Saturday, May 28, 2005
Dual-effort tech triumph
My husband really justified his existence today; check the sidebar, and you'll see a new clock... click where it says "calendar" (after hovering over it to see the cool pulsing effect), and the clock will slide up and a guess-what will replace it. How cool is THAT?!! :-)
For those of you who miss the old flash clock, or want to see what it was, or maybe want to put it on your site, you can see it, and the other styles available, here
http://www.clocklink.com/ENG/gallery.htm
The one I'd had is the green version of the 1st one in the gallery.
As you might expect, there's a story behind the new addition; I almost didn't even GET the new addition, because my analysis of the source code of the blog I originally found it on didn't provide me with a URL to get access to the flash file, and the URL that WAS there led to a site with lots of cool stuff but not the clock/calendar combo. I was stumped... until I asked my husband for help.
He was cranky and put-upon, as he always is when asked to do anything, but he revealed that the URL I'd been looking at is something necessary when you use flash, as it accesses the site that'll make sure you're using the right plug-in, and thus has nothing to do with the actual flash file... that was a new one on me, but then again I don't know anything about flash, so that's no surprise.
Because the owner of the site I found the clock on had her own domain, she didn't have full URL's in her source code for the files she was using, and that made it tricky to "find" the file and download it; it also made me wonder if it was her original work, NOT something in the public domain, which would mean that I shouldn't just take it... this concern was doubled by the realization that there was no comment in the code indicating the name or site of the creator, and usually something this slick DOES have that. Much to my relief, I found the site where the flash programmer for what's actually meant to be a watch rather than a clock had offered up several versions of his work for free downloads
http://ptnuke.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=132
which means it IS ok to use it... WHEW!! My husband got the file, and I uploaded it to an online file storage site
http://ripway.com/
which gave me a URL to use in the html code that would access the file and actually put it in the sidebar... it was unfamiliar to me, but I managed to alter the size parameters (it's tricky working with pixels, because I don't intuitively have any idea of how big any given # of pixels is the way I would with inches or fractions thereof) and remove a centering command to make it fit nicely in my sidebar. I saved my template changes, republished my blog, brought it up in a new window, and...
... the clock was on a GREEN background.
My husband had told me that the background was transparent, and I foolishly listened to him and failed to actually LOOK; naturally, a green background was specified in the code, so I changed it to white, added some more space above and below to prevent overlapping onto other elements that was going on in some browsers (important site design rule that I learned the hard way-check every change in ALL your browsers), and... the result is what you see. I hope you get as much of a kick out of it as I do. :-)
As a bonus today, I'm including the URL to one of the cutest tech things every created; it's called an iGuy, and it's a doodad you put your iPod into to give it a body (including a BUTT) and posable arms and legs... it can even STAND. It's so darling that it makes me want to get an iPod just to be able to have an excuse to get it; if other people agree, and I can't imagine they wouldn't, whoever invented it is about to become a billionaire. Check it out here:
http://www.speckproducts.com/iguy.html
For those of you who miss the old flash clock, or want to see what it was, or maybe want to put it on your site, you can see it, and the other styles available, here
http://www.clocklink.com/ENG/gallery.htm
The one I'd had is the green version of the 1st one in the gallery.
As you might expect, there's a story behind the new addition; I almost didn't even GET the new addition, because my analysis of the source code of the blog I originally found it on didn't provide me with a URL to get access to the flash file, and the URL that WAS there led to a site with lots of cool stuff but not the clock/calendar combo. I was stumped... until I asked my husband for help.
He was cranky and put-upon, as he always is when asked to do anything, but he revealed that the URL I'd been looking at is something necessary when you use flash, as it accesses the site that'll make sure you're using the right plug-in, and thus has nothing to do with the actual flash file... that was a new one on me, but then again I don't know anything about flash, so that's no surprise.
Because the owner of the site I found the clock on had her own domain, she didn't have full URL's in her source code for the files she was using, and that made it tricky to "find" the file and download it; it also made me wonder if it was her original work, NOT something in the public domain, which would mean that I shouldn't just take it... this concern was doubled by the realization that there was no comment in the code indicating the name or site of the creator, and usually something this slick DOES have that. Much to my relief, I found the site where the flash programmer for what's actually meant to be a watch rather than a clock had offered up several versions of his work for free downloads
http://ptnuke.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=132
which means it IS ok to use it... WHEW!! My husband got the file, and I uploaded it to an online file storage site
http://ripway.com/
which gave me a URL to use in the html code that would access the file and actually put it in the sidebar... it was unfamiliar to me, but I managed to alter the size parameters (it's tricky working with pixels, because I don't intuitively have any idea of how big any given # of pixels is the way I would with inches or fractions thereof) and remove a centering command to make it fit nicely in my sidebar. I saved my template changes, republished my blog, brought it up in a new window, and...
... the clock was on a GREEN background.
My husband had told me that the background was transparent, and I foolishly listened to him and failed to actually LOOK; naturally, a green background was specified in the code, so I changed it to white, added some more space above and below to prevent overlapping onto other elements that was going on in some browsers (important site design rule that I learned the hard way-check every change in ALL your browsers), and... the result is what you see. I hope you get as much of a kick out of it as I do. :-)
As a bonus today, I'm including the URL to one of the cutest tech things every created; it's called an iGuy, and it's a doodad you put your iPod into to give it a body (including a BUTT) and posable arms and legs... it can even STAND. It's so darling that it makes me want to get an iPod just to be able to have an excuse to get it; if other people agree, and I can't imagine they wouldn't, whoever invented it is about to become a billionaire. Check it out here:
http://www.speckproducts.com/iguy.html
Friday, May 27, 2005
Are you a geek?
