Jean on the 18-Hour Bra

Jean pondering why 18-hour bras exist:

I've never said to my girlfriends, "Meet you at the club? OoooOoooooo, bummer … I'd love to, but my bra, you see I had an early start so I only have like another hour, by the time I get there, get parking … I just can't."

TV's Aryan Sisterhood

A little slide show from Slate on the blondeness of TV newsreaders. There's even a slide on 'Fox lips'! Next they'll be telling us that TV people are better looking than the rest of us.

Those Neutral Swiss

Even when they live in Berlin they cause disruption. Zone-Interdite, a site that shows you the restricted areas of the world's maps and also has cute 3D walkthroughs of a couple of such sites. Found on Der Spiegel.

Interesting income model

Dick Cheney shoots a person. Some smart individuals rewrite a popular song and make an animation to fit. Put it on the web and behold, an instant hit site. And you can buy the t-shirt.

Commuting Denial

Reading Will Wilkinson's post on commuting made me think about my old commute.

When I swapped the Microsoft commute (30-60 minutes) for the Amazon commute (10-25 minutes) I felt much happier. I knew the Microsoft commute was stressful and time consuming, but I probably kept it up for 8 years partly through denial.

Between National Public Radio and books on tape you can think of the commute as a learning experience. The perception is also that a good job is worth commuting to and that commuting is just part of the lifestyle.

When I started working in Seattle itself, I felt so much better. It wasn't the time gain so much as the lowering of stress when the freeway commute was removed. Stop-start traffic on a freeway gives you no time to relax, whereas traffic lights let you lower the awareness level at red lights. Another factor was the freedom to leave at any time and not have to a heavy rush hour cost.

Hayley Westenra is Coming to Town

She's big in New Zealand and she's coming to Seattle to support some smouldering band of cheekbones.

Sydney Yuppies find it Tough?

A bizarre opinion piece from the Sydney Morning Herald. The thesis: Australia has to fix its cities because it doesn't have good latte towns. Is this irony?

They ask themselves if it is worth living in the buzz of the city, with its all its amenities, and cafes, when disgruntlement is their prevailing mood.

Just what I need in my Inbox on a dark winter Thursday night

...the Friday afternoon surf report for Piha Beach, west of Auckland in NZ. Where it is summer, of course.

Turning the Tables

From a friend of mine, a former developer on WinForms:

It's a funny thing; working on the WinForms team, inside WinForms every day, is very different to working *with* WinForms

My Inner Introvert

Jonathan Rauch on Introversion.

extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours

People who know me would howl in laughter at the suggestion I was an introvert. I test as an extrovert according to that Briggs-Meyers thingo. Put me among Jean's family and I am the guy who is hidden in a bedroom, away from everyone, reading a book I found on a shelf somewhere in the house.

I time out on social situations, love to stay home and wish I had more time alone. My happiest moments come while reading or writing or playing music or listening to music. These are solo activities. However I also have my worst moments alone too.

I think being extrovert smooths out the ups and downs of introversion.

This is silly

[Although I am a curmudgeon.]

Gen Y meets the workforce.

The Code for Seattle

Nalgene bottle as fashion statement.

"If I were making a Seattle time capsule," says UW junior Mary Wang, "it would have an iPod, a North Face Denali jacket and a Nalgene bottle."

Market Forces and the Spanish Holiday Home

With the opening up of international commerce in Europe over the last few decades, people from the richer European countries (such as the UK, Ireland, Germany) are buying up holiday property in the poorer European areas (such as Spain, rural France, Croatia and anywhere those super cheap airlines fly).

So instead of letting the property attain its true value, the European Central Bank wants to raise interest rates to stop the price rise. Canute stopping the tide?

So many Bell Curves, so little Time

Bart Kosko from USC has a dangerous idea - that we're all over-simplifying by using the classical central limit theorem.

