3diff's Friends
[Most Recent Entries]
[Calendar View]
[Friends View]
Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
[ << Previous 25 ]
| Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 |
tcb
|
1:09p |
Cute cat pic of the day  Georgie discovers ICE!(and doesn't quite know what to make of it..) |
lyonesse
|
12:39p |
i suck but it doesn't matter sometimes i'm just blessed for no reason. went to meet with tax accountant with none of the requested statements, and it turned out he just wanted me to clarify a few things on our earlier meeting sheet, and gossip about where various family members went to school and why i'm out of my job. and my tax refunds are going to be HUGE. cancelled my riding lesson b/c it is hot as hades and i don't think stjarni should work in this weather. might take him out after it cools off, if i am lucky and good. Current Mood:  grateful |
drbitch
|
10:23a |
Humorscope Humorscope is actually kinda funny. It might get old, but right now it's about my speed. "Good day to bring donuts to a meeting. Later, ask people how their diets are going." |
kestrell
|
8:36a |
Cybersoldiers Wired has this article http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/06/jason-warns-of.htmlon a document written by scientists working for the Pentagon which discusses the possibility of supersoldiers who use pharmaceuticals and brain-computer interfaces (refer to the Wired article to read the document as a PDF). The Wired article briefly mentions some of the brain-computer interface research being done in the U.S., but doesn't mention that almost all such research, along with research into other sorts of external or internal (i.e., brain) prosthetics, is funded by the Department of Defense. This was one of the patterns which emerged in my thesis work on disability and technology: while the development of new technologies is often contextualized as a means of "helping" the disabled, it is often primarily intended to help the military. Or, as this excerpt from the Pentagon document phrases it (this excerpt is taken from the MindHacks post on the same article): block quote Non-medical applications of the advances of neuroscience research and medical technology also pose the potential for use by adversaries. In this context, we must consider the possibility that uses that we would consider unacceptable could be developed or applied either by a state-adversary, or by less-easily identified terrorist groups. In the following, we consider first the issues of what types of human performance modification might alter a military balance, and how those issues can be evaluated. We then address two broad areas where there are significant, and highly publicized, advances in human performance modification. These are the areas of brain plasticity (permanently changing the function of an individual’s brain, either by training or by pharmaceuticals), and the area of brain-computer interface (augmenting normal performance via an external device directly linked to the nervous system). block quote end |
| Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 |
drbitch
|
11:23p |
|
| Wednesday, July 9th, 2008 |
lyonesse
|
12:08a |
pony log and why i suck
i've been horribly unmotivated. today i uploaded my vacation pix (took some figuring out of software but i'm sorta good at that) which still need to be fixed up/sorted (anyone know of osx freeware that's nice for that? i seem to have lost graphics converter with my last hard disk death). i scheduled and rescheduled a variety of stuff i have to do. i need to figure out whether i want to earn an mhc or an msw, if i can't find a science job and decide to return to school. i keep turning away signs of it work, which may or may not be wise. and the dog is in my lap.
i think i need a sketchbook in my room and to work on drawing if all else fails.
anyway then eventually went to the ponies. we groomed our own, but i rode ljufur and elf my elf rode stjarni. ljufur was quite good for me, with walk on, halt, turns and serpentines, and tolting -- he tends to be pacy but can do four beats if encouraged. the first time i asked for trot i got canter, which was not so bad; the second time it took a bit but eventually he stretched his neck way down and i got a few nice trotty strides. good pony! then i got on stjarni, who was clearly peevish (either he didn't like seeing me on ljufur or he didn't like the way the elf rode?) but eventually we got one nice clean tolt around the ring, and seeing how the barn had closed half an hour earlier, then we went home.
and now i can't find my 2007 bank statements, which i need for my (re-)meeting with my tax accountant in the morning, since i put them "somewhere" after the original meeting in february. i totally hate myself sometimes :( i am such a mess! |
| Tuesday, July 8th, 2008 |
lillibet
|
10:35p |
And let's hear it for the movies Also from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) smackaskiBelow is the Entertainment Weekly's list of 100 Classic Movies of the past 25 years. Bold the ones you've seen, underline the ones you plan to. ( Listy, list, list ) |
lillibet
|
10:16p |
Another Fine Book Meme The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. 1) Look at the list and bold those you have read. 2) Italicize those you intend to read. 3) Underline the books you LOVE. 4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've only read 6 and force books upon them ;-) ( Because I can't resist a list of books ) |
flyingwolf
|
10:03p |
|
tcb
|
7:09p |
can I just say..
..that I haven't even noticed not being at work this week.