Here are a few questions to help you figure it out:
1) You have
a) a computer that you share
b) your own computer
c) more than one computer
d) enough computers to equip a lab
2) If you had to give up either your DSL connection or food, you'd
a) N/A-you don't have DSL
b) give up the DSL
c) hang onto the DSL for a couple of days, until you got really hungry
d) hang onto the DSL until you fell into a starvation coma
e) call a medical supply warehouse and order an IV and a lifetime supply of glucose solution
3) How often do you get so caught up with what you're doing on the computer that you realize 5 or more hours have gone by and you haven't had anything to eat or drink, or even been to the bathroom?
a) Never
b) Sometimes
c) Frequently
d) Twice a day
4) Your wardrobe is best described as
a) whatever's currently in style
b) nice clothes of different kinds for different occasions
c) jeans and t-shirts, with bonus points if the shirts
i) are freebies from tech companies
ii) are decorated with graphics that relate to scifi or cartoons
iii) have stains and/or holes
5) Your meals
a) are skillfully prepared by you
b) are basic but homecooked
c) are microwaved or takeout
6) The word "convention" brings to your mind
a) people gathered together for business purposes
b) people gathered together to view and buy stuff related to scifi, horror, fantasy, anime, gaming and comic books
7) Your home decor has
a) all the standard stuff
b) the standard stuff accented with items related to science, roleplaying games, cartoons, etc
c) piles of computer equipment, a few pieces of furniture, and boxes full of books, magazines, papers and outdated hard drives
8) You see these abbreviations all the time... but for how many of them can you say what they stand for?
a) http
b) html
c) URL
d) CSS
9) a) If you're male, have you forgotten what you look like with short hair, a clean-shaven face, and nice clothes?
b) If you're female, have you forgotten what you look like with makeup, a sexy outfit and high heels?
10) What's your reaction to the following joke: There are 10 kinds of people... those that understand binary and those that don't.
a) HUH?
b) Hahahahahaha!!
No, I don't have some random scoring system to tell you how much of a geek you are based on your answers; you already know, right? In case you were wondering, the abbreviations stand for hypertext transfer protocol, hypertext markup language, uniform resource locator, and cascading style sheets. The punchline of the joke is that in binary, you represent 2 as "10." And yes, these examples were all taken from how my husband and I and some of our friends are.
Why didn't I include questions about technical expertise? Because many people who have that are "normal" people these days, not geeks, and plenty of geeks can't program beyond tweaking the html of a pre-fab template; geekdom requires being overly-involved with computers, granted, but it's also about being part of a subculture that likes certain sorts of things and can't be bothered with others that're standard in the wider culture.
When I met my husband, I didn't own a computer, didn't know how to use one, and had never been online; now, I'm about the geekiest female we know. Do you suppose geekdom is contagious? ;-)
1) You have
a) a computer that you share
b) your own computer
c) more than one computer
d) enough computers to equip a lab
2) If you had to give up either your DSL connection or food, you'd
a) N/A-you don't have DSL
b) give up the DSL
c) hang onto the DSL for a couple of days, until you got really hungry
d) hang onto the DSL until you fell into a starvation coma
e) call a medical supply warehouse and order an IV and a lifetime supply of glucose solution
3) How often do you get so caught up with what you're doing on the computer that you realize 5 or more hours have gone by and you haven't had anything to eat or drink, or even been to the bathroom?
a) Never
b) Sometimes
c) Frequently
d) Twice a day
4) Your wardrobe is best described as
a) whatever's currently in style
b) nice clothes of different kinds for different occasions
c) jeans and t-shirts, with bonus points if the shirts
i) are freebies from tech companies
ii) are decorated with graphics that relate to scifi or cartoons
iii) have stains and/or holes
5) Your meals
a) are skillfully prepared by you
b) are basic but homecooked
c) are microwaved or takeout
6) The word "convention" brings to your mind
a) people gathered together for business purposes
b) people gathered together to view and buy stuff related to scifi, horror, fantasy, anime, gaming and comic books
7) Your home decor has
a) all the standard stuff
b) the standard stuff accented with items related to science, roleplaying games, cartoons, etc
c) piles of computer equipment, a few pieces of furniture, and boxes full of books, magazines, papers and outdated hard drives
8) You see these abbreviations all the time... but for how many of them can you say what they stand for?
a) http
b) html
c) URL
d) CSS
9) a) If you're male, have you forgotten what you look like with short hair, a clean-shaven face, and nice clothes?
b) If you're female, have you forgotten what you look like with makeup, a sexy outfit and high heels?
10) What's your reaction to the following joke: There are 10 kinds of people... those that understand binary and those that don't.
a) HUH?
b) Hahahahahaha!!
No, I don't have some random scoring system to tell you how much of a geek you are based on your answers; you already know, right? In case you were wondering, the abbreviations stand for hypertext transfer protocol, hypertext markup language, uniform resource locator, and cascading style sheets. The punchline of the joke is that in binary, you represent 2 as "10." And yes, these examples were all taken from how my husband and I and some of our friends are.
Why didn't I include questions about technical expertise? Because many people who have that are "normal" people these days, not geeks, and plenty of geeks can't program beyond tweaking the html of a pre-fab template; geekdom requires being overly-involved with computers, granted, but it's also about being part of a subculture that likes certain sorts of things and can't be bothered with others that're standard in the wider culture.
When I met my husband, I didn't own a computer, didn't know how to use one, and had never been online; now, I'm about the geekiest female we know. Do you suppose geekdom is contagious? ;-)
Thursday, May 26, 2005
How observant are you?
Unless you're reading this from another planet, you're human, and if you're human the answer to that question is; not very... according to an article called "What Do Animals Think?" in the May 2005 issue of Discover. The central figure of the article is Temple Grandin, PhD, whose doctorate is in animal science, and who is "perhaps the best-known autistic person in America." It's probably not a coincidence that Grandin picked the field she did, because she feels a certain kinship with animals:
"In her new book, 'Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior,' Grandin examines the surprising similarities between an animal's mind and an autistic mind--her own. 'Autistic people,' she writes, 'are closer to animals than normal people are.'"
