brazilians, Nigerians -- other methods of teaching are required!

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Chip Conley: Measuring what makes life worthwhile

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:14:00 -0700

via ted.com

The first 10 minutes (and that high-pitched accent) are a bit iffy, but it does deliver after that.

It's not really anything new -- he cites Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Robert Kennedy's 'What GNP doesn't count' speech. He even throws in a fantastic Albert Einstein quote, which I've paraphrasedly heard before, but never attributed to Einstein:

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

The point is, I think, is that GDP -- and money -- doesn't really represent how well we're doing as a society. I think the speaker is spot on with the fact that GDP is a machination of the Industrial Revolution, when almost everything produced and consumed was tangible. Today, with 65% of the world's money coming from services -- things that aren't inherently tangible with difficult-to-measure value -- it would be sensible to measure more than just our GDP and GNP.

There must be a reason there's such emphasis on making and measuring money though. Capitalism? If so, it's going to make it very hard to change. No doubt this talk only exists because of the current economic recession -- and in it, he talks about the previous recession of the dot-com boom-bust!

I guess, while we're all making money and everything's tickety-boo, no one really has time to question whether we're actually enjoying ourselves...

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Etymology: -phil- (φίλος)

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 13:55:00 -0700

Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. They are antonymic to suffixes -phob-.

Phil- (Philo-) may also be used as a prefix with a similar meaning.

via en.wikipedia.org

I think I've told you about my love of etymology.

For me, there's nothing as divine as true understanding -- and the first barrier to understanding is not actually understanding the words.

Now, admittedly, you could go through life without ever knowing the roots of words. Most people do. But the added richness of knowing derivations, the additional nuance and flavour... well, to me it's unrivalled!

Call me a nerd, but I just LOVE that little lip-formed 'o' that people make when I tell them the derivation of a word. Sometimes it's a vapid 'o' of not-quite-understanding, but sometimes it's of the omg-my-world-view-has-just-totally-changed variety.

To the case in point: philia, philos, phil -- Greek (φίλος) for 'beloved' or 'dear'. Now, you certainly know the suffix form -- paedophile, cinephilia, Anglophilic. But the prefix form... ahhh!

Philosophy! A love of wisdom.

Philadelphia! Brotherly love.

Philanthropy! Love of fellow humans.

Philanderer! Loving or fond of men (but probably after someone called Philander).

But the word I was actually looking up, which led me to 'phil', is Philharmonic. It's just one of those words that you see around -- but I bet you didn't know what it means. Until now! It literally means 'the beloved sound'. Very simple, yet I bet most orchestras don't even know why they're called 'philharmonic'.

There, done. That wasn't too boring, was it?

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Hire the geniuses

Sat, 19 Jun 2010 07:07:53 -0700

I've been watching Boston Legal recently. In it there's a character called Alan Shore who uses his passionate, mellifluous voice to devastating effect in courtroom closing arguments. In an episode I just watched he argues that the U.S. government should 'hire the geniuses', rather than public sector contractor cronies. It's not actually his best closing (his 'Free Religion' one is amazing), but later, talking to his buddy Denny Crane, he says it a lot more succinctly:

Hire the geniuses, not the guy who’s got the best lobbyist, or the rich friend who’ll take you to his quail ranch and let you shoot ‘em. Hire the thinkers [...] Instead of every Tom, Dick and Brownie, let’s turn our visionaries loose.

He makes a damn good point. You would be flabbergasted at the amount of money that governments around the world spend on bloated public sector contracts. Imagine giving 'The Steves' (Jobs, Wozniak, Ballmer) just a tiny fraction of the $3.5 trillion that the U.S government spends each year.

Just recently news emerged that cops in Massachusetts will soon be equipped with souped-up iPhones capable of making positive identifications in the field. I mean... what the frak? Why are police only now being equipped with technology that has been in the hands of consumers for years?!

I wonder what the world would be like if our teachers, police and other civil servants had access to the same technology as bleeding-edge tech-savvy consumers. Surely it would be good to put advanced technology in the hands of those that spend their days trying to improve society.

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Michael Shermer: The pattern behind self-deception

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:16:23 -0700

via ted.com

There's nothing new here -- at least for rational, non-mad humans. It's nice to hear someone (more qualified than I?) reaffirming exactly what I think, though.

The best bit -- the bit that shows how close we are to knowing what chemically makes us tick -- is the bit about dopamine levels in the brain. More dopamine = hyperactive imagination, see patterns everywhere and in everything; not enough dopamine = dull, sluggish, unable to make potentially life-saving associations.

That a single neurotransmitter can play such a vital role in our lives is scary. My point of view is that humans are basically pattern matching machines. We do carry out extemporaneous acts -- we do sometimes act without actually thinking of the consequences -- but ultimately, living life is a matter of matching objects, ideas, thoughts and people against archetypes held in cranial memory.

I don't think people realise that without accurate, rational pattern-matching abilities, we basically fail as human beings. Fail to associate a road sign with 'stop' -- you're dead. Fail to associate a pointed gun with 'stop talking' -- you're dead.

You can take the pattern-matching thing even further. Consider laboratory scientists -- specialist humans designed to spot very specific patterns, often at the expense of having weaker pattern-matching in other areas. The same goes for any specialist: they all spot patterns, or make best guesses based on known patterns -- a bomb defusal expert (circuits, wiring, smell, sight); a video gamer (peripheral vision, color processing); a lawyer (similar cases, concepts, human traits).

I need to learn more about how dopamine affects our rationality; it's an interesting vein of thought, that's for sure.

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David Byrne: How architecture helped music evolve

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 15:58:28 -0700

via ted.com

Not the best-delivered talk I've ever heard -- and he definitely loses it a bit towards the end -- but still, it's interesting.

