another novel
Or a subplot in the last one:
Jamie Paulin-Ramirez was a straight-A nursing student when she abruptly left Colorado last fall with her 6-year-old son and turned up in Ireland, where her parents say she was arrested this week in an alleged plot to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist.
Chatroulette, Texas
Other hotbeds of connectivity can be espied here.
indivisible
Check out this comment thread.
from the comments
On the other hand, desires and dreams can be simultaneously robust and fragile, and a few words of heartfelt encouragement from a mysterious stranger can change a person’s life.
Jihad Jane
There is a novel in the details of this as well.
Colleen LaRose spent long days caring for her boyfriend’s father in a second-floor apartment in Pennsburg, a small town north of Philadelphia.
But online, federal authorities say, the devoted caretaker developed a daring alter ego, refashioning herself as “Jihad Jane” while helping recruit and finance Muslim terrorists — and eventually moving overseas to try to kill an artist she perceived as an enemy to Islam.
ready-to-hand
“The person and the various parts of their brain and the mouse and the monitor are so tightly intertwined that they’re just one thing,” said Anthony Chemero, a cognitive scientist at Franklin & Marshall College. “The tool isn’t separate from you. It’s part of you.”
quote out of context
Ms. Travers disappeared by hiding in plain sight, living quietly with her parents in the house in Clifton, N.J., in which she had grown up. She remained there till well past middle age, through the death of her father in the 1980s and her mother in 1995. Afterward, she moved to a condominium nearby.
the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy
About the same time that Ibnale was handing out umbrellas, Brett Lockspeiser took $100 worth of dollar bills to the 16th Street Mission BART Station and held up a sign.
“I will give you $1 for you to give to someone else,” the sign said. Throughout the evening rush, Lockspeiser stood in the station, trying to give away dollar bills.
“Everyone though I was trying to scam them,” he said. “They wanted to know what I was up to. I told them they just had to promise to give the $1 to someone else.”
After three hours, Lockspeiser had managed to give away only $52. One passer-by did not take the $1 but, suspecting that Lockspeiser was down and out, handed him a pair of socks.
(via marginal revolution)
quote out of context
What follows is that the more strictly I try to repeat what Joyce has done, the more freedom I have.
(via marginal revolution)
context kills
A study on the effect of context on art.
“Providing contextual information led to participants perceiving examples of the various styles of art as matching less well with their internal standards than when no contextual information was presented,” Bordens writes. In other words, they were more likely to feel a piece conformed to their personal ideas about art — and thus more likely to enjoy or appreciate it — when it was presented without interpretation.
(via marginal revolution)
hunger, thirst, happy anticipation
In the never ending quest to sell, ad men are researching the impact of sound.
To figure out what most appeals to our ear, Lindstrom wired up his volunteers, then played them recordings of dozens of familiar sounds, from McDonald’s ubiquitous “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle to birds chirping and cigarettes being lit. The sound that blew the doors off all the rest–both in terms of interest and positive feelings–was a baby giggling. The other high-ranking sounds were less primal but still powerful. The hum of a vibrating cell phone was Lindstrom’s second-place finisher. Others that followed were an ATM dispensing cash, a steak sizzling on a grill and a soda being popped and poured.
The down side:
The Microsoft start-up sound has taken on similarly negative associations, because people so often hear it when they’re rebooting after their computer has crashed.
what might have been
“On average, bronze medalists are happier than silver medalists,” said Victoria Medvec, a psychologist and professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Managementv in Illinois.
quote out of context
To the formal study data, I feel I must add one last statement about the afterlife, passed along to me by Allison DuBois, who received it from an unnamed discarnate during a private sitting: ‘I can wear pleated pants now.’”
the spiritual brain
Scientists have identified areas of the brain that, when damaged, lead to greater spirituality. The findings hint at the roots of spiritual and religious attitudes, the researchers say.
New research has found that spirituality has a greater effect on the sex lives of young adults — especially women — than religion, impulsivity, or alcohol.
