Sickness and Health
I used to work in an office where they got furious with me if I came into work and was sick. "Why are you here?" they'd ask me. "Are you trying to get the rest of us sick?" They'd feel so strongly about it that they would send me home for the day. It makes sense because self-interest the motivator: getting sick is lousy, so better to let me have the time off than risk...
Deprecation of Utility
The print map industry used to be big business. Everyone needed maps to keep in their cars whenever they were going on long trips. The more detailed, the better, because you didn't want to end up someplace and not be able to figure out where you were. And you had to buy new ones every few years because sometimes things changed, and you didn't want to be driving around looking for Sao Paulo Street only...
Spooky Scary
Watched an old movie last night called The Birds, one of Alfred Hitchcock's later movies. A rather odd movie that doesn't fit so much with the rest of Hitchcock's movies, and falls more into the "nature turns against man for no reason" category. I remember watching this movie as a kid and thinking it was at times extremely boring and at times extremely cheesy. The horror didn't really seem believable, and it took an entire...
Organizing Photos
Every so often, a friend of mine creates a photo album on Facebook called "Random stuff" or something similar, the contents of which have no common thread save for the fact that they were taken by the same person carting around a camera with them. (I find these are generally the most entertaining albums to click through.) I don't take a whole lot of digital photos and I don't own a camera, but most of...
Memorable
Several times in my life, I've set out to make something happen that would be memorable. And I find that the harder I try, the less memorable it ends up being. Something that sticks in my mind tends to be unexpected, and the more effort you put into planning anything, the less likely you are to be surprised by anything that happens. I'll tell you what never works: trying to reproduce a past holiday or...
For A Better Beer
I met a guy in college who swore by the Playboy method of pouring a glass of beer. You can view the instructions here. (Note: NSFW) These instructions has turned the simple act of pouring a beer into a scientific process with specific rules. The beer should be served at 43-46 °F, the bottle (but not the glass) should be tilted at a 40° downward angle, and there should be three pours, no more or...
Looking Smart
There are two ways to appear smart in the eyes of others: 1. Actually know what you're talking about. 2. Make the people around you look dumb. I work as computer programmer, I attended middle school and high school, and I'm part of the human race, so I've met my fair share of people who think that #2 is a good shortcut to getting respect. You might win a few people over in the short-term,...
"I Get Paid Either Way"
The movie The Boondock Saints opens with a priest giving a sermon, in which he preaches about the evils perpetrated by criminals in society. In talking about their morally deleterious effects on society, he adds: "There is another kind of evil which we must all fear most, and that is the indifference of good men." I've had lots of conversations with close personal friends of mine in which they're complaining about their jobs. They range...
Structure of Information
Here are some (intended) characteristics of a book: 1. Has a single point of entry. 2. Progresses linearly from start to finish. 3. Information is organized into a hierarchy. Most books, you're meant to read from the beginning to the end, and the information is structured into a natural hierarchy; books have chapters, chapters have sections, and so on. Inherently, there aren't any good reasons for these characteristics. They exist merely because of the constraints...
TED
TED is a large conference where lots of the best, brightest, or at least the most notorious, minds in the world gather in order to present interesting ideas to a large audience. It costs a lot of money to attend and more to be a speaker. For the rest of us, there's a massive online video archive that we all can watch for free. Most of my close friends already know about TED, but to...