Misheard
I always thought it was “threw the rock away”. Mykala corrected me: it’s actually “do the rockaway”. The latter does make more sense.
I always thought it was “threw the rock away”. Mykala corrected me: it’s actually “do the rockaway”. The latter does make more sense.
Jay Leno wants to move his show to the Tonight Show’s time spot, bumping Conan a half hour into the next day (12:05). In wonderfully well-written letter, Conan O’Brien Says He Won’t Host ‘Tonight Show’ After Leno - NYTimes Media Decoder Blog:
Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.
I enjoy both Leno and Conan (additionally, Jimmy Fallon’s show could mature into a great asset). But NBC has royally screwed up their entire late night schedule. If Leno wasn’t ready to retire, they should’ve let things be for a while… Leno at 11:35, followed by Conan… and then they chould have put Jimmy Fallon on after that. But this quagmire looks like it is going to kill off the institution of ‘The Tonight Show’, Conan’s career, and poor Jimmy Fallon’s show (still in its infancy). What a mess.
Gail Collins is quite funny; more so than I realized. Take a look at her recent column “The Wizard With a Bad Plan”
I would like to offer two comments about this. One is that professional athletes should not Twitter. I got this thought from Ashley Mayo, a student at the Columbia Journalism School, who showed me an essay that she had written on the subject, which included a tweet from one of the Indiana Pacers containing the good news that he had begun the day with a triumph over irregularity.
Steve Silberman, in Wired: “Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.” Here’s the part of the article I found most fascinating:
In one study, Benedetti found that Alzheimer’s patients with impaired cognitive function get less pain relief from analgesic drugs than normal volunteers do. Using advanced methods of EEG analysis, he discovered that the connections between the patients’ prefrontal lobes and their opioid systems had been damaged. Healthy volunteers feel the benefit of medication plus a placebo boost. Patients who are unable to formulate ideas about the future because of cortical deficits, however, feel only the effect of the drug itself. The experiment suggests that because Alzheimer’s patients don’t get the benefits of anticipating the treatment, they require higher doses of painkillers to experience normal levels of relief.
Sometimes, you enact a smoking ban, and clubs refuse to abide by the new rules:
Elliott Marcus, an associate commissioner of the health department, said that he knew where the trouble spots were. “It’s these high-end places for people who think that the rules don’t apply to them,” he said.
Let me tell you about a mistake I’ve made: at some point in your life, you’ll think the rules don’t apply to you. This is probably not true. It certainly wasn’t for me. So don’t get cocky.
I always love these articles about “costly signaling” — the pursuit of real, not-fakable signals of your mating fitness. Take a look at Sex and shopping – it’s a guy thing - New Scientist (emphasis mine):
The results here were equally clear: men in the mating condition, compared with the non-mating condition, said they would spend more money on the conspicuous luxuries, and that they would actually spend less on the inconspicuous necessities; there was no effect on female consumption decisions. In contrast, women in the mating condition, compared with those in the non-mating condition, said they would spend more time on conspicuous pro-social volunteering, but no more time on the inconspicuous pro-social activities. Again, there was no effect on male volunteering.
In the age of advanced makeup and cosmetic surgery, physical fitness is still a great example of costly signaling. Consider men: “Hey look, I have the time, money, baseline health, and motivation to take care of my body” is quite obvious to even the casual observer and can not be faked by gastric bypass weight loss surgery. Or consider this: ownership of expensive things can not be faked… at least not in the long run. For women: you can’t fake volunteering — it’s a binary thing, you’re either out there or you aren’t.
I don’t think the conclusions of these four studies should be taken as final, gospel truth, but they are a good starting point for thinking about the different ways women and men signal one another. A particularly interesting conclusion from one of the studies: women looking for a short term relationship are swayed by the car a man drives, but those looking for a long term partner tend not to care about the care he drives.
Barbara Strauch, in How to Train the Aging Brain:
Teaching new facts should not be the focus of adult education, she says. Instead, continued brain development and a richer form of learning may require that you “bump up against people and ideas” that are different. In a history class, that might mean reading multiple viewpoints, and then prying open brain networks by reflecting on how what was learned has changed your view of the world.
Confronting people with whom you disagree will only raise your blood pressure — but absorbing, internalizing, and critiquing ideas that run orthogonal to the “well-trodden paths in [your] synapses” will keep your brain’s abilities honed.
HTMLGIANT’s Grammar Challenge, courtesy of David Foster Wallace, is composed of ten of the most difficult grammar questions I have ever attempted to answer. Mykala and I worked on it together and got… some answers correct. If the sentence “I only spent six weeks in Napa” looks wrong to you, then take a look at the remaining sentences!
Reading the New Yorker (thanks, Katy!) with the afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window may be the single best way to spend an hour of a cold winter afternoon.
Mykala and I made a quick list of things we did in 2009. Here are my notes from our conversation:
THINGS WE DID THIS YEAR
Got married
Went to Hawaii
Survived 5 semesters of school (combined)
Moved in together
First married Christmas
Camped
Bought a real tree
Attended a cat funeral
I really liked 2009. 2010 has been good so far.
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