"'You can't get anything past a cow,' she writes. She knows this partly because you can't get anything past an autistic person either."
"The difference between a normal person's mental clutter and the intense, detailed absorption of an autistic person's visual concentration closely resembles the difference between humans and animals."
We've all wondered at some point about what animals are thinking and feeling, whether we're pet owners or just animal lovers, and Grandin has shown herself to be astonishingly accurate in seeing things as animals do and predicting how they'll react; this has led her to be a sought-after consultant in the world of animal husbandry... many advances in the humane treatment of "food animals" have come from her, and the article says "Grandin has done more to improve animal welfare than almost any human alive."
Non-autistic people do NOT see as much as we think we do:
"When Grandin teaches people how to handle livestock, the subtext isn't so much what she notices-she takes that for granted, after all. It's what ordinary people don't notice and, especially, how they don't notice. The surprise that normal people feel when they realize how much Grandin sees has been more than matched over the years by her surprise at how much ordinary people fail to see. The difference can be summed up in a relatively simple manner, though the underlying biology is complex. A cow sees everything in detail and responds to details. Like an autistic person, its fears are hyperspecific because its perception is hyperspecific. But normal humans tend to see only what they expect to see.
We're used to the idea that human thought is abstract. But what Grandin points out is that even the sensory perception of ordinary humans is abstract as well. 'Normal people,' she writes, 'see and hear schemas, not raw sensory data.'"
"It's easy to imagine an engineer not being able to visualize a design flaw in a complex structure. What's harder to take in is the everyday blindness of ordinary people. Humans, Grandin writes, 'are built to see what they're expecting to see, and it's hard to expect to see something you've never seen. New things just don't register.' Animals, on the other hand, 'definitely act like they see everything.' New things not only register to cows, they positively throb with significance."
"... there's plenty of scientific evidence to suggest that Grandin's right. Normal humans are good at seeing the big picture but bad at what Grandin calls 'all the tiny little details that go into that picture.' For normal humans, the big picture isn't created by accumulating lots of sensory details. It's created by filtering out detail. 'The price human beings pay for having such big, fat frontal lobes,' Grandin writes, 'is that normal people become oblivious in a way animals and autistic people aren't. Normal people stop seeing the details that make up the big picture and see only the big picture instead.' The result, as she puts it, is that 'normal human beings are blind to anything they're not paying attention to.' And the parameters of our attention can be incredibly narrow.
Like autistic people--and unlike normal humans--animals have direct access to the raw sensory data that an ordinary human brain sifts out. Grandin argues that animals and autistic people are specialists, masters of individual skills and individual senses, whereas ordinary people are generalists. What normal humans specialize in is mental association. The principal difference between a human brain and the brain of a pig, for instance, is an immensely larger neocortex in the human. Humans appear to have evolved that layer of the brain to handle the interconnections and associations that produce what we happily call thought and the conscious mind. The only way to keep the association area of the human brain from becoming overloaded is to strictly limit our access to raw sensory data. Like animals, we see everything. But unlike animals, we process only a fraction of what we see"
"Grandin uses an awkward but powerful word to describe the perceptual fog that normal humans live in. She calls it 'abstractification.' It means the ability to live in our thoughts, surrounded by 'our ideas of things.' 'Normal human beings,' she writes, 'are abstractified in their sensory perceptions as well as their thoughts.'"
Isn't that mindboggling? We think we're so observant, hardly anyone would say that they weren't, yet it turns out that compared to an autistic person we see, really SEE, very little... and yet we base all our judgments on what little detail we take in. I wondered in my last post if ghosts might be around us all the time, and I know that many people will pooh-pooh that idea right away because they haven't seen any evidence of this, or of any of the other things I talk about here... but, can they, or any of us, be really SURE about what we're seeing, given how little detail we apparently notice? There could be all kinds of evidence right in front of us, and we aren't picking up on it... the way we tend to almost never notice the unfocused tips of our noses that're ALWAYS along the bottom of our visual range-heck, I'd NEVER noticed the tip of MY nose until I read "The Invisible Man" and the hero realizes that he can no longer see any of HIS nose, which made me look down and see MY nose for the 1st time in my life.
What else is there right out in the open that we don't see, don't notice, don't grasp the significance of, or have subconsciously written off as known and/or trivial? If we could have the superior perceptions of an autistic person for a day, would we see a bunch of unexpected and unexplainable variations in light, shadow, the way the house creaks and wind sighs through the eaves, that would make our hair stand on end? If we could be spared the need to withdraw from stimuli that afflicts autistics, and make ourselves focus, REALLY focus, on the details we've been missing... what would we see?
Or who?
"In her new book, 'Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior,' Grandin examines the surprising similarities between an animal's mind and an autistic mind--her own. 'Autistic people,' she writes, 'are closer to animals than normal people are.'"
"'You can't get anything past a cow,' she writes. She knows this partly because you can't get anything past an autistic person either."
"The difference between a normal person's mental clutter and the intense, detailed absorption of an autistic person's visual concentration closely resembles the difference between humans and animals."
We've all wondered at some point about what animals are thinking and feeling, whether we're pet owners or just animal lovers, and Grandin has shown herself to be astonishingly accurate in seeing things as animals do and predicting how they'll react; this has led her to be a sought-after consultant in the world of animal husbandry... many advances in the humane treatment of "food animals" have come from her, and the article says "Grandin has done more to improve animal welfare than almost any human alive."
