discoveries from the internets and some stuff I wrote too
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recent quotes i like
"Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words." - ? | | | | | | |
"If there is anything I have learned from liberals and conservatives, it's that you can have great answers and still be mean... and that just as important as being right is being nice. " - shane claiborne | | | | | | |
"If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." --George Orwell ||||||
"On Facebook, no one can hear you scream." - I dont know ||||||
"The reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favor; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it." - Machiavelli ||||||
Chest of Drawers
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This chest of drawers is to replace the cheap stand (with no storage) that
was previously holding up our parrot's travel cage. She only lives with us
a few...
An important message from Consumer Reports
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This is our last post on Consumerist.com. We’re deeply proud of all the
work we’ve done on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by
secretive ...
My Milk Toof Travel Update
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*Dear International readers from Southeast France!*
ickle, Lardee & myself will be traveling around the southeast of France
area from 06/02-06/20. If anyo...
The Years Of Writing Dangerously
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Thirteen years ago, as I was starting to experiment with this blogging
thing, I wrote the following: [T]he speed with which an idea in your head
reaches th...
Saint Francis of Assisi
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… everyone who follows Christ receives true peace, the peace that Christ
alone can give, a peace which the world cannot give. Many people, when they
think ...
X-Factor Auditions, Part Two: The registration...
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Kind of creepy to be walking around White Plains at 4:30 in the morning. No
lights on, no cars, no people. I felt like I was in a zombie movie. And,
really...
Leslie Lemke didn't have a great start in life. He was born with severe birth defects that required doctors to remove his eyes. His own mother gave him up for adoption, and a nurse named May Lemke (who at the time was 52 and was raising 5 children of her own) adopted him when he was six months old.
As a young child, Leslie had to be force-fed to teach him how to swallow. He could not stand until he was 12. At 15, Leslie finally learned how to walk (May had to strap his fragile body to hers to teach him, step by step, how to walk).
At 16 years of age, Leslie Lemke bloomed. In the middle of one night, May woke up to find Leslie playing Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1. Leslie, who has no classical music training, was playing the piece flawlessly after hearing it just once earlier on the television.
Orlando Serrell wasn't born autistic - indeed, his savant skills only came about after a brain injury. In 1979, then ten-year-old Orlando was playing baseball when the ball struck him hard on the left side of his head. He fell to the ground but eventually got up to continue playing.
For a while, Orlando had headaches. When they went away, he realized he had new abilities: he could perform complex calendar calculations and remember the weather every day from the day of the accident.
anyone who knew me before the age of 12 or so would know that i find this one very interesting due to my obsessive drawing of imaginary cities on the giant rolls of paper my dad would bring home from his office mailroom job:
Urville isn't just an idle idea - Gilles has 250 detailed drawings, complete "history" of the founding the the city, and has even published a book detailing it (Sneak peak at Google Books)
Visit Urville at Gilles' official website here: Link
Does you're creepy friend hiding behind the couch come with the place?
"Oven? What oven? Found by Whitney, who points out that "the listing remarks say that the gas bill is less than $10.00 a month -- BECAUSE YOU CAN'T USE THE OVEN." "
and then a bit from her bio on Wikipedia that pretty much sums it up:
Leslie first began displaying herself in "strangely glamorous and unflattering ways" while attending Ames High School in Iowa. During her senior year, she entered the homecoming parade, as part of a prom queen campaign, donning a sparkling pink Goodwill gown, a neck brace, and a tiara (won by her mother who was crowned Miss Auburn, Nebraska in 1970). Her publicity stunt made the front page of the local newspaper the following day. Her campaign was a success, and when springtime came, she was crowned queen. After graduating from high school, Hall moved to Boston, Massachusetts and completed her education at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in May 2006. Currently she resides in Ames and lives with her parents.
Sometimes, you wake up following a drunken night out and realise you have sent an inappropriate text to an ex-girlfriend or your boss.
And sometimes you realise you have drunkenly admitted to plagiarism to camera, and spectacularly resigned from your job, shouting "F**k you' to your boss.
from http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/:
The candidate receiving a majority of the votes in the electoral college wins the election. The electors are apportioned roughly according to states' populations, as measured by the census, but with a small but deliberate bias in favor of smaller states.
