darling girl at pr comes up with some intriguing questions about the sexual act and circumstances surrounding it. - no, at first, no, yep, nope - imho#

from nova is the very strange MUTEBLOG - a blog with no words, just tiny tiny pictures.#

nova also writes about what he calls "Adaptive Navigation" - the idea is to have the structure of the site evolve as more content is add and more users navigate it - ''I'm talking about changing the graph structure of the site dynamically to best-reflect the paths that a given user is most likely to be interested in, given their previous surfing/reading behavior. I think what I'm hitting upon is that the concept of a fixed site structure is something that we could completely discard in favor of a more advanced notion of "total separation of content and structure." '' - pretty interesting idea, although i wonder if it really is "The Next Step in User Interface" because isn't the most important aspect of interfaces consistency - although ''Good UI designers use consistency intelligently, and, though it may not show off their creativity as well, in the long run it makes users happier.'' - maybe the hit of not being able to navigate the site the same any more is made up for with the increased utility of the "new" way - look at Wikis!#

nova on a roll - ''Can you understand the character of a culture by the number of different words they have for particular things? For example, Eskimos have dozens of words for snow. Americans have dozens of words for capital. Tibetans have dozens of words for mind.'' - what a great thought!#

accordion guy continues and links sousveillance - watching the watchers. - ''It has often been said that the true causes of terrorism are oppression, bad foreign policy, and secrecy, rather than privacy. (In fact some have even gone so far as to say that they've felt more frightened of the soldiers of their own armed forces than of the so-called ``terrorists''.) ''#

via instapundit is polipundit on how Arnold is a "Soccer Mom" - ''No one seems to have a phrase to describe Arnold's politics. Is he a "conservative," a "moderate," a "liberal" or a "pragmatic libertarian?" None of the above. Arnold Schwarzenegger is... a Soccer Mom! Your prototypical Soccer Mom isn't a hate-the-greedy-corporations Democrat. Heck, her husband is probably a middle manager at Procter & Gamble. She's a "fiscal conservative," in the sense that she doesn't want more taxes and regulation. She doesn't like affirmative action either, since it goes against her sense of fairness and threatens her childrens' future.''#

ev remembers word and that ''it's good for writing stuff'' - sometimes you get into a kick of not using WYSIWYG editors because with HTML you can't trust them, and with WORD you can't put them into the end format (html/blog/pdf/etc)#

brian carnell writes about a Good Example of How Dave Winer Edits and Reputation -#

One of the things that Dave is really setting himself up for is for someone to simply making something up and start claiming that Winer actually said it but then deleted it.

Suppose, for example, I decided to make up a particuarly over-the-top statement and falsely attribute it to Winer. So I post it to my weblog and say that Winer posted this earlier and then almost a quickly deleted it.

How's Dave going to convince people that he didn't? He's not going to be able to say he wouldn't make that kind of inflammatory statement, because we have plenty of evidence that he does. He also can't credibly claim that he wouldn't post and then delete an inflammatory statement because there's plenty of evidence he does it regularly.

spelling mistakes cost lives - a misleading name but interesting site#

nova wonders, "What is the Genetic Benefit of Sexual Versus Asexual Reproduction?" - ''If it turns out there is an important selective advantage to species that reproduce sexually, then cloning, a form of asexual reproduction, may have a negative effect on a species in the long-term.'' - he links reproduction of some insects who have vastly different strategies than humans, asking, ''I wonder whether the mating systems of ants are optimal compared to humans? Ants will probably outlive the human race.''#

amelie is one my favourite movies too - i would watch it anytime, anywhere. - watching foreign films makes me feel smart, heh heh.#

i think it's neat when people are really interested in fonts and think so much about choosing the best one - i love beauty in all his forms.#

dan hon, is incredibly interesting in octopuses, so he is ''Pre-emptively bowing to cephalopoid overlords'' - some neat links from him...#

on their brains#

They also have very differently organised nervous systems. They have large brains but in order to react very rapidly and control the movement of many rubbery legs (as well as controlling their body colour), a lot of information processing happens in ganglia distributed around the body. What mental powers do they have?