Non-autistic people do NOT see as much as we think we do:
"When Grandin teaches people how to handle livestock, the subtext isn't so much what she notices-she takes that for granted, after all. It's what ordinary people don't notice and, especially, how they don't notice. The surprise that normal people feel when they realize how much Grandin sees has been more than matched over the years by her surprise at how much ordinary people fail to see. The difference can be summed up in a relatively simple manner, though the underlying biology is complex. A cow sees everything in detail and responds to details. Like an autistic person, its fears are hyperspecific because its perception is hyperspecific. But normal humans tend to see only what they expect to see.
We're used to the idea that human thought is abstract. But what Grandin points out is that even the sensory perception of ordinary humans is abstract as well. 'Normal people,' she writes, 'see and hear schemas, not raw sensory data.'"
"It's easy to imagine an engineer not being able to visualize a design flaw in a complex structure. What's harder to take in is the everyday blindness of ordinary people. Humans, Grandin writes, 'are built to see what they're expecting to see, and it's hard to expect to see something you've never seen. New things just don't register.' Animals, on the other hand, 'definitely act like they see everything.' New things not only register to cows, they positively throb with significance."
"... there's plenty of scientific evidence to suggest that Grandin's right. Normal humans are good at seeing the big picture but bad at what Grandin calls 'all the tiny little details that go into that picture.' For normal humans, the big picture isn't created by accumulating lots of sensory details. It's created by filtering out detail. 'The price human beings pay for having such big, fat frontal lobes,' Grandin writes, 'is that normal people become oblivious in a way animals and autistic people aren't. Normal people stop seeing the details that make up the big picture and see only the big picture instead.' The result, as she puts it, is that 'normal human beings are blind to anything they're not paying attention to.' And the parameters of our attention can be incredibly narrow.
Like autistic people--and unlike normal humans--animals have direct access to the raw sensory data that an ordinary human brain sifts out. Grandin argues that animals and autistic people are specialists, masters of individual skills and individual senses, whereas ordinary people are generalists. What normal humans specialize in is mental association. The principal difference between a human brain and the brain of a pig, for instance, is an immensely larger neocortex in the human. Humans appear to have evolved that layer of the brain to handle the interconnections and associations that produce what we happily call thought and the conscious mind. The only way to keep the association area of the human brain from becoming overloaded is to strictly limit our access to raw sensory data. Like animals, we see everything. But unlike animals, we process only a fraction of what we see"
"Grandin uses an awkward but powerful word to describe the perceptual fog that normal humans live in. She calls it 'abstractification.' It means the ability to live in our thoughts, surrounded by 'our ideas of things.' 'Normal human beings,' she writes, 'are abstractified in their sensory perceptions as well as their thoughts.'"
Isn't that mindboggling? We think we're so observant, hardly anyone would say that they weren't, yet it turns out that compared to an autistic person we see, really SEE, very little... and yet we base all our judgments on what little detail we take in. I wondered in my last post if ghosts might be around us all the time, and I know that many people will pooh-pooh that idea right away because they haven't seen any evidence of this, or of any of the other things I talk about here... but, can they, or any of us, be really SURE about what we're seeing, given how little detail we apparently notice? There could be all kinds of evidence right in front of us, and we aren't picking up on it... the way we tend to almost never notice the unfocused tips of our noses that're ALWAYS along the bottom of our visual range-heck, I'd NEVER noticed the tip of MY nose until I read "The Invisible Man" and the hero realizes that he can no longer see any of HIS nose, which made me look down and see MY nose for the 1st time in my life.
What else is there right out in the open that we don't see, don't notice, don't grasp the significance of, or have subconsciously written off as known and/or trivial? If we could have the superior perceptions of an autistic person for a day, would we see a bunch of unexpected and unexplainable variations in light, shadow, the way the house creaks and wind sighs through the eaves, that would make our hair stand on end? If we could be spared the need to withdraw from stimuli that afflicts autistics, and make ourselves focus, REALLY focus, on the details we've been missing... what would we see?
Or who?
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Inspiration from "The Others"
If you haven't seen the abovementioned terrific suspense/horror movie
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?channel=Movies&subChannel=sub&movieID=127891&displayBoxArt=true#Full
don't miss out on a real treat; skip this post, because it contains SPOILERS for the movie... and if, after you see "The Others," which you really should, you still want to know how I've tied it into my spiritual imaginings, the post will still be here.
I was blown away by the idea of a family of ghosts, with no memory of having died, being "haunted" by the living in such a way that they believed the living to be ghosts; sure, movies like "Beetlejuice" have shown ghosts being bothered by people living in "their" houses, but not, as far as I'd previously seen, have any of them set it up so that the ghosts can't usually see or hear the living, as if the 2 categories live on totally different planes that don't quite touch most of the time rather than really living in the same house.
Which, when you think about it, could well be the case.
If you believe in ghosts, or at least have an open mind, ask yourself this; when a ghost isn't visible, audible or otherwise perceptible, where is it? Is it there but IMperceptible, or is it doing something in another dimension (might there be a dimension called "Heaven" by its inhabitants?), and can it or can't it see us from there? If spirits reside in another dimension, do we perceive them because there's overlap of sensory data in "thin" spots sometimes, and/or maybe because some are "drawn" back here by unfinished business? COULD it be that generally they aren't aware of us? I'd like to believe that they're NOT hanging around, watching us, but the reliable people within my family's circle of acquaintance who see ghosts as naturally as they see anything else assert that they ALWAYS see some, wherever they are, and that some people have their own personal escort; when my uncle was, we thought, terminally ill, a "seeing" friend told us that he saw a sizable group with him, and my father and I saw one of these in what was one of the most amazing experiences of my life... but I try not to think about the ramifications of this too much, as the thought of possibly being observed all the time is distinctly uneasy-making.