We can represent the effects of the electoral college by scaling the sizes of states to be proportional to their number of electoral votes, which gives a map that looks like this:
One way to improve the map and reveal more nuance in the vote is to use not just two colors, red and blue, but to use red, blue, and shades of purple in between to indicate percentages of votes. Here is what the normal map looks like if you do this:
and finally i will let this map speak for itself:
red areas shifted more republican since 2004, blue areas shifted more democratic:
fivethirtyeight.com's poll of the polls pre-election prediction followed by the actual results (perfectly correct except Indiana went Obama too):
also worth considering: these relatively lily white states that went Obama as well - Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington State.
first is l-tran's awesome video she took from her car in philly just after the results were announced:
At 52nd and Pine Sts. in West Philly (about 8 blocks from my house) there has been an Obama field office busy with volunteers for nearly two years. At roughly 11:02 p.m. - following the official announcement that Barack Obama had won the presidential race - the place erupted into the streets. For a clear mile you could see/hear/feel relief, celebration, thank you Jesuses, YES WE CAN's, O-Bam-A's!, pots and pans, honking cars, fireworks and noisemakers of all kinds.
At 11:03, too excited to fall back to sleep, I left the house in my pajamas (Pajamas for Obama!) to experience it firsthand.
second, from another section of the US that probably fell into Palin's supposedly "anti-amercian parts of america", St. Marks & Ave. A, NYC: and then the east village:
There were people all over the streets of NYC, but Brooklyn was the place to be:
almost no one sings the entire thing - so - click below and you can see the FULL lyrics :)
actually it's not that hard to see why most performers don't sing the whole thing, it's a bit of a tougue twister even just reading it - let alone memorizing and singing it!
Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: 'Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion, A home and a country should leave us no more! Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: "In God is our trust." And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
from slavery, 3/5th of a vote in the constitution, to no vote in the poll tax south, to the president in just 140 odd years. everyone's child can become president. half white half black. half kansas and half immigrant. the original american dream, realized. finally. all men ARE created equal. America is the great melting pot - isn't that what we were supposed to believe all along? well, the pot has melted.
i feel a great sense of relief. it is time. it has been long enough. when the old confederacy votes to deliver the presidency to an african american - it's done. you all who drug your feet, it's over, america is transformed. it is finished. we have arrived at Jefferson's original ideal.
all men ARE created equal.
perhaps it IS because i was a child of the 70's that i think that this is the future and not an apocolyptic future, but a fresh and clear future. the elementary school i went to was named leda shishoff elementary school. this was in 1978 - the school was named after a past principal of the school. she was an african american and she made her way to be principal in an elementary school in nj in the 1950's! a majority white town voted to name the school after her. she had passed away before i ever even attended the school. so maybe to me - it is different - why wouldn't an african american be a good leader? she was. and she was good enough for all the white folks in williamstown in the 50's and 60's. why would someone be ineligable for leadership now due to their melanin count? why wasn't colin powell ineligible when he led our armed forces, or condoleeza rice when she led our foriegn affairs? those two republicans - and african americans - had risen to some of the highest ranks America has to offer. would they not be eligible?
it is over. it is finished. the declaration of independence has finally reached fruition today! all the words of the declaration are now a reality. God bless and protect us all. and i do not see why He would not.
beyond race - in fact - when a man is 50% white and raised by his white grandparents and 50% black - is there even such a thing as race anymore? i'm losing words....
race. given the reality of science and the workings of genetics taking us all back to africa, and given the cultural realization that, yes, despite the fact that generations said the words but did not enact them - ALL men ARE created equal.
#5 philly is looking like the reverse florida so far today :( "Security" patrols stationed at polling places in Philly"
fox says:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCeD1RcJjAg intimidated guy called the police and the nightstick guy was told to leave by the police "we had a little bit of a skirmish in front of the door" - a skirmish?
#6
TMZ, of all sites, has an interesting story up about a political saboteur telling Democrats in Deerfield Beach, Florida that they are supposed to vote at a different location.
