this and that

11% cash back on ebates, get a $25 amazon gift card

2010-05-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

Limited time only...For ebates 11th anniversary, get 11% cash back on your everyday online purchases.

This is a great way to get cash back on purchases you'd be making online anyway....I just got a $25 check in the mail....

Use the link below to get a $5 sign up bonus

PLUS

Get entered into a raffle to win a $25 amazon gift card (after your first qualifying purchase)

http://www.ebates.com/rf.do?referrerid=NHzNwq5N01iJfF91rYygsw%3D%3D

read this, since odds are, someone in your household is a procrastinator

2008-12-09T09:28:00.000-08:00

"A penchant for postponement takes its toll. Procrastination carries a financial penalty, endangers health, harms relationships and ends careers."

Procrastinating Again? How to Kick the Habit in Scientific American describes several theories on why people procrastinate, some snippets:

The characteristic most strongly linked to procrastination is conscientiousness—or lack thereof. A highly conscientious person is dutiful, organized and industrious. Therefore, someone who is not conscientious has a high probability of procrastinating. A person who is impulsive also is a procrastinator at risk. “People who are impulsive can’t shield one intention from another,” Pychyl says. So they are easily diverted by temptations—say, the offer of a beer—that crop up in the middle of a project such as writing a term paper

Procrastination can also stem from anxiety, an offshoot of neuroticism. Procrastinators postpone getting started because of a fear of failure (I am so worried that I will bungle this assignment), the fear of ultimately making a mistake (I need to make sure the outcome will be perfect), and the fear of success (If I do well, people will expect more of me all the time. Therefore, I’ll put the assignment off until the last minute, do it poorly, and people won’t expect so much of me).

Then the article offers strategies to kick the habit:

So rather than setting a vague goal such as “I will get healthy,” set one with its implementation, including timing, built in—say, “I will go to the health club at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow.”

Setting such specific prescriptions does appear to inhibit the tendency to procrastinate. In 2008 psychologist Shane Owens and his colleagues at Hofstra University demonstrated that procrastinators who formed implementation intentions were nearly eight times as likely to follow through on a commitment than were those who did not create them. “You have to make a specific commitment to a time and place at which to act beforehand,” Owens says. “That will make you more likely to follow through.”

Smart scheduling can also thwart procrastination...

More simply, Pychyl advises procrastinators to “just get started.” The anticipation of the task often is far worse than the task turns out to be...

perhaps I should start a "woman's site"

2008-08-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

Advertiser's are targeting women, and the sites that cater to them. From NYtimes article, Woman to Woman, Online :

Heather Armstrong’s wickedly funny blog about motherhood, Dooce, is more than just an outlet for the creativity and frustrations of a modern mother. The site, chock full of advertising, is a moneymaking machine — so much so that Ms. Armstrong and her husband have both quit their regular jobs.

Despite her blog going downhill after she had a child (I thought so anyway, but maybe that's only because I don't have children?), enough people are still flocking to her blog that both she and her husband were both able to quit their day jobs?!

Is this art?

2008-07-10T13:32:00.000-07:00

Waterfalls take over NYC:

What's more refreshing than a waterfall on a hot Brooklyn day? How about four? In one of the most expansive public art projects in New York City's history, artist Olafur Eliasson has constructed four giant waterfalls around the East River made out of scaffolding and water pumps.

Seems really silly to me, but then again, I wasn't too big a fan of the other "art" exhibited in NY in recent years. Namely, the refurbished entry pavilion to the Brooklyn Museum of art, the Sensation exhibit, and The Gates in Central Park....

*For more, see the official project website: NYC Waterfalls

in favor of part time work for all

2008-06-17T15:26:00.000-07:00

Interesting article in the NYtimes: When Mom and Dad Share It All. Not much time to comment on it, as I work full time, and have far too many errands to run while at home (and I'm not a parent!), but a couple of points I found especially interesting. The article talks about men holding part time jobs - very inspiring, since if men can get away with it, surely, I as a women can too...And a quote regarding division of labor:

“And the most sadly comic data is from my own research,” he adds, which show that in married couples “where she has a job and he doesn’t, and where you would anticipate a complete reversal, even then you find the wife doing the majority of the housework.”

exercise willpower, but only toward one goal at a time

2008-04-02T10:05:00.001-07:00

Interesting, but largely nonsensical, article on willpower, advising us to be careful when expending our willpower resources:

The brain has a limited capacity for self-regulation, so exerting willpower in one area often leads to backsliding in others...The brain’s store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of goals...It can be counterproductive to work toward multiple goals at the same time if your willpower cannot cover all the efforts that are required. Concentrating your effort on one or at most a few goals at a time increases the odds of success.

However, also advising us to make sure to use willpower often, since:

Like a muscle, willpower seems to become stronger with use. Whatever the explanation, consistently doing any activity that requires self-control seems to increase willpower — and the ability to resist impulses and delay gratification is highly associated with success in life.

And some fluff:

People who stick to an exercise program for two months report reducing their impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework. Other forms of willpower training, like money-management classes, work as well.

natural alternative to drugs

2008-03-27T12:57:00.000-07:00

Read studies about this years ago, but predictably enough, the NYtimes is writing about it again, Yes, Running Can Make You High:

But now medical technology has caught up with exercise lore. Researchers in Germany, using advances in neuroscience, report in the current issue of the journal Cerebral Cortex that the folk belief is true: Running does elicit a flood of endorphins in the brain. The endorphins are associated with mood changes, and the more endorphins a runner’s body pumps out, the greater the effect.

They (German researchers) show that it is possible to define and measure the runner’s high and that it should be possible to figure out what brings it on. They even offer hope for those who do not enjoy exercise but do it anyway. These exercisers might learn techniques to elicit a feeling that makes working out positively addictive.

yet another thing to blame on feminism

2007-09-26T11:12:00.001-07:00

Nytimes article on how women appear to be less happy than men these days. The explanation the article gives for this decline in happiness: "women now have a much longer to-do list than they once did."

Some highlights from the article, He’s Happier, She’s Less So:

In the early 1970s, women reported being slightly happier than men. Today, the two have switched places.

Since the 1960s, men have gradually cut back on activities they find unpleasant. They now work less and relax more...

Over the same span, women have replaced housework with paid work — and, as a result, are spending almost as much time doing things they don’t enjoy as in the past. Forty years ago, a typical woman spent about 23 hours a week in an activity considered unpleasant, or 40 more minutes than a typical man. Today, with men working less, the gap is 90 minutes...

Women are not actually working more than they were 30 or 40 years ago. They are instead doing different kinds of work. They’re spending more time on paid work and less on cleaning and cooking...

...the average time devoted to dusting has fallen significantly in recent decades. There haven’t been any dust-related technological breakthroughs, so houses are probably just dirtier than they used to be. I imagine that the new American dustiness affects women’s happiness more than men’s.

And the bottom line: women are working more, men less, and yet:

Inside of families, men still haven’t figured out how to shoulder their fair share of the household burden. Instead, we’re spending more time on the phone and in front of the television.

I too felt guilty about my desperate purchase of Dasani on Friday, but perhaps for other reasons...

2007-08-13T16:04:00.000-07:00

Water, Water Everywhere, but Guilt by the Bottleful

On a recent family vacation in Cape Cod, Jenny Pollack, 40, a novelist and public relations associate from Brooklyn, did something she knew she would come to regret. She did it on the spur of the moment. She did it because she felt desperate.

Besides, the giant illuminated Dasani vending machine was just standing there, like a beacon.

So, with her reusable plastic Nalgene bottles dry and her son Charlie working up a thirst in an indoor playground, she broke down and bought a bottle of water. To most people it would be a simple act of self-refreshment, but to Ms. Pollack it was also a minor offense against the planet — think of all the oil used to package, transport and refrigerate that water.