"Rare events are not so rare if the bell curve has thicker tails than the normal bell curve has. Telephone interrupts are more frequent. Lightning flashes are more frequent and more energetic. Stock market fluctuations or crashes are more frequent. How much more frequent they are depends on how thick the tail is — and that is always an empirical question of fact."

The evil of cellphones

The cellphone as the source of all evil, by Bryan Curtis of Slate.

"If I had to pick two things that have changed the world of genre writing, one would be the fall of the Berlin Wall, which eliminated a whole genre of fiction. And the other would be cell phones. The question everybody asks about crime stories is, 'Why don't they just call they police?' And now, with cell phones, you have to come up with a pretty good explanation."

My Corolla enables someone else to drive a Landcruiser

NYT article on how the gas guzzler rules have an unintended consequence - that every hybrid (or any other fuel efficient vehicle) allows a manufacturer to sell a less fuel-efficient vehicle. The mandated average fuel economy for trucks is 21.6 mpg. So each time you sell a truck that does better than that, you can sell a truck that does worse. So buy a hybrid and allow someone else to buy a Hummer.

"...every Ford Escape — the hybrid S.U.V. that Kermit the Frog hawked during the Super Bowl — makes room for a Lincoln Navigator, which gets all of 12 miles a gallon. Instead of simply saving gas when you buy a hybrid, you're giving somebody else the right to use it."

The Europeans have huge gas taxes. Their cars are tiny.

Kick a Ball around a Park

A Professor from University College London, Roger Mackett, talking about child recreation at the University of Otago.

"In industrialised countries there was a move away from unstructured play, prompted by parents, towards organised sport. But that often involved being driven to and from a venue, time spent getting changed and listening to a coach."

Is this really saying success at sports in the eyes of the community is more important than health and fitness of your child? It is a decision we're going to have to examine as our kids grow into the 'drive to the gymnastics tournament' stage.

Moral Distancing and Project Management

Benedict Carey of the NYT writes on how people cope with doing morally questionable tasks (e.g. performing capital punishment) by 'morally disengaging'.

Things I learned here:
1) That whatever the reason for performing the dubious action, your mind copes by turning down or adjusting your morality temporarily. I'm guessing this also leads to guilt, depression and sucide.

2) There's a concept called 'diffusion of responsibility' where the task of killing is shared around several people - one person straps the left leg, another the right (and so on), another brings the lethal injection, another administers the lethal injection.

"Firing squads draw on this same idea. Everyone in the squad fires but no one can be sure whose shot was deadly. "

3) Cheating students use moral evasion techniques like:

"I think it's hard for people not to look at the answer manual if it's available," said one student. "Maybe you should have taken the problem off so people wouldn't be tempted."

I see language like this in the workplace all the time. People performing in a workplace where multiple competing goals are set seem to morally disengage. Missed dates and broken promises cause moral distancing.

Corporations use the moral system to get their work done - missing a date isn't 'insufficient planning' or 'random events' but a 'broken promise' and therefore a morally poor event that will cause pain to do and so motivates the employees to work extra hard to avoid.

I'll be thinking about this all day.

What Rich Boomers buy when they don't know about Art

"As baby boomers approach 60, some have decided it is time to have the cars they craved when they were 16. The boys who wanted to burn rubber in high school do not covet red cars from Italy or green ones from Britain, but Plymouth 'Cudas from Detroit wearing Plum Crazy paint. By now, the thirst for big-engine GTO's and Road Runners is so strongly rooted in the collector world that it may no longer be appropriate to call it a muscle car craze."

From the NYT.

So when I turn 60 I am going to buy the bike I craved when I was a teenager - a BMW R100GS. Oh pooh, I already have one.

That's an 'interesting' answer

Why I say "wrong" and "not good enough" when I could say "interesting" and "fun alternative": a coroner in Wellington points the finger at our over-protective society.

When I grow up I want to be a Patent Troll

I hate patent law. I hate copyright law. Maybe this guy suing RIM will make me happy by bringing about reform.