Primal Emo...

Apparently, there really is something universal about our music: emotion. A study using Western music and members of the African Mafa tribe who had never heard it before showed that anger, sadness, and fear in our music is understandable even outside our culture.

Fritz enlisted members of the Mafa, one of about 250 ethnic groups in Cameroon. He traveled to the extreme north of the Mandara mountain ranges, where they live, with a laptop and sun collector to supply electricity in his backpack.

Their studies showed that both Western and Mafa listeners, who had never before heard Western music, could recognize emotional expressions of happiness, sadness, and fear in the music more often than would be expected by chance. However, they report that the Mafa showed considerable variability in their performance, with two of twenty-one study participants performing at chance level.

Both groups relied on similar characteristics of music to make those calls; both Mafas and Westerners relied on temporal cues and on mode for their judgment of emotional expressions, although this pattern was more marked in Western listeners.

By manipulating music, the researchers also found that both Western listeners and African listeners find original music more pleasant than altered versions. That preference is probably explained in part by the increased sensory dissonance of the manipulated tunes.

HT Future Pundit

Hmmm

Better than reality : a principle to live by

This article points out the futility of designing web interfaces to "emulate" (more like "mock", which actually works quite well if the intention is humor rather than usability) the real world.

The principle is clear: don't burden yourself with unnecessary limitations just to cleave to the familiar. Transcend.

HT: MR on the Kindle

Economic Stimulus you can believe in.....

Being quite pro-immigration (after all, I am an immigrant myself!), this item struck me as more than just amusing. Why isn't it being done?

To be fair, encouraging immigration of the well-to-do is actually quite common, although typically on the WEALTHIER end of that spectrum. Almost any country is willing to host a billionaire.

Goldfish Memories

I watched an enjoyable movie tonight with Jocelyn. It's a bit slow starting, and it's quite a challenge to keep all the characters straight (no pun intended, since most of them are not "straight"), but it is very sweet and gently humorous.

My favorite exchange (paraphrased from memory)

girl: "He's NOT my type"
friend: "Well, YOUR type is currently making love to another man, so maybe you should expand your range."

Good documentation....

In the computer world, we are constantly reminded of the need for good documentation. This is an extreme case from the non-computer (military) world.

Could there be a more embarrassing lapse?

Previous lives...

Guys will put up with a bit of nonsense if it gets them what they want! Click on the image for more of these fun comics.

New Rochester blog...

Let's see how it goes, only one blog post so far - but it is informative:

Sisters of Murphy

I love the name - apparently an Irish play on the name of the Leonard Cohen song (and the band) "Sisters of Mercy". Playing, appropriately enough, at Murphy's Law (I've seen them at the Krown)

Quote of the day

I’ll get the speech about how wonderful I am. Basic rule, isn’t it? More wonderful you are at the start of the speech, the more dumped you are at the end.
-- Coupling

Quote of the Day

"Wind power has no future on the Moon."
Randall Parker, FuturePundit, in an article on lunar applications of solar power

Making our own romantic night-time sky

According to Slashdot, Venus is no longer going to be the brightest object in our night sky - the International Space Station is going to beat it with the newest set of solar wings.

This will give lovers something a bit more frisky than the typical planet to gaze at (I wonder if this will affect birthrates?) while lying on darkened lawns, but it might peeve astronomers that are already upset at "light pollution".

Quote of the day

"I really quite like being single. Except for the bit about not having a man."
- from the BBC series "Coupling"

Jet city....

Some people view corporate jets as being in the same category as champagne and expensive cigars. Much has been made of the executives flying to their begging session in these jets, but here is a good defense of that "perq", especially the Cessnas that can land in 3250 feet:

That figure — 3,250 feet — means business aircraft can alight on any of the 5,000 or so public-use airports scattered throughout the nation’s suburbs, small towns and back country, as well as land at small city airports abandoned by airlines decades ago. By contrast, the airlines fly to only about 500 airports, and of those, fewer than 70 get about three-quarters of all traffic.

If two companies are competing for business, the one using a business aircraft can fly directly to one of those smaller airports and get to lunch with the client before the other guys taking the commercial airlines show up.

And the business people with the corporate jet won’t just arrive faster; they’ll also show up better prepared. After all, most companies send teams of people, and in their own airplane they’re free to discuss confidential information or polish up that PowerPoint presentation. What’s more, they can use the phones, their BlackBerrys and the Internet en route. In other words, these jets are offices that move.

Of course, only the last part of that applies to landing in Washington to beg, and I'm still not very sympathetic to taxpayer handouts to ANY corporations....but I don't like thoughtless sneering either.

HT MR.

Quote of the day

What we do is never understood, but only praised and blamed.
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Quote of the day

"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch."--Jack Nicholson

So I am in the state

...that most people are fleeing.

At least the Californians (#2) have warmer weather.

Quote of the day

"There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL."
--Lynn Lavner

Phrasebooks for time travelers

This news report seemed quite interesting:

What the researchers found was that the frequency with which a word is used relates to how slowly it changes through time, so that the most common words tend to be the oldest ones.

For example, the words "I" and "who" are among the oldest, along with the words "two", "three", and "five". The word "one" is only slightly younger.

Interesting, but a bit dubious. Mark Liberman (HT, by the way!) is inspired to provide a precise distinction between lies and "bullshit" (see original post) and comments:

Though I still hold out some hope that Prof. Pagel is being systematically misquoted, I'm afraid that I'm now reluctantly coming to believe what a colleague of his told me in confidence: "He knows better, but he just doesn't care".

Sense of humor not applicable in this one

Sometimes it is argued that gay marriage is a rather frivolous cause - that pretty much all the important things are available without it. This story emphasizes why it can be important.

The gist?

As her partner of 17 years slipped into a coma, Janice Langbehn pleaded with doctors and anyone who would listen to let her into the woman's hospital room.

Eight anguishing hours passed before Langbehn would be allowed into Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center. By then, she could only say her final farewell as a priest performed the last rites on 39-year-old Lisa Marie Pond.

I admire his sense of humor...

The guy in this story might have been a loser, but talk about a good loser!

The prank resulted in him becoming a national laughingstock, an indecent picture of him becoming widely available, and the end of his marriage.

His reaction?

“There’s no doubt I’ve been done good and proper by the lads from Liverpool.

“It was cruel, but I’ll hold my hands up and say they really wound me up.”

Perhaps he is merely trying to lull them into a false sense of security while he thinks up a revenge prank that will top it.

HT The Agitator