“Something about it felt like a betrayal,” said Ms. Pollack...

another reason to avoid cubicles (if you can)

2007-08-02T13:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I noticed that the pounding headache I attempted to ignore much of the day, almost completely vanished within half-hour of leaving the office. But this was only a small piece of evidence from the growing number of personal experiences I was passively accumulating to support my long standing hypothesis that physical ailments are magnified in and sometimes even develop from the office environment. However, until now my hypothesis was rather weak, since I had gathered very little hard scientific data to support it (I’m sure data exists, but I’ve been wasting my free time at work researching other nonsense). Until now.

The NYtimes reports Study: Laser printers may pose health risks

Emissions from office laser printers can be as unhealthy as cigarette smoke, according to an Australian professor who is now calling for regulations to limit printer emissions.

The average printer releases toner particles that can get deep into the lungs and cause respiratory problems and cardiovascular trouble, according to Morawska's team, part of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health, and specialists in atmospheric particles.

And yes, I sit less than 10 feet away from a laser printer that is almost constantly in operation. Never mind the radiation emitted from the half a dozen or so radars rotating above my building...

I used to live here...

2007-07-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

Wall Collapses On West Side Construction Site:

A retaining wall at a construction site where blasting work was being done collapsed Wednesday night, forcing the evacuation of several hundred residents from a nearby apartment building...

Residents said they had major doubts about the safety of the work being performed...

Residents have complained about noise and work at odd hours at the planned commercial and residential project, which is being handled by Gotham Construction, Stringer and Cook said...

quotable

2007-07-16T09:34:00.000-07:00

Jean Rostand:

"To love an idea is to love it a little more than one should."

finally, an alternative to triple typing

2007-05-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

A Key Change for Mobile Phones:

Levy thinks that people are so fed up with triple typing that they're finally ready for a new keypad design, one that places each letter in alphabetical order, without adding a space-consuming QWERTY keyboard...

The new layout, called Fastap, is the first major overhaul of the traditional phone keypad since it debuted on touch-tone phones in the 1960s.

best memorial

2007-04-29T21:58:00.000-07:00

Near a cliff overlooking the ocean in Santa Barbara there lies a rock on which there is a plaque that reads:

"This is in commemoration of the Isla Vista tree which fell into the ocean on January 28, 1983."

new age addiction

2007-04-20T10:19:00.000-07:00

When BlackBerry service gets cut off for ten hours, we discover just how much of a hold this technology has on some people's lives, from Bereft of BlackBerrys, the Untethered Make Do:

“I quit smoking 28 years ago,” she said, “and that was easier than being without my BlackBerry.”

“I have reached the point where I get phantom vibrations, even when I’m not carrying the thing,” he said. “That sure doesn’t sound too healthy, does it?”

The BlackBerry blackout, just like the power failures of yore, could have even helped in the romance department — if couples could actually connect. Robert Friedman, president of the media and entertainment division of @radical.media, a production company, said the disruption gave him “a lot of free time on my hands to spend with my wife, although I couldn’t find her since her BlackBerry was off.”

male biological clock

2007-03-01T08:43:00.000-08:00

Seems that a discussion with a friend about how the older siblings in our families seem "brighter" may have not been so far off...

From It Seems the Fertility Clock Ticks for Men, Too:

Another study by Dr. Malaspina and Dr. Reichenberg, also using Israeli army data, found a correlation between having an older father and lower scores on nonverbal, or performance, I.Q. tests.

or judaic divinity school?

2007-02-06T13:42:00.000-08:00

First ever secular yeshiva opens:

"I like Torah and Gemara and I looked for a place where I could learn Judaism that was not related to mitzvoth. I acquired a cultural package that will always stay with me."

a far too cynical approach to heroes

2007-01-23T17:54:00.000-08:00

In thinking about how to respond to this tag, I realized that while I can list a number of people I admire, and there are plenty of heroic acts I appreciate, I am wary of explicitly labeling anyone as my hero (to me “hero” suggests perfection and is a bit too strong a description for the inherently flawed human). So instead, I leave you with Ralph Waldo Emerson words to consider:

“The youth, intoxicated with his admiration of a hero, fails to see, that it is only a projection of his own soul, which he admires”

the more we know, the less we understand?

2007-01-14T18:30:00.000-08:00

Daniel Gilbert in Stumbling on Happiness:

Once upon a time there was bearded G-d who made a small, flat earth, and pasted it in the very middle of the sky so that human beings would be at the center of everything. Then physics came along and complicated the picture with big bangs, quarks, branes, and superstrings, and the payoff for all that critical analysis is that now, several hundred years later, most people have no idea where they are.

VS

Albert Einstein quoted in the The New York Times:

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.

only in NYC

2007-01-08T07:39:00.000-08:00

Gas-Like Odor Permeates Parts of New York City:

Mysterious odors come and go in the New York City area, sometimes never identified.

underground holiday spirit

2006-12-31T09:24:00.000-08:00

(from my favorite photo blog: Express Train)

apparently there's such a thing as a "cartoon philospher"

2006-12-26T11:06:00.001-08:00

Great article in the Washington Post: Very Fine Lines: What Makes a Cartoon New Yorker-Worthy? Draw Your Own Conclusion. Some snippets:

He pauses. "Sometimes somebody will say something funny and you'll see a bunch of people do this -- " He reaches into his pocket for a pen and paper. "And somebody'll say, 'I claim it!' "

Mankoff, who has been cartoon editor at the magazine since 1997, knows that sometimes people are befuddled by New Yorker cartoons. "We don't do focus groups. We don't find out ' Does everybody get it?' " he says

Mankoff, 62, is a cartoon philosopher and a cartoonist. He's the guy who drew the oft-reproduced classic of a businessman looking at his datebook as he talks on the phone, saying "No, Thursday's out. How about never -- is never good for you?"

It's the power of negative thinking -- the perfect philosophy for New Yorker cartoonists and any other poor souls who are frequently clobbered by rejection.

(hat tip: bits'n pieces)

top five things Jews do on X-mas

2006-12-25T09:17:00.000-08:00

Eat Chinese food
Watch a movie
Go to the Matzo Ball
Do work (house work, "real" work, school work...)
Go to the Jewish Museum (the line was a block long!)

on difficult people

2006-12-11T19:23:00.000-08:00

From Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields:

Regarding people who were difficult to accept or respect, Nelle said, “Our response to these people represents our earthly test. And I think, that these people enrich the wonder of our lives. It is they who most need our kindness, because they seem less deserving. After all, anyone can love people who are lovely.”

comical

2006-12-07T13:43:00.000-08:00

From Ouch! My Bag Is Killing Me:

Chloe Thompson, 24, is used to the back pain caused by carrying big bags, but she suffered a different kind of sting in July, when her Lucky Brand slouch bag was stolen during a reunion at Brown University. “I had over $2,000 worth of stuff in that bag,” said Ms. Thompson, who works in retail analysis for Cynthia Vincent, a fashion company in New York, “my iPod, digital camera, cellphone, glasses, sunglasses, makeup kit and a ton of other belongings, including a Care Bear that I’ve had since I was born.”

Because she lost so much property, Ms. Thompson found that the theft was actually covered by her homeowner’s insurance. But before she could collect any money, she had to convince the insurance adjuster that it was possible to fit everything into a single bag.

Dowd, Full Strength

2006-11-26T19:42:00.000-08:00

So finally, my long overdue review of Are Men Necessary? (The answer to which, incidentally, is YES! “for breeding and heavy lifting,” at the very least.) The book made for one the most entertaining and quotable reads ever. Suffice it to say that it is one of the few books I would like to own. My main criticism of the book is that its title is misleading. It’s not really about whether men are necessary or not. It’s mostly just a humorous, witty, and sarcastic account of society today, ridiculing the men and women who make it up along the way. There are also some great statistics and interviews. Some snippets:

“Feminists in the seventies went overboard,” agreed Anne Schroeder, a twenty-six-year-old magazine editor in D.C. “Paying is like opening a car door. It’s nice. I appreciate it. But he doesn’t have to.”