Redemption
Sorry I’ve been quiet of late. I have much to share that may or may not be of interest to ‘flockers, but this glimpse into the mind of my late Uncle Ray (through a letter to his friend Jim) may provoke:
The once “Bro. Jim”,
After prayer and meditation the Lord, in His wisdom and compassion, has led me to extend the hand of civility and forgiveness to you who have fallen so far from the fold. But I do not want to place undue emphasis on how far you have fallen or the depths of your depravity but rather on the Hope that shines eternal through His grace and redemptive power. It is truly grace because you, of all people, have through your sins, blasphemies and contemptuous behavior, earned an eternity in hell. If you escape your destiny only grace can account for it. It warms my heart to extend a gracious welcome back to the fraternity of the true believers, the promise keepers if you will. All you need to do is open your heart. It matters not that you reek of fish, gin, campsmoke and possibly loose women (could not tell from the fish odor) so long as you are sincere in your confession of sin.
Come as you are as we softly sing “Just As I Am”.
You cannot imagine how my heart swells to see a sinner return to the Truth as I see it. You should be aware that the Lord’s forgiveness is complete and total but mine is more exacting. Lacking the supernatural powers to see into your heart, I must judge by outward behavior. You would serve your rehabilitation well by inviting Joyce and me up to a Cardinal game before the season is over. That would be a splendid sign of an intent to climb out of the cesspool of degradation and self-elevation that you have inhabited.
You were once a good boy. I’ve been told that. By you, but it was convincing at the time. Open your heart. Accept this lifeline. Put on the raiments of salvation and join me when we celebrate for an eternity. Just put your hand on the computer and say “Bro. Ray intercede for me because I am lost and unworthy but I want to be found and redeemed.”
Jesus and I patiently wait,
Bro. Ray
Spiritual Warrior
These letters keep my dear Uncle alive for me. I hope you enjoy them too.
from the comments
On the battlefield, we call out to loved ones who are far away.
this unique 18-minute genre has its own requirements
From a Wired article on how to ace a TED Talk:
“I’m surprised to see that half the people here know my career in some detail and the other half don’t know who I am,” he says.
Science is fine, but not when it messes with our illusions.
If she had included solar power and African child warriors, it would have been so perfect a TED talk that there would have been no need for others.
Wolfram wraps his talk by saying that when it comes to trying to boil down the universe to a simple algorithm, “it’s almost embarrassing not to at least try.”
“Just because someone has an ego,” he says, citing a writer whose name I can’t read from my scribbled notes, “doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
color me ceo
For example, the color test shows that the typical CEO is more sensitive and private than the typical person and is less likely to be a perfectionist or to be dominant and more likely to be emotionally unstable.
Steve Jobs on Monopolies
Apple had a monopoly on the graphical user interface for almost 10 years. That’s a long time. And how are monopolies lost? Think about it. Some very good product people invent some very good products, and the company achieves a monopoly. But after that, the product people aren’t the ones that drive the company forward anymore. It’s the marketing guys or the ones who expand the business into Latin America or whatever. Because what’s the point of focusing on making the product even better when the only company you can take business from is yourself? So a different group of people start to move up. And who usually ends up running the show? The sales guy… Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever reason. But by then the best product people have left, or they’re no longer listened to. And so the company goes through this tumultuous time, and it either survives or it doesn’t.
state of the union
I find myself wanting to link to all sorts of political commentary lately, not so much because of what it says about the political landscape but because it scares the fuck out of me. My interest in these stories — perhaps warped by my own partisanship — borders somewhere between the realms of surreal fascination and unbridled terror. I love absurdest snapshots of reality, so there’s a large part of my psychology that responds to the state of the union with pleasure, but then the survival part of my brain kicks in and I think these people are voting, these people have — and continue to want to — run our country. Which points me to something I’ve thought about obsessively lately: the greatest detriment to human progress is us.
the opposite may also be true
A short talk on different ways of seeing.
(via marginal revolution)
slow low
It’s always a big let-down to me when the NFL season is over. But this year I have the Olympics and World Cup to look forward to. I’m saying this as much to remind myself.
chronesthesia
People sway backward when thinking about the past and forward when thinking about the future.
Miles and Aberdeen colleagues Louise Nind and Neil Macrae fitted 20 participants with a motion sensor while they imagined future or past events. After just 15 seconds, participants who were recalling the past had swayed backward an average of about 0.7 inches (1.5 to 2 mm), while the future thinkers leaned forward about 0.1 inches (3 mm).
what’s that?
Nearly 1 in 10 seven- to eight-year-olds hears voices that aren’t really there, according to a new study.
math anxiety
Student math ability was not related to teacher math anxiety at the start of the school year, the researchers report in Tuesday’s edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
But by the end of the year, the more anxious teachers were about their own math skills, the more likely their female students — but not the boys — were to agree that “boys are good at math and girls are good at reading.”