Adam Wiggins

Give Way

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:27:38 GMT

"As a kid, you're not familiar with much. A yield sign is interesting, for example, and you notice it. Later, you see a yield sign, and can't even remember you saw it.

If you travel to Australia, and the yield sign says "Give Way",you notice it again. That's why travel is so memorable. Your brain filters less when you're in unfamiliar territory filled with new perceptions."

From a comment on Why Does Time Go Faster as We Get Older?

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Art Donovan

Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:14:16 GMT

Art Donovan is a really amazing artist.

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The Only Unpardonable Crime

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:37:57 GMT

"I am perhaps happier now than I have ever been and yet I cannot but recognise that I would trade all that I am to be you, the eternally unhappy, nervous, wild, wondering and despairing 16-year-old Stephen: angry, angst-ridden and awkward but alive. Because you know how to feel, and knowing how to feel is more important than how you feel. Deadness of soul is the only unpardonable crime, and if there is one thing happiness can do it is mask deadness of soul."

From Steven Fry's letter to himself, via Charles Miller

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Sita Sings the Blues

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 03:39:54 GMT

Sita Sings the Blues is a feature-length, animated film that I found unique and entertaining.

The creator, Nina Paley, wrote, animated, directed, and produced the whole thing. A film of this caliber could only have come from a Hollywood studio at a budget of million a decade ago. Now one (admittedly very talented, ambitious, hard-working) person can do nearly the whole thing herself.

It's licensed under the Creative Commons License. If you're not familiar with the CC licenses, recall the FBI warning at the beginning of most DVDs: it states that you'll go to jail if you give a copy of the movie to your friend, or show it to a group of people in a public place (a "screening"). Now, imagine the exact opposite of the FBI warning. That's the Creative Commons License. It encourages you to freely share, copy, and remix the work in any way you like.

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Ritualized Violence

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 06:46:15 GMT

"As a man, one experiences very heavy socialisation from an early age to constrain violent impulses. Agression is channeled out of us in every way (other than on the sports field) which is absolutely correct of course. Anyone who hits another person is a criminal. And all the more so with regards to girls – you never, ever hit girls.

[...]

In fact, spanking is okay (great!) because it is highly ritualised, that is, has associated codes and rules which define actions and limits (the key ones are bottom only + consensuality). It is okay exactly in the sense that other code-constrained violence, notably contact sports and martial arts are okay. These also allow and imply consent to violence-within-the-rules. The rules make the violence productive rather than destructive."

From How to get the spanking you want from Art of Authority

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Neurofeedback

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 03:46:36 GMT

Neurofeedback, something I've been interested in for a long time, is making its way into the mainstream in the form of videogames:

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The Oceanic Feeling

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 07:01:07 GMT

"This dissolving of the ego is akin to what Freud, borrowing the expression from novelist Romain Rolland, called 'the oceanic feeling.' He described it as 'a sense of indissoluble union with the great All, and of belonging to the universal,' very much as a wave or a drop of water belongs to the ocean. Most of the time, this is indeed no more than a feeling. But occasionally it is an experience, and a powerful one - what contemporary American psychologists call an altered state of consciousness. [..]

There is nothing innately religious about the oceanic feeling. Indeed, my own experience of it is quite the opposite. When you feel 'at one with the All,' you need nothing more. Why would you need a God? The universe suffices. Why would you need a church? The world suffices. Why would you need faith? Experience suffices."

From The Little Book of Athiest Spirituality by Andre Comte-Sponville

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Cell Phone Taxes

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 08:29:37 GMT

If you buy a $199 iPhone in California, you might notice that the tax is $56.91, which implies a 28.6% sales tax rate. California sales tax should be between 7% and 9% (depending on the city), so what gives?

Cell phone carriers typically subsidize the retail cost of a phone in exchange for locking you into a one or two year contract. AT&T pays Apple a few hundred dollars for every iPhone sold. State law requires sales tax be paid on the non-contract, retail price of the phone, which means your $56.91 in tax is actually against an estimated $700 cost of the phone.

Somewhat related: cell phone service fee taxes are linked to the area code of the phone, regardless of where you currently live. This means you're paying taxes to whatever city you lived in when you bought the phone.

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Everyone

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 23:48:27 GMT

"Many people would agree that drug culture reform is needed, but we must recognize that “the drug culture” now includes everyone. Modern life involves daily decisions about psychoactives. The option of caffeine use is encountered multiple times a day. It is rare to watch an hour-long television show without seeing an advertisement for a mind altering pharmaceutical or a legal recreational drug."