Unless he wants another date.

* * *
Cosmo quoted a survey by Youth Intelligence, a market research firm in New York, that found that 68 percent of three thousand married and single women said “they’d ditch work if they could afford to.” And a Cosmo poll of eight hundred women revealed the same startling statistic: two out of three respondents would rather “kick back a casa than climb the corporate ladder.”

* * *
Five years ago, you would often hear high-powered women fantasize that they would love a Wife, somebody to do the shopping, cooking, and carpooling, so they could focus on work.

Now the fantasy is more retro: They want to be that wife.

* * *
She [Cosmo editor, Helen Brown] explained that she refused to run articles on sexual harassment in Cosmo because, "I have this possibly benighted idea that when a man finds you sexually attractive, he is paying you a compliment..when he doesn’t, that’s when you have to worry."

She also reminisced fondly about her salad days at a Los Angeles radio station KHJ, as she worked her way through secretarial school, when the men played “a dandy game” called “Scuttle.”

“Rules: All announcers and engineers who weren’t busy would select a secretary, chase her down the halls, through the music library and back to the announcing booths, catch her and take her panties off. Once the panties were off, the girl would put them back on again. Nothing wicked ever happened. Depantying was the sole object of the game.

“While all this was going on, the girl herself usually shrieked, screamed, flailed, blushed, threatened and pretended to faint, but to my knowledge no scuttler was every reported to the front office. Au contraire, the girls wore their prettiest panties to work.”

* * *
The earthshaking question they considered was: Why are men attracted to female cartoon characters, while women are not attracted to male cartoon characters?

* * *
“What happens genetically when a man who has his nose done, chin augmented and ears pinned back is attracted to a woman who’s had her eyes done and her lips pumped up and her face lifted?” Alex Kuczynski wonders. “And they have a baby and look at each other and moan, ‘My G-d, where did this ugly baby come from?’ or ‘Honey, that’s not your nose’ or ‘Baby, whose ears are those?’ I’ve talked to doctors who have already seen this happening.”

* * *
New York doctors envision princess-to-frog (or dog) scenarios in which men marry smooth-faced women and, four months and no Botox injections later, wake up next to a shar-pei.

For all those who get married and dump their friends, read this:

2006-11-08T12:08:00.000-08:00

Abridged version of Too Close for Comfort:

It has only been in the last century that Americans have put all their emotional eggs in the basket of coupled love. Because of this change, many of us have found joys in marriage our great-great-grandparents never did. But we have also neglected our other relationships, placing too many burdens on a fragile institution and making social life poorer in the process.

Until 100 years ago, most societies agreed that it was dangerously antisocial, even pathologically self-absorbed, to elevate marital affection and nuclear-family ties above commitments to neighbors, extended kin, civic duty and religion.

Researchers soon found that men and women with confidants beyond the nuclear family were mentally and physically healthier than people who relied on just one other individual for emotional intimacy and support

As Americans lose the wider face-to-face ties that build social trust, they become more dependent on romantic relationships for intimacy and deep communication, and more vulnerable to isolation if a relationship breaks down. In some cases we even cause the breakdown by loading the relationship with too many expectations.

Paradoxically, we can strengthen our marriages the most by not expecting them to be our sole refuge from the pressures of the modern work force. Instead we need to restructure both work and social life so we can reach out and build ties with others, including people who are single or divorced.

on friendship (the book)

2006-10-31T12:16:00.000-08:00

Though I finished reading Friendship by Joseph Epstein over a month ago, it’s been taking me a while to get around to posting my comments... While overall the book made for an entertaining read that did indeed meet up to its largely positive reviews, at first, I thought Epstein’s casual style of writing in Friendship was a bit cheesy. But either I stopped noticing his annoying way of addressing the reader, or it wasn’t as explicit as the book progressed, since I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and not because it was particularly insightful (it was more about Epstein’s particular friendships than anything else), but because Epstein both has and has had some pretty interesting friendships, and I always find it interesting to read confirmations of things I already know. For instance:

According to the received opinion of the day, women are better at friendship than are men.

And of course,

In any competition between friendship and marriage, friendship loses every time.

And,

"Friendship and marriage- and-family are mutually exclusive alternatives," Leon Kass has written in an essay titled "The Beginning of Wisdom. ..."

But I was confused by this one (is this a common enough male fantasy?):

In his friendships with women, he (Hemingway) seemed to want the common enough male fantasy, a lover with a man's mind and a women's body.

PPO vs HMO

2006-10-26T14:00:00.000-07:00

I need to decide between United Healthcare (PPO) and Oxford (HMO) by tomorrow. If you have any experience with both or either, please advise!

What I've learned from the web (here) about HMO's:

You're stressed, your staff is stressed and curt, everyone's attitude deteriorates. You know you're a darned good doctor, but the fun of medicine and the joy of really knowing your patients and being involved in their lives has become a distant memory.

Welcome to "Managed Care".

the scientific way of saying: stop being so self-absorbed

2006-10-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

Albert Einstein:

When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about.

Latest commuting statistics are out...

2006-10-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

Commuter trends show more early birds, longer rides:

More and more commuters are leaving home earlier, traveling farther and driving alone, says an analysis of commuting trends reported Monday.

...compared with the previous decade, more Americans are leaving for work between 5 a.m. and 6:30 a.m.

But statistics aside, great quote I read elsewhere: “The worst part about my commute is that half the time I end up at work.”

No one is normal, but must everything be classified as a psychiatriatric disorder?

2006-10-17T08:29:00.000-07:00

Psychiatrists are debating whether to classify compulsive buying as a disorder akin to alcoholism. Doing so would help "shopaholics" get treated but might also let them escape legal responsibility for their debts. A study says more than 10 million Americans may qualify for the diagnosis.

Funny, how come I feel like it’s the other way around?

2006-10-16T10:37:00.000-07:00

To Be Married Means to Be Outnumbered:

Married couples…have finally slipped into a minority…

…49.7 percent, or 55.2 million, of the nation’s 111.1 million households in 2005 were made up of married couples

What happens when a plane crashes and the bodies fall 30 stories?

2006-10-12T11:56:00.000-07:00

Area Returning to Normal After Plane Crash

Police have placed 95 markers showing the location of remains of the two men and set up a white tent to process them.

First thought on reading this: Yuck, that’s a bit more graphic than I expected from a newspaper article.

Then I started wondering: Why are they marking these 95 spots exactly?

educating the public

2006-10-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

Check out photo 6: Sacred Holiday

overanalyzing hand-holding

2006-10-05T10:28:00.000-07:00

Sweet article, A Simple Show of Hands, on what the simple gesture of holding hands suggests these days. Some snippets:

“Hand-holding is the one aspect that’s not been affected by the sexual revolution...”

Nowadays hand-holding has attracted the interest of scientists who are studying its effects on the body and mind...

Usually it connotes something innocuous and sweet about a couple and their relationship...

Someone should write a follow up piece on what hand-holding connotes (and incites?) in Orthodox communities (like CH): Scandalous? If so, why? And why the sudden prevalence of the gesture in public? (I think it's cute.)

emphasis on "undervalued"

2006-10-04T08:39:00.000-07:00

From Numbers Are Male, Said Pythagoras, and the Idea Persists:

"female scientists and engineers are underpaid, undervalued and underrepresented in the top tiers of science."

spilling over from CH into Joe's blog

2006-09-29T06:16:00.000-07:00

In Times Square again

be sure to read the comments

2006-09-26T19:02:00.000-07:00

Today's picture from one of the photoblogs I check daily: Times Square.

nine-eleven, where were you?

