on free will

Bat in Motion

2009-05-10T09:34:00.002-04:00

via this Discover magazine blog post. Bats are so gorgeous in flight. But quite odd on the ground - my favorite, the running vampire bat.

Vampire running! from Carl Zimmer on Vimeo.

How to kill a nocturnal mockingbird

2009-05-10T07:58:00.007-04:00

Kept up by a courting song of a bachelor mockingbird.

The odd birds that are up at 1am turned out not to be birds at all. The lone voice and the odd collection of calls could only come from one. Sources say that he will get over night singing once he's found a mate. Actually killing the bird appears to be illegal, due to a 1918 law (but feel free to dispose of the cute singing European Starlings). To get rid of the noise of a nocturnal singing mockingbird, one tourist noted online that they used a loud bluejay call and laptop speakers. But he isn't so bad.

He's back at it again now. Not bad background for coffee and pie.

Perhaps, though, he's drawn too much from the spare night environment that has more people noises than bird noises. One piece sounds just like a kitten, but probably isn't. Another is definitely a cricket. Also, I'm pretty sure that he frequently repeats his version of a car alarm. A few other pieces sound like car unlocking beeps, a sci-fi ray gun, and what seems to me like the turning system screech of a car that needs maintenance. I can't identify the noise of a car starting, but I feel like it should be there.

Wikipedia tells me that Darwin originally expressed doubts about the immutability of species while considering the variations in Mockingbirds he saw in South America and the Galapogos. The Mockingbird came before his finches.

updating things

2008-10-05T03:38:00.005-04:00

as usual, posts are not fixed once posted. when i get into a time-wasting mode, i edit edit edit. so recent stuff likely changed a bit, hopefully in a good direction. but often just with the addition of extraneous links.

listening to: the Große Fuge (man, I wish I felt like this sometimes; well maybe not that cheesy), Godowsky etudes, and the Well-Tempered Clavier Book II (Fisher).

Bacon - it embetters your vittles!

2008-10-05T02:40:00.003-04:00

Bacon: the modern elixir (that is if your religion or political party doesn't forbid pork).

Here's a recipe that shows that bacon fat can make potatoes tastier. This can be seen as a proof of principle; others have likely extended this bacon-fat improvement into many varied foodstuff recipes.

This reminds me that i never partook in the purchasing of chocolate mit bacon at wholefoods while at UCLA. Others said it was tasty... a project for tomorrow's shopping, I think.

did anyone else know they can get an amphetamine patch?

2008-09-28T02:51:00.016-04:00

It's called Daytrana, a patch version of Ritalin aka methylphenidate. This is sortof crazy, but it does seem a natural extension from a nicotine patch to a meth one.

This smart patch is targeted at children, naturally, who don't like to eat pills*. You can read about Daytrana on Wikipedia. In great wiki-flack form, the entry closes by noting that "Daytrana continues this progression toward greater abuse resistance by providing a non-oral, non-granulated package that can be removed at will." Of course this is a huge advance. If you feel addiction creeping up on you, just pull the patch right off.

Daytrana - a "Methylphenidate Transdermal System" (MTS) - was first known as MethyPatch. I wonder why that didn't make it through PR? (mother to ADHD child: "Here Tommy, come and get a new MethyPatch for your arm to replace that old spent smart sticker.")

But I probably don't know how useful this product could be. Helpfully, Shire pharma provides parents' accounts of drug effectiveness. I like the one about Jimmy, with the funny anecdote about the time Jimmy stuck his smart sticker in the cat's ear "to make Fluffy a genius". Just kidding.** Although I'm pretty sure there have been cases where the child receiving treatment shared the patch with a friend.

Anyway, don't forget to sign up for your free 30-day Daytrana trial. Watch out for recalls, as in 2008 some lots were pulled from the market because it seems that the sticker backing was hard to pull off. No reported ODs, so no biggie.

Seriously, though, no one really knows the costs of medicating very young children with strong dopaminergic drugs. I would bet that their brains do not develop normally, although that may not be a bad thing. There's lots of research left to do here, and also on adult ADHD, which isn't even easily DSMIV-diagnosable (not to say that I endorse the DSMIV).