Recently there has been a new ripple of interest in their psychology after researchers at Naples found evidence that one octopus was capable of learning by watching what another octopus did. "Observational learning" was thought to be evidence of intelligence and restricted to the "higher" mammals and birds.

The experiment has not yet been repeated, but there is a sense in which it may miss the point. Until the 1970s, researchers tried to classify the intellectual abilities of different animals and rank them within a universal intelligence scale with humans at the top. That view crumbled as it became obvious that the abilities of different animals were tuned to the circumstances in which they live.

Rats learn some things slowly and others very rapidly. Just one experience with a novel food that makes them ill will put them off that food for life, even if they only become sick many hours after eating it. It's a useful memory feat for an animal that survives by scavenging. Honey bees remember the location of a flower that is producing nectar after a single visit and with just a few trips will learn at what time of day the nectar flow is at its peak.

tom coates on the bloody weather - ''The English talk about nothing but the weather. We do this to avoid talking about ritual goat sodomy, which would otherwise be the first thing on our minds, I think. This is my honest belief. It would decimate my world-view if it was demonstrated to be untrue.'' - ''bear in mind that English homes are - at best - designed to keep the rain off and the heat in. They are not designed to be cool and refreshing idylls amid the melting pavements.''#

gene expression highlights an article on Natural Born Killers and how they are great assets to the military - ''A natural killer is a person who has a predisposition to kill—he enjoys combat and feels little or no remorse about killing the enemy. These men have existed throughout the history of warfare, and their feats have often been hailed as heroic. They constitute less than 4 percent of the force, yet some studies show that they do almost half of the killing.''#

i just spent some time reading The Knowledge for Thirst and i picked out some of my favourite quotes from the archives.#

mango madness - ''OK, I just had Mango Madness. The visions I had of being lost in a sweet nightmare of fruit-related dementia were way more intense and complicated than the reality, but like when isn't that the case.'' - ''But you know what's good? Nantucket Nectars Orange-Mango. Comes in the half-gallon and is evidently their top-selling flavor, if I remember right. Nice and smooth, a delicate balance between sweet and tart. So, like, orange is the antipsychotic drug Stelazine that helps control — but not cure! — mango's madness. It's a triumph of modern medicine. ''#

soda machines - ''Actually getting the soda machine delivered was a total brou-ha-ha, however. It turned out that although my company had a contract with Coke, the company we were leasing the office space from had a contract with Pepsi. There were meetings, proposals, heated discussions, threatened walk-outs, the whole 9. The solution was a thing of beauty and a testament to the power of neutrally-arbitrated conflict resolution: we got a Pepsi machine that also dispensed Coke and Diet! $0.50/can, even. I loved the sight of that Pepsi guy, coming by every week with a dolly full of Coke. Talk about your roadmap for peace. If Coke and Pepsi can lay down their arms like that, certainly it's only a matter of time before the Berlin Wall crumbles and the Jews and Israelis embrace as brothers. ''#

spreachers#

I tried a Sprecher's Ravin' Cran-Cherry Ginseng Soda , and...I don't really know how to put this. I guess I blacked out in the middle or something, because I only remember bits and pieces of the experience.

I was in the convenience store, all jazzed about finding a soda I'd never heard of before. I was standing in the parking lot, guzzling it like liquid crack. I stopped suddenly, my brain all confused because the drink is thick like a cola, but cranberry? cherry? these flavors don't really even go together. There was this sudden disconnect where I wake from a dream like "Where I am? Why am I drinking this?" Then I realize that my tongue is all buzzing from the ginseng. (WHY is there ginseng in this drink? Did someone lose a bet?) Then I'm stumbling home, the half-empty bottle dangling from my fingertips, my stomach plotting an angry, violent rebellion. Then as I dizzily climb the steps to my front door I'm thinking: Holy crap I am one-hundred percent not as young as I used to be.

