Non-Prophet

Sugar is a Drug

Over the last hundred years it has become ubiquitous in our food. I'm finding that even organic wheat bread tastes more like cake than bread these days. Sugar is disgusting. ;)

news.yahoo.com:

A study of rats finds they show all the signs of addiction to sugar. The finding could help better understand eating disorders in humans. Professor Bart Hoebel and his team in the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute have been studying signs of sugar addiction in rats for years. They had previously demonstrated a behavioral pattern of increased intake and then showed signs of withdrawal.

What is Cuteness?

You know it when you see it, but in a fashion similar to defining humor it is somewhat elusive. To have cuteness is to be subscribed to some vague aesthetic criteria which has no specific rules or boundaries. Babies are sometimes cute, sometimes hideous. The emotional feeling one can feel when exposed to cuteness can vary from affectionate pleasantries to utter disgust. I for example, while I can spot their cuteness, have always very much so hated the Smurfs.

Perhaps a better question then "What is Cuteness?" would be "Why is there Cuteness?"

Wikipedia:

Cuteness is a kind of attractiveness commonly associated with youth and appearance, as well as a scientific concept and analytical model in ethology, first introduced by Konrad Lorenz. It is usually characterized by (though not limited to) some combination of infant-like physical traits, especially small body size with a disproportionately large head, large eyes, a small nose, dimples, and round and softer body features. Infantile personality traits, such as playfulness, fragility, helplessness, curiosity, innocence, affectionate behavior and a need to be nurtured are also generally considered cute.

Steampunk Hits the Big Time

When the NY Times decides to cover Steampunk, the deliciously neo-victorian aesthetic, you know it has made it out of the realm of indy comics and off-beat web sites. The next big thing? I don't know about that, but I'd love nothing more than to see lower Manhattan awash in top hats and brass goggles. Why not? It is a whole lot more accessible and DIY than a lot of cultural phenomenon that I see around. I love this stuff to death.

The whole movement seems to be a reflex against the tsunami of high tech that has invaded our lives, but lacks a lot of the wonder, style and pure aesthetic extravagance that once accompanied such things. For example, a great new desktop computer comes in a plastic case built for economy. Our modern efficiency has largely robbed us of style. Where better to look than the Victorian era to right this utilitarian shortcoming?

nytimes.com:

The elaborate mourning dresses, waistcoats, hacking jackets and high-button shoes are goth’s stepchildren, for sure, but the overall look is “not so much eyeliner and fishnets,” said Evelyn Kriete, who sells advertising space for magazines like Steampunk, The Willows and Weird Tales, and who manages Jaborwhalky Productions (jaborwhalky.com), a steampunk Web site.

Ms. Kriete and her eccentrically outfitted cohort of teachers, designers, writers and medical students, drew stares last week at a picnic at the Cloisters in Manhattan, but provoked no shudders or discernible hostility.

“As a subculture, we are not the spawn of Satan,” Ms. Kriete said. “People smile when they see us. They want to take our picture.”

Robert Brown, the lead singer for Abney Park, a goth band that has reinvented itself as steampunk, echoed her sentiments. “Steampunk is not dark and spooky,” he said. “It’s elegant and beautiful.”

Are You Popular? (1947)

Steampunk Lego Star Wars

The freaky genre of Steampunk Star Wars has been one upped in hilarity and profanity by infusing it with the askew Lego Star Wars genre, thus creating "Lego Steampunk Star Wars."

Yes, it is a Verne-esk fighter from Victorian Naboo. Dig it.

Worlds Largest Bookshelf Collection

My friend Sue has started a really cool project over at exposeyourshelf.blogspot.com. She is collecting pictures of people's book shelves and hopes one day to manage the worlds largest collection of bookshelf pictures. The project has only recently begun, and she already has a pretty cool collection of bookshelf pictures. You can learn a lot about someone from what books they choose to share their space with. Head on over and have a look, and send in your bookshelf pictures!

Here.

The bookshelf displays only a slight sliver of time and place at any given moment, and allows the observer only a few inferences about us. It reveals both the content and the structure of our lives simultaneously. Who we are. What we think. How we organize, if at all. It contains books, yes, but also memories and outrage, tears and photos, secrets and flummery. The bookshelf may seem permanent and timeless, but unless you are a stagnant human being, your library has mutated over the course of your lifetime. People change. So do their bookshelves.