* I never liked taking pills as a kid, either. For a long time I used to mush any pills I needed to take into refried beans. How that made the them easier to ingest, I have no idea. I still have a vivid memory of these cheap canned beans with chalky pills. You can bet that my memoir will begin with me sitting in a old-folks home, eating my mush of beans and pills, and suddenly I'll be pulled back the world of my childhood...

** Don't sue me for libel! This example NOT taken from an actual personal account.

my t-shirts, post #1

2008-08-31T23:54:00.004-04:00

Lets start a new series on my numerous self-designed t-shirts* with the one that I wore today.

I didn't come up with the text myself. Berkeley restrooms, on campus or in coffee shops (a moment of silence for the late Wall Berlin), were full of crazy rantings and a few coherent ones (and crazy responses to the coherent ones, etc). In my opinion, nothing tops the spare graffiti in the Moses, the home of the Philosophy department - it's probably written by crazy people actually on their way to Ph.D.s. The tshirt text was scrawled by the urinal in the upper floor men's room in the Philosophy building at UC Berkeley. Years later I have finally memorialized it in print, after testing out the idea in numerous bar conversation. I've no idea if the writing is still there today.

Perusing the world's restrooms, you might see Nietzsche's "God is dead" written here and there - or whatever the local translation of "Gott ist tot" may be. Everyone loves that bit of old Friedrich. And sometimes this will be followed by the bland addition, "Nitzsche is dead (God)."*

The Berkeley version, however, with it's delicious taboo-breaking and associated smells and taste, is incomparable.

God is dead

Necrophiliacs rejoice

When I walk down the street with this on, I often feel like people are ogling my breasts, but then I remember what I'm wearing. Though I'm betting that half the population doesn't know what necrophilia is (make that half the population of New York. Back home in Nebraska, perhaps 90%). Back in Berkeley this spring, I wore this shirt during my sprint from eating to more eating, a girl working at Gregoire said that it had made her day. That was pretty sweet. Also, a professor I work with appreciatively(?) said the shirt was "disgusting."

* only LA hipsters were harmed in the creation of this fitted t-shirt. Printed via CafePress - I think this is the link to my correct storefront (cafepress is down right now).

** it is a good question but perhaps beyond the realm of science to test whether Nietzsche is not dead, but just suffering a nightmare of eternal recurrence. Perhaps he's stuck somewhere between here and Mars?

The mango nectarine

2008-08-30T19:56:00.002-04:00

I miss California's cornucopia of fruit oh so much. But this summer the grocery store on my block - which has almost everything except really diverse produce (they haven't had tangelos for months until last week!) - threw in a few sweet gems that I had never heard of before.

The best so far has been the mango nectarine. These yellow-green fruits first appeared at $6.99/lb, though, so I definitely avoided them. Until late one night when I came off the 1 still a bit buzzed. Even the cashier commented on how expensive the fruit was. I took my conquest - just one! - immediately to my room.

This was one of the most luscious, delicious fruits that I have ever had. Calling it "mango" probably accounted for half of the flavors I thought I detected (placebo flavors), but no matter. The texture was not like a nectarine, but more like a non-stringy Nam Doc mango - with edible flesh! I actually kept the fruit's sticker - like this one - stuck to the inside of my wallet as some kind of reminder (I forget names really easily).

I've read that mango nectarines bruise easily, don't preserve very long, and only have a short season, all of which probably accounts for their rarity. And they seem pretty variable (not unlike most other fruits, pitted or otherwise), as a month later the store had them for only $2.99/lb. I jumped on this and got a few, but they were more bruised, less flavorful, and a bit stringy. I'm still hooked from the first one I had, though, so next time they arrive, I'll definitely put out three bucks for another amazing yellow-green half pound.

convention colors

2008-08-30T19:26:00.003-04:00

While the last night of the convention was grand because of the speeches, I wasn't in much of a mood to be affected by them or get misty (I can usually get choked up over anything.). Perhaps a bad mix of beer and caffeine and a so-so experience at a piano recital at Le Poisson Rouge was to blame.

Anyway. What really caught my attention Thursday night was the horrible mix of a yellow-orange lit grid facade behind Obama and his skin color. Imagining the clips of the speech playing later with this anti-designed combination made me cringe. What about a cool blue? or pink? I head that the dems had to get some generic convention planners to throw this together because the primary fight didn't leave much time, but I still assumed that the Obama campaign was omniscient and omnipotent. Alas.