That's the last thing I remember.

That was two weeks ago.

soda fights - ''I intend no obloquy towards root beer lovers, so tenderly do I embrace the newness of living. But it kind of reminds me of a another group I feel no warmth towards: the people at restaurants who are all "I'll have a Coke!" and then the waiter says "Is Pepsi okay?" and the people are all "Eww gross no way I'll just have water." '' - ''Life is way to short. Why get all huffy about wanting Coke when there's only Pepsi, or wanting Pepsi when there's only Coke? How about cultivate an interest in a different flavor? There's lots! And how about not taking your corporate allegiances so seriously? '' - ''It's like a strange kind of proletarian elitism, where people feel embarrassed about the fact that they can't tell a Merlot from a Shiraz, and have to take it out on the kid working the counter at Burritoville. ''#

grocery strores - ''So I'm over at the freaking Super Shop 'n' Stop, which is now going to be my nearest grocery store, although I can't even call it a grocery store. It's more like a grocery community, maybe, or a grocery wonderland. It's huge and has 900 of everything. You can even check yourself out, and I don't mean like, "Well hell- osexy man in the mirror!" but like scan your own stuff and pay and all with a touch-screen. I think the point is if you're buying embarrassing stuff you can just keep it between you and the computer and not have to deal with the clerk's totally judgmental looks. ''#

(from the same) - ''I was thinking about the whole Coke v. Pepsi debate and what struck me was how clearly second-class Pepsi is. Just ignoring the issue of flavor, Pepsi has always been in second place and it really just doesn't have the credibility that Coke has. Like, you can order a Jack and Coke in a bar and hold your head high, but you order a Jack and Pepsi and all of a sudden you're total white trash. I think Pepsi needs to class up its graphic design a little, maybe give itself a more old-fashioned look. Maybe that could turn the tide. ''#

smoothie shops#

The Juice Guys Store had smoothies down to an absolute science. I'm talking they were on some next-level MIT Media Lab type shit. The menu had a few recipe suggestions on it, but basically they encouraged you to just throw whatever ideas you had at them. They did not care. Mix it up however you like, they would hook you up. They practically dared you.

You're like: "I want papayas and kiwis and mangos, plus apple juice and vanilla yogurt, and turbinado, and wheat grass." They're like: "Pal you are boring me to tears here."

One time I was all: "I demand peaches bathed in mango juice. Strawberries and limes. Soy protein and skim milk, no ice. With a star fruit garnish. And I want it facing magnetic north."

And the girl was all: "If you can't run with the big dogs, you better stay on the porch with the puppies."

accordion guy is one of the best reason to read blogs on the intanet. he posted a nude accordion performance on friday. so funny. so perfect. - ''I have decided that the I would perform the first accordion video naked. Then I decided I'd look even better if I wore my Famous Cowboy Hat. Then I decided that the most appropriate song would be Britney Spears' Baby One More Time. And all this was decided while I was sober! '' - oh yes. thank you#

joey also writes about the weirdness of the IKEA "no-photos" policy. - '' I really hate being treated like some kind of criminal by companies who then expect me to give them money. I don't like being told that I can't have a friend take a picture of me inside their showroom when I'm quite certain that they themselves are monitoring me through the store's security cameras.'' - that is pretty annoying because somethings are pretty and photos are nice. sniff.#

flight simulator as a text based game - ''*> LOOK STEWARDESS* She's hot.'' - hah#