2006-09-11T08:45:00.000-07:00

One of those relatively rare events that occur in ones lifetime that warrants the question of: “where were you when it happened?” And more so, the answer to which is vividly recalled. Can’t believe it’s been five years. Feels like ages ago, but at the same time seems like only yesterday…

I was in Baltimore, getting ready for class, with the radio on in the background. Thought nothing of it when they casually announced that a plane hit one of the twin towers. Didn’t realize what had happened until an hour later, when I was walking to class, and a classmate hysterically reported the news, saying class was canceled, since terrorists have attacked, the world trade center has collapsed, etc. Admittedly, I blew him off at first, thinking he must be exaggerating…Then spent the rest of the morning and afternoon watching the footage in shock…

Fung Wah lives up to their reputation

2006-09-07T06:20:00.000-07:00

So turns out there was reason to be weary of Fung Wah. During my two years in the Boston area, I took the Chinatown buses, either Fung Wah or Travelpack, at least once a month, and urged many others to use them as well, saying they were safe enough, or at least, other than feeling like the bus was going to flip on several occassions, I always arrived safely at my destination and usually on time (and most importantly for only $15). But alas, Fung Wah bus crash hurts 33:

A packed Fung Wah bus that overturned and injured 33 people yesterday appeared to have taken a curvy highway exit at high speed - a mistake authorities said came despite increased scrutiny of the company’s safety performance.

let us fly in peace*

2006-08-23T06:31:00.000-07:00

Suspicious smell, bottle of water causes flight to be diverted:

A flight from Atlanta to New York was diverted to Charlotte, North Carolina, last night after a flight attendant found a bottle of water and smelled something suspicious.

Bomb-sniffing dogs checked the plane while authorities interviewed the flight crew and some of the passengers from AirTran Flight 372.

The dogs found nothing hazardous. The passengers were re-screened and they continued their trip after about a three-hour delay.

*plea to airline officials: my abhorrence of delays and being stripped and "patted down" far surpasses any sliver of fear of being blown up while in flight. And oh, terrorists don’t have to kill to win: their tactics are working if we are limiting are personal freedom in fear of them. These restrictions are bordering paranoia.

things wrong with this cartoon

2006-08-22T13:54:00.000-07:00

Why are there only men on the plane?
Since when do men travel with shampoo?

A million little pieces—plus some

2006-08-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it’s because I went into reading it with the knowledge that portions of it were apocryphal that I was able to read A Million Little Pieces without getting angry at the author for misleading me. Some of it must be true, and it seems almost irrelevant that some details are not, and besides, I commend the author on being so bold as to splatter intimate details of his life for the world at large to read and dissect…Even though I am well aware that I can’t completely trust James Frey, oddly, his writing still comes off as remarkably honest. The book is gripping, informative, powerful, and in a way, honest. Would highly recommend to a select audience.

Another Hollywood Conspiracy Perhaps

2006-08-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

In Time essay, Where Have All the Cary Grants Gone, Belinda Luscombe puzzles over how “The shift in power between the sexes has nowhere been greater than in romantic comedies.” Where “The men are about as useful as a pitcher of spit, while the women have careers and well-furnished apartments and vast freighters of wisdom.”

Though she acknowledges that, “You don't have to talk to smart single women for long before the subject moves on to the difficulty of finding even a standard-issue male. The more powerful the woman, the more elusive the match,” She can’t understand, “who, settling into the center of the fifth row on a Friday night, Junior Mints and large diet soda in hand, wants to be reminded of real men? Why do we have to keep seeing in movies the people we sneaked out of the house to get away from?”

I think it’s a cheap trick: if enough women watch these chick flicks where powerful women fall for loser men, perhaps women might adapt and gladly put up with Men Not Working, and Not Wanting Just Any Job and Guys [that] Just Want to Have Fun.

first and last lines

2006-07-28T07:29:00.000-07:00

From Guys Just Want to Have Fun

The intro:

When I was in college, I followed a simple strategy: Go where the boys are. Sure, that led me into many settings where inebriants flowed, but my reasoning was strictly practical. Men ruled the world, as anyone could see, so the trick was to do as they did. No girlie major like art history or French lit for me. I started in chemistry and then proceeded up the gender gradient to physics, finally achieving in Classical Mechanics the exalted status of only girl in the class.

[The body: see if you can fill in the blanks]

And the conclusion:

I'd still major in physics if I were doing it again, just because there ought to be at least a few Americans, of whatever gender, who know something beyond the technology of beer bongs.

eight troops

2006-07-28T06:48:00.000-07:00

The 51st Battalion

Eight troops from Golani's 51st Battalion lost their lives on Wednesday during heavy fighting with Hizbullah operatives in the southern Lebanese village of Bint Jbail. Another officer was killed in a clash at Maron a-Ras.

Ro'i would have been 31 years old on Thursday...We tried all day to reach him, called his friends, the hospitals...Alex, 23, from Acre, had already registered for studies at Haifa University...Amihai wanted to serve in battalion 51 in order to follow in the footsteps of his friend, Shmuel Weiss...Asaf had a month left to finish his two-year army service...Idan, 21, from Jaffa, told only his father that he was in Lebanon. "He didn't want his mother to worry"...

mid-east conflict allegory

2006-07-27T07:00:00.001-07:00

Sarah provides a dumbed down version of why Israel is at war (in case you didn't like Krauthammer's straight up version).

another one liner (on Jews)

2006-07-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

From BOOKS IN BRIEF on Fabulous Small Jews:

But Epstein, always a graceful writer, also happens to possess a stand-up comic's gift for punch lines: "Psychotherapy is what Jews have instead of golf," one character says. "Gentiles try to improve their backswing, Jews their past."

tortilla reference

2006-07-26T07:57:00.000-07:00

For my own reference mostly (from The Taco Joint in Your Kitchen):

if you roll the tortilla, it’s a burrito;
if you layer food on top of it, it’s an enchilada;
if you crisp it up and use it as a kind of plate, it’s a tostada;
if you cut it into pieces and bake or fry it, it’s a chip;

google fixed it!

2006-07-19T07:27:00.000-07:00

Now when you discard a draft on gmail, there is the option to "undo discard." Yay!

(I complained about this a couple months ago here.)

one reason to fear a power outage in nyc

2006-07-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

Stuck A train in Queens boils riders:

Dozens of subway riders were stuck for nearly two hours yesterday on a stalled elevated A train in Queens, sweltering in the searing heat before making a harrowing evacuation 40 feet above the street.

It doesn’t simply feel more polluted when it’s hot…

2006-07-18T10:34:00.000-07:00

Severe weather alert from weather.com:

AIR QUALITY LEVELS IN OUTDOOR AIR ARE PREDICTED TO BE GREATER THAN AN AIR QUALITY INDEX VALUE OF 100 FOR FINE PARTICLES. THE AIR QUALITY INDEX...OR AQI...WAS CREATED AS AN EASY WAY TO CORRELATE LEVELS OF DIFFERENT POLLUTANTS TO ONE SCALE. THE HIGHER THE AQI VALUE, THE GREATER THE HEALTH CONCERN.

WHEN POLLUTION LEVELS ARE ELEVATED... THE NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH RECOMMENDS THAT INDIVIDUALS CONSIDER LIMITING STRENUOUS OUTDOOR PHYSICAL ACTIVITY TO REDUCE THE RISK OF ADVERSE HEALTH EFFECTS. PEOPLE WHO MAY BE ESPECIALLY SENSITIVE TO THE EFFECTS OF ELEVATED LEVELS OF POLLUTANTS INCLUDE THE VERY YOUNG, AND THOSE WITH PRE-EXISTING RESPIRATORY PROBLEMS SUCH AS ASTHMA OR HEART DISEASE. THOSE WITH SYMPTOMS SHOULD CONSIDER CONSULTING THEIR PERSONAL PHYSICIAN.