You can see the faux windows/doors below, but luckily, the nyu at least, in the post-speech front-page slideshow, was also conscious of the problem and avoided any ugly clashing shots.

The savior of the night was the divine use of fucsia. In Obama's black-striped tie, in Michelle's gorgeous print dress, and in the girls' dresses - especially the little one. This perceptual harmony just made up for the clashing stage tones. When they cut to the younger daughter dancing around during the speech in bright pink and fucsia, it put a smile on my face.

It helps that my brain is probably 10% devoted to processing this color, with direct wiring into my dopamine system (this also fuels my growing all-beet diet). But perhaps subliminally this combination could push a few aesthetic focused Hillary supports back more strongly into the fold?

jobama.net

2008-08-28T23:34:00.001-04:00

"Jobama's so phat, they sit on both sides of the aisle."

Enjoy the Obama-Biden site - some folks I know who have great foresight threw it together last week. It's kindof like "Barack Obama is your new bicycle". You can also submit your own clever phrases to them via the email address on the site if you'd like to improve it. Spread the word.

Radiohead concert review & photos

2008-08-17T00:10:00.005-04:00

OK, I need to get to sleep, so this isn't a review, but here are links to the Radiohead 8/8/8/ concert photos and videos (the date reminds me - I still have not watched the opening ceremonies!)

Photo album I: Ferry, Rainbows, Waterfalls, and All Points West evening photos.

Photos album II: Radiohead concert photos, stills all taken from the Youtube videos - though one of the best from the show, Reckoner, is all crappy and blank (and lower quality than the rest) because I was dancing. Check out people's videos, though, because the lights are mesmerizing.

Recent cooking - BEETS! and pasta

2008-08-16T21:40:00.005-04:00

I roasted beets last week, pushed by the nyt week of beets a little while back (it was really like beets 24/7 - even a beetcast). Yeah, following the nyt recipes are a bit boring, and probably everyone else in the city is doing it, but you know, they're easy and good, so whatever. I don't have time to be crazy and unique in the kitchen these days - I'm lucky to make more than pasta + tomatoes + pesto +mozarella. Or eat more than carrots, cucumbers, and hummus for lunch.

First came beet and endive salad with walnuts. Endives are a first for me - tasty, but kindof expensive, as well as tarragon - very unique. In my run of expensive greens buying, the store didn't even have chives, so the recipe was sans chives, and in the final analysis, had too much garlic and salt. But will definitely make it again (if in part to munch on lots of walnuts and feta while cooking).
Above - the remains of the beet and endive salad: the focal color of my brain. Nothing stimulates my visual system more...

I roasted beets last week, pushed by the nyt week of beets a little while back (it was really like beets 24/7 - even a beetcast). Yeah, following the nyt recipes are a bit boring, and probably everyone else in the city is doing it, but you know, they're easy and good, so whatever. I don't have time to be crazy and unique in the kitchen these days - I'm lucky to make more than pasta + tomatoes + pesto +mozarella. Or eat more than carrots, cucumbers, and hummus for lunch.

First came beet and endive salad with walnuts. Endives are a first for me - tasty, but kindof expensive, as well as tarragon - very unique. In my run of expensive greens buying, the store didn't even have chives, so the recipe was sans chives, and in the final analysis, had too much garlic and salt. But will definitely make it again (if in part to munch on lots of walnuts and feta while cooking).

Then Thursday I finally made the mediterranean beet and yogurt salad.
By today, the yogurt in the leftovers had turned a deep magenta purple. I spread it in some warm pita with some tomatoes (to lighten the garlic in the salad), and the results was the most alien purple food I've ever eaten.

From now on, I'm going to cook with beets as much as I can, mostly just for the color. Up next: finally cook some fresh greens (lost this batch to procrastination) and follow the beet breeder's advice and 1) blanch them for a few minutes and remove the skin, 2) slice, toss with olive oil and spices to taste 3) roast until done like roasted potatoes. Mmmm.

Tonight, dinner was pasta with cherry tomatoes and arugula. I've never actually cooked with arugula, either. Pretty tasty, and very simple, but nothing to knock you over with.

Olympic swim trial pictures

2008-08-14T18:55:00.005-04:00

Just in time for the, ah, end of Olympic swimming. Here they are.