from ten reasons why is criticism of kottke - ''Jason Kottke has fallen prey to the siren's lure of the "human readability" argument'' - and the idea that the web was help by "View Source" - ''You think the web took off fast because of "view source"? Bah! Think of what would have happened with web publishing in 1995 if there had been an effective way of publishing web sites without having to reverse engineer HTML from "view source" and hand-code your own pages. The web didn't succeed because of "view source"; the web succeeded in spite of "view source." The reliance on people who would reverse engineer HTML source and the concurrent lack of effective personal publishing tools held back the web. Weblog tools revolutionize personal web publishing because they overcome the "view source barrier;" they allow your typical, non-geek human to publish to the web simply and effectively without ever having to view HTML source to do so. Why can't we expect the same sort of transparency from tools that produce and consume RSS feeds? ''' - i think until something has become an mature standard and strategy for doing something it needs to be easy to mutate and reason about - not a "binary format that happens to be human-readable" (as someone said who's link i cannot find) - i am pundit, and unoriginal, so i have no support for this idea.#

from outside the beltway is gallagher announcing his platform for the California governor re-election (complete with slogans - the platform points are interesting, ''Because it ain't drugs and it ain't violent, let the kids cruise and show off their cars, abolish anti-cruising laws or give the kids a place to cruise. '' - and the slogans are fun, ''Why settle for amateurs? California deserves a Professional comedian. ''#

from andrew grumet is an article about hypochondria and the 'placebo/nocebo effect' - the article, ''Conventional medical wisdom holds that hypochondria is a hopeless condition and should be treated by ignoring it, because a hypochondriac's recognition of his problem does not result in a change in his symptoms or in his behavior. Indeed, doctors like to joke that a hypochondriac's symptoms will disappear only when the patient lands on a desert island—and nobody is around to listen to his whining.'' - from grumet, ''In the "placebo effect", a subject feels better because they expect to feel better, even if no drugs are involved. It's easy to get a kick out of this because, hey, if the person feels better that's just great, whatever the reason. The nocebo effected subjects, by contrast, felt worse because they expected to feel worse. Not only that, they felt worse in specific ways that they'd gone out of their way to discover. Here there is also an element of human folly, but it is at once more tragic and more delicious.''#

from raymond chen is some windows trivia - ''Why is a registry file called a "hive"? Because one of the original developers of Windows NT hated bees. So the developer who was responsible for the registry snuck in as many bee references as he could. A registry file is called a "hive", and registry data are stored in "cells", which is what honeycombs are made of. ''#

some interesting thoughts over at Peter Lindberg's blog about writing and the idea of "constrained universes of expression." - ''As you're beginning to read a new book, you're familiarizing yourself with its universe. You're getting to know it's structure, it's rhythm. Simply put, you're learning what to expect from the book, and the writer establishes the constraints of his universe of expression.'' - he mentions an article that talks about "High Concepts" - ''Simply put, a high concept is an intriguing idea that can be stated in a few words and is easily understood by all [Emphasis mine.]. An asteroid the size of Texas is hurtling toward the earth. That's a high concept. Everyone knows exactly what that means. It arouses an emotional response, and, in just eleven words, everyone knows what the movie is about.'' - this is a way having a "pre-fabbed" universe created for you so you can tell you story - think in terms of software, this is the language/tool framework that wraps up your functionality. - peter's an intriguing guy#

she who wears crimson ponders cuteness, comfort, and companionship - '' Just saw a guy I hadn't seen since I was maybe 16. It was amusing. When I said, "I wasn't this cute then," he said he remembers that I was cute back then too, which was awfully kind of him. How is it that I have the opportunity to spend the weekend with a jacuzzi, central air conditioning, a queen-size pillow top bed, and complete peace and privacy, and I don't have a - *kaff* - companion?'' - it bugs me when i see girls i used to think were cute and they've ruined themselves, or when i think about those girls who are still cute but now distant, unknown, and untouchable... why didn't i not care about embarrassment then like i do now, i could've been invincible.#

from a Just a Gwai Lo is a ''rule [that] only really applies to self-conscious nerds.'' - ''I've thought about all the potential good outcomes of it all, and I think [I] know why there won't be any of the potential good outcomes. [...] because [I] thought about them and the first rule of the female group theory is that they can't be observed and interacted with simultaneously'' - hah.#

awesome dictionary word of the day today, phantasmagoria - ''A fantastic sequence of haphazardly associative imagery, as seen in dreams or fever.''#