Here's the idea that REALLY makes me uneasy, though: How sure can we be that our reality is the true one, or the truEST one, that we're actually alive and doing all the things we think we're doing? What if the reason that time doesn't exist the way we think it does (as quantum physics has proven) is that time is OVER for us, because we're essentially ghosts running through the same experiences forever like a CD on an infinite loop?
http://www.blockbuster.com/catalog/DisplayMoreMovieProductDetails.action?channel=Movies&subChannel=sub&movieID=127891&displayBoxArt=true#Full
don't miss out on a real treat; skip this post, because it contains SPOILERS for the movie... and if, after you see "The Others," which you really should, you still want to know how I've tied it into my spiritual imaginings, the post will still be here.
I was blown away by the idea of a family of ghosts, with no memory of having died, being "haunted" by the living in such a way that they believed the living to be ghosts; sure, movies like "Beetlejuice" have shown ghosts being bothered by people living in "their" houses, but not, as far as I'd previously seen, have any of them set it up so that the ghosts can't usually see or hear the living, as if the 2 categories live on totally different planes that don't quite touch most of the time rather than really living in the same house.
Which, when you think about it, could well be the case.
If you believe in ghosts, or at least have an open mind, ask yourself this; when a ghost isn't visible, audible or otherwise perceptible, where is it? Is it there but IMperceptible, or is it doing something in another dimension (might there be a dimension called "Heaven" by its inhabitants?), and can it or can't it see us from there? If spirits reside in another dimension, do we perceive them because there's overlap of sensory data in "thin" spots sometimes, and/or maybe because some are "drawn" back here by unfinished business? COULD it be that generally they aren't aware of us? I'd like to believe that they're NOT hanging around, watching us, but the reliable people within my family's circle of acquaintance who see ghosts as naturally as they see anything else assert that they ALWAYS see some, wherever they are, and that some people have their own personal escort; when my uncle was, we thought, terminally ill, a "seeing" friend told us that he saw a sizable group with him, and my father and I saw one of these in what was one of the most amazing experiences of my life... but I try not to think about the ramifications of this too much, as the thought of possibly being observed all the time is distinctly uneasy-making.
Here's the idea that REALLY makes me uneasy, though: How sure can we be that our reality is the true one, or the truEST one, that we're actually alive and doing all the things we think we're doing? What if the reason that time doesn't exist the way we think it does (as quantum physics has proven) is that time is OVER for us, because we're essentially ghosts running through the same experiences forever like a CD on an infinite loop?
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Intelligence loses yet again
In my post of 5-13-05, I described some sad evidence about how negatively we view intelligence as reflected in a person's language skills; to summarize, a study at Stanford showed that the use of big words in writing led to readers giving a LOWER intelligence rating for the writer, and political analysts say that shorter words and sentences, and more basic language, are more effective in speeches, and get the speaker seen as everything from more honest to more confident... in other words, that the way most intelligent, educated people naturally speak and write is counter-productive to getting them judged positively.
I contacted the primary researcher for the Stanford study, Dr. Daniel Oppenheimer, and he kindly sent me a version of his paper (I assume that he took out alot of statistical stuff that I'm not qualified to understand); from it, I learned that people's judgments of the intelligence of the authors of written passages is so little related to reality that if they print out identical passages in fonts that are easy to read and less easy to read, making it clear that the researchers and NOT the writers chose the fonts, people rated the passages in the harder to read fonts as being written by less intelligent authors... that's right, the EXACT same passage is judged as being from a less intelligent person if the FONT is made less readable, although that has nothing whatsoever to do with the author, much less their intelligence.
The judging of intelligence is even more fickle than that; he also tested how readers would react to passages printed with low toner, and found that they rated the intelligence of a writer HIGHER from the low toner copies!! The explanation for this, which I guess one needs a PhD in cognitive psychology like Dr. Oppenheimer to have foreseen, is that when people's 1st reaction to something they're supposed to judge is, "Oh look, this is messed up," they become consciously aware that it'll be harder to read and that this will impact them negatively, and thus over-correct and rate the author's intelligence as higher than it would be if they were reading from a clear copy.
As disheartening as these results are, they provide a useful hint for those bloggers who get creative with their fonts; it looks cool, but people may be misjudging your intellect as a result. I'd be interested to know if things like yellow text on a red background and other colorful combos popular among younger bloggers affect readers' judgments as to their intelligence, and if so in which direction.
Today, I got hit with "helpful hints" in Cosmo (April 2005 issue-I'm behind in my reading) from an article misleadingly entitled "The Art of Seduction" even though it's about influencing people in general rather than about what it sounds like. The 1st one, about the "right" way to tell a story to a group of people, was mildly dismaying; "If the story is about you, make yourself the butt of the joke, because even if you climbed Mount Kilimanjaro or saved the day, it can be annoying to listen to someone talk about herself in that way." Say WHAT? If you do something impressive, it ANNOYS people to hear about it unless you make it into a JOKE?!! No one likes a braggart, of course, but is it really true that we can't even give a factual report about something impressive we've done without it being a problem? This "hint" targets competency in general rather than intellect in particular, but wait, it gets better.
The next "hint," from Caren Neile, PhD, director of the South Florida Storytelling Project at Florida Atlantic University, is to speak more slowly; "Taking the pace of your speech down a notch makes you seem less anxious and skittish... It projects a kind of confidence and importance that invites people in." Yes, nervous people might speak too quickly, but they might also speak slowly and hesitantly, whereas a confident person might charge boldly forward, verbally speaking... right? The intelligent and educated people I know generally speak more quickly than average when making other than idle social chitchat; their ideas are well thought out and often felt strongly about, they have the vocabularies to not need to flounder for words, and so they tend to move briskly from point to point... whereas the less intelligent people I know tend to plod along more slowly in their speech. The only really bright people I can think of who speak slowly are those who are shy and/or with poor verbal skills, who simply can't go any faster without stumbling over their own tongues, so to my mind the idea of speaking more slowly, NOT to prevent sounding like an auctioneer or otherwise be better understood but simply to make a better impression, is in the same category as using smaller words and shorter sentences... the idea being to mimic the average person, who is of average intelligence, and thus to win general approval.
