Ramblings & ephemera
From Oliver Sacks’ “The Case of Anna H.” (The New Yorker: 7 October 2002: 64):
I was reminded of a blind woman, a contemporary of Mozart and a most remarkable pianist, who, it is said, could no longer play after she regained some sight.
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After a stroke, he can write, but can’t read
Our eye seeks the [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: art, history, security, weird | No Comments »
From Oliver Sacks’ “The Case of Anna H.” (The New Yorker: 7 October 2002: 64):
I recently received a letter from Howard Engel, a Canadian novelist, who told me that he had a somewhat similar problem following a stroke: “The area affected,” he relates, “was my ability to read. I can write, but I can’t read [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, science, weird | No Comments »
From Celeste Biever’s “Language may shape human thought” (New Scientist: 19 August 2004):
Language may shape human thought – suggests a counting study in a Brazilian tribe whose language does not define numbers above two.
Hunter-gatherers from the Pirahã tribe, whose language only contains words for the numbers one and two, were unable to reliably tell the difference [...]
Posted on April 20th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: science | No Comments »
From Steven Pinker’s “What the F***?” (The New Republic: 9 Octobert 2007):
The mammalian brain contains, among other things, the limbic system, an ancient network that regulates motivation and emotion, and the neocortex, the crinkled surface of the brain that ballooned in human evolution and which is the seat of perception, knowledge, reason, and planning. The [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: science | No Comments »
From Adam Parfrey’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007):
I like the internet and computers for their ability to make writers of nearly everyone. I don’t like the internet and computers for their ability to make sloppy and thoughtless writers of nearly everyone.
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The shift from [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, Technology, art | No Comments »
From Mark Dery’s response to R.U. Sirius’ “Is The Net Good For Writers?” (10 Zen Monkeys: 5 October 2007):
But we live in times of chaos and complexity, and the future of writing and reading is deeply uncertain. Reading and writing are solitary activities. The web enables us to write in public and, maybe one day, [...]
Posted on April 19th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: On Writing, Technology, art | No Comments »
From Les Jones’s email in Bruce Schneier’s “Crypto-Gram” (15 August 2005):
Avoiding rescuers is a common reaction in people who have been lost in the woods. See Dwight McCarter’s book, “Lost,” an account of search and rescue operations in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In one chapter McCarter tells the story of two backpackers in [...]
Posted on April 15th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, weird | No Comments »
From Nicholas Lemann’s “Paper Tiger” (The New Yorker: 4 November 2002):
Ellsberg devoted a good portion of his life to decision theory, and made quite a significant contribution for somebody so young. People are still publishing comments on his best-known idea, the so-called “Ellsberg paradox.”
The paradox arises from a series of games involving colored balls in [...]
Posted on April 12th, 2008 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book | No Comments »
From “A-Z Retail Tricks To Make You Shop“:
Escalators - Multi-level Department stores often use their escalators to encourage you to see more of the store. Travelling either up or down the store you will find you have to walk half way around the level in order to find your next connecting escalator, as opposed to [...]
Posted on August 29th, 2007 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business | No Comments »
From Northrop Frye’s “The Mythos of Autumn: Tragedy” (128):
The moment of discovery or ‘anagnorisis’, which comes at the end of the tragic plot, is not simply the knowledge by the hero of what has happened to him … but the recognition of the determined shape of the life he has created for himself, with an [...]
Posted on December 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, On Writing, art | Comments Off
From Erica Goode’s “Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find: They’re blind to own failings, others’ skills” (The New York Times: 18 January 2000):
Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.
On the contrary. People who do things [...]
Posted on October 7th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Webster U: InfoSec Management, science | Comments Off
From Reuters’s “Chinese fugitive leaves cave after 8 years” (5 October 2006):
A Chinese man wanted by police on gun charges has given himself up after hiding in a cave constructed at the back of his house for eight years, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The 35-year-old man from the southeastern city of Fuzhou had tunneled [...]
Posted on October 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, law, weird | Comments Off
From James Surowiecki’s “The Tastemakers” (The New Yorker [13 January 2003]: 31):
… it’s one thing to foist a fad on people, and another to have a deep and enduring impact on their everyday customs and habits. In the late eighteen-eighties, when George Eastman invented the Kodak - the first point-and-shoot camera - photography was the [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, art, business, history | Comments Off
From Claudia Roth Pierpont’s “Tough Guy: The mystery of Dashiell Hammett” (The New Yorker [11 February 2002]: 70):
There is one section of “The Maltese Falcon” that could not be filmed, and for many readers it is the most important story Hammett ever told. A dreamlike interruption in events, it is a parable that Spade relates [...]
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Language & Literature, security | Comments Off
From Peter Norvig’s “Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years” (2001):
Researchers ([John R. Hayes, Complete Problem Solver (Lawrence Erlbaum) 1989.], [Benjamin Bloom (ed.), Developing Talent in Young People (Ballantine) 1985.]) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, painting, piano playing, [...]
Posted on September 30th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Teaching, Technology, business, education | Comments Off
From Bruce Schneier’s “Burglars and “Feeling Secure” (Crypto-Gram: 15 January 2005):
This quote is from “Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief,” by Bill Mason (Villard, 2003): “Nothing works more in a thief’s favor than people feeling secure. That’s why places that are heavily alarmed and guarded can sometimes be the easiest targets. The single most important [...]
Posted on August 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Webster U: InfoSec Management, business, security | Comments Off
From Clay Shirky’s “Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software” (Clay Shirky’s Writings About the Internet: 5 November 2004):
This possibility of adding novel social components to old tools presents an enormous opportunity. To take the most famous example, the Slashdot moderation system puts the ability to rate comments into the hands of [...]
Posted on August 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Social Software, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, history | Comments Off
From Clay Shirky’s “Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software” (Clay Shirky’s Writings About the Internet: 5 November 2004):
Learning From Flame Wars
Mailing lists were the first widely available piece of social software. … Mailing lists were also the first widely analyzed virtual communities. …
Flame wars are not surprising; they are one of [...]
Posted on August 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Wash U: Social Software, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, history | Comments Off
From Charles Platt’s “The Profits of Fear” (August 2005):
It seems to me axiomatic that most primary actors on the global stage are disturbed people, because an obsessive lust for power is itself a pathology, and in a competition among thousands or millions of power seekers, only the most pathological are likely to win. …
I think [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics | Comments Off
From Charles Platt’s “The Profits of Fear” (August 2005):
Game theory began with the logical proposition that in a strategic two-player game, either player may try to obtain an advantage by bluffing. If the stakes are low, perhaps you can take a chance on trusting your opponent when he makes a seemingly fair and decent offer; [...]
Posted on July 31st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: history, politics, science | Comments Off
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