Putting aside, for the moment the dirty tricks going on, there is another important nugget to glean from the story.
Nearly 400 people were firmly planted in line at 6:15 this morning, waiting for the polls to open at 7:00 AM. There is one voting machine to accommodate all of them.
This is a predominantly African-American community, with only one machine to punch in residents' votes.
all from various other sites, mostly readers submissions to Andrew Sullivan and The Dish but I will note when something is from another site:
#1 Baghdad, Iraq
I'm embedded with the military in Saddam's Presidential Palace and sent in my absentee ballot - for Obama - weeks ago. One of my colleagues [contractor, retired military] strongly supports McCain-Palin, believes Obama is a Muslim, etc. He told me he wasn't going to send in the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot because someone told him it wouldn't be counted unless the election was close. Well, that's not true. They do, eventually, count all the valid ballots for the official totals, issued several weeks later.
I showed him how to print one out [from fvap.gov] and encouraged him to participate, no matter what. Even though we disagree on the candidates, he really appreciated my taking the time to ensure that he sent in his vote. Even if, in the end, his state does not count his ballot [maybe he should have requested an absentee ballot in advance, and maybe he didn't; I don't know], it's important to me that everyone have a voice in this election.
#2 Scotland
Thought I'd send along my voting experience as an American living abroad, since reading yesterday's late post about the experience in Ohio.
My idea was simple; my mom would field my absentee ballot and post it out to me in Scotland. I would fill it in, and send it back. Easy. But one does not plan for the vagaries of international post at such a heightened sense of mental urgency. So when California mailed out the absentee ballots on 6 October, I was on it. Called my mom: is it there? No. October 7: Is it there? No. October 8: Is it there? Mom: 'How about I call you when it's here?' Mental images of all the most horrible, egregious methods of voter suppression flashed at me. Had I broken some rule of absentee voting? Did they know I was abroad and not in Cali? Was I….purged?
No – I got the happy call, finally, beginning my daily vigil at the mail slot, waiting… hoping… whispering to myself, Yes We Can. Okay, not really, but after 4 years of living abroad, witnessing firsthand America's waning international clout, I am ready for change. I don't consider myself overtly patriotic, but there's only so much casual animosity one can take about the state of one's country. The Bush Administration is, to put it very politely, not well-received abroad.
My absentee ballot took over two weeks to get here. My poor mother received increasingly desperate calls about the state of the envelope and the number of stamps she put on it – even double-checking the address that she'd sent it to. All fine, but she clearly thinks I'm nuts. So, when it finally arrived, I was beyond thrilled. I opened it with some ceremony, showing it to my Scottish colleagues, who are all very interested in the voting process Stateside. There was general merriment – they all knew my postal woes. With a flourish, I bubbled in my vote for President. My friend Claire, smiling, said in her lilting Ayrshire accent, 'Aye, and that's for all of us.' So, this one's from me, and several Scottish postgraduates in Glasgow.
#3 a little late - from last night's south philly biden rally:
At Biden rally, Obama's Democratic Party comes into view
PHILADELPHIA -- Joe Biden’s rally in South Philadelphia Monday night served as an example, writ small, of just how far the Democrats have come. Sensing imminent success, the early-2008 party torn apart by Bitter-gate and “hard-working, white Americans” seems to have been seamlessly knit back together.
The Biden rally was in a park in Philly’s deep south, a row-house neighborhood, the kind of place that gave birth to the post-civil rights ethnic white resentment that wrecked the New Deal coalition. It's where Rocky comes from, and the infamous Mayor Frank Rizzo, the local version of Richard Nixon.
It was, in other words, the kind of crowd Barack Obama might have struggled with back in May, full of white folks with blue collars. These are the voters Scranton-born Irish-Catholic Joe Biden was supposed to help win over. At least a quarter of the crowd seemed to be there with the local for the teamsters, the electricians, the painters, or the firefighters.