via richard tallent is If Airlines Sold Paint - very funny - ''Our lowest price is $12 a gallon, and we have 60 different prices up to $200 a gallon.''#

too bad i can't see it#

via digital web magazine is Usability Professionals Must Disappear at Good Experience - it talks about how talking about names and putting all the attention on the "expert" is the wrong direction, usability experts should seek integration and assimilation into the rest of the company so that the user is at the center of everyone's thoughts, because "Business is About People" - ''Here's the thing about user experience work: its success depends primarily on the buy-in from everybody else in the larger organization. The primary issue isn't what you're named, but what results you're generating, and what buy-in you're getting from the company. ''#

courtney lists what she loves about men - ''I love guys who will drag me out on the dance floor, even when we both know we can't dance.'' - as a response to why Yeti Suit loves women - ''I love women who say, "I love you" to people only when they mean it. I love women who mean it a lot. Most of all, I love the time I spend wth you. I love the way you look at me when you know that I was serious when I said, "I do." I love the good times and the bad, because we were together. And I love you. '' - CUTE PLUS.#

don park wants a beard - facial hair weirds me out on me, i was never taught how to use a razor so if i tried i'd probably screw it up so i just use the electric every day and don't even consider ever growing a beard#

don park thinks the naming of the usability profession is a fruitful task and likes the that's Bruce Tognazzini's suggestion is a great one - but when don thinks about all the things he's been involved in and can do, he says ''I am clueless as to what my title should be. Swiss Army Knife seems appropriate but doesn't reflect the focus and passion that powers me. Not having a good name for one's profession can be very frustrating. Not only that, my ambiguous role often cause confusion and turmoil in companies large enough to have political atmosphere. Heck, it also confuses me enough to pause whenever someone asks me what my profession is. In the past three years, I have been occasionally using: I am a Rainmaker. I do anything and everything, including moving mountains with chopsticks, to make it rain.'' - werd.#

tim bray on namespace pedantry in XML - ''There is one aspect of XML namespaces that keeps confusing people, and since I wrote the specification, it's at least partly my fault.'' - that's such a strange thing to be able to say.#

russell hits a nerve with my annoyance with the intanet - ''In short, domain names are the stupidest things in the world to base URIs on because we don't own the domains. I already think it's sort of wacky to have a unique identifier like a URI include technology specific implementations like http:// or ftp:// etc. If I have 2 URIs that are exactly the same except for the protocol, are they really different? Anyways, I get the idea - these names are supposed to be globally unique, and I too thought at first that domain names where a good way to do it. But that was years ago when domain names felt like something that was mine, not leased. After a few years of paying for these names, I realize that it's all very ephemeral.'' - anything to reduce the number of centralized crap keeping me down the better#

russell wonders about the best way for a weblog system to make sure it's output is valid markup. - ''Though it seems like the first solution of validating the data before saving is the most obvious - it's not if you start thinking about various ways to enter data. What happens if you're moblogging and you send off an email to post with some markup that's bad? Do I 1) ignore it, 2) clean it up automagically, even though it might screw up the post 3) send back an email with corrections, requiring the user to send yet another email to post? (repeat ad nauseum?). '' - i think what i would like the most is having the ability to view markup errors in any entry and fix those errors at my own behest, so the first time i create an entry it may (or may not, depending on the interface) tell me what my errors are and give me the ability to fix them now or at a later date. - the idea is to have the system work for a user who wants to post information now and wants it to be valid markup eventually, ie me.#

russell links and writes about the goodness of jabber.#

kim learned soemthing - ''Today's lesson: if you never make an effort to do anything, you'll get bored out of your mind. A life of leisure is neither fun nor rewarding. If you're bored and unmotivated at work, and you've been spending your time surfing the web looking desperately for something more interesting, you may be stuck in a vicious circle. If you're bored with work and try to avoid doing it, you will become even more bored. '' - if you're bored, you must be boring too, did I st-st-st-st-studder?#