From early July; it must have been the 3rd. My brother and dad were setting up the town fireworks, so my mom and I went down to Omaha for the trials. They had already seen one night. It's quite a show. And at that time (not sure if the games will beat it), the fastest meet in history, I believe.

Above left is Brendan Hansen, for the first race of the night, the 200m breaststroke. The top two swimmers advance to the games. The crowd was primed for a world-record-breaking performance and he was looking forward to swimming against his Japanese rival in the games. Only, he didn't win. Or get second. He placed fourth, and then slumped against the lane ropes (see the pics). Poor guy. And then the other day he didn't medal in the 100m breast either.

* But Phelps' 8-gold race now depends on Hansen's breaststroke relay leg. Fingers crossed.

On the right is Dara Torres, 41 - she qualified for two races the night I was there and then became a huge sensation.

Left, Michael Phelps swinging his double-jointed gigantic arms before the butterfly. Right, Phelps mid-stroke in the fly. Such a gorgeous stroke.

The water screen was mesmerizing. My brain gets really excited about stuff like this. Dropping water, bright neon green. Have a few youtube videos of it.

After we left the trials, we (ok, I picked, she paid) then bought more stuff at Whole Foods than I ever have. I was afraid there would be nothing edible by my current standards in the state, and I was kindof right. Except PIE!

Feng Li/Getty Images

Also, I would like to express my infatuation with the Water Cube. I really really like it. Das Cube! Look it up. I'd like to live there some day.

Observing my lab behavior would not reveal a scientist

2008-08-12T15:39:00.001-04:00

"The opening of more tabs than one can read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity, and this passion is the only thing that raises us above the beast that perish." Alfred Edward Newton

Radiohead in rainbows. All Points West 8/8/8

2008-08-10T12:01:00.010-04:00

A view of Eliasson's waterfall under the Brooklyn bridge, with a rainbow, on the ferry to All Points West. More to come, but enjoy the short videos from Radiohead from Friday that I've uploaded to YouTube.

Read: London Fields, Martin Amis

Reading: papers, and no longer The Man Without Qualities - it was pissing me off with all this history and "great man" silliness

Super bodega

2008-08-06T21:49:00.000-04:00

I returned last week from a two-week brain imaging training course at UCLA which was, most important for posting, followed by a drive up Highway 1 to San Francisco. Setting out from LAX in my little red Toyota Yaris, I drove by Santa Monica beach, where the ocean air first hit me, and then followed the coast as best as you can going around the base by Ventura. By Oxnard I was hoping for a supermarket stop to stock up on necessary delights.

So I stopped at the only place I saw, the Vallarta market.

Little did I know, the market was a supersized bodega, with everything you'd ever need to cook like you were in Mexico. A meat counter with all the delicious weird bits white people won't eat. Mexican sodas and juices. Fresh-baked conchas - a wall of pastries. Produce. And of course, a taqueria.

I was pretty hungry by this point, so I got a plate of three tacos, rice & beans, and a big horchata. Mmm delicious horchata, perfect after a morning drive. And the tacos were the best I'd had in a while. Spices even made my eyes water a little.

Though they were lacking in one thing I was searching for, because I'd been deprived for two weeks: hummus. A guy looked pretty confused when I asked him if they had any. No loss, though.

Apparently this is a chain with most stores of its stores surrounding LA, but alas none south of Mulholland Dr. If you're going to be stuck living in SoCal, this is at least one thing I'll envy. Maybe we need a store like this in nyc. A big box family-run Mexican superstore. With tacos.

n.b. - I finally finished making notes about my copious 4th of July pies and truffles - check it out below.

Freni e Frizioni

2008-08-04T17:00:00.008-04:00

The most amazing bar in Rome (in my small experience) and the time I had there makes it the best I've been to. Freni e Frizioni translates as "Brakes and Clutches"; apparently it used to be an auto shop.

Some friends are in Italy right now, and I wanted to send them to this bar which we found last summer thanks to our trusty little pink book for new money / posers, Wallpaper City Guide: Rome (which actually led us to some cool and cheap eats; the bar's website posts the page from the guide).

