a non-seasonal observation

Most years, robins nest in our back porch trumpet vine.

But I have no idea why a youtube video of our 2007 hatchlings has been viewed more than 2000 times (especially since it's one of those old jumpy not-that-shareable youtube clips).

[Figure: Photo from 6/28/2005; others here.]

she said / I said

My wife told me that something interesting happened to her the other day.

She was getting her usual coffee to go from the coffee shop in the building next door to her office.

She saw a young man for whom she felt an instant warmth and affinity, but she did not know why, because she did not recognize him, or know him.

She puzzled over this, she told me, for a little while. Then, she told me, she figured it out.

This young many, she told me, was not quite tall enough, but otherwise looked very much like I did, twenty years ago, when we met.

Well, I replied, I don't understand that. Because no woman could remind me of how you looked twenty years ago, I told her, because you look just the same, just as lovely, today.

impossible

"It is impossible to make anything truly foolproof, as fools are so ingenious."

-Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)

"lest"

In eighth grade American History & Social Studies class in Clifton, New Jersey, I once used the word "lest" in answering a test question.

When I got back the scored test, the word was circled, and points had been deducted.

So, I asked why. Had I used the word incorrectly or improperly?

No, I was told, the problem was that "no one really uses that word."

From this we can conclude that we should not assume that all teachers aim to inspire all students to achieve their best, lest we forget that the educational system provides a warm home to conformity and anti-intellectualism.

her new old scope

A dear friend gave my wife a microscope:

It was made in Germany, about a hundred years ago.

We, naturally, took some pictures with it:

A poppyseed.

Scales on a human hair.

A slice of papaya.

[For full-resolution images, click here.]

sometimes, it's faster to lose traction

Skilled drivers can get through a curve faster by drifting (or "getting sideways"), as shown in this classic film from 1987 (love the soundtrack!):

not that kind of drag race

We agree with Colin Chapman, & we'd also like to share our understanding of how, in the world of cars, the meanings of the words "faster" & "quicker" differ.

The quicker car is the one that accelerates most speedily from a standing start to, say, 60 MPH, in a straight line. Or, the one that does the standing quarter-mile in the least time.

The faster car is the one that get around a particular banked curve in the least time. Of course, this requires a skilled driver.

Related to this distinction is another one: Competition to determine which car is quickest is called drag racing. Competition to determine which car & driver are fastest is called automobile racing.

nifty

From the BBC, a laboratory demonstration of greenhouse gas warming in a bottle.

heavy

In preparation for an upcoming trip, I loaded the TomTom app onto my iPhone.

[Although my iPhone 3G has built-in GPS, & google maps, it is of limited utility for navigation because the maps are not built in. That is, if you don't have a cellphone signal, you don't have a data network, so you don't have any maps! In contrast, the TomTom app contains roadmaps for all of North America (and also additional functionality that folks are used to having in a nav system, such as turn-by-turn voice instructions).]

Now, the TomTom iPhone app is huge – about 1.3 Gigabytes – because of all those roadmaps. And I swear my iPhone feels heavier, with all those maps in it. Really. It reminds me of some lines from the song "Your Belgian Things" from the album "We Shall All be Healed" by the Mountain Goats:

I shot a roll of thirty-two exposures / My camera groans beneath the weight it bears.

I told my wife that the phone felt heftier because of all the roadmaps in it, and she asked:

Which are heavier, the zeroes or the ones?

[Disclaimer: Trademarks are property of their respective owners; their use here does not denote endorsement or sponsorship. Also, NeuroCooking is not sponsored by General Motors, makers of Cadillac vehicles, which combine legendary luxury with state of the art performance.]

Clay Shirky on Algorithmic Authority

"Algorithmic authority is the decision to regard as authoritative an unmanaged process of extracting value from diverse, untrustworthy sources, without any human standing beside the result saying 'Trust this because you trust me.' This model of authority differs from personal or institutional authority..."