Twitter to the rescue

The power of Twitter Dooce spends $1,300 on a new Maytag washing machine, it breaks, she has a nightmare getting it fixed, and a customer service rep sneers when she makes a veiled threat to Tweet her woes to the world. Big mistake.

Read Full Post »

Everything old is new again

The Grownups’ Guide to Indie Rock Interesting insights (and anecdotes) from a 57-year-old guy who can’t decide if he likes modern indie rockers like Devendra Banhart (above) because they’re a flashback to the ’60s, or because they’re better.

Read Full Post »

Flauting convention

3 kids, 1 flute MeFi has a fantastic thread on the book “The Idea of Justice” by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. Here’s the starting premise:  Take three kids and a flute. Anne says the flute should be given to her because she is the only one who knows how to play it. Bob says the flute should be handed to him as he is so poor he has no toys to play with. Carla says the flute is hers because it is the fruit of her own labour. How do we decide between these three legitimate claims?

Much wonderful and witty discussion ensues (my favorite comment is from Alvy Ampersand: “I would break the flute into three equal pieces.  And then I would laugh at the tears of the children while I brought the fox and the bag of corn across the river.”).

But there’s one thing that isn’t clear in the premise — whose flute is it now? It says Carla says it’s hers because “it is the fruit of her own labor,” but does that mean she made it for herself, and now owns it? Or does she work in a flute factory, and recognizes it as one that she made (and presumably has already been paid for making)?

If we assume the former, then the whole premise is skewed in Carla’s favor, even though it’s blatantly illogical — why would she go to the trouble of learning to make a flute, gathering the raw materials, then investing time and labor in making a flute when she doesn’t even know how to play flute?

If we assume the latter, then her claim about the fruits of her labors rings kind of hollow, since she’s already been paid. Though if she’d been a slave at a flute-making plantation, that might be different.

(beautiful flute pic via The Music Store @ Powell)

Read Full Post »

Can’t you see that I’m on the Fune?

So, apparently Microsoft is entering the highly competitive market of smart phones (e.g. iPhone, Palm Pre, Blackberry) with the Fune. For some reason, I can’t see the word “Fune” without thinking of Inspector Clouseau (YouTube clip — go to 2:08 to see what I mean).

Read Full Post »

Female flirting futility

Female flirting futility

A study shows women can tell when women are flirting (as opposed to merely being friendly), but men can’t. From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, this raises the obvious question, WTF?

How did we get to a point where female signals intended for males are missed by the males but picked up by the females? Is female flirting some sort of territory-marking behavior, intended to signal other women rather thanthe man? Or has modern life just gotten everyone so conflexed and perpused that signals are getting crossed?

On a somewhat related note: Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature focuses hugely on sex –especially polygyny –  and not so much on other aspects of what evolutionary psychology tells us (accurately or not) about human nature. Some of it veers dangerously close to the kind of stuff that gives Ev Psych a bad name, but it’s still worth taking a look.

(pic — and shirt — via Zazzle.com)

Read Full Post »

The origin of “Origin”

Darwin’s First Clues National Geographic uses annoying 9-page format for a nice piece by David Quammen, IMO the best living science/nature writer, throwing light on what really got Darwin thinking about evolution (in contrast to the usual story about the finches):

Darwin’s first real clue toward evolution came not in the Galápagos but three years before, on a blustery beach along the north coast of Argentina. And it didn’t take the form of a bird’s beak. It wasn’t even a living creature. It was a trove of fossils. Never mind the notion of Darwin’s finches. For a fresh view of the Beagle voyage, start with Darwin’s armadillos and giant sloths.

Read Full Post »

Elites vs. tweets

How the Other Half Writes: In Defense of Twitter

Geoff Manaugh takes issue with those who like to put down people who write with their thumbs:

Now that suburban housewives in Missouri are letting their thoughts be known via Twitter, it’s as if writing itself is thought to be under attack, invaded from all sides by the unwashed masses whose thoughts have not been sanctioned as Literature™.  In many ways, I’m reminded of Truman Capote’s infamous put-down of Jack Kerouac: “That’s not writing, it’s typing.”

And in We Are All Writers Now,  Anne Trubek says Facebook and other technologies can foster creativity and self-expression:

Take the “25 Things About Me” meme that raged around Facebook a few months ago. This time-waster, as many saw it, is precisely the kind of brainstorming exercise I used to assign to my freshman writing students decades ago.

(cartoon via Neuroanthropology blog, which also has some useful insights)

Read Full Post »

OGX – Original GenX

Joshua Glenn says the last 10 years of the Baby Boomers were really the Original Generation X (and has some revisions to other traditional “generation” labels). I kind of like this — I’ve always felt out of place as a  Baby Boomer, though technically I am one — but I’m still at the trailing edge of this new demographic (born 1954-63) as well. (via Kottke)

Read Full Post »

Ferris’ wheels

Life lessons from real-life “Ferris Bueller” Some good advice here from a high school buddy of John Hughes, along with some interesting revelations, even as he tries to downplay the notion that he was an inspiration for the character:

I’ll admit that Ferris-ian high jinks were the everyday stuff of our boyhood lives. Ferris clocked in at nine absences his final high school semester. My own was a breathtaking 27. That might explain the dean’s pursuit. The key was, from the time I entered high school, all sick notes from our mom were actually penned by our sister Sheila. Even the real ones.

He was probably the inspiration for the car hijinx as well: … we secretly borrowed a car almost as ridiculously conspicuous as the 1961 Ferrari 250 GT in the movie: my dad’s purple Cadillac El Dorado (yes, purple). Put an extra 113 miles on the odometer. Hoping to erase that telltale mileage, we raised the back on a pair of jacks and ran the car in reverse. The Caddy did not fly backward into a ravine, as in the film. What it did do is quickly take off a clean 10,000 miles. Oops. (Yes, you bet he noticed.)

Read Full Post »

Newspaper-Web wars deja vu

Radio killed the newspaper star

Slate media critic Jack Shafer looks at print media’s war on radio in the 1930s and finds lots of parallels to today’s skirmishes.

It’s actually a review of a 1995 book by Gwenyth L. Jackaway, but that book was written in the days when newspapers were in their “just a passing fad” phase WRT the Web.

Some print journalists and industry leaders claimed that radio content was inaccurate, skimpy, sensationalist, and trivial and that its practitioners were amateurs. When radio news was accurate, they asserted, it was either a bunch of headlines from a newspaper or a story directly pilfered from one. Does any of this sound familiar?

Read Full Post »