11:39 am

When we think of events in the distant past or distant future we tend to think abstractly about why they happened or will happen, but when we think of events in the near past or near future we tend to think concretely about how they happened or will happen.

Seeing in time is like seeing in space. But there is one important difference between spatial and temporal horizons. When we perceive a distant buffalo, our brains are aware of the fact that the buffalo looks smooth, vague, and lacking in detail because it is far away, and they do not mistakenly conclude that the buffalo itself is smooth and vague. But when we remember or imagine a temporally distant event, our brains seem to overlook the fact that details vanish with temporal distance, and they conclude instead that the distant events actually are as smooth and vague as we are imagining and remembering them.

Daniel Gilbert, on the difficulty of predicting future happiness. (#)

8:43 pm

Start poking around the names in the Google Chrome comic book and the names are there. Scott McCloud’s drawings aren’t just a useful pictorial explanation of what to expect in Chrome; it’s practically a declaration of independence from the yesteryear traditions of browser design of the past 10 years, going all the way back to Netscape’s heyday when the notion of the web was a vast collection of interlinked documents. With Chrome, the web starts to look more like a nodal grid of documents, with cloud applications running on momentary instances, being run directly and indirectly by people and their agents. This is the browser caught up.

Chris Messina, on the historic significance of Google's announcement – and beta release – of the Chrome browser. (#)

5:28 pm

Yes, we need to have a rational conversation in this country about striking the balance between providing students with age-appropriate sex education and a rational discussion about moral values and their role in making sexual choices. I am a full and complete supporter of comprehensive sex ed – which includes information like “there is no such thing as blue balls” and “no means no” and “saying no to sex can be a sign of respect for both of you.” But clapping our hands in joyous rubbernecking over Bristol Palin’s being in the family way is not going to be the start of any discussion. It makes us look as judge-y as we accuse Them of being, it makes us look like abortion-promoters instead of choice-respecters (it does mean both choices, after all) and it makes us look like we think a 17-year-old target is easier to hit than a 44-year-old target. Sex education will be a great topic for discussion and reform in an Obama Administration, and it wouldn’t – and shouldn’t – involve the now rather-public embarrassment or shaming of a 17-year-old girl.

Megan Carpentier of Jezebel, urging all the lefties to back the eff off the whole Bristol Palin pregnancy annoncement. Since when did Jezebel become the voice of reason? (#)

11:39 pm

Is he kidding? How can John McCain make the argument that Barack Obama isn’t ready to be president when he picks a running mate with even less experience than Obama to be his vice president? Is he actually retarded? When you are seventy two years old and attempting to undertake one of the most strenuous jobs in the world for at least four years, don’t you want to at least consider the notion that you might drop dead?

Memo to John McCain: you might drop dead.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has been a governor for two years, and before that a mayor for ten, the mayor of Wasilia (population 5,000). My brother-in-law was the Republican mayor of Waseca, Minnesota, which has about the same size population, and I can tell you with absolute certainty after playing foosball with him in his basement that my brother-in-law is not ready to be president of the United States of America. I’m not even sure that he’s ready to be president of his rotisserie football league.

Michael Ian Black, on John McCain's misguided VP pick. (#)

9:00 pm

Engineers have long (since at least the 1950s) used the term unobtainium when referring to unusual or costly materials, or when theoretically considering a material perfect for their needs in all respects save that it doesn’t exist. By the 1990s, the term was widely used, including formal engineering papers. (As an example, Towards unobtainium [new composite materials for space applications], by Misra and Mohan describes how the ideal material (unobtainium) would weigh almost nothing, but be very stiff and dimensionally stable over large temperature ranges.)

The Wikipedia entry on Unobtanium. (Re-blogged from kottke.org.) (#)

10:49 pm

Any application that lets you “friend,” “follow,” or otherwise observe another user should include a prominent (and silent) “PAUSE” button.

I think users of apps like Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Delicious, and, yes, FriendFeed, would benefit from an easy and undramatic way to take a little break from a “friend” – without inducing the grand mal meltdown that “unfriending” causes the web’s more delicately-composed publishers.

Merlin Mann, proposing a (frankly ingenious) way to enable polite personal management of your social network. (#)

9:08 pm

This fatality (no photograph without something or someone) involves Photography in the vast disorder of objects—of all the objects in the world: why choose (why photograph) this object, this moment, rather than some other? Photography is unclassifiable because there is no reason to mark this or that of its occurrences; it aspires, perhaps, to become as crude, as certain, as noble as a sign, which would afford it access to the dignity of a language: but for there to be a sign there must be a mark; deprived of a principle of marking, photographs are signs which don’t take, which turn, as milk does. Whatever it grants to vision and whatever its manner, a photograph is always invisible; it is not it that we see.

In short, the referent adheres.

Roland Barthes on each photograph's relation to its referent. (#)

7:45 am

Everyone born after Ghostbusters 2 just blends into one huge, apple-cheeked, nubile symbol of my mortality.