A series of local pols warmed up the crowd, starting with Bob Brady, a hulking sausage of a Congressman. The former carpenter kicked off the rally with a series of union-guy shout-outs: “Jimmy! Harry! Guy! Johnny Doc! Manny! Ronny! Tony!” before, with a joke about hiding his knuckles, he handed the podium off to a nun and walked backstage to smoke a cigarette with a nearby cop. A series of local luminaries followed, including Mayor Michael Nutter, Gov. Ed Rendell and Maryland's governor, Martin O'Malley.
Every speaker made sure to emphasize how important it was that voters stay in line Tuesday, no matter how long the wait might get. Rendell in particular captured the spirit of the night.
"I don’t care if you’re in line for two and a half hours. Don’t bitch about it," the governor said. "Do you remember when South Africa got the vote for the first time? People stood out in the heat for five and a half hours to vote for Nelson Mandela. Why? Because their country’s future was on the line... Make a party out of it. Sing songs. ‘Kumbaya.’ You name it. ‘Philadelphia Freedom.’ Whatever. Have fun.”
To hear a crowd of South Philly carpenters and electricians cheering wildly for Nelson Mandela and “Kumbaya” seems as good a measure as any of the kind of Democratic Party that looks poised to win the White House today. When Biden himself came on, two hours late, he played the role cast for him, talking up the World Series winning Phillies and joking about his own locally appropriate ethnic background: “I tell you what, we got two Irish guys here, O’Malley and Biden. And I tell you what, I may be Irish, but I’m not stupid. I married Dominic Giacoppa’s granddaughter.”
The group was cold and tired by then, but Biden kept it short and sweet. The crowd of 2500 disappeared almost immediately after he finished, but everyone had the same thing to say. Local Paul Gambone “came for the excitement.” “Biden was electrifying,” said Chris, a South Philly 20-year old. Jabbing this reporter in the chest, firefighter Joe Love said, “He tells it from the heart.” Nearly everybody who spoke to Salon used some variation of the word “exciting” or “energizing.”
In South Philly, at least, Obama and Biden seem to have put to rest some of the demons from earlier this year, and from earlier in the city’s history. http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/11/04/biden_south_philly/index.html
#4 Over 1,000 Students Lined Up To Vote At Penn State (VIDEO)
When the polls opened...there were 200 people waiting. Some in heels. Some in ties. Some in pajamas. Lots of hair pulled back in ponytails. Lots of baseball caps. Dodgers. Red Sox. Indians.
The line stretched from the church to the Burger King around the corner. Kinda fitting. That's America. Faith and french fries. I watched people walk out with their "I voted" stickers. You could see the smiles...and a few tears. An older woman got her ballot and told the poll worker..."I've voted my entire life, but this is what I have been waiting for."
#6 philly burbs
I was busy preparing my five year-old son for school when my wife called to inform me about the voting situation. After hanging up, I asked my son if he wanted to go with me to vote (he has been obsessed with Barack Obama for about two months much to the consternation of both sets of his very Republican grandparents).
It was one of those incredible moments as a parent that I hope to never forget---walking to the polls with my son in his red and blue voting hat that he made at school yesterday with his incessant questioning about Obama and McCain, his awe at the voting booth and seeing the large list of candidates for political office, and trying to contain the volume of this excited five year old as I agreed to let him help me push the button confirming my vote.
I went to vote this morning in Red Bank, NJ at the elementary school that is the polling station for my district. After voting I was sitting in the small park across the street having a scrapple egg and cheese sandwich and some coffee when I saw my first real live wild bald eagle! it might not be so exciting for folks in other locations but they are a real rarity here in NJ still, only 60 nests in the entire state.