(except, that is, for writing an LJ post..) |
flyingwolf
|
2:16p |
OW OW OW OW
My leg pain has peaked. Screaming happened. I can't NOT scream. Sandylee thinks I should try one of those patches, but I haven't felt like heat or cold will help (only tried cold). But I'm trying one anyway. Luckily the pain is not too bad when I'm not moving it. But how do I not move my foot? The stabs are as bad as they were when it effected my knee. I wish I knew what kind of Dr. I should go to about this. It's been over 6 weeks, so hoping it'll go away on it's own has failed. |
metahacker
|
10:19a |
Full disclosure  I am experimenting with spying on my readership. This post, and successive ones, may be bugged. If you don't like this, adblock the 'dot' image that occurs at the top of this post. Information revealed to ljtoys includes your IP, when you browsed, and the url you hit this post from. They share this information with me. I cannot guarantee the security of their servers, etc... (What, you don't have AdBlock installed? Or Firefox? Well...you might be able to do it with a custom proxy, or something.) AdBlock will still load the webbug, but will obfuscate your hostname and the page you read it from. So I'll know someone from your IP visited, but only if I know your IP (e.g. if you have commented in this journal). |
flyingwolf
|
6:42a |
flower child  IMG_27406
Originally uploaded by FlyingWolf.I heard the keeper was actually aiming for the flowers when she tossed the fruity. |
flyingwolf
|
6:38a |
It's Chessie's fault
I was out most of yesterday and guess I didn't fawn over Chessie enough when I finally got home. I was sitting at my computer going through new pics and felt him reach out and bat my foot. Cute. I was sitting weird, with one foot up on the table when he attacked that foot - chomping on the top. I jumped. Things fell. Including my external hard drive. The one I was using with my photos on it. Guess I need to find the instructions on how to rebuild the iPhoto library again. |
siderea
|
1:01a |
[psych, anthro] BIG5 Type from Infectious Disease Prevalence (Damn, just, go read all of ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) apa_psp. It's, obviously, updating again. Crackalicious good research, delivered right to your friends page!) Schaller and Murray (2008) " Pathogens, personality, and culture: Disease prevalence predicts worldwide variability in sociosexuality, extraversion, and openness to experience." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Previous research has documented cross-cultural differences in personality traits, but the origins of those differences remain unknown. The authors investigate the possibility that these cultural differences can be traced, in part, to regional differences in the prevalence in infectious diseases. Three specific hypotheses are deduced, predicting negative relationships between disease prevalence and (a) unrestricted sociosexuality, (b) extraversion, and (c) openness to experience. These hypotheses were tested empirically with methods that employed epidemiological atlases in conjunction with personality data collected from individuals in dozens of countries worldwide. Results were consistent with all three hypotheses: In regions that have historically suffered from high levels of infectious diseases, people report lower mean levels of sociosexuality, extraversion, and openness. Alternative explanations are addressed, and possible underlying mechanisms are discussed. |
siderea
|
12:56a |
[psych, anthro] "Underestimating compliance with direct requests for help" Yet another lovely confirmatory article, this one intersecting interestingly with the (else-journal) discussion of Guess Culture vs. Ask Culture (a paradigm, btw, I have reservations about.) Flynn, F. J. and Lake, V. K. B. (2008) "If you need help, just ask: Underestimating compliance with direct requests for help." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: A series of studies tested whether people underestimate the likelihood that others will comply with their direct requests for help. In the first 3 studies, people underestimated by as much as 50% the likelihood that others would agree to a direct request for help, across a range of requests occurring in both experimental and natural field settings. Studies 4 and 5 demonstrated that experimentally manipulating a person's perspective (as help seeker or potential helper) could elicit this underestimation effect. Finally,!
in Study 6, the authors explored the source of the bias, finding that help seekers were less willing than potential helpers were to appreciate the social costs of refusing a direct request for help (the costs of saying "no"), attending instead to the instrumental costs of helping (the costs of saying "yes"). |
canthelpyou
|
12:25a |
The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ (if you want) so we can try and track down these people who've read only six and force books upon them.
Yeah, not so much into bolding and underlining. Will comment on those I've read.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Favorite book ever
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
Read them all, very good
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
Read significant parts at various times, but can't completely say I've read the whole things. All those begats.
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
Read it, found it disturbing, even if the exact imagery was somewhat dated.
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Read it, found it wanted to be more shocking than it actually was.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Read it, liked it well enough like most Dickens, wouldn't reread it.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
Read the first several chapters many times, knowing this was something I should have read, but put it down in boredom every time.
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Read it, still just as warped as it ever was.
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
Oh please, like anyone ever reads Titus Andromechus. I've read a healthy number of the plays, and feel myself well-served.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Second-best book ever.
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
Read it, though it was stupid.
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
Read it for school, of all things. Appreciated it as an original, even though millions like it now exist it was first.
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Read it, hated every second of it.
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Read it, still quote it every day
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Read it several times as a child, to the point I was sick of it when we were supposed to read it for school in 3rd grade.
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Like Little Women, knew this was something I was supposed to have read, but could never finish it.
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
Read them all many times
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
See above
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Saw the movie, don't believe this is a classic
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Many times
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
Many times. For some reason my school system had an animated movie adaptation of this, so we saw that several times, and of course I read the book to match. Why we didn't have a similar one of 1984 I don't know. Perhaps schools are happy showing animated animals, but have a problem with people having their faces eaten off by rats?