Jon Stewart, from a Daily show rant addressing Olympic gymnasts – and more generally, all the young dudes. (#)

6:16 pm

Messaging platforms like IM and SMS are defusing the idea of location as a hurdle to accessing content, it’s true. But somewhat unwittingly and paradoxically, they’re also tethering themselves to individual clients, to physical hardware with unique stores of data. When the data on a device is the only copy of its kind, its location is more important than ever. Until these services have an IMAP-like solution, they won’t truly be able to liberate us from location, or be as useful or as powerful as they can be.

Khoi Vinh, arguing for an extension of the concepts that drive IMAP email to other messaging protocols. I love the idea of IMAP for SMS. (#)

12:57 am

I never want to forget that something’s fried.

Jeffrey Steingarten, commenting on a dish prepared by Bobby Flay for Iron Chef America. (#)

12:42 pm

When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment.

Sen. John McCain describing his stance on net neutrality. (#)

5:31 pm

Change the yellow labels, change the caption and you change the meaning of the photographs. You don’t need Photoshop. That’s the disturbing part. Captions do the heavy lifting as far as deception is concerned. The pictures merely provide the window-dressing. The unending series of errors engendered by falsely captioned photographs are rarely remarked on.

Errol Morris, filmmaker and writer for the New York Times, on the amazing suggestive power of words + photographs. (Via Boing Boing.) (#)

3:29 pm

I never liked the idea of the “for Dummies” or the “complete idiot’s guide to” book series’, but their sales success have certainly demonstrated that plenty of people identify with being a dummy or a complete idiot. Self-deprecation is fine, just realize that there’s a dear line between embracing your own ignorance and ensuring a prophesy of certainty.

David Hansson, partner at 37signals and co-creator of Ruby on Rails. (#)

12:03 pm

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Albert Einstein. Or: Inspiration isn't magic. (Via Chris.) (#)

9:32 pm

When you embed a Google map on your web page, you don’t download a bunch of map images from Google and stick them on your server, you link to Google which then serves up the maps to registered domains. The same approach can be applied to fonts. Font foundries could license their fonts for embedding and serve those fonts only to registered websites, using their own hosted system or via a trusted third party.

This way foundries can provide designers and their readers with a legal way of embedding fonts, removing the need for uploading font files to multiple web servers, and of course make some extra income in the process. Think about it – foundries can sell their fonts twice this way – once to the designer and again to the readers.

Richard Rutter, arguing for the acceptance of @font-face embedding by font foundries. (#)

11:20 am

Love is not the last room: there are others after it, the whole length of the corridor that has no end.

Yehuda Amichai, from "Near the Wall of a House." (Via Lena.) (#)

6:08 pm

Anyone who grew up near the ocean knows that the curative powers of salt water are both expansive and mysterious. Everything from poison ivy to a common cold is quickly and remarkably aided by swimming in the ocean. We’ve known this our entire lives.

When we got to college, our Midwestern friends derided the college infirmary’s ubiquitous prescription of a salt water gargle for nearly every malady. Sore throat? Gargle this packet of salt in warm water. Sinus headache? Gargle this packet of salt in warm water. Herpes? Gargle, slut.

Pax Arcana, from a funny article on the benefits of the neti pot. (#)

11:43 am

Experiences are like movies with several added dimensions, and were our brains to store the full-length feature films of our lives rather than their tidy descriptions, our heads would need to be several times larger. And when we wanted to know or tell others whether the tour of the sculpture garden was worth the price of the ticket, we would have to replay the entire episode to find out. Every act of memory would require precisely the amount of time that the even being remembered had originally taken, which would permanently sideline us the first time someone asked if we liked growing up in Chicago. So we reduce our experiences to words such as happy, which barely do them justice but which are the things we can carry reliably and conveniently with us into the future. The smell of the rose is unresurrectable, but if we know it was good and we know it was sweet, then we know how to stop and smell the next one. 

Daniel Gilbert, from his book Stumbling on Happiness. It's a terrific book. Or: I've begun the process of reducing the book to the word "terrific." (#)

10:41 pm

Architects are an important part of my existence. They call me at eleven at night and say they just got off work, am I hungry? Listen, it is practically midnight. I ate hours ago. So long ago that, in fact, I am hungry again. So yes, I will go. Then I will go and there will be other architects talking about AutoCAD shortcuts and something about electric panels and can you believe that is all I did today, what a drag. I look around the table at the poor, tired, and hungry, and think to myself, I have but only one bullet left in the gun. Who will I choose?

I have a friend who is a doctor. He gives me drugs. I enjoy them. I have a friend who is a lawyer. He helped me sue my landlord. My architect friends have given me nothing. No drugs, no medical advice, and they don’t know how to spell subpoena. One architect friend figured out that my apartment was one hundred and eighty seven square feet. That was nice. Thanks for that.

Colin Kloecker, from a damn funny piece on the idiosyncrasies of architects. (Via Anthony.) (#)

10:52 pm

Do not use the bouncer as a catapult.

The manual for a baby bouncer Meg and I just bought. No clues given as to what we'd be catapulting. (#)