It landed in a tree in the school's playground for a few moments. Me and another two guys saw it. I had my camera and one of the other two guys grabbed his out of his glove compartment of his truck. By the time we started to cross the street to get a close enough shot it started to fly away, I got a pic of it sitting in the tree and two of it in mid flight but all are from quite far away. (i used the "sharpen" feature in GIMP - if you doubt this story and require the originals I can send em to ya - just ask :)
Anyway, I had been sitting on the bench watching all the different kinds of folks go in and out of the polling station, old men, young hipsters, sweat suit moms and pantsuit businesswomen, guys in BMWs and guys in old beat up pickuptrucks, grandmothers and young brothers all getting along and being friendly and courteous, and I was thinking that America is pretty cool after all when... what else can I say, this sign from above came down. I don't know if he was trying to vote or send a message or just tired from flying around but he delivered a message to me, whether he intended to or not :)
taking flight
sitting in a branch upper left
Soaring away
my polling place, no lines
my flags
my sign (and some gourds I grew)
the preview of the electronic voting booth's setup. no paper trail here in Jersey yet (boooo). all the other parties presidential candidates trail off to the left, there were two different socialist parties, the green party, the constitutional party, a communist party and maybe 2 or 3 other choices besides Barack and John.
"We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States, We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we've got some gay friends in the Red States." Barack Obama
me and my brother david went to philly - shooting for the phillies victory parade but were held up by the fact that 2 million people crowded broad street and market street and the nj transit bus made us get off in camden and take the PATCO line (underground train) into the city because the buses had given up even trying to navigate the city at all. we waited in the PATCO station while 5 fully sardine packed (think japanese subways) trains went past out of the city into the jersey suburbs before 1 train came to take us into the city.
anyway - we missed the official parade but were still surrounded by friendly but loud and mostly drunken phillies fans for the rest of the afternoon and evening.
Surveying the good, the bad and the ugly in Philadelphia, our correspondent is optimistic about its future.
By Alex Schmidt, October 30, 2008 It's a clear winter morning on a small carriage street in South Philadelphia. A woman in a mumu steps out of her narrow row home and yells, "Bill, Bill, you got an extra rubber band?"
The person she's talking to is the mailman, as he pushes his cart along.
"Morning, Joyce," he answers. "Sure."
This is one of the first Philly interactions I remember being absolutely shocked by when I arrived here about a year ago. The fact that a regular person would address the mailman with such familiarity – and that he'd respond in kind – was completely foreign.
I had moved here, most recently, from my hometown of Los Angeles, where casual conversation in the street rarely takes place due to the car thing. On the rare occasions when direct addresses do happen, they're viewed with a degree of reserved suspicion. What does this person want from me? I'd actually much rather go inside. Casual conversation among strangers isn't merely common here—there's an expectation that you'll take the time for chitchat. If you don't, people think you're rude. At first, this was a chore. But a couple of months ago, as I waited for the Chinatown bus in a crazy Friday afternoon crowd, I found myself commenting to a straight-faced gentleman, "Stick with me, we'll make it on."
He didn't respond. New Yorker.
If you've only lived in huge cities, you might be surprised (as I was) to learn that the geographic center of Philly is really small. It's easy to get around everywhere on a bike, despite it being the 5th largest city in the country...
...So many things here simply defy the logic that you would think governs the rational functioning of a major American city. There are only three places in the entire city where you can buy subway or bus tokens – and they only take cash...
...Several New York friends commented to me when I first moved to Philly that they loved it here because it felt so "real." I answered back that they were confusing realness with dirt...
...Each show, from the biggest to the smallest, that I attended at the Philly Fringe Festival was packed, and the audience laughed, clapped, and generally participated. Loudly. That goes for every other exhibit, opening, bar, party, or event that I've been to in Philadelphia.
And it was especially true late Wednesday night, as the Philadelphia Phillies brought a World Series championship to the city. Everyone with a pulse had taken to the streets, groups were lighting piles of newspapers on fire and setting off fireworks in the middle of crowds as high fives flew between utter strangers...
In the mid-1990s, few in Germany had ever heard of Halloween, and even fewer celebrated it. Now, it's a €150 million a year industry. The holiday's success can be traced to a single marketing genius.
By Julia Bonstein, Marcel Rosenbach and Hilmar Schmundt
Google gathers so much detailed information about its users that one critic says some state intelligence bureaus look "like child protection services" in comparison. A few German government bodies have mounted a resistance.
The web has resurrected a rare alternate ending to a 1986 musical about a monstrous, blood-sucking plant.
The spectacular 24-minute sequence shows an army of giant plants rampaging past city skyscrapers, overturning cars, swallowing railroads, and demolishing New York City, Godzilla-style. The U.S. army discovers the plants are bulletproof, and as helicopters flee, the plants swarm over the statue of Liberty.