From Towards a Culture of Responsible Psychoactive Drug Use by Earth & Fire of Erowid

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Liberty, Justice, and the American Way

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 22:08:09 GMT

Here's to liberty and justice:

From Bent's 4th of July event page.

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Intentions

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 00:11:29 GMT

"Four different tests of 63 people found that those who kept their intentions private were more likely to achieve them than those who made them public and were acknowledged by others."

From Shut up! Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish them by Derek Sivers

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The Deal With Things

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:19:53 GMT

When you try something new - like a new TV show or movie, a new food, or a new card game - and you decide you don't like it, there are two categories your judgement may fall into.

One is that you just don't get its deal.

The other is that you get it, but you don't like its deal.

Figuring out the deal is part of the fun intellectual stimulation of our recreational activities. A process of exploration and discovery.

Jerry Holkins puts it like this:

"It is my goal to play a game until I discover its thesis. [...] Essentially, I want to know a game's intention. That intention is surprisingly close to the surface in games most people consider to be of high quality, and so I don't need to play them very long to discern it. I will still finish games that I have come to understand, but a large part of my enjoyment is bound up in this interpretive process."

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Flappers

Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:10:47 GMT

"These low-hipped gobbies never worry me,” she said. “I keep my cash straight and my decimal points in order. Furthermore, if some dumbbell starts hanging onto the cage I tell him to move on. They don’t block traffic outside my cell. Why, then, should they be starting all this plain-jane-and-no-nonsense business? They’ll be putting us in gunnysacks with nothing but our hands sticking out the next thing you know."

A quote in the San Francisco Chronicle from a female bank teller and self-identified flapper, circa 1922. She's fighting the power, vintage style.

From the Sparkletack podcast.

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Hardy Souls

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:27:28 GMT

"By 1935, when America set up its Social Security system, the official pension age was 65—three years beyond the lifespan of the typical American. State-sponsored retirement was designed to be a brief sunset to life, for a few hardy souls."

From The end of retirement

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Rockbox

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:33:09 GMT

Rockbox is open-source firmware for mp3 players - basically, a new operating system for your iPod, but one that can play superior open source media formats like ogg and flac.

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Argument

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 03:35:07 GMT

The word "argument" has a fairly specific meaning, yet we're often conditioned to think of its negative connotations - husband and wife hurling dishes at each other, yelling and emoting, no real communication going on.

At another extreme is what critical thinking defines as an argument: an assertion based on a premise. This has nothing to do with people or emotions, but is a tool of logic and communication.

Thomas Jefferson purportedly would not abide in-person arguing. He had a rule for dinner guests: they may state their position, then he would state his, and then they would drop the subject. He felt that back-and-forth discussion was fruitless: it never changed anyone's mind, only further entrenched the preexisting beliefs of the arguers.

I disagree with Jefferson on this point. In-person argument is extremely healthy, done right.

The key to accomplishing healthy debate - as opposed to unhealthy quarreling - is that the advocates for each side have to avoid feeling personally tied to the point they are arguing. The arguers have to be free to critically attack the other position with full force. For a position to prove its merit, it must pass the gauntlet presented by a skilled, informed, and highly critical devil's advocate.

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Shadows

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 07:17:08 GMT

"We see laws as nothing more than the shadows of our predecessor's customs, lengthened by the years to seem more wise than our own judgement."

From Fighting For Our Lives: An Anarchist Primer

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Some Good Games

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:09:58 GMT

I've done music and movies, why not video games?

Rachet & Clank

Master of Orion

Sly Cooper

Super Mario Brothers 3

Portal

Pax Galaxia

Angband

X-Com

Wizardry 7

World of Warcraft

The Secret of Monkey Island

Castle Crashers

Jax & Daxter

Simcity

Jet Grind Radio

Klonoa 2

Puzzle Fighter

Street Fighter 2

Battlezone

Warcraft 3

Aurora Feint 2

Tetris

Populus

Price of Persia: The Sands of Time

Samurai Showdown 2

Wing Commander

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Neuroeconomics

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:36:29 GMT

"Neuroeconomics combines neuroscience, economics, and psychology to study how people make decisions. It looks at the role of the brain when we evaluate decisions, categorize risks and rewards, and interact with each other."

From Wikipedia. This is right up my alley.