The heading of the next section of the article made me want to scream; "Don't Show Off Your Smarts." I wish I was joking. They advise (asterisks are mine), "... even when you're armed with convo-starting current events or a fabulous anecdote, you still want to ***** act a tad naive so you don't seem, frankly, obnoxious." ***** If you know something interesting, you're supposed to FAKE being some clueless twit who accidentally just happens to know it?!! Yes, according to them; "Next time you're trying to stoke a conversation with some interesting tidbit, ***** couch your smarts in an unintimidating way ***** by introducing the topic with something like 'Wow, I learned this cool thing recently...'" In other words, sound like a kid passing along something rather than like an adult discussing something; do you suppose they'd DARE suggest this tactic in a MEN'S magazine?!! Would any man be willing to pass along information this way? It kills me that a women's magazine is instructing intelligent women to sound like morons to be considered likable... and that, again, the central idea is that you have to pretend that you don't know more than anyone else does, that you're average just like they are, rather than intelligent and knowledgeable.
I'm sure it's no coincidence that I read this article so soon after reading the other ones about this topic, and collectively they hammer home a crucial lesson that'll probably benefit me at some time in the future when I have to deal with people other than geeks and other intellectuals and try to impress them or garner their liking; in general, though, although I've always tried to hold off on the $10 words when I'm talking to regular folks so I don't get blank stares and admissions that they don't know what I'm talking about, I'm just not willing to dumb myself down to the level that studies and experts say would get me the highest rating of intelligence and likability from the general population.
For anyone out there who thinks that my vocabulary and ability to express complex thoughts makes me UNintelligent, and who's going to dislike me because I don't pretend to not know anything except by accident, I have a statement of the kind they prefer; it contains only short words, and there are only 2 of them... and the 2nd word is "you."
I contacted the primary researcher for the Stanford study, Dr. Daniel Oppenheimer, and he kindly sent me a version of his paper (I assume that he took out alot of statistical stuff that I'm not qualified to understand); from it, I learned that people's judgments of the intelligence of the authors of written passages is so little related to reality that if they print out identical passages in fonts that are easy to read and less easy to read, making it clear that the researchers and NOT the writers chose the fonts, people rated the passages in the harder to read fonts as being written by less intelligent authors... that's right, the EXACT same passage is judged as being from a less intelligent person if the FONT is made less readable, although that has nothing whatsoever to do with the author, much less their intelligence.
The judging of intelligence is even more fickle than that; he also tested how readers would react to passages printed with low toner, and found that they rated the intelligence of a writer HIGHER from the low toner copies!! The explanation for this, which I guess one needs a PhD in cognitive psychology like Dr. Oppenheimer to have foreseen, is that when people's 1st reaction to something they're supposed to judge is, "Oh look, this is messed up," they become consciously aware that it'll be harder to read and that this will impact them negatively, and thus over-correct and rate the author's intelligence as higher than it would be if they were reading from a clear copy.
As disheartening as these results are, they provide a useful hint for those bloggers who get creative with their fonts; it looks cool, but people may be misjudging your intellect as a result. I'd be interested to know if things like yellow text on a red background and other colorful combos popular among younger bloggers affect readers' judgments as to their intelligence, and if so in which direction.
Today, I got hit with "helpful hints" in Cosmo (April 2005 issue-I'm behind in my reading) from an article misleadingly entitled "The Art of Seduction" even though it's about influencing people in general rather than about what it sounds like. The 1st one, about the "right" way to tell a story to a group of people, was mildly dismaying; "If the story is about you, make yourself the butt of the joke, because even if you climbed Mount Kilimanjaro or saved the day, it can be annoying to listen to someone talk about herself in that way." Say WHAT? If you do something impressive, it ANNOYS people to hear about it unless you make it into a JOKE?!! No one likes a braggart, of course, but is it really true that we can't even give a factual report about something impressive we've done without it being a problem? This "hint" targets competency in general rather than intellect in particular, but wait, it gets better.
The next "hint," from Caren Neile, PhD, director of the South Florida Storytelling Project at Florida Atlantic University, is to speak more slowly; "Taking the pace of your speech down a notch makes you seem less anxious and skittish... It projects a kind of confidence and importance that invites people in." Yes, nervous people might speak too quickly, but they might also speak slowly and hesitantly, whereas a confident person might charge boldly forward, verbally speaking... right? The intelligent and educated people I know generally speak more quickly than average when making other than idle social chitchat; their ideas are well thought out and often felt strongly about, they have the vocabularies to not need to flounder for words, and so they tend to move briskly from point to point... whereas the less intelligent people I know tend to plod along more slowly in their speech. The only really bright people I can think of who speak slowly are those who are shy and/or with poor verbal skills, who simply can't go any faster without stumbling over their own tongues, so to my mind the idea of speaking more slowly, NOT to prevent sounding like an auctioneer or otherwise be better understood but simply to make a better impression, is in the same category as using smaller words and shorter sentences... the idea being to mimic the average person, who is of average intelligence, and thus to win general approval.
The heading of the next section of the article made me want to scream; "Don't Show Off Your Smarts." I wish I was joking. They advise (asterisks are mine), "... even when you're armed with convo-starting current events or a fabulous anecdote, you still want to ***** act a tad naive so you don't seem, frankly, obnoxious." ***** If you know something interesting, you're supposed to FAKE being some clueless twit who accidentally just happens to know it?!! Yes, according to them; "Next time you're trying to stoke a conversation with some interesting tidbit, ***** couch your smarts in an unintimidating way ***** by introducing the topic with something like 'Wow, I learned this cool thing recently...'" In other words, sound like a kid passing along something rather than like an adult discussing something; do you suppose they'd DARE suggest this tactic in a MEN'S magazine?!! Would any man be willing to pass along information this way? It kills me that a women's magazine is instructing intelligent women to sound like morons to be considered likable... and that, again, the central idea is that you have to pretend that you don't know more than anyone else does, that you're average just like they are, rather than intelligent and knowledgeable.