We sat on the wall around the little plaza, with me trying to fit in with the very fashionable crowd in my constant attire of t-shirt, shorts, sandals, and backpack. When I got the drinks I noticed a huge buffet of Italian appetizer-like food inside, but was afraid to ask how much it cost. After a trip to the restroom I dared to inquire, timidly approaching an uber-hip bartendress, who looked a bit taken aback as she replied that it was free. Free! Appears that this is how Rome works. Ah, Rome. So I brought some select bounty to the plaza.

Later we headed inside, where the bartender corrected my pronunciation of Caipirinha (the drink, delicious, but all alcohol). The bartenders were rocking out to some South American hip-hop and their drink-making was like a dance. We were so very much intimidated and not at all cool enough to be there. So we thought. But after a heavy buzz set in, who cares? Before we were too drunk to make sitting on the high wall precarious, we set off for dinner to get lost in Trastevere.

n.b. - perhaps a close competitor for best drink I had on the trip, but not best bar, came from the small city of Lecce, in Puglia, the heel on Italy's boot, at Prosit. Some kind of tasty pink melon-infused mojito concoction, if memory serves.

(map pic from google, top pics from flickr)

SoCal & joke conspiracies

2008-08-02T11:00:00.007-04:00

So I was at this little party of SoCal locals near UCLA and overheard a few kids talking about the so-called 9/11 truth movement ("Are you a truther?"). My first instinct was to give them the benefit of the doubt, that they weren't serious. Then I realized that they might be seriously into it, which scared me - was the movement a hell of a lot more popular than you'd think? But finally, I had the realization that these guys must be in on the prank - I had a vision of bored MIT undergrads running 9/11 truth as a huge joke, putting their minds to "discovering" clever evidence, dragging along unsuspecting folks (those too dim to suspect...) by playing to the mind's natural conspiracy bent.

This was a joke I respected, and for a second one thought I might want to join. Also, it's comforting to think that rouge hackers are running these crazy groups around the globe instead of genuine crazies.

Scientology pervades LA. Perhaps old Hubbard was just playing a huge joke. But he should have let everyone free after his death. Not funny to let the joke play on.

Cambria beach sunset video

2008-08-01T19:11:00.005-04:00

A little bit of the sunset I saw on the beach in Cambria on my way up the coast to SF from LA. I love the way the water mirrors the light, but that isn't well captured here. Unedited audio, for now.

i want to be the berkeley bowl when i grow up

2008-07-28T21:49:00.006-04:00

When I grow up, I want to be the Berkeley Bowl - the produce section. I want to give people the beauty and deliciousness of fruit and vegetables and fungi. When I see the rich reds of the pluots and the island of mangoes, I feel like I'm in heaven. So I want to be this heaven, of ten - ten! - different kinds of pluots, a whole row of varied heirloom tomatoes, four kinds of limes, endless apples, banana blossoms, hawaiian plantains, jujubees, chickpeas in the pod, black velvet apricots, mango nectarines, purple carrots, and kumquats!... I will be so bountiful and bring joy to so many. I haven't had a real dream for the future in a long while, but today I realized that when I grow up, I want to be the Berkeley Bowl.

California sunset

2008-07-26T23:36:00.001-04:00

Cambria, California. A few minutes ago.

Truffle attempt - 4th of July at home

2008-07-20T03:17:00.003-04:00

Hello from UCLA! (and now, belatedly, New York)

Instead of making a 5th pie, I wanted to make something very chocolaty for my dad. Cake was too intense after making so many pies, which left truffles. I've only attempted them once, with help, using the Bittmann recipe in the NYTimes
(there's a video; it's insanely easy).

But I thought I'd try a variant I saw in the Tartine cookbook (now in my possession! I, uh, am an Indian giver (no offense to native americans))
The recipe:
It calls for adding in unsalted butter along with the melted Valrhona chocolate and cream. As usual, chopping the chocolate isn't easy, but it much better after a few dozen seconds on the microwave. Here's a shot of the mixing:
After this, I divided the bounty into three batches, one for plain dark chocolate truffles, one to add in strips of candied ginger, and another for cardamom. Then the bowls went into the fridge to solidify a bit before forming the balls. But they came out as solid chunks, which that is not supposed to happen. I blame the butter for hardening the ganache too much. So I gave up. Until the morning I needed to go to the airport, that is - ganache into the microwave, and then into balls, to be rolled in cocoa. I only made a few, and didn't get any pics.