And this is because (source):

The stagnant atmospheric conditions of the heat wave trap pollutants in urban areas and add the stresses of severe pollution to the already dangerous stresses of hot weather, creating a health problem of undiscovered dimensions.

we're having a heat wave

2006-07-18T06:06:00.000-07:00

Love this line from NYtimes article, Nation Sweats as Heat Hits Triple Digits:

In New York, people did what they always do: Complain. Endure. Live in fear of having a single centimeter of clothing brush the arm of a fellow subway rider.

middle east conflict in a toon

2006-07-17T12:39:00.000-07:00

Citi card attempts to woo me

2006-07-16T18:49:00.000-07:00

From a personalized letter from Citi:

Since becoming a cardmember on 2/15/2005, you have established yourself as one of Citi’s most valuable customers.

What can we offer you now? A lower rate on purchases? The opportunity to earn cash back as a statement credit on your everday spending?

P.S. We want to hear from you.

Even though they weren’t being completely honest with me (I’m one of Citi’s most valuable customers? Come on…), I’m a sucker for shameless flattery, so I gave them a call (yes, I know, it’s against The Rules, but I couldn’t help myself…). And I’m now getting 5% cash back on all my Citi® Dividend Platinum Select® card purchases for the next 3 months. Woo-hoo.

comical Op-Ed on ban of gay marriage

2006-07-14T11:34:00.000-07:00

Too Good for Marriage

LAST week, New York’s highest court voted 4-to-2 that a legislative ban on same-sex marriage did not violate the state Constitution...

What’s noteworthy about the New York decision, however, is that it became the second ruling by a state high court to assert a startling rationale for prohibiting same-sex marriage.

...straight couples may be less stable parents than their gay counterparts and consequently require the benefits of marriage to assist them...

But the New York court also put forth another argument, sometimes called the “reckless procreation” rationale. “Heterosexual intercourse,” the plurality opinion stated, “has a natural tendency to lead to the birth of children; homosexual intercourse does not.” Gays become parents, the opinion said, in a variety of ways, including adoption and artificial insemination, “but they do not become parents as a result of accident or impulse.”

(Reminded me of the argument my high school teachers used to present about how women are on a higher spiratual level than men and thus...)

Loss of Jewish Identity

2006-07-13T18:59:00.000-07:00

Abigail Pogrebin interviewed “prominent Jews” asking them to reflect on what being Jewish means to them and compiled their words in Stars of David. So what does being Jewish mean to these 60 something celebrities, in short, nothing much. To most it’s limited to matzo balls and acknowledging Yom Kippur. To some it’s about their passions and/or attitudes, for instance when Gene Wilder was asked by his son if he’s superstitious, he replied, “Not in the least, but why take a chance.”

It is recommended that this book be read along side Dershowitz's The Vanishing American Jew: only (roughly) a handful of the 63 interviewed married within the faith…

the under-privileged sex

2006-07-12T06:32:00.000-07:00

Lines extracted from several letters published under: Yes, College Women Work Harder (8 Letters):

The simple truth is that women work harder because we have to; men coast because they can.

Where are the legions of women dominating senior, high-paying positions? Women earn just under half of the doctoral degrees and make up only about 39 percent of the faculty in degree-granting institutions. The average salary of male faculty exceeds that of female faculty.

In general, men take risks, do not interrupt careers to bear and raise children, and tend to be confident. (Right so...if the women didn't take the time to bear and raise children, umm...who would?)

During the last three years, I have taught hundreds of students in introductory college history classes, and I can confirm that my female students usually perform better and work harder.

I'm all for going back to the traditional household (don't quote me on this, since I'm not really*), but if we're going to work, we should at least get treated fairly (payed equally for starters).

*I’m in this mode where if it were up to me, I would prefer not to work, or only very part time, or I think I just really might want to go back to school...But I wouldn’t want anyone telling me that I couldn’t if I wanted to.

the paradox of love

2006-07-10T20:14:00.000-07:00

Spinoza renounces romantic love, writing that (quoted by Rebecca Goldstein in Betraying Spinoza):

Emotional distress and unhappiness have their origin especially in excessive love towards a thing subject to considerable instability, a thing which we can never possess. For nobody is disturbed or anxious about anything unless he loves it, nor do wrongs, suspicions, enmities, etc. arise except form love toward things which nobody can truly posses.

And Amoz Oz writes in his memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness:

Love is a curious mixture of opposites, a blend of extreme selfishness and total devotion. A paradox! Besides which, love, everybody is always talking about love, love, but love isn't something you choose, you catch it, like a disease, you get trapped in it, like a disaster.

Yet even the most rational of people crave this temporary insanity that takes an almost unbearable emotional toll on its victims (except maybe Spinoza, but it was speculated that that might have been because a girl broke his heart early on and he never really recovered). Seems almost counterintuitive.

is this another product of feminism?

2006-07-07T11:31:00.000-07:00

Putting the Manly in Manicure

Gaza in short

2006-07-07T09:27:00.000-07:00

Time Magazine essay by CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, Remember What Happened Here:

Israel Invades Gaza. That is in response to an attack from Gaza that killed two Israelis and wounded another, who was kidnapped and brought back to Gaza ...which, in turn, was in response to Israel's targeted killing of terrorist leaders in Gaza...which, in turn, was in response to the indiscriminate shelling of Israeli towns by rockets launched from Gaza.

...Before the eyes of the whole world, Israel left Gaza. Every Jew, every soldier, every military installation, every remnant of Israeli occupation was uprooted and taken away.

How do the Palestinians respond? What have they done with Gaza, the first Palestinian territory in history to be independent, something neither the Ottomans nor the British nor the Egyptians nor the Jordanians, all of whom ruled Palestinians before the Israelis, ever permitted? On the very day of Israel's final pullout, the Palestinians began firing rockets out of Gaza into Israeli towns on the other side of the border. And remember: those are attacks not on settlers but on civilians in Israel proper, the pre-1967 Israel that the international community recognizes as legitimately part of sovereign Israel, a member state of the U.N. A thousand rockets have fallen since.

the lonelier American

2006-07-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

Socialists have recently estimated that Americans have less friends than ever. In Time Magazine, Robert Putnam discusses the issue in piece titled,“You Gotta Have Friends”:

Social isolation has many well-documented side effects. Kids fail to thrive. Crime rises. Politics coarsens. Generosity shrivels. Death comes sooner (social isolation is as big a risk factor for premature death as smoking). Well-connected people live longer, happier lives, even if they have to forgo a new Lexus to spend time with friends.

And Henry Fountain in the NYtimes writes “The Lonely American Just Got a Bit Lonelier”:

More people are working and commuting longer hours and have little time for the kinds of external social activities that could lead to deeper relationships...

"Sure, you might say, we've still got our wives or husbands or mothers," he said. "That's true. But gosh, the number of friends you have is a strong predictor of how long you live."

What struck me about both articles was the emphasis on how having friends prolongs life. Here they are delving into the decline of meaningful friendships among Americans and how it reduces the quality of life, one of the underlying messages they leave the reader with is that friends are important because they make one live longer?! Umm...Seems like living longer would be an odd concern for the lonely person…

guru podcast

2006-06-28T06:10:00.000-07:00

Most entertaining and largely amusing subway listening material: Slate's Shopping: Choosing a Guru that's Right for You, Part I.

