People are dumb. If they hear something that is unclear or ambiguous, they will hear whatever they want to hear, or whatever they are told to hear. And I don’t mean they’ll interpret “nice shoes” as a genuine comment when it was meant sarcastically; I mean people will actually hear completely different words depending on [...]
Archive for September, 2007
Your Brain Will Betray You
Posted in psychology on September 16, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Book Review: I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson
Posted in book reviews on September 10, 2007 | 4 Comments »
I Am Legend is a difficult book to categorize. At first glance, it’s a vampire novel; an accurate characterization, because yeah, there are vampires in it. But the deeper meaning and metaphors behind them, the structure of the story, and the situation the main character finds himself in, make it feel more like a zombie [...]
Magnets: Beyond Holding Things to Fridges
Posted in general science, psychology, real life, technology on September 7, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Some random but fascinating tidbits that I’ve learned while writing my comps today: There are over fifty known sensory systems that have been identified in living things. Why, then, is a “sixth sense” seen as a far-out impossibility? The genome of bacteria that can sense magnetic fields is only about 4.3 megabytes. All the information [...]
Rotten Apple
Posted in technology on September 5, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Is it just me, or are Apple’s new iPods sorta disappointing? The Shuffle hasn’t changed. The Nano does video and has a new interface, but looks fat and ugly (best comment I’ve seen about it: “does it do the truffle shuffle?”). What’s now called the “Classic” has the new interface and looks pretty good, and [...]