I'm sure it's no coincidence that I read this article so soon after reading the other ones about this topic, and collectively they hammer home a crucial lesson that'll probably benefit me at some time in the future when I have to deal with people other than geeks and other intellectuals and try to impress them or garner their liking; in general, though, although I've always tried to hold off on the $10 words when I'm talking to regular folks so I don't get blank stares and admissions that they don't know what I'm talking about, I'm just not willing to dumb myself down to the level that studies and experts say would get me the highest rating of intelligence and likability from the general population.
For anyone out there who thinks that my vocabulary and ability to express complex thoughts makes me UNintelligent, and who's going to dislike me because I don't pretend to not know anything except by accident, I have a statement of the kind they prefer; it contains only short words, and there are only 2 of them... and the 2nd word is "you."
Monday, May 23, 2005
What makes a true friend?
I spent today shopping and having dinner with one of my oldest and dearest friends. She has no interest in karma or spirituality. She knows nothing about science, psychology or couture. She has never been online, and wouldn't know what a blog was if asked. I'm an old married lady, but she still lives with her parents although she's in her 40's. Aside from trivial things, like both finding it attractive when a man has a hairy chest and both liking the flavor of blue raspberry Icees, we have nothing in common. It doesn't sound like we should have any basis for friendship, does it?
We can talk nonstop for hours; we've never run out of things to say. I honestly couldn't tell you what we talk ABOUT most of the time... we just have a smooth flow of communication in which the metamessage of caring is more important that what's being said.
She's totally accepting of me; she's never demanded that I justify my often-unusual preferences or choices, or tried to argue me out of them.
I'm totally accepting of her; she's one of the unfortunate souls whose beauty is 100% INternal, and although I was considered a hot item when we met, and she was the butt of jokes, I befriended her and was always good to her... she told me at one point that I was one of only 2 people in her life who'd ever been a true friend.
When we shop, I help her look for things for herself most of the time rather than looking for things for myself; I've taught her how to put herself together as attractively as possible, to allow her to feel better about herself... which has allowed a once-doormat to get enough self-esteem to stand up for herself and be her own person.
When we have dinner and she gets a salad and I don't, she gives me some of hers so I have something to eat... including most or all of her croutons. She's taught me generosity of spirit, about giving in the purest sense; important lessons for the child of selfish, stingy parents.
NOW is there any confusion as to why we're friends?
True friendship isn't about liking the same things or doing the same activities; a true friend accepts you where you're good (and understands that if it isn't harmful it's ok even if it's not their style), offers help where you need it, and makes you a better person. Did you EVER consider those qualities as requirements in a friend? Why not... what could be more important? How much do you suppose we're missing out on in the modern day, where we can't be bothered to really get to know someone unless they have an overwhelming amount of surface things in common with us? How many times has karma sent you someone who could enrich you, and who you in turn could enrich, only to have you and/or them be unwilling to make the effort to get to know each other because you didn't have the easy route of mutual interests?
People used to think I was nuts for being willing to attempt friendship with anyone who offered it, even if the offerer was the sort of person that everyone turned their noses up at; in retrospect, that's one of the smartest decisions I ever made.
We can talk nonstop for hours; we've never run out of things to say. I honestly couldn't tell you what we talk ABOUT most of the time... we just have a smooth flow of communication in which the metamessage of caring is more important that what's being said.
She's totally accepting of me; she's never demanded that I justify my often-unusual preferences or choices, or tried to argue me out of them.
I'm totally accepting of her; she's one of the unfortunate souls whose beauty is 100% INternal, and although I was considered a hot item when we met, and she was the butt of jokes, I befriended her and was always good to her... she told me at one point that I was one of only 2 people in her life who'd ever been a true friend.
When we shop, I help her look for things for herself most of the time rather than looking for things for myself; I've taught her how to put herself together as attractively as possible, to allow her to feel better about herself... which has allowed a once-doormat to get enough self-esteem to stand up for herself and be her own person.
When we have dinner and she gets a salad and I don't, she gives me some of hers so I have something to eat... including most or all of her croutons. She's taught me generosity of spirit, about giving in the purest sense; important lessons for the child of selfish, stingy parents.
NOW is there any confusion as to why we're friends?
True friendship isn't about liking the same things or doing the same activities; a true friend accepts you where you're good (and understands that if it isn't harmful it's ok even if it's not their style), offers help where you need it, and makes you a better person. Did you EVER consider those qualities as requirements in a friend? Why not... what could be more important? How much do you suppose we're missing out on in the modern day, where we can't be bothered to really get to know someone unless they have an overwhelming amount of surface things in common with us? How many times has karma sent you someone who could enrich you, and who you in turn could enrich, only to have you and/or them be unwilling to make the effort to get to know each other because you didn't have the easy route of mutual interests?
People used to think I was nuts for being willing to attempt friendship with anyone who offered it, even if the offerer was the sort of person that everyone turned their noses up at; in retrospect, that's one of the smartest decisions I ever made.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Is anyone an expert on romantic relationships?
There are certainly many who CLAIM to be, some with actual degrees in psychology, some with careers as couples therapists (did you know that you do NOT have to have a degree to call yourself a therapist?)... and it never ceases to amaze me how little clue they generally have.