WikiHow of the day

2006-06-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

Check out How to Retire in Your 30's (most amusing - I thought...). My abridged version:

Define the dream.
Make a LOT of money by getting a job in:
- Investment banking - These Wall Street jobs can pay extremely well. In exchange, you sell your soul: the hours are a grind, the work is dull, and your boss is an egomaniac.
- Sales - You can earn a lot doing this dull job of sucking up to corporate IT drones.
- Engineering - If you join early at the right startup, you might be be able to Buy a Private Island after 4 years of work. But more likely, you will grind away endless hours for an incompetent 27 year old CEO and his insatiable venture capital masters before the company goes belly up, leaving your options worthless.
Lower your expenses. Resist the massive pressure to dress, eat and shop like your peers, and live a modest lifestyle. Focus on work, as your play will come later.
Invest wisely. Remember that the more you play it safe, the longer it'll probably take you to retire.
Keep your eye on the mark. There will be times when you feel like giving in and throwing in the towel.

From the warnings section:

Be aware this article is not titled "How to Be Happy". The financial freedom of early retirement described in this article requires sacrificing many things that most people believe are the greatest sources of happiness in life, such as driving a German automobile, wearing clothes with the right label, or for the more selfless, having kids

on vacations and wasting time at work

2006-06-26T07:05:00.000-07:00

Interesting essay in Time in which Po Bronson (author of What Should I do with My Life) discusses how Americans seem to be working too much, though not very efficiently (I’m guilty of this very crime myself, and I think it’s well justified, since if it were up to me, I would spend half the amount of time in the office and do double the amount of work, but I’m forced to sit in my cubicle for many more hours than I can be efficient for, and thus have no choice but to waste company time, and I suppose, my own as well…).

We Americans are so active in our leisure that we commonly complain we need a vacation from our vacations. We leave home tired; we come back exhausted...

There's no doubt that work has found its way into every hour of our day, thanks to beepers, cell phones and e-mail. Our lunch hours aren't even close to an hour; they average only 31 min. That's down 5 min. in 10 years. But fear not. We're getting our secret revenge. We've discovered a method to goof off despite it all. How? We seem to be stealing ever more bits of free time throughout the day.

For instance, surveys in recent years have concluded that the average American office worker "goofs off" for just over two hours a day--and that's not counting lunches or breaks. One hundred twenty-six minutes a day, to be exact. What do we do with this stolen time? "Spacing out" is a common poll response. Gossiping with co-workers is obviously popular. Surfing the Internet tops them all.

my “to read” list is too rapidly decreasing

2006-06-22T20:16:00.000-07:00

My commute has drastically increased my consumption rate of books. I’m afraid that if I don’t get some new suggestions soon, I won’t know what to read in a couple months, and I’ll have no choice but to learn Latin or something... I most recently completed The Genius Factory (The Curious History of the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank) by David Plotz. I found it extremely interesting, well written, and would highly recommend it. Some excerpts:

I was not much closer to wanting to be a donor than I had been before I started, but I was closer to understanding why someone else might want to do it. In the abstract, donating sperm had seemed fundamentally silly. But actually doing it was seductive. I have been accepted by the ultraexclusive Fairfax Cryobank! My sperm was “well above average”! My count was 105 million! What’s yours, George Clooney? Amanda, lovely Amanda, had asked for my help. The women of America—barren, desolate, desperate—needed me. They yearned for my B-positive, brown-eyed, six-foot-one-inch, HIV-negative, drug-free, heart-attack-prone, only slightly mentally ill sperm. And what kind of selfish monster was I to deny it to them?

“It was a screwed-up idea, making genius people,” he [Doron Blank, poster child of the Nobel sperm bank] said. “The fact that I have a huge IQ does not make me a person who is good or happy. People come expecting me to have all these achievements under my belt, and I don’t. I have not done anything that special.

“I don’t think being intelligent is what makes a person. What makes a person is being raised in a loving family with loving parents who don’t pressure them. If I was born with an IQ of 100 instead of 180, I could do just as much with my life. I don’t think you can breed for good people.”

the enjoyment derived from an item is multiplied when the item was obtained at zero monetary cost

2006-06-21T20:26:00.000-07:00

I received my free Jets engraved iPod Nano yesterday only a month after applying for the Jets credit card (thanks ctownbochur!), and I’m already having way too much fun with it. Today I adorned it with a protective iSkin purchased from the most incredible B & H, and yesterday I thoroughly enjoyed the first two podcasts I downloaded. And I should mention that iPods had very little appeal to me before I was offered a free one (as cool as they look, did I really need one?).

My first podcast is now my new favorite article:Watching the Couples Go By. There are some great lines, like the last one, but I won’t clip: read the whole thing.

Islamabad-based freelance columnist's take on the Jew's secret

2006-06-21T06:07:00.000-07:00

Why are Jews so powerful?

part of working in NYC

2006-06-16T07:43:00.000-07:00

Voiced on the PA system of my building Wednesday afternoon:

There is a suspicious package on XXth st. NYPD is on the scene and they are awaiting the bomb squad. All entrances and exits on the XXth st side are closed. Please do not look out the windows of the XXth street side

I was of course amused, but I overheard some concerned chatter in the office...

do book reviewers read every word?

2006-06-12T18:52:00.000-07:00

I read hardly a word last week (partly because I was out of commission, but mostly because I didn’t bring any good books with me), but the week before I finished A Tale of Love and Darkness. It was a disappointing read in that it wasn’t as interesting as I expected as it dragged on for much of the book, something was surely lost in the translation, and Oz’s writing can be quite poetic (sometimes too poetic and wordy for my likes), but it picked up towards the end, and overall, I would recommend it to those who have the patience to read it. Some excerpts:

Once, when I was seven or eight, my mother said to me, as we sat on the last seat but one on the bus to the clinic or the shoe shop, that while it was true that books could change with the years just as much as people could, the difference was that whereas people would always drop you when they could no longer get any advantage or pleasure or interest or at least a good feeling from you, a book would never abandon you. Naturally you sometimes dropped them, maybe for several years, or even forever. But they, even if you betrayed them, would never turn their backs on you: they would go on waiting for you silently and humbly on their shelf. They would wait ten years. They wouldn’t complain. One night, when you suddenly needed a book, even at three in the morning, even if it was a book you had abandoned and erased from your heart for years and years, it would never disappoint you, it would come down from its shelf and keep you company in your moment of need. It would not try to get its own back or make excuses or ask itself if it was worth its while or if you deserved it or if you still suited each other, it would come at once as soon as you asked. A book would never let you down (pp. 275).

I understood where I had come from: from a dreary tangle of sadness and pretense, of longing, absurdity, inferiority and provincial pomposity, sentimental education and anachronistic ideals, repressed traumas, resignation, and helplessness. Helplessness of the acerbic, domestic variety, where small-time liars pretended to be dangerous terrorists and heroic freedom fighters, where unhappy bookbinders invented formulas for universal salivation, where dentists whispered confidentiality to all their neighbors about their protracted personal correspondence with Stalin, where piano teachers, kindergarten teachers, and housewives tossed and turned tearfully at night from stifled yearning for an emotion-laden spiritual life, where compulsive writers wrote endless disgruntled letters to the editor of Davar, where elderly bakers saw Maimonides and the Baal Shem Tov in their dreams…(pp. 492).

Nobel prize physicist on the Jewish tradition

2006-05-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

I.I. Rabi commenting on why he thought Robert Oppenheimer never advertised his Jewish identity [American Prometheus pp. 76]:

"Oppenheimer was Jewish, but he wished he weren't and tried to pretend he wasn't...The Jewish tradition, even if you don’t know it in detail, is so strong that you renounce it at your own peril. [This] doesn’t mean you have to be Orthodox, or even practice it, but if you turn your back on it, having been born into it, you’re in trouble. So that poor Robert, an expert in Sanskrit and French literature...[Rabi's voice here trailed off into silent thought.]"

