Smooth Corroborator

Quick and happy

2006-09-27T04:36:00.000-07:00

Think faster, be happier.

2006-09-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

Animated bouncing boobs from Japan.

Of facts

2006-09-21T05:10:00.000-07:00

Facts enable you to remember broader concepts. Facts enable you to explain and justify ideas.

Memorizing is storing information as disconnected fragments. Remembering is integrating information into the rest of your life.

Two links

2006-09-19T08:10:00.000-07:00

Social drinking and social capital by Agoraphilia.
Teetotaler spotting guide by Modern Drunkard Magazine

Caper and the question of taste

2006-09-16T03:17:00.000-07:00

Having an aesthetic attitude towards life and everything makes one happy and independent, and there are few more chaming traits in a human being than an appreciation of pure and simple tastes. My ex-girlfriend was very fond of berries, and kept on picking raspberries even though I told her I suspected the dogs had peed on them. That made a tremendous impression on me, and I was instantly in love like never before.

My current favourite taste is caper. Spice pages describe caper as follows: The fragrance is spicy and a little bit sour (because of the pickling), the taste is slightly astringent and pungent. Yesterday I cooked spaghetti and ate it with capers, and nothing else. Simple tastes make the feeling after the meal a bit similar to the feeling after sex. If the food is too mashed-up, and one just devours it without stopping to feel the flavours, it resembles masturbation. Which is of course ok too, but seldom rivals the actual coitus.

Anyway, ones who cannot enjoy trash food (or music or art or bad sex etc) too, usually aren't just refined enough. By the way, today I'll eat boiled potatoes.

An ingenious machine

2006-09-15T02:14:00.000-07:00

This guy is Ibehem, a computer salesman from my favourite Iznogoud album, Iznogoud and the magic computer. I'm taking my first steps in learning Prolog, and I'm constantly spotting parallels with logic programming and the stories in this album. The second story, Road to Nowhere, combines traversing the graphs, spanning and pruning the trees and using taboos with a story that reminds me of one of my other favourite authors (besides Goscinny), Borges.

Anyway, in late 1960's people seemed to have less prejudices on what the computers are and how they should be used. I think the view that computer is supposed to give us answers instead of just being a passive piece of automation keeps on fascinating me. Ibehem's computer has an ultrasimplistic user intercafe (write your question on a piece of paper and slide it in) that would make Jakob Nielsen drool.

Besides, I found out the word for computer in French is ordinateur, which is one of the coolest expressions I know, only rivalled by Finnish tietokone, literally "knowledge machine". Prolog teaches that computers--oh, ordinateurs--should really be treated and used more as knowledge machines than computers.

How to earn more

2006-09-15T01:23:00.000-07:00

Some reasons why men earn more than women and tips for women on how they can catch them up by Marty Nemko:

Choose careers that pay more. Because of supply and demand, you'll earn more by choosing a job that:
is in an unpleasant environment (prison vs. childcare facility);
requires harder-to-attain skills (hard science vs. liberal arts);
requires longer work hours (executive vs. administrative assistant);
is unrewarding to most people (tax accountant vs. artist);
demands financial risk (commission-based sales vs. government job);
is inconvenient (traveling salesperson vs. teacher);
is hazardous (police officer vs. librarian).

Put in more hours
Be more productive in the hours you do work.

Ray on remorse

2006-09-14T02:54:00.000-07:00

I didn't know people's moral sentiments were this interesting until I found these cartoons. Via Raving atheist.

The ignorant and superstitious

2006-09-14T00:04:00.000-07:00

Interesting quote from Marieke Saher's PhD thesis Everyday beliefs about food and health (my italics):

in comparison to skeptics, superstitious individuals assigned more purpose to biological wholes, natural parts and natural wholes, they explained biological processes more often with organ intention and energy, and they regarded energy more as matter, a living entity, a mental phenomenon, and vital power. In addition, superstitious individuals assigned less purpose to artefact parts and artefact wholes than skeptics did.

The more I think about the last sentence, the more it seems to explain certain everyday phenomena I haven't been able to grasp fully earlier. Superstitious people simply don't know why and how the common artefacts are build and how they are used. It isn't just about one's world view, lifestyle, or personality. It's about one's plain ignorance.

Thanks for the advice

2006-09-13T00:52:00.000-07:00

wikiHow has tips for everyone. Like How to dissuade yourself from becoming a blogger and How to look like a model.

Ten years rule

2006-09-11T03:37:00.000-07:00

If every skill worthwhile requires ten years of practise before acquiring mastery, the quality of blogs should soar in the first years of the next decade. It would be interesting to see.

Doubt

2006-09-10T02:22:00.000-07:00

One thing I don't like in philosophy and humanities is the claim, that their main objective is to teach doubt. Nothing is easier than not believing. Believing is harder, because if the beliefs are false, you might end in trouble.

Teaching and education, when it works, is always just injecting the proper information into the students' brains.

Link-o-rama

2006-09-09T04:44:00.000-07:00

Flickr: the minimalism pool
Potato museum
One-button musician
Japan’s underground photography
Abandoned iron mines
Your concrete Utopia

Creation Pride

2006-09-09T04:36:00.000-07:00

Show pride in your anti-scientific beliefs, via Plasticbag.

Satisficing

2006-09-09T03:29:00.000-07:00

Today's word is satisficing.

Reading music

2006-09-09T02:28:00.000-07:00

This morning I read the score of the g-minor (my current favourite key) fugue in WTC1. I try to learn it by heart and play it in my head without any instrument. Beats buying an Ipod, at least economically.

Eat pork!

2006-09-09T02:23:00.001-07:00

I just ate some pork sauce. Everyone should be made to eat pork, at least occasionally. For obvious reasons.

Lin Chi Ling

2006-09-09T01:13:00.000-07:00

Lin Chi Ling (some more pictures) is probably the most beautiful woman on this planet. According to Wikipedia, she's 32, and majored in economics!