I think I convinced someone at home to finish them for me, because I eventually got a pic of the final product: looks mmm chocolaty. Think there was too much cardamom in that batch, but ah well. Next time more interesting flavors, and possibly liquid centers? And maybe no butter in the ganache - though at room temperature, this recipe may have held up better than the simple recipe, if only I'd have taken them out of the fridge sooner. It would be good to compare the flavor of the variant recipes as well, because the Tartine book argues that the butter adds something more than unfortunate solidity. Luckily I wasn't there to eat them, because they're so addictive (see: Trader Joe's truffle box, 2007).

Fourth of July pies

2008-07-20T03:07:00.008-04:00

Over the fourth of July weekend, I was back home for a week in Nebraska. I started making pies and crust and just couldn't stop. I almost abandoned the record-breaking quest for five pies in five days, but a little encouragement pushed me beyond my cop-out truffle production to throw together a pumpkin pie at the last minute. Two of these made up my main contributions to the fireworks extravaganza, as post-show rewards.

July 4th: Strawberry rhubarb
The rhubarb was imported to Nebraska from my local grocery store in nyc - brilliant red stuff. Rhubarb at home had already flowered and were green and likely pretty tough. The success here was the crust, which was very easy to handle; the method and the ode to Tartine's recipe deserves its own post later. Pie verdict: definitely runny, and the rhubarb was a bit too chunky. It was really good, but not exactly the consistency I'm looking for - perhaps the rhubarb needs to be cooked a bit before baking, as in some recipes.

July 5th: Hand-picked cherry
Our old cherry tree at home was ripe to be picked. So for the first time in maybe eight years I found myself in hot sun inside poking branches, reaching precariously for cherries. I got a few gallons of fruit off of it, some of which went into the pie. It's insanely easy to make, but I didn't get the thickener balance right here either so the final product was a bit soupy. Delicious!

July 6th: Bourbon pecan
By now, this is my standard pie - roasted pecans combined with absurd amounts of corn syrup, some sugar, maple syrup, and eggs, and of course a generous amount of whiskey. Plus some orange zest. Even though the pre-baking of the crust was abandoned after huge balooning, the final product was pretty good. Not my best, but who can complain about lots of sugary custard and nuts?

July 7th: Blueberry-boysenberry
Blueberries weren't as cheap in Nebraska as they were in nyc (3 pints/$5!), but my blueberry enthusiasm carried over enough that someone got a few pints for me. And there was a lot of huge frozen boysenberries in the freezer. Along with a trusty berry pie-making table in a cookbook at home (x berries -> y amount of thickener) it was quite easy to make. And I even got a little creative with the top, though I haven't succeeded in closing the sides, as you can see... but I like how it gives the excess space to bubble out without mucking up the top. The finished product was gorgeously solid and mmm so good. I'd make another right now, if it wasn't so hot in our non-AC kitchen.

July 8th: Pumpkin

This was a last-minute pumpkin pie, thrown together with leftover dough and a new recipe from the Tartine cookbook. On the day before flying back to nyc, I was going to quit the run of pies, except my brother expressed a surprising preference for pumpkin (surprising because his preferences rarely extend beyond explosives). I like to make my pumpkin pies by making caramelizing the sugar and cream, but that is of course really time-consuming. Finished product: definitely passable pumpkin pie.

Needless to say, everyone ate really well that week.

berkeley campanile carillon

2008-07-10T23:32:00.005-04:00

Keeping with the video posts lately, here is a brief recording of Berkeley's Campanile carillon playing The Beatles' "Hey Jude," recorded during my trip to the Bay for the Cognitive Neuroscience conference this April. It was a really beautiful day in Berkeley, starting on the steps of the Campanile and ending, of course, at the Bowl. I have great memories of the carillon concerts at Berkeley - especially the pieces I recognize. The Beatles are a bit out of the ordinary - see this one, and the carillonist here - but I remember some Satie in particular.

I'll be in California again soon (yes, southern), eventually driving up the 1 to Berkeley, SF, and the Peninsula.

Reading: Robert Musil, The Man Without Qualities, Volume I: A Sort of Introduction and Pseudoreality Prevails

Fireflies

2008-07-06T19:56:00.005-04:00

My first night back home, the fireflies were out like I've never seen before. Here is an attempt at capturing them on video (with music taken from John Adam's Grand Pianola Music).

and here:

and here and here as well. Like the brief flash of human consciousness...