(Rabi grew up in an Orthodox home where “Even in casual conversation, G-d centered, not every paragraph, more like every sentence.” But of course, as with most very successful people, soon enough, “the formal religion fell away.”)

one of the things I dislike about SC

2006-05-24T17:49:00.000-07:00

In the East, a car is something that is used to get you places, in Southern California, it is so much more (and most annoyingly so!). From Get Your Motor Running:

John Lasseter grew up in Southern California, where driving is people's passion and second career, and a car their church and fortress. So if you ask Lasseter about car love, you get an impromptu prose poem. "Car love," he says, "is the sound of a throaty V-8 rumbling and revving, the acceleration throwing you back in the seat--especially when you get on a beautiful, winding road and the light's dappling through the trees. For me, it's a combination of enjoying the beauty of cars, classic or cool modern ones, and also the actual driving: getting out on the open road, whether it's a family road trip or driving by myself on a nice windy road and enjoying the ride."

another one of those I'm posting only because I like the title

2006-05-24T07:05:00.000-07:00

Is That a Tinge of Green on New York's Yellow Cabs?:

The Taxi and Limousine Commission, under pressure from the City Council, approved six hybrid models for taxi service last fall. The first batch entered the fleet in November; there are now 27 hybrid taxis on city streets.

classic

2006-05-21T18:12:00.000-07:00

See this Mike Peters cartoon.

but work IS a four letter word

2006-05-18T15:49:00.000-07:00

Hillary criticizes the work habits of the young folk, then Chided by Daughter, she retracts her criticism:

Mrs. Clinton said her daughter, Chelsea, called to complain after learning about her remarks at a gathering of the United States Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Thursday. In that speech, Mrs. Clinton criticized young people for having a sense of entitlement after growing up in a "culture that has a premium on instant gratification."

"My daughter heard that I'd said that, and she called and she said, 'Mom, I do work hard and my friends work hard,' " Mrs. Clinton said on Sunday in a commencement address at the C. W. Post campus of Long Island University.

"And I said, 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to convey the impression that you don't work hard,' " Mrs. Clinton continued. "I just want to set the bar high, because we are in a competition for the future."

Chelsea is right. My friends work hard as well. I think too hard. I have friends who are taking on jobs that require at least 60 hours in the office a week. One was describing his schedule: wake up at 6:30, get to the office by 7:30, work straight through till about 9 pm, because if he stays past 8, dinner is on them, go to the gym for an hour, get home by about 10:30 pm, watch TV for an hour, and retire. Now is that a way to live?

I for one don't plan on working that hard. I hope not to at least. I think working hard is overrated. We should learn from the European's: long lunch breaks, more vacation, chilled work environment. Laziness is a virtue when it comes to enjoying life. Unless you enjoy working hard, or you do humanitarian work, I say, don't listen to Hillary, and take it easy.

science is not infallible

2006-05-16T12:36:00.000-07:00

I can't understand how many very educated people, and even more surprisingly, many very skeptical people have implausible faith in doctors and/or too much confidence in scientific theory. That is, they believe in spite of the fact that scientific and medical findings are constantly being proved wrong. Why be less skeptical of scientific conclusions than of anything else?

Scientists reverse their conclusions about lactic acid:

Coaches and personal trainers tell athletes and exercisers that they have to learn to work out at just below their "lactic threshold," that point of diminishing returns when lactic acid starts to accumulate. Some athletes even have blood tests to find their personal lactic thresholds.

But that, it turns out, is all wrong.

And in support of intuitive thinking as opposed to basing belief on hard facts: Coaches didn’t know the science behind lactic acid, but from intuition knew what worked:

Through trial and error, coaches learned that athletic performance improved when athletes worked on endurance, running longer and longer distances, for example.

That, it turns out, increased the mass of their muscle mitochondria, letting them burn more lactic acid and allowing the muscles to work harder and longer.

And the scientists?

They took much longer to figure it out.

There's a Mench playing for the Texas Rangers

2006-05-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

From this NYtimes article that I did not read :

At first glance, I thought his jersey was a joke (seemed like the other players were pointing at him laughing), but seems that's his real name.

Google, please fix it

2006-05-11T18:40:00.000-07:00

Gmail's biggest flaw: the "discard" option. Why can't discarded drafts end up in the trash like other emails? I just mistakenly discarded a draft, the second time I've made the mistake this week. Luckily, I haven't lost anything too important yet...

(I just emailed myself a very important draft, just in case.)

I'm "energy in its purest form"

2006-05-09T15:09:00.000-07:00

You Are Diet Coke

You are energy in its purest form. No need to complicate things with sweetness.
And while people may hate your aftertaste, you are seen as a necessary evil.

Your best soda match: 7 Up

Stay away from: Coke

What Kind of Soda Are You?

I tag bits'n pieces, I'm Haaretz, Ph.D., and A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND (these are the only bloggers I know to read my blog), and anyone else who wants to do it, even if you don't have a blog, cuz it's fun to waste time, and it's only 5 questions.

Blaine fails, but survives

2006-05-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

Blaine fails to break underwater record in New York:

After Blaine spent seven minutes and 8 seconds underwater without any breathing apparatus, he blacked out and trainer Kirk Krack sent two divers into the tank to free him from shackles attached to his ankles.

good line

2006-05-08T17:10:00.000-07:00

From Report Finds Failures in Duke's Response in Lacrosse Case:

The case has generated enormous attention nationally and internationally because it involves issues of race, class, alcohol, university athletics, elitism and town-gown relationships.

on innate talent

2006-05-07T19:05:00.000-07:00

Some interesting conclusions regarding memory and talent from A Star Is Made:

This success, coupled with later research showing that memory itself is not genetically determined, led Ericsson to conclude that the act of memorizing is more of a cognitive exercise than an intuitive one. In other words, whatever innate differences two people may exhibit in their abilities to memorize, those differences are swamped by how well each person "encodes" the information. And the best way to learn how to encode information meaningfully, Ericsson determined, was a process known as deliberate practice.

Ericsson's research suggests a third cliché as well: when it comes to choosing a life path, you should do what you love — because if you don't love it, you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good. Most people naturally don't like to do things they aren't "good" at. So they often give up, telling themselves they simply don't possess the talent for math or skiing or the violin. But what they really lack is the desire to be good and to undertake the deliberate practice that would make them better.

I'll buy the second bit of information, since I've experienced it. I went from enjoying engineering and doing well in my classes, to being horribly bored by it, which led to a decrease in performance (or maybe it was the realization that I'm not actually gifted in the field that lead to loss of interest?). But I'm skeptical of the memory findings: I'm not sure I could ever improve my memory...

"I can do it myself"

2006-05-07T13:56:00.000-07:00

Rather frightening article on the Brit's shortage of dentists (the picture shown of the 43 year old, who looks at least 70, might be most horrific of all):

"I snapped it out myself," said William Kelly, 43, describing his most recent dental procedure, the autoextraction of one of his upper teeth.

William Kelly, 43, extracted part of his own tooth, leaving a black stump. He plans to pull one more.

Now it is a jagged black stump, and the pain gnawing at Mr. Kelly's mouth has transferred itself to a different tooth, mottled and rickety, on the other side of his mouth. "I'm in the middle of pulling that one out, too," he said.

It is easy to be mean about British teeth. Mike Myers's mouth is a joke in itself in the "Austin Powers" movies. In a "Simpsons" episode, dentalphobic children are shown "The Big Book of British Smiles," cautionary photographs of hideously snaggletoothed Britons. In Mexico, protruding, discolored and generally unfortunate teeth are known as "dientes de ingles."

the religion of scientists

2006-05-06T18:35:00.000-07:00

From American Prometheus [pp. 35]:

But if there were gaps in his education, he could admit to his friend Paul Horgan that Harvard was good for him. In the autumn of 1923, Robert wrote Horgan a satirical letter in which he wrote about himself in third person: “[Oppenheimer] has grown to be quite a man now you have no idea how Harvard has changed him. I am afraid it is not for the good of his soul to study so hard. He says the most terrible things. Only the other night I was arguing with him and I said but you believe in G-d don’t you? And he said I believe in the second law of thermodynamics, in Hamilton’s Principle, in Bertrand Russell, and would you believe it Siegfried [sic] Freud.”

possibly the number one screensaver being downloaded

2006-05-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

georgie

If he gets stuck, just move him with your cursor.

the immigrant strike benefits at least one native (me)

2006-05-01T05:49:00.000-07:00

This morning I got the following email from my professor:

Dear Class:

I am writing today to you to cancel class today. As an immigrant to the US with my family, I observe the nation-wide strike of immigrants today, for which reason I need to cancel today's class.