It cost $5 million, took 11 months to produce, and has never been released.
Well, almost never.
Ten years ago, "Little Shop of Horrors" was available on a DVD including the toothier alternate ending — for exactly five days. But Warner Brothers failed to secure the proper copyrights for the alternate ending — and the DVD was recalled. For the next decade, producer David Geffen and Warner Brothers wrangled and promised to restore the original ending, until Warner Brothers finally discovered in 2007 that it had already been burned in a studio fire.
But while Hollywood argued, the coveted footage quietly slipped onto YouTube.
The original everyone-dies ending from the play, changed after test audiences whined. Heartbreaking both for Audrey's reprise of "Somewhere That's Green" and the glimpse it offers of the classic that could have been had the filmmakers stayed true to the retelling of Faust that lent moral resonance to its otherwise campy source material.
Base rate fallacy — ignoring available statistical data in favor of particulars.
Bias blind spot — the tendency not to compensate for one's own cognitive biases.
Choice-supportive bias — the tendency to remember one's choices as better than they actually were.
Concord fallacy — the tendency to make investment decisions based upon past levels of investment rather than an assessment of the potential for future returns.
Confirmation bias — the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.
Congruence bias — the tendency to test hypotheses exclusively through direct testing, in contrast to tests of possible alternative hypotheses.
Conservatism bias — the tendency to ignore the consequence of new evidence. (Related to base rate fallacy.)[1]
Contrast effect — the enhancement or diminishing of a weight or other measurement when compared with recently observed contrasting object.
Déformation professionnelle — the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one's own profession, forgetting any broader point of view.
Distinction bias — the tendency to view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately.[2]
Endowment effect — "the fact that people often demand much more to give up an object than they would be willing to pay to acquire it".[3]
Expectation bias — the tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agrees with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appears to conflict with those expectations.[4]
Extreme aversion — the tendency to avoid extremes, being more likely to choose an option if it is the intermediate choice.
Focusing effect — prediction bias occurring when people place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.
Framing — by using a too narrow approach or description of the situation or issue. Also framing effect — drawing different conclusions based on how data are presented.
Hyperbolic discounting — the tendency for people to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, where the tendency increases the closer to the present both payoffs are.
Illusion of control — the tendency for human beings to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes that they clearly cannot.
Impact bias — the tendency for people to overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.
Information bias — the tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action.
Irrational escalation — the tendency to make irrational decisions based upon rational decisions in the past or to justify actions already taken.
Mere exposure effect — the tendency for people to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them.
Moral credential effect — the tendency of a track record of non-prejudice to increase subsequent prejudice.
Need for closure — the need to reach a verdict in important matters; to have an answer and to escape the feeling of doubt and uncertainty. The personal context (time or social pressure) might increase this bias.[6]
Neglect of probability — the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty.
Not Invented Here — the tendency to ignore that a product or solution already exists, because its source is seen as an "enemy" or as "inferior".
Omission bias — the tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).
Outcome bias — the tendency to judge a decision by its eventual outcome instead of based on the quality of the decision at the time it was made.
Planning fallacy — the tendency to underestimate task-completion times.
Post-purchase rationalization — the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.
Pseudocertainty effect — the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.
Reactance — the urge to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do out of a need to resist a perceived attempt to constrain your freedom of choice.
Unit bias — the tendency to want to finish a given unit of a task or an item. Strong effects on the consumption of food in particular
Von Restorff effect — the tendency for an item that "stands out like a sore thumb" to be more likely to be remembered than other items.
Wishful thinking — the formation of beliefs and the making of decisions according to what is pleasing to imagine instead of by appeal to evidence or rationality.
Zero-risk bias — preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.
Many of these biases are often studied for how they affect business and economic decisions and how they affect experimental research.
Ambiguity effect — the avoidance of options for which missing information makes the probability seem "unknown".
Anchoring — the tendency to rely too heavily, or "anchor," on a past reference or on one trait or piece of information when making decisions.
Attentional bias — neglect of relevant data when making judgments of a correlation or association.