Olympic swim trials!

2008-07-04T13:19:00.006-04:00

Pictures and notes coming. Last night we went to the evening semifinals and finals at the Olympic swim trials. I was just as mesmerized by the dropping water screen as the swimming.

Patriotic audio version dubbed over with Four Tet, "Les Soucoupes Volantes Vertes."

brain imaging fiction hits The Atlantic!

2008-06-23T21:24:00.003-04:00

You could read this new article in The Atlantic investigating the author's brain's responses to political pictures, but you'd be better off spending a few minutes reading and treating The Onion as fact. This pseudo-science brain imaging has just got to stop.

JPSP as soothing therapy and navel-gazing

2008-06-21T17:39:00.004-04:00

For the past few days, I've been spending a bit of time going back in time through the tables of contents of 'the' psychology journal, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Besides providing absurd uninterpretable titles and abstracts that scream for alternative interpretations, it gives a view of how the other half lives (the half that doesn't care about the brain... or mechanism). But primarily, I find it calming, an anxiolytic - especially the abstracts that are like peer-reviewed self-help advice (attachment style and relationships, anyone?).

Anyway, going back to 2004, I thought this abstract was an amusing and mildly meta thing to post. Adding to the finding that bedrooms and offices reflect one's personality, it isn't too much of a surprise that websites are pretty great mirrors, too. (Gosling does great personality work, including research on hyenas personality.) We all google everyone anyway (and ourselves...), so it's nice to see that there's real information to mine.

e-Perceptions: Personality Impressions Based on Personal Websites

Simine Vazire and Samuel D. Gosling. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2004:87(1)

Abstract: This research examined the accuracy of personality impressions based on personal websites, a rapidly growing medium for self-expression, where identity claims are predominant. Eighty-nine websites were viewed by 11 observers, who rated the website authors' personalities. The ratings were compared with an accuracy criterion (self- and informant reports) and with the authors' ideal-self ratings. The websites elicited high levels of observer consensus and accuracy, and observers' impressions were somewhat enhanced for Extraversion and Agreeableness. The accuracy correlations were comparable in magnitude to those found in other contexts of interpersonal perception and generally stronger than those found in zero-acquaintance contexts. These findings suggest that identity claims are used to convey valid information about personality.

Endowment paper hits the economist

2008-06-21T17:32:00.003-04:00

07-08 went two for two for papers in Neuron and mentions in the Economist (last year here). Now I just need one of my own prospective projects to pay off for next year, I guess...

This week's story is a more general one that touches on our paper and then moves on to talk about the discovery of the endowment effect (- overvaluing what is yours) and recent research in other species. There's also a strong link to be made between the endowment effect and the current plight of people selling their homes - owners far overvalue their houses, especially in a falling market. The story opens with a cringe-inducing quote from one of Ayn Rand's books, but it is otherwise pretty good, even though the don't mention the role of affect so much.

Summer solstice

2008-06-21T10:14:00.010-04:00

Yesterday afternoon, sitting in a cafe in the village, I realized that it was the summer solstice. The sun cuts into the cafe in the evening, and right about then they were playing some jazz that I found extraordinarily vivid.

After wandering through Washington Square, the sun disappeared below the clouds.

The Woman in the Dunes

2008-06-19T10:06:00.000-04:00

I finished reading The Woman in the Dunes, by Kobo Abe, last night. So much sand. It ends with the man in mixed victory and defeat.

At the end of the book I finally realized what the villager's plight reminded me of: ex-PFC Wintergreen in Catch-22, who was charged with digging 6-foot holes as almost constant punishment for disobedience. This is how most jobs appeared to me when I read that book, as pointless hole-digging, and still think that today (the majority of human jobs today will one day (soon?) be considered human rights abuse). I dreamed then that instead of having a pointless job, I would actually just dig holes. Nothing else, just dig holes. I still like this idea if the whole science/philosophy/farming thing falls through. The physical labor and connection with the outdoors would stave of depression, and the statement about the human condition would presumably keep me satisfied for, like, at least a day or two.