A standard line of thought from them, and the one that always amuses me the most, is to claim that all successful couples do, don't do, say or don't say certain things... ridiculous things that I can't imagine that ANY couple has EVER handled that way. They describe elaborate communication rituals that, even if any woman independently came up with them, no man would participate in beyond the grunts and groans that men typically come out with when their women try to get them to discuss the details of the relationship or to drag deep thoughts and feelings out of them. They detail behavior patterns, emotional reactions and mindsets that are totally contrary to both male and female relationship norms. They talk about the regular occurrence of novel sexual, romantic, and couple-time activities that shows a total lack of grasp of how human beings fall into ruts and have no interest in climbing out, even if it's to their benefit. They insist upon the necessity of wild spontaneous goings-on that only the idle and childless wealthy would have the time and ability to do.
It should come as no surprise that many of these folks are either single or have failed in at least one marriage; most notably, one of the best-known female relationship gurus, Barbara De Angelis, has been married FIVE times, and her 3rd husband was fellow guru John Gray, author of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"... so why do we listen to these people?
There's an old saying; "A woman marries a man expecting him to change, and he doesn't... and a man marries a woman expecting her not to change, and she does." This is certainly an over-generalization, but it points up 2 of the most important things to remember when trying to form a lasting relationship:
1) Do NOT put on a fake persona, or fake any part of how you interact with your prospective partner, as you can NOT keep it up forever, and more importantly you're being deceptive, and that'll come back to bite you eventually. If you can't show your true self to a person, either you lack what it takes to have a long-term relationship, or they're too immature to handle normal human failings and so are themselves lacking... or of course both.
2) Do NOT delude yourself that you can change the other person, or that you can prevent them from gradually changing as they mature and grow. You can't expect your partner to be like your same-sex or friends, or like you (unless you're gay, in which case I wouldn't pretend to be able to offer advice); men and women are DIFFERENT, and will STAY different, and will grow and change in different ways over the years... so if you can't handle socks on the floor or panties drying on the shower rod, or the other irritating things each gender does, you're not ready for a long-term relationship yet.
To these, I'd add 3 others:
3) Don't confuse lust and infatuation with love; you can NOT love a person until you've known them long and well enough to see what's lovable about them, so if you're talking about love within a few weeks, or even months, of meeting someone, you're very likely heading for a fall.
4) Don't confuse having things in common plus sexual attraction with love; someone too like you will usually bore you sooner or later, and, more importantly, it's too easy to get too close too fast with such a person, and to not realize that they differ from you in crucial ways before it's too late.
5) Don't enter into a relationship with unrealistic expectations. Don't think that your relationship will be like what you see in the movies, or even like what your parents had; expect it to be hard work, with plenty of fighting and aggravation and not getting your way, and fairly dull much of the time... in other words expect it to be like LIFE, and if your mate has the same perspective you'll do ok.
There will certainly be people whose relationships are exceptions to the above, just as there are people who married as teenagers, or after only knowing each other a few weeks, who manage to beat the odds and be together forever, but they WILL apply to most people... which is more than the so-called experts can say about THEIR advice.
A standard line of thought from them, and the one that always amuses me the most, is to claim that all successful couples do, don't do, say or don't say certain things... ridiculous things that I can't imagine that ANY couple has EVER handled that way. They describe elaborate communication rituals that, even if any woman independently came up with them, no man would participate in beyond the grunts and groans that men typically come out with when their women try to get them to discuss the details of the relationship or to drag deep thoughts and feelings out of them. They detail behavior patterns, emotional reactions and mindsets that are totally contrary to both male and female relationship norms. They talk about the regular occurrence of novel sexual, romantic, and couple-time activities that shows a total lack of grasp of how human beings fall into ruts and have no interest in climbing out, even if it's to their benefit. They insist upon the necessity of wild spontaneous goings-on that only the idle and childless wealthy would have the time and ability to do.
It should come as no surprise that many of these folks are either single or have failed in at least one marriage; most notably, one of the best-known female relationship gurus, Barbara De Angelis, has been married FIVE times, and her 3rd husband was fellow guru John Gray, author of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus"... so why do we listen to these people?
There's an old saying; "A woman marries a man expecting him to change, and he doesn't... and a man marries a woman expecting her not to change, and she does." This is certainly an over-generalization, but it points up 2 of the most important things to remember when trying to form a lasting relationship:
1) Do NOT put on a fake persona, or fake any part of how you interact with your prospective partner, as you can NOT keep it up forever, and more importantly you're being deceptive, and that'll come back to bite you eventually. If you can't show your true self to a person, either you lack what it takes to have a long-term relationship, or they're too immature to handle normal human failings and so are themselves lacking... or of course both.
2) Do NOT delude yourself that you can change the other person, or that you can prevent them from gradually changing as they mature and grow. You can't expect your partner to be like your same-sex or friends, or like you (unless you're gay, in which case I wouldn't pretend to be able to offer advice); men and women are DIFFERENT, and will STAY different, and will grow and change in different ways over the years... so if you can't handle socks on the floor or panties drying on the shower rod, or the other irritating things each gender does, you're not ready for a long-term relationship yet.
To these, I'd add 3 others:
3) Don't confuse lust and infatuation with love; you can NOT love a person until you've known them long and well enough to see what's lovable about them, so if you're talking about love within a few weeks, or even months, of meeting someone, you're very likely heading for a fall.
4) Don't confuse having things in common plus sexual attraction with love; someone too like you will usually bore you sooner or later, and, more importantly, it's too easy to get too close too fast with such a person, and to not realize that they differ from you in crucial ways before it's too late.
5) Don't enter into a relationship with unrealistic expectations. Don't think that your relationship will be like what you see in the movies, or even like what your parents had; expect it to be hard work, with plenty of fighting and aggravation and not getting your way, and fairly dull much of the time... in other words expect it to be like LIFE, and if your mate has the same perspective you'll do ok.
There will certainly be people whose relationships are exceptions to the above, just as there are people who married as teenagers, or after only knowing each other a few weeks, who manage to beat the odds and be together forever, but they WILL apply to most people... which is more than the so-called experts can say about THEIR advice.