Of course, we continue on Wednesday.

Best,
signed

more from the nyt

2006-04-23T19:34:00.000-07:00

What I thought made for a great opening to an overall delightful Op-Ed, The Modern Elizabethan:

AN academic colleague of mine once asked me who had made me into a writer. "And I don't mean one of those creative writing professors," he said to me, a creative writing professor.

"Well, who do you mean?" I asked, probably ungrammatically, a thing creative writing professors get to do.

"I mean, who was your Shakespeare professor?" he asked; he was of course a Shakespeare professor himself.

what society has come to...

2006-04-23T16:03:00.000-07:00

Wanted: New Roommaid:

Shorty after Stephen McCarthy moved to Las Vegas in 2004, he offered a female friend an interesting proposition: if she kept the place tidy, cleaned up after his dog Maya and brought in the paper each morning, she could live in his house rent free.

While it seems men may always have ulterior motives ("Guys," he says, "always have it in the back of their mind." ), even when it comes to "roommaids," one claimed this wasn't so saying, "I'd like to meet somebody," he says, "but it's not going to be my roommate."

Though Richard Feynman hired a "roommaid" and she later became his third wife...

good line from the nyt

2006-04-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

From "And You Thought Abercrombie & Fitch Was Pushing It?":

But he is quite possibly the most unorthodox Jew in the history of the shmatte business.

on the latest evolution finding

2006-04-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

Tina Fey:

Scientists have discovered a fossil of a 375 million-year-old fish with a reptilian jaw and a swiveling neck that they say is a long-sought missing link between fish and walking land creatures. Disturbingly, they found it in a Red Lobster fried-seafood platter.

another genius and his baggage

2006-04-18T12:05:00.000-07:00

A biography on Oppenheimer won one of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes. I hope to read it, but for now, I was reading a bit about him here:

Despite his evident success as a scholar, he was plagued with doubts. In a letter to a friend, Oppenheimer concluded a listing of his feverish academic pursuits with the abrupt phrase "and wish I were dead." As an adult he recalled that, during his adolescent and college years, nearly everything about him aroused "a very great sense of revulsion and wrong."

Thomson accepted Oppenheimer as a research student and gave him the task of preparing thin films of beryllium. Oppenheimer regarded the work as "a terrible bore" and pronounced himself "so bad at it that it is impossible to feel that I am learning anything."

Oppenheimer celebrated the end of the war and the success of the Manhattan Project, but the death toll and chilling descriptions of radiation sickness had a sobering effect. He informed government officials that most scientists in the project would not continue to pursue such work. "I feel we have blood on our hands," he told President Harry S. Truman. "Never mind. It'll all come out in the wash," Truman replied.

The only genius that I can think of off-hand who was not disturbed was Richard Feynman…

what little people feel like on the subway

2006-04-11T07:51:00.000-07:00

From Express Train

on cleaning

2006-04-10T06:16:00.000-07:00

You Want It Clean? You Clean It!

Two things are clear. First, women still do more housework then men. Married women spend twice as much time on housework than their husbands, and single women spend twice as much time on housework as single men. Second, much time that could be spent cleaning is spent fighting about it.

The thing a lot of women miss is that you can’t make men do more than they would do on their own. Clearly, most men don’t need things to be as clean as women prefer them to be; hence they are likely to get resentful if they’re made to work harder than they would if they were living alone. (It’s kind of like when you work on a group project, and you’re generally a slacker, but your group wants to get an “A,” so you are forced to work overtime…It can be extremely frustrating…) However, if roles are reversed, and the woman is working and supporting her husband, that’s when I think it's only fair for the woman to expect the man to more housework...

The “Jewish personality” according to Nuland

2006-04-08T18:51:00.000-07:00

From Maimonides by Sherwin B. Nuland (pp. 23-24):

Among Jews, especially those of an intellectual bent, there is commonly a kind of restlessness, an anticipation of uncertainty, ambiguity, imperfection and the sense that one must do something about it even though the total solution will never be found. Many have lived in relative comfort with a chronic sense of discomfort. Irritability and a persistent low-grade aggravation are in the very marrow of such people. Though the qualities rankle, they may be the source of an active response to the world, whether productive or counterproductive. As the sociologist Thorstein Veblen famously put it in his frequently quoted essay of 1919, The Intellectual Pre-eminence of Jews in Modern Europe, “They are neither a complaisant nor a contented lot, these aliens of uneasy feet.”

Out of this restless dissatisfaction there arises a skepticism, a questioning of oneself of one’s place in the predominantly Christian world and, indeed, of the givens of that world, both great and small. Many Jews have felt themselves less bound by the encompassing assumptions of the surrounding culture, in part because they could never be wholly a part of it. “The first requisite for constructive work in modern science, and indeed for any work of inquiry that shall bring enduring results, is a skeptical frame of mind,” Veblen correctly pointed out.

I’ll buy it, although I feel like this “Jewish personality” is becoming less common with increased assimilation and seeming acceptance of Jews into the Christian world here in the states...

when criticism could be a good sign

2006-04-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

Bill Gates mocks $100 laptop project:

"If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type," Gates said.

(Geez, Bill, some people don't have billions of dollars and can't afford "to get a decent computer.")

And MIT Professor Dismisses Laptop Criticism:

"When you have both Intel and Microsoft on your case, you know you're doing something right," Negroponte said, prompting applause from the audience of several hundred open-source software devotees.

Chabad* masked as hipster synagogue

2006-04-04T08:24:00.000-07:00

With Yoga, Comedy and Parties, Synagogues Entice Newcomers:

The pioneers of outreach to secular Jews are the Chabad-Lubavitchers, members of an Orthodox Hasidic sect that is based in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Although their tactics have sometimes drawn controversy, their work has become a model for many Jews.

Dovi and Esty Scheiner, a young Lubavitch couple who moved from Crown Heights to TriBeCa several years ago, are trying to bring Judaism to the cool and hip in Lower Manhattan.

In order to reach the downtown audience, it was necessary to rethink the traditional synagogue approach, said Rabbi Scheiner. "This is a very anti-establishment, anti-organized-religion type of community."

Instead of holding religious services, they gave fancy cocktail parties in art galleries and lofts. In the middle of the events, Rabbi Scheiner would offer a few words of Jewish teaching.

The parties have now given way to the SoHo Synagogue, which they believe is the first Jewish house of worship in the neighborhood. About 250 people attended a dedication party last month for the synagogue's first home, on Varick Street near Canal Street. It is a stylishly decorated 5,000-square-foot space, complete with chic couches, a lacy flora-and-fauna-patterned curtain that functions as the mechitza separating the sexes and an avant-garde sheet-metal ark to store the Torah.

Also, watch the The SoHo Synagogue video.

*For the record: it has been pointed out that the SoHo Synagogue is not officially a "Chabad establishment."

in favor of the new design

2006-04-04T06:32:00.000-07:00

Nytimes launches a redesigned version of their website. See details in A Letter to Our Readers.

back in HSI zone

2006-04-03T09:12:00.000-07:00

After nearly a week of very limited internet access, I decided to catch up on my reading (and over did it). Some amusing posts I came across:

(I'm thinking I might make better use of my time if I switched to dial-up internet even if it costs me more than cable...)