Authority bias — the tendency to value an ambiguous stimulus (e.g., an art performance) according to the opinion of someone who is seen as an authority on the topic.
Availability heuristic — estimating what is more likely by what is more available in memory, which is biased toward vivid, unusual, or emotionally charged examples.
Availability cascade — a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse (or "repeat something long enough and it will become true").
Clustering illusion — the tendency to see patterns where actually none exist.
Capability bias — The tendency to believe that the closer average performance is to a target, the tighter the distribution of the data set.
Conjunction fallacy — the tendency to assume that specific conditions are more probable than general ones.
Gambler's fallacy — the tendency to assume that individual random events are influenced by previous random events. For example, "I've flipped heads with this coin five times consecutively, so the chance of tails coming out on the sixth flip is much greater than heads."
Hawthorne effect — the tendency of people to perform or perceive differently when they know that they are being observed.
Hindsight bias — sometimes called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect, the inclination to see past events as being predictable.
Illusory correlation — beliefs that inaccurately suppose a relationship between a certain type of action and an effect.
Ludic fallacy — the analysis of chance related problems according to the belief that the unstructured randomness found in life resembles the structured randomness found in games. Ignoring the non-gaussian distribution of many real-world results.
Optimism bias — the systematic tendency to be over-optimistic about the outcome of planned actions.
Ostrich effect — ignoring an obvious (negative) situation.
Overconfidence effect — excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions. For example, for certain types of question, answers that people rate as "99% certain" turn out to be wrong 40% of the time.
Reminiscence bump — the effect that people tend to recall more personal events from adolescence and early adulthood than from other lifetime periods.
Rosy retrospection — the tendency to rate past events more positively than they had actually rated them when the event occurred.
Selection bias — a distortion of evidence or data that arises from the way that the data are collected.
Stereotyping — expecting a member of a group to have certain characteristics without having actual information about that individual.
Subadditivity effect — the tendency to judge probability of the whole to be less than the probabilities of the parts.
Subjective validation — perception that something is true if a subject's belief demands it to be true. Also assigns perceived connections between coincidences.
Telescoping effect — the effect that recent events appear to have occurred more remotely and remote events appear to have occurred more recently.
Texas sharpshooter fallacy — the fallacy of selecting or adjusting a hypothesis after the data is collected, making it impossible to test the hypothesis fairly. Refers to the concept of firing shots at a barn door, drawing a circle around the best group and declaring that to be the target.
Actor-observer bias — the tendency for explanations of other individuals' behaviors to overemphasize the influence of their personality and underemphasize the influence of their situation (see also fundamental attribution error). However, this is coupled with the opposite tendency for the self in that explanations for our own behaviors overemphasize the influence of our situation and underemphasize the influence of our own personality.
Dunning-Kruger effect — "...when people are incompetent in the strategies they adopt to achieve success and satisfaction, they suffer a dual burden: Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Instead, ...they are left with the mistaken impression that they are doing just fine."[8](see also Lake Wobegon effect, and overconfidence effect).
Egocentric bias — occurs when people claim more responsibility for themselves for the results of a joint action than an outside observer would.
Forer effect (aka Barnum Effect) — the tendency to give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. For example, horoscopes.
False consensus effect — the tendency for people to overestimate the degree to which others agree with them.
Halo effect — the tendency for a person's positive or negative traits to "spill over" from one area of their personality to another in others' perceptions of them (see also physical attractiveness stereotype).
Herd instinct — Common tendency to adopt the opinions and follow the behaviors of the majority to feel safer and to avoid conflict.
Illusion of asymmetric insight — people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them.
Illusion of transparency — people overestimate others' ability to know them, and they also overestimate their ability to know others.
Illusory superiority — perceiving oneself as having desirable qualities to a greater degree than other people. Also known as Superiority bias.
Ingroup bias — the tendency for people to give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups.
Just-world phenomenon — the tendency for people to believe that the world is "just" and therefore people "get what they deserve."
Money illusion - an irrational notion that the arbitrary values of currency, fiat or otherwise, have an actual immutable value
Notational bias — a form of cultural bias in which a notation induces the appearance of a nonexistent natural law.