Listening to: John Adams, Road Movies

2008-06-19T09:57:00.000-04:00

And it keeps coming, it keeps coming, it keeps coming until the day it stops.

the writer's almanac

2008-06-13T13:20:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, I don't know what brought me to find Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac online. Perhaps a hint of a memory of commuting from Berkeley to Stanford years ago, when the Writer's Almanac would come on the radio. In the midwest I grew up with Saturday trips out of town that were capped by Keillor's soothing voice on A Prarie Home Companion on the ride back. The Almanac seems an oddity today; it reminds me of a quieter time.

I opened the page to the June 12th Almanac, which notes the life and birthday of Anne Frank. Reading it can't help but give perspective.

recent books...

2008-06-13T02:02:00.000-04:00

I've been reading again, at home in the dark while sunlight rages outside; inside my mind the light of summer becomes more and more faded, like an old postcard.

After more than a year of on-and-off reading of stories in random order, I finished Murakami's recent collection of short stories, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. This book was thought lost, but then rediscovered in California this spring. And it is gone again, now. The stories are not like those that I love so much in an earlier collection (the bakery memory, I'll keep), and I'm not sure why - maybe it's just me. They're still beautiful, of course.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy was a gift that I enjoyed. It took lots of time on the road and then now to finish - on the road, my mind wandered so quickly to other worlds that I never got very far. This is not a happy book - and I had no idea what it was about before going in.

I found a used copy of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater in a bookstore in the Mission. Used Vonnegut is hard to come across these days for some reason. No masterpiece, but no complaints.

Ian McEwan's Amsterdam was also a gift. After a horrible experience with a movie adaptation of his work last year that will go unnamed, I thought that this book could provide some, ah, atonement. Nope. I would maybe pick up another of his books if it was free, but this one is so trite, so predictable, and with stupidly absurd turns at the end, all masquerading as something more profound, that I'm definitely holding this one against him. "Oh, look, one character is a composer, so we can talk about music! And then there's deep insight into the British press and politics!" In retrospect, it read like the sketch of a B-movie script.

Finally: Compared to the previous book, I got so much more depth out of the only forty-or-so pages of Dostoevsky's The Adolescent (trans. Pevear & V.) before I put it down, tired of reading right now of a world as seen by eyes of an immature, angry, grandiose youth. But it is still great: "It's not enough to refute a beautiful idea, one must replace it with something equally beautiful..."
[As an aside, I think more people should read Dostoevsky's Demons - revolution with a comic touch. You don't have to keep worrying about missing some profound thread. If there are any, they're floating right on the surface.]

endowment paper is out

2008-06-12T22:12:00.000-04:00

The final big remaining project from my work at Stanford is out now, in Neuron. We've gotten a bit of press - the same press piece repeated in random newspapers, with the same illogical title "Possesion is Nine-Tenths the Perceived Value"?!, as well as separate stories in Forbes, the Telegraph, Nature, etc. Science's coverage is entitled "Parting's Sweet Sorrow". I'm not feeling much sweet anything, or celebration, with this one, though.

* update: we also made boingboing. though this doesn't beat the gawker post we got for scanning a nytimes columnist on our shopping task last year.

olafur eliasson in new york

2008-06-06T17:03:00.000-04:00

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his show at the MoMa is perhaps the best show i have ever seen.

here's a picture of a picture of myself taken with my cellphone in a rotating prism room.

it's done

2008-06-03T21:42:00.001-04:00

I can't resist - in all good fun: ding dong, she's dead (youtube). God save us from the nightmare ticket.

an introduction

2008-06-03T16:09:00.000-04:00

i'll refine this thought later, but for right now, a brief introduction. this blog is an outlet. i'm going to have to learn to become my own interlocutor. this is stuff that doesn't fit on my (languishing) intellectual properties blog. like what happens to me in a day. art. the city. photos. music. complex creative random events. brownian thoughts that ping around my head. with the reserved right to edit anything without posting notice. and as i'm wont to abandon projects, i'm hoping that i don't give up on this conversation too soon.

the title is a joke. and a fiction - i'm never going to talk about 'free will' - that's a subject for the other blog - except for this bit of silliness: the world is physically determined, or hey, perhaps full of quantum randomness!, so we can't get to so-called free will from here. but never fear - the computational unfolding of the world is incompressible. and strangely, it feels like something, when we do things, and enjoy things, and want things, and make choices, exploring the evolving future.