"[Neuroeconomics] measures brain activity while experimental subjects make decisions. Because the brains of all animals are "economic," that is, they have limited resources to achieve necessary goals, neuroeconomics experiments are not limited to studies of human beings, but have also employed apes, monkeys, and rodents."

From Neuroeconomics Explained.

Some neuroeconomics blogs: George Mason University's Neuroeconomics dept, and The Moral Molecule in Psychology Today.

Ambiguity and Pessimism Bias - Humans are hard-wired to anticipate bad outcomes when outcome is uncertain.

Oxytocin-Raising Tips to Make This Valentine's Day the Best Ever - Oxytocin is a chemical which serves double-duty as both a brain neurotransmitter and a hormone, and (we are starting to discover) plays a substantial role in human bonding. For example, it's released after sex (especially in females), and in huge quantities for mothers during childbirth. This short video outlines five activities which release oxytocin. None of them are surprises, but we now have scientific evidence based on brain imaging that (for example) sitting in a hot tub releases oxytocin, thereby creating feelings of bonding.

How to Run a Con - Malicious hacking on the human brain's tendancy to mirror apparent trust that is shown to us.

Why We Cry at Movies - Oxytocin may play a part here as well.

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Eye to the Future

Sat, 30 May 2009 22:29:18 GMT

"The make plans for the world of a century hence today based on today's technology and practice makes no more sense than it did in 1900, when a man with a prudent eye to the future might have worried about avoiding a collapse of the transportation system due to a shortage of hay and oats."

From Future Imperfect by David Friedman

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Stage Magic and Neuroscience

Thu, 28 May 2009 03:45:27 GMT

Magic and the Brain: Teller Reveals the Neuroscience of Illusion suggests that stage magic may provide insights into the working of the human mind.

And watch the embedded video of Teller showing the seven basic techniques of stage illusion - it's awesome.

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Government is an Industry

Mon, 25 May 2009 23:23:27 GMT

"Government is just another industry, where countries offer services to citizens, but it has some unfortunate features. It is a geographically segmented monopoly, and since all land is taken, the industry has an enormous barrier to entry. To start a new government you have to beat an old one, which means winning a war, an election, or a revolution. And it has very high customer lock-in: there are barriers to emigration and immigration, and switching countries involves both high financial and emotional costs. These characteristics result in a horribly uncompetitive industry, so it is no surprise that existing firms tend to exploit customers instead of innovating to attract them."

From Beyond Folk Activism by Patri Friedman

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Die, Flash, Die

Tue, 19 May 2009 06:00:04 GMT

I've never liked Flash. And yet, I can't deny that it's been an enabling technology for a new type of artform - Homestar Runner being one excellent example. That's aside from all the media its enabled, like Beatport and Youtube.

But I don't like the technology. The good news is that standards-based, browser-friendly technologies like SVG and the canvas tag may be getting good enough to replace Flash. Rahaeljs is one example.

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Clockwork Fetish

Sun, 17 May 2009 07:36:14 GMT

Extrodinary Clocks and Watches:

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Goodbye, Vehicle Ownership

Sun, 03 May 2009 17:57:42 GMT

I've owned a car my entire adult life. My parents purchased a car for me the moment I got my learner's permit, at 15. It represented the same thing to me that it does to teenagers the world over: mobility, opportunity, a chance to pilot my own destiny. In short, freedom.

I've been through five cars (AMC Concord, Fiat Spyder, Mercury Mystique, Ford Mustang, Saturn VUE). Each one was one of those tools that, like my laptop or cell phone today, I reach for with such habit in my everyday life that it starts to feel like a part of me.

But this time I'll be letting go of my vehicle, and not replacing it with another.

Part of what makes this possible (and indeed, wise) is that I now live in a dense urban area with reasonably good alternate transportation options (buses, trains, bikes, taxis) and short travel distances (making walking a viable choice in many cases).

Perhaps more significantly, recent advances in technology have made not owning a car a much more workable option. Google Maps gives bus and walking directions; nextmuni.com gives extremely accurate predications of bus arrivals; Taxi Magic makes easy to summon taxis nearly anywhere; and Zipcar and City Car Share mean that I can still get access to a vehicle when I wish to leave the city, or go buy something at Home Depot, or take a road trip. (Zipcar and City Car Share can be seen as fractional ownership of a car.)

Still, being without guaranteed, instant, 24/7 access to a familiar vehicle is a bit unnerving. We'll see how it goes.

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