I'm sure I've heard the artistic 'limited by the shape of the vessel' argument before, I'm just not sure where.

I guess a portable MP3 player is simply a tool. Much like a painter's work extends beyond the canvas, to the frame, to where it will hang.

And if you agree -- if form really does limit function -- then surely that puts engineers above artists.

I wonder if Michelangelo would've invented the chisel, if someone hadn't done it before him...

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Brian Skerry reveals ocean's glory -- and horror

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 15:33:00 -0700

via ted.com

... and now I want to go to New Zealand! And do underwater photography!

This talk's an almost perfect blend of insightful commentary, beautiful photography and chilling reality. (Eleni, this one's for you!)

Watch out for the bit on Blue Fin tuna -- I had no idea that FISH (not sharks, not whales) could weigh a ton. A ton tuna would be about two or three times the size of the tuna in the above photo, by the way... about five meters in length...

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Thermonuclear War

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 08:10:00 -0700

via youtube.com

I don't think people appreciate the power of nuclear weapons.

'Hiroshima!' people cry. Sometimes people even remember the other one: 'Nagasaaaaaaaaakkeeeee!' Yes, atomic weapons have only ever been used twice. Little Boy and Fat Man were incredibly primitive devices -- really, Little Boy hadn't even been tested before they dropped it. Fat Man had been tested just once. They were dropped, about 150,000 people died, and that was that. No more atomic weapons -- just research... lots and lots of research. Tests, displays of power -- but so far, nuclear weapons have never again been used in war.

Believe it or not, those weapons used on Japan were really quite weak: just 15 and 21 kilotons, or 15,000 and 21,000 tons of TNT. Little Boy and Fat Man were what's known as 'atomic bombs', primitive designs that came out after just a few years of research into critical atomic masses. Little Boy, the bomb that killed about 100,000 people in Hiroshima, simply shot a lump of uranium into a larger lump of uranium. Boom. So it goes.

But 21 kilotons wasn't enough. 100,000 incinerated or terminally toxified in a moment of brilliant, burning energy wasn't enough.

So we invented the hydrogen bomb. Hydrogen bombs produce anywhere from a few hundred kilotons of explosive force, to 100 megatons -- 100 million tons of TNT. The largest bomb ever tested was the Russian Tsar Bomba -- if used in war, it would wipe out an area the size of Paris. Blam: 10 million dead souls. The fireball from such a bomb would instantly incinerate anyone within a 3.5 kilometre radius of the bomb -- anyone within a radius of 35 kilometres would've been caught in the actual explosion.

Fortunately, 50 megaton bombs aren't feasible in modern war -- they're too big, too slow, too easily intercepted. Instead, we have fleets of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) that can strike almost anywhere on Earth within 30 minutes. You wouldn't even see or hear it coming: by the time the missile begins its descent, it's moving at 4 kilometres per second. These ICBMs generally carry multiple warheads of around 350 kilotons each -- some 10 or 20 times stronger than the bombs dropped in Japan. The Russians and Americans have missiles that can carry 10 or 12 nuclear warheads, called MIRVs. Enough warheads for a single missile to wipe out every metropolitan city in England or France... in just 30 minutes from launch to detonation. At any time, America or Russia or China has thousands of these ICBMs ready to launch within a few minutes. Thousands of missiles, each individually capable of wiping out 10, 20, 30 million people within half an hour of launching.

When people talk of 'thermonuclear war', or simply 'nuclear war', they mean a war where explosive devices 20 to 200 times the strength of those dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki are simply scattered over our fair planet's surface. Everyone would die. Fucking crazy.

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Brian Cox: Why we need the explorers

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 03:08:00 -0700

via ted.com

(I'm sure I know Brian Cox, but I'm damned if I can remember how or why...)

The talk itself isn't particularly convincing, but! The three quotes he uses! I've dug them up:

When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn't plan to revolutionize all medicine by discovering the world's first antibiotic.

Alexander Fleming (inventor of penicillin)

Cox uses this quote to combat the idea that we 'know enough' about the universe. The same thing has been said throughout history. It's bullshit.

Nothing is so dangerous to the progress of the human mind than to assume our views of science are ultimate, that there no mysteries in nature, that our triumphs are complete and that there are no new worlds to conquer.

Sir Humphry Davy (Michael Faraday was famously his protege)

Aaaand... an excerpt of the epic Carl Sagan quote (I can't believe I've never heard this one before, considering he's a hero of mine):

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Carl Sagan, on the Pale Blue Dot (Full quote here)

Now that's what we call 'putting it into perspective'.

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Bombing of Tokyo

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:32:00 -0700

10 March 1945: 334 B-29s dropping incendiaries destroy ~267,000 buildings; ~25% of city (Operation Meetinghouse) killing some 100,000

via en.wikipedia.org

I recently finished reading Slaughterhouse 5, Vonnegut's 'antiwar' (it's really not) story about the fire bombing of Dresden in World War II.

Vonnegut apparently got the numbers of the Dresden bombing wrong -- but still, people forget that conventional weapons can still be as destructive as nuclear weapons. Hiroshima was 'synthetically' large because it was actually left INTENTIONALLY unbombed -- the Americans wanted to accurately gauge the damage of Little Boy, you see?

Anyway, in the end I spent 4 hours researching nuclear warfare. Grim, grim reading.

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Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill - Wikisource

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 15:06:05 -0700

via en.wikisource.org

I've recently finished reading Churchill's war-time speeches. He's an immensely talented speaker! Don't be surprised if I start sounding a little Churchillian when I write -- in cadence, if not content.

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