Outgroup homogeneity bias — individuals see members of their own group as being relatively more varied than members of other groups.
Projection bias — the tendency to unconsciously assume that others share the same or similar thoughts, beliefs, values, or positions.
Self-serving bias — the tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests (see also group-serving bias).
Self-fulfilling prophecy — the tendency to engage in behaviors that elicit results which will (consciously or not) confirm our beliefs.
System justification — the tendency to defend and bolster the status quo. Existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives disparaged sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest. (See also status quo bias.)
Trait ascription bias — the tendency for people to view themselves as relatively variable in terms of personality, behavior and mood while viewing others as much more predictable.
Ultimate attribution error — Similar to the fundamental attribution error, in this error a person is likely to make an internal attribution to an entire group instead of the individuals within the group.
Beneffectance — perceiving oneself responsible for desirable outcomes but not responsible for undesirable ones. (Term coined by Greenwald (1980)) (See Self-serving bias.)
Consistency bias — incorrectly remembering one's past attitudes and behaviour as resembling present attitudes and behaviour.
Cryptomnesia — a form of misattribution where a memory is mistaken for imagination.
Egocentric bias — recalling the past in a self-serving manner, e.g. remembering one's exam grades as being better than they were, or remembering a caught fish as being bigger than it was
False memory — confusion of imagination with memory, or the confusion of true memories with false memories.
Hindsight bias — filtering memory of past events through present knowledge, so that those events look more predictable than they actually were; also known as the 'I-knew-it-all-along effect'.
Suggestibility — a form of misattribution where ideas suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory.
Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows' Computer Video from 1984
it's longish but the little white dots on the playline at the bottom of the video shows the best parts by minute mark.
oh the days of floppy disks and black screens with green typeface.
btw - nice nancy reagan dress Jayne.
i found it was tolerable when i played it in the background while i did my other stuff online.
With an Apple II, a Kaypro 2, cheeseball computer animation and a grab-bag of corny jokes, this is classic computing from the VHS era. Keep an eye out for references to Wargames, hackers, Boy George, Ronald Reagan, and more.
I came to Iraq about 4 months ago to work as an Environmental Technician. I really have enjoyed my work, even if it is dangerous. I have almost all the confronts of home here thanks to KBR, however I was missing one thing, GREEN. I came here from Pennsylvania (Just PA for you from there) and missed seeing all the green. In PA we have more trees, grass, and flowers then we know what to do with.
I began to miss the foliage so much that I decided to try and start a little flower garden. Unfortunately I came into more then a few problems being here in Iraq, on a military base...
...Since the Iraqi dirt is to dense when wet for growing efficiently I remeberd that one of the tools at my disposal to soaking up Hazmat spills on base is peat moss! Which made for an awesome growing material. I also did one better. I went down to the STP Plant (poopie plant) and got some of the "dried solids" (poopie) and mixed two parts of that to ten parts peat moss. It makes for excellent soil to grow things in!!!
Product names don't necessarily reflect the truth of the products. Ever heard of Corinthian Leather? Think New Jersey, not Corinth, Greece. How about Häagen Dazs? Nothing Scandinavian about it. Read on to find out how a product's name can deceive you ...
Corinthian Leather
Sounds Like: Fancy leather from some exotic place in Europe - specifically, the Greek city of Corinth. The phrase "rich Corinthian leather" was made famous by actor Ricardo Montalban, in ads for Chrysler's luxury Cardoba in the 1970s. (The seats were covered with it.)
The Truth: There's no such thing as Corinthian leather. The term was made up by Chrysler's ad agency. The leather reportedly came from New Jersey.
the full website has the stories of these and others:
and then there's this one - victim of the most embarrassing DUI ever:
Apparently, being the only tree in that part of the wide-open desert (remember: there wasn’t another tree for 250 miles around), wasn’t enough to stop a drunk Libyan truck driver from driving his truck into it, knocking it down and killing it!
Now, a metal sculpture was placed in its spot to commemorate the Lonely Tree of Ténéré"
