January 2012
1 post
December 2011
8 posts
“Every year I give the grandparents DVDs with all of our digital pictures from...”
– Jeff Handley (@JeffHandley) December 18, 2011
“People have a terrific loyalty to their brand of cigarette… and yet, in...”
– Research director, New York advertising agency (name withheld upon request)
The Evolved Self-Management System →
The placebo effect is real, and has an evolutionary purpose — the body depends on the brain to tell it when it’s safe to start using up valuable resources (such as for healing). If you feel anxious or stressed, your body takes that as a cue that there’s a threat, and it should hold off healing.
November 2011
2 posts
Graph of curse words in the Linux source code over... →
July 2011
1 post
December 2010
2 posts
“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the...”
– - Aldous Huxley
(via dannythrax)
November 2010
1 post
October 2010
3 posts
“If you just shut your mouth and let the product speak for itself — once...”
– Matt Drance (Why Apple Doesn’t Talk)
September 2010
12 posts
“The U.S. is officially committed to what is called “low-intensity...”
– Noam Chomsky
r = (1 + sin(θ)) (1 + 0.9 cos(8 θ)) (1 + 0.1... →
WatchThis kid’s got some moves!
“The poet is inspired to write by reading another poet’s poetry and will...”
– The Anxiety of Influence
Why Time Slows Down in Near-Death Situations
“Turns out, when you’re falling you don’t actually see in slow motion. It’s not equivalent to the way a slow-motion camera would work,” David says. “It’s something more interesting than that.”
According to David, it’s all about memory, not turbo perception.
“Normally, our memories are like sieves,” he says. “We’re not writing down most of what’s passing through our system.” Think about walking...
August 2010
11 posts
“[Our website] has to be fancy but hip. And since our company has the word velvet...”
– Clients from Hell
Watch…keeEEEEEeep watching….
How Facts Backfire →
In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could...
“Shu’s idea is that time and space are not independent entities but can be...”
– “The Big Bang Never Happened”, The New Standard?
“When a child acted overconfident, Ms. Nader would say, “You’d better...”
– Ralph Nader’s Childhood Roots
Mark E - Plastic People (Medit)
WatchA videogame that’s actually a tiny remote controlled car on a cardboard Wipeout XL track.
July 2010
12 posts
“Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing.”
– Optimus Prime (via quote-book)
“What is most peculiar and unnerving about [coordinating development of an open...”
– Mark Edel
Signal to noise
Dell did a study of corporate data usage patterns, and they discovered that 90% of data is written once and never read again.
