Happy Birthday Tom

Merkley Makes Me Miss SF

Iconoclastic- not sponsored by Grey Goose

Best Movie I Saw All Year

From the self-proclaimed-Conquistador of the Useless- Werner Herzog

Best Book I Read All Year

Broken Window

They finally did an experiment to prove out the broken window theory. For those of you who might not know what that is (although one of you explained it to me at some point), the propensity for vandalism increases the more disordered an area is. The example given is a broken window of a building. If one is broken people tend to feel ok about breaking others.

Anyway. It seems true (although I'm not sure how large their sample was, etc.).

It also seems a small leap to think the following:
What we are really thinking about here is perception. Whether this is subjective perception- this place looks untidy- or a subconscious disagreement with objective societal rules- if this space is being misused it's cool if I do it as well.

This seems to make sense. But it also seems to be absolutely bonkers. Think of the small (from a social experiment perspective) amount of people you know well. Now think of the how far on one side or the other some of them fall in the tidiness scale. Some are neat freaks. Some are absolute slobs.
Much of how you judge them on that scale relates not only to their perception of clean and dirty, but your perception as well. Mostly your perception. But that isn't really the point.

The point is, when people perceive something to be in disarray, they have a tendency to value that space in a different manner, one in which they break social conventions/laws.
So, the neater you are- the more likely you are to be a damn deviant, because you perceive spaces to be in disarray more than someone who tends to be a bit of a slob.

This seems crazy. Slobs are the psychos, right?

On a slightly related note this video I've included reminded me of this (for some reason).


Links:
The OG: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/198203/broken-windows
The New Hotness: http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12630201



I know I know, too much from Kottke.

Selling a new idea.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2008/11/13hodgman.html

clipped from www.mcsweeneys.net FIRE: THE NEXT SHARP STICK? MAKER: See, the thing about fire is that it's totally interactive. Fire isn't a bear, but if you put fire on a bear, then the bear becomes fire. It's completely responsive to your needs at a given time, reacting specifically to your fuel input and usage paradigm ... HAIRY ONE: OK, stop right there. Here's the thing. I've heard a lot about this fire already. Everyone is saying how shiny it is and how flickery it is. But you have to agree that that's very specialized. I know you folks at the Shallow Pond With a Terrible Odor are making a whole big deal about this, but we here by the River That's Not as Wide as the Really Wide River, well, we're simple folk. We want to know: what can it do for us? And the thing is, until people really figure out how fire can be used, I just can't see it becoming a staple of everyday life.

Ahhh....What the Fuck?

http://registry.weddingchannel.com/coupledir/200811/B/R307842908/ALISON_BONNER_AND_TOM_NAUGHTON.htm

I mean...Crate and Barrel?

do it.

http://www.bombombombomwooooo.com/

The Onion's Reaction

I doubt many of you looked at the Onion headlines immediately after the acceptance speech, but I DID.
They were perfect.
Well done to the Onion.

Happy Halloween.

Cheatin' Perspective

The program I use to clip out stuff only allows me 1,000 characters, so this is rather truncated- but the most interesting thing I found (aside from the explanation of why the elderly are cheating- hip replacements, viagra, and vaginal vitamins, apparently) is that the historic rates of cheating by gender may never have been unequal.
Societal reasons, we know, have had a lot to do with who admits it, but , it takes two to tango.

And yes, I am working on Millionaire Matchmaker 2 planning right now. ugh.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Dr. Fisher notes that infidelity is common across cultures, and that in hunting and gathering societies, there is no evidence that women are any less adulterous than men. The fidelity gap may be explained more by cultural pressures than any real difference in sex drives between men and women. It is not entirely clear if the historical gap between men and women is real or if women have just been more likely to lie about it. “Men want to think women don’t cheat, and women want men to think they don’t cheat, and therefore the sexes have been playing a little psychological game with each other.” One notable shift is that couples appear to be spending slightly more time together. And married men and women also appear to have the most active sex lives, reporting sex with their spouse 58 times a year, a little more than once a week.

I just couldn't pass these up without sharing

http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/2008/10/piglet_squid.php


http://cellar.org/iotd.php?threadid=18424

And you think you had a bad day

A little reminiscent of Pooh and the honey jar.

Books

I've never read Siddhartha or heard of Paul Buckley.
1. I've heard of the book about the boy and buddha.
2. I now know that I like the work of Paul Buckley.
3. What really compelled me to share this was Paul Buckley's explanation of Siddhartha.
3a. More accurately, it was the realization that two unknowns can use each other as a catalyst to create something deeply identifiable for us to find out about ourselves.

clipped from gdnss.com Paul Buckley: Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse I have a bad tendency to over-explore things; to sometimes think that in order to find the right answer, one needs to look at EVERYTHING. Anything that reminds me that the answer is always nearby…grab it and keep moving…is good for me – visually and personally.

Another Dzurko sighting?

Gotta love Muji

And you have to appreciate the sentiment: multifunction is not the same as multipurpose.

Still getting sparks of delight from true and pure insight. Hope all of you are as well.

clipped from jackcheng.com It’s the simplest manifestation of what a day planner is all about: time on paper. The clocks occupy a small amount of space on the page and rest is completely flexible. You can write in your own dates at the top of each page, and you can treat the rest of the space like a blank page. Here’s are some words from the designer, Wong Kok Kiong: Because of the numerous hours in a day (and various other constraints), the lines in a diary are typically very narrow. They are also usually equally distributed (somewhat). But our information is a hierarchy. Some are more important to us. Some we feel happier about. We want to highlight stuff that’s important to us. We want to write things that are more important in BIGGER sizes. Our lives cannot be so easily and clearly divided into equal parcels. multifunction is not the same as multipurpose.

Whimsical

clipped from www.nypost.com NO LOOKING: A Hasidic man averts his eyes yesterday as MariaDolores Lopez rides by on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. Leaders of South Wil liamsburg's Hasidic community said yesterday that bike lanes that bring scantily clad cyclists - especially sexy women - peddling through their neighborhood are definitely not kosher.

tripod

This is Fazoul. He lives next door. He only has 3 legs, but he totally believes he has 4.