100 Folks and 1 Drum

Although the concept is simple it manages to survey the human lifetime quite effectively. Check it out.

Steampunk Rocks!

Call me late to the party once again. I don't care. I've discovered the wonderful world of Steampunk and I think it is cool as hell. Steampunk is a sci-fi sub-genre that hearkens back to the days of fabulously complicated machines made from gears, brass and steam. They're often depicted doing miraculous things such as in "Time Machine" by HG Wells or "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" by Jules Verne. In any case, this stuff is cool and is on the rise in cyber-culture. Hobbyists are making steampunk art, and much of it is actually functional. Do a search on ebay and you'll see a whole host of wickedly cool wears. It is like Victorian retro-tech. I love it to death.

Check out this working Steampunch Laptop Computer.
The Steampunk Workshop has lots of cool project examples.
And Gizmodo has a cool roundup of some of the coolest Steampunk stories on the web.

Check'em out.

Learning a Foreign Language

For me, learning a foreign language is about the most difficult thing in the world. My brain just doesn't work well when asked to memorize large amounts of information. I've always been far more adept at analysis and conceptual understanding than I have been at anything that defies a solution based on logic. Computer programming is about as natural of an activity to me as breathing or sleeping. Picking up even a conversational ability in any language other than my own native English is nearly impossible. I feel like a cripple attempting to go for a walk.

As my new wife and I are planning on heading to Peru for a jaunt up the Amazon for our honeymoon in January I've decided to bite the bullet and learn some conversational Spanish. I don't have any plans to become fluent, I just want to be able to get around somewhat. I'm not above using a cheat sheet. I figure this goal shouldn't be too terribly difficult to achieve.

Language audio tapes leave me in a pool of confused frustration. I don't remember anything. I get bored and my mind begins to wander. Instead, I'm spending a half hour every few days with one of my Spanish speaking co-workers. She's teaching me simple yet useful phrases such "esta culebra me da miedo." With enough practice, repetition and my language-savvy wife by my side I think I'll be able to get by without too many problems.

Speaking of wives, did you know that "esposa" is the word for both "wife" and "handcuffs" in Spanish? heh.

I'm up for whatever tips anyone wants to throw at me. Thanks.

Absolute Morality?

The idea that right and wrong are more than simple constructs created to allow civilization to function is a puzzling concept to examine. Surely there are certain archetypes that have been programmed into our psyche -- such as incest, baby killing and torture-for-entertainment -- that seem to be absolutely fixed in the cosmos as wrong. Aside from pointing to some type of a god for supposed universal truths, can one make a case for absolute morality that manages to hold any water whatsoever? I mean, I have an inherent sense of right and wrong, but when I take a close look it is really a self serving type of a thing. It keeps myself and my family alive, and the respect I have for others is at least partially driven by the respect, safety and piece of mind that I myself enjoy.

It seems to me that at best one could make the case that there are a few moral absolutes swimming in a sea of moral relativism. Even that seems like a difficult case to make.

From Wikipedia:

In its major descriptive usage, morality, (from Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behaviour") means a code of conduct held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong. The proper source of this authority is controversial, but society, philosophy, religion, and individual conscience are widely held to be candidates. 'Morality' can also be used in a normative sense to mean that code of conduct which would be espoused in preference to alternatives by all rational people, given specified conditions. To deny that 'morality' in this sense, refers, is a position known as moral skepticism. In its third usage 'morality' is synonymous with ethics, the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain.

And on moral absolutism:

In its major descriptive usage, morality, (from Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behaviour") means a code of conduct held to be authoritative in matters of right and wrong. The proper source of this authority is controversial, but society, philosophy, religion, and individual conscience are widely held to be candidates. 'Morality' can also be used in a normative sense to mean that code of conduct which would be espoused in preference to alternatives by all rational people, given specified conditions. To deny that 'morality' in this sense, refers, is a position known as moral skepticism. In its third usage 'morality' is synonymous with ethics, the systematic philosophical study of the moral domain.