Archives for July 2005

Mmm… looks and brains. Whatever is a (male) geek to do? ;-)

Excerpt:
collision detection: Celebrity math
One hazard of being an attractive starlet is that many people assume you’re not that smart. This, however, is no problem for Danica McKellar, a 30-year-old former star of The Wonder Years and regular on The West Wing, because she’s actually got documented proof of her brilliance: She’s the author of the mathematical proof “Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin-Teller models on Z-squared” (PDF), which she cowrote while doing a degree at the University of California.

Excerpt:
Congress to add 2 months to Daylight Savings Time
Congress to add 2 months to Daylight Savings Time

July 20, 2005

BY JOHN J. FIALKA
It looks like Daylight Saving Time is about to be extended, and that has child safety and fire prevention advocates riled.

Congressional leaders of both parties have signed off on a proposal, being considered in Washington this week, to start Daylight Saving Time on the first Sunday in March and end on the last Sunday of November. They say it would save energy.

Table of Condiments
Table of Condiments
That Periodically Go Bad

Excerpt from Creating Passionate Users:

No matter how enlightened and politically correct we’ve become, most people still tend to believe that when making decisions, men are less driven by emotions than women. Men use left-brained (metaphorically speaking) logical, rational thought. Men are persuaded to buy or act based on thinking, not feeling, while women do the opposite. You know, that whole Mars and Venus thing.

This wouldn’t be so bad if those left-brained characteristics weren’t seen as being more… virtuous.

Newsflash: emotions are sick and tired of being treated like second-class brain citizens! They’re taking back their rightful place in the world, thanks to the work of brave neuroscientists like Joseph LeDoux and Antonio Damsio (author of Descarte\’s Error). These two, and a handful of others, withstood the mocking of their peers (“Wait… let me get this straight…you’re basing your career on studying emotions [laughs hysterically, spits coffee out of nose]. That is hilarious! Oh, Antonio, you almost got me on that one… ha-ha