joel reveals a loop hole in his own software - ''There's a loophole the size of a truck going on right now with CityDesk pricing... we promised to upgrade all CityDesk 1.0 Home or Pro Edition users to CityDesk 2.0 Pro for free when 2.0 ships. So basically while I'm looking at fjords and glaciers, you can buy the 1.0 home edition for $79 and get the 2.0 pro edition free when I get home, saving $270.'' - yous a good person joel#

via dan hon is an amazing video of an octopus and and interesting story about brain sucking alien octopuses.#

this post from kottke is very interesting, there's about a thousand comments that add the to fire. - it's about whether or not RSS should be easily human readable and that whole jabba - jason: ''If hardcore developers of RSS readers and authoring tools are the only ones technically savvy enough to understand RSS files, the pool of potential memes is limited by the size and narrow focus (not to mention, for the most part, gender) of that group. But if the format is fairly human readable (more like HTML 3.2 markup than, say, Perl code), you're going to get more people from different backgrounds hacking away at it, coming up with new memes that could be useful in the long run.''#

ryan mcgee makes a good distinction about various kinds of music that came from that dark time of history known as the "80's" - ''"There are two distinct categories of music: '80's music' and 'good music that happened to come out between 1980-1989'." - The former category is either a "so bad it's good" or "guilty pleasure", but really wouldn't hold up under a critical microscope. The latter is great music that had the misfortune of being surrounded on the radio by Jodi Whatley and Stevie B. (For some reason, "Because I Love You (The Postman Song)" has been stuck in my head for days. Help me. Please.) I would argue that calling something simply "80's music" is degrading. I mean, no one calls anything from "The Joshua Tree" simply "80's music". Ditto for "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back". Toni Basil, though? Hell yea. Soft Cell? Word to your mother's Casio keyboard. Ayways, you get the gist. Discuss.'' - i like good 80s music, i like good music. i like "stalker songs" - my favourite are "With or Without You", "Every Breath You Take", and "Are Those Space Pants or Are You Just Happy to See Me?"#

scoble writes about how to be a better presenter of presentations and ideas in general, that and about the difficult in telling people they are doing something wrong - ''Trying to look out for their best interests, it's easy to tell them the way the world should be. Especially when you have the arrows in your back that remind you of the right way to do something. But, people often don't wanna hear they are going down the wrong path. Humans hate throwing away work. And, maybe that decision was reached after months of meetings, and lots of homework. Yes, it probably is a bad decision, but getting them to throw away months of work isn't easy.'' - he then gives an interesting story about selling cameras and how looking out for customers created great customers#

scoble on people 'firing' microsoft - ''if interoperability and lack of lockin is your only concern, then Microsoft probably isn't the best thing out there (although, hey, anyone can open my Notepad documents and we did invent, or implement, many of the world's interoperability standards like SOAP, etc). But, most of us don't really care about these two things, do we? - Everytime I see just how popular Tivos are, or how popular Sony's Play Stations are, or how popular Barry Bonds is, I get the feeling that most consumers really could care less about lockin. But, guys like Joey and Jeremy are telling me I'm wrong.'' - so the only people who care about lockin are "power users" maybe? well not really because lots of power users are advocates of a platform and try to exploit the things unique about it, hmm?#

at experience thread is an article about how Business is about People - ''A successful business is based around products and brands, both of which are built by and for people. People must need and/or desire the products (or services) that a company offers. Thus, products must be designed to meet those needs and desires. They must also be positioned, promoted and communicated in a way that bridges the gap between what the company and product really are and what people need and desire. And ultimately, people are doing the designing, production, manufacturing and distribution.'' - this is from digital web magazine who adds, ''Technology and tools are great, it is what allows you to move forward, however it would be short lived if what you are developing is of no use to people. Consider that the tin can was invented in 1813, the can opener was not invented until 1858. The modern can opener with rolling and cutting wheels didn't surface until 1870.'' - woah.#