2013 — 22 December: Sunday
A more "normal" time for my return to what passes for consciousness, at least.1 Nor is it currently raining, for a pleasant change. And a mere 20 minutes left until the sun pokes its head up, too.
Having polished off...
... the remaining three episodes of "Episodes" Season #1, yesterday evening, I'm almost afraid to watch Season #2 in case the gloriously high standard slips. Excellent show.
Having found...
... an interesting-looking piece here by Michael Posner (and, incidentally, thereby learned of a new Spike Jonze film called "Her") I went in search of the basis for part of it (by a postdoctoral researcher in Rotterdam) that had appeared on 3Quarks Daily. That was my mistake. Big mistake. Just look at what else I found to distract me, dagnabbit. Without even hardly trying, too:
- The Science of Sex an interview with Daniel Bergner, author of "What do women want?"
To be clear, the FDA isn't going to talk to me and say, "We're going to consider rejecting a drug because it had too strong an effect and would create a generation of nymphomaniacs." But it was the drug companies themselves that were worried that if the effects were too strong, the FDA might reject them on those grounds. Was I surprised that those conversations were happening inside the drug companies? Yes, I was staggered. - The Holy Foreskin by whoever lurks behind Medievalists.net
Very few articles have been written on the topic of the Holy Foreskin, partly because in the year 1900 the Roman Catholic Church threatened to excommunicate anyone who did so. However, Robert Palazzo bravely did his research and his article "The Veneration of the Sacred Foreskin(s) of Baby Jesus: A Documentary Analysis," offers some interesting details about this relic. He notes that apocryphal gospels, such as the The First Gospel of Baby Jesus, which was written sometime before the 6th century, described how the foreskin was kept and passed down from generation to generation. - Do cats control my mind? by James Hamblin
The idea of infections changing a host's behavior in order to survive, Kathleen McAuliffe noted in The Atlantic last year, has also been seen in people with the flu. Afflicted people have been noted to be more social — possibly at the behest of the virus, so they can cough all over people and spread it. Patients in the later stages of AIDS and syphilis have, analogously, reported increased libido. - Listening to the inner voice by John Hewitt (kicking off with yet another reference to that strange book by
Julian Jaynes, by the way)
As children we learn to talk by talking to ourselves. Unless marooned on an island, we tend to abandon this behavior in polite company for fear of stigmatization, among other things. If the line between normalcy and pathology for hearing voices, or even talking to them, (so long as they do not command undesirable physical actions), is drawn with a greater acceptance for normalcy, a clearer understanding of the inner voice might be sooner in hand. - Must we give up understanding to secure knowledge in economics? by
Alex Rosenberg and Tyler Curtain
Economics is the social science that has most relentlessly tried to be scientific about turning understanding, which gives meanings to events, into knowledge. Instead of moving beyond understanding in the way physics or biology has, a significant part of the discipline has sought to formalize, mathematize, generalize the sense we so easily make out of economic exchange.
Did I find what I was looking for? Don't be silly!
Now...
... here's a good question! It is said, after all, that eny fule can ask a question that the wisest of men cannot answer. (Link.)
I was also...
... unsuccessful when scouring the Food Standards Agency website to track down the evidence behind this letter from Tescos about their label on a fresh pineapple stating "Suitable for Vegetarians". But I did find a most interesting 2008/9 report from their Chief Scientist. Somehow, I'd managed to miss any of the 500 copies printed :-)
Cerys has just played Ella Fitzgerald singing "Bewitched (bothered and bewildered)", a version of which — I can't help noticing — appears on Disc 3 of "This Record is not to be Broadcast" (by the BBC). Times change.
Being a bit of...
... a madcap daredevil, I've just installed an 'optional' update (from AMD, but delivered via Microspit's "Windows Update" process) to the graphics driver for BlackBeast's passively-cooled graphics adapter — the Radeon HD5670 that I use to drive the pair of 24" Dell monitors. All seems well after a precautionary PC restart. And the 60" Kuro plasma still reports in for duty on the motherboard's separate integrated adapter. Well, after the obligatory half a second of "flicker and flash" while the brain-damaged HDCP protocol handshake2 works its way unrapidly up and down the signal chain to the Kuro.
I shall probably...
... regret this, but it's a cheap-ish Kindle edition:
Last Friday...
... night was early Xmas feast night for Chris, Gill, and your 'umble diarist!
Via the miracles of technology...
Episodes, Season #2 was a riot. I don't think I've seen anything quite as cynically insightful and bitingly funny since Jay Mohr's "Peter Dragon" character in Action! back in 1999 (and that got taken off the air less than halfway through its first season).