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Read it in the original Spanish
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Nope, never. I had to read another Collins work for school, and have no interest in reading another. Ditto Camus, Wharton, Fitzgerald, and Joyce.
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
And the whole rest of the series, many times. And Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms.
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Started it a couple times
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
Several times, but never got into the sequels.
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Read it. A short read, so worth picking up if you want to knock another off the list.
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Now I can't remember if I read this or not. I did see the movie, and I think it inspired me to read the book.
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Partway. It really should not be given to teenagers. They aren't warped enough to get the weird parts, or patient enough to get through the thick parts
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Of course.
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
Of course.
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
No, but I read the Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy.
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
No, never, never, never. Not even if I were on drugs.
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Yes. A good quick read, classic Christmas ghost story.
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
Yes, many times.
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
Is this fiction, or a self-help book?
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Many times.
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Read it for school, never again. Nasty, brutish, and not short enough.
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
In english first, although I think I remember poking through it in French.
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
Read it
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Read it. Discovered it on my own before everyone else was calling it a classic.
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Read it. This guy's a hoot. Stephen Brust can only hope to try to imitate it.
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Of course.
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
And several others. James and the Giant Peach gave me a complex when my grandmother tried to read it to me when I was five. Danny Champion of the World was my particular favorite, with Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator in second place.
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Hey, where's Canterbury Tales? Beowulf? A Wrinkle in Time? Little Big? Peter Pan? Dorothy Parker and Agatha Christie? Swiss Family Robinson and Robinson Crusoe? Gulliver's Travels? (Though I don't think I finished that one.) |
siderea
|
12:47a |
[psych/anthro] Resentment of Shocked Conscience This is just a nice experimental substantiation of something I've observed first hand too many times. From the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, " The rejection of moral rebels: Resenting those who do the right thing.", by Monin, Sawyer, and Marquez (2008): Four studies document the rejection of moral rebels. In Study 1, participants who made a counterattitudinal speech disliked a person who refused on principle to do so, but uninvolved observers preferred this rebel to an obedient other. In Study 2, participants taking part in a racist task disliked a rebel who refused to go along, but mere observers did not. This rejection was mediated by the perception that rebels would reject obedient participants (Study 3), but did not occur when participants described an important trait or value beforehand (Study 4). Together, these studies suggest that rebels are resented when their implicit reproach threatens the positive self-image of individuals who did not rebel. This is one of the primary phenomena I have in mind when I say that my experience has shown me that all it takes for me to piss people off is to just be me. |
| Monday, July 7th, 2008 |
sichling
|
11:15p |
I am thinking about looking for new living room furniture - primarily couch/sectional/etc. What we have is ok, but very large and clunky and don't really provide a lot of seating area. Any suggestions on where we should look or whether anything exists that isn't at least 3 feet deep? I'm pretty sure that I want something where the seat is shallower (like 20-21") and 3diff likes taller sofas so he has head/back support. Given that one commits to such things for a long period of time (5+ years), I'd like to find something that we actually really like - and I don't have a lot of ideas about good places to look. Current Mood:  pensive |
metahacker
|
9:08p |
Reminder: You're invisible if you don't comment
A reminder to the lurkers, since there seem to be a bunch on this journal --
You're invisible if you don't comment. I don't know you read my blog, I can't learn who you are, and you're extremely unlikely to end up getting friended -- which means you'll miss out on all the fun f-locked posts I make.
Or even if I have friended you...it's nice to know you're reading.
I could do it the rude way, by spying on you -- say, by adding lj toys to my pages (btw, if you use lj toys, I've adblocked them, so it may appear to you that I'm not reading your journal -- but I am). But I'd prefer if you'd just participate from time to time instead.
Anyway. Hi. :) |
|
mangosteen
|
7:35p |
Just stand still while we draw this demographic target on your forehead
So, having dropped off my VolkswagenTM
at CostCoTM
to get new MichelinTM tires,
I walked over to SuperCutsTM to get a desperately-needed haircut,
and I'm now in PaneraTM
using their free wireless and sipping on a Frozen Mocha Latte TM.
I feel so.... branded. |
kestrell
|
6:07p |
Dance Dance Revolution for senior citizens Posted to the GameSetWatch Web site In this session from the recent Games for Health conference, Jeff Pepper, President and CEO of Touchtown, discussed his company's work in creating Dancetown http://www.dancetown.us/ - a PC-based dance game specifically aimed at older players and retirement homes, to give players regular exercise and reduce the risk of falling. Touchtown is a 9-year old company out of Pittsburgh that was originally not a game company, but provided digital signage and TV to retirement homes. Two years ago, Pepper's daughter came home with Dance Dance Revolution and he "got hooked". His daughter said 'Wouldn't it be great if your customers could do this?' But it seemed too hard for seniors, and Pepper thought "there's no way our customers would actually use this." Study Findings However, after an investment of 18 months on a study, with a team of over 40 people, five retirement homes on an advisory board, and the CMU Entertainment Technology Group helping out, he discovered that dance provides benefits over plain exercise. It has benefits for balance, endurance, strength, agility, flexibility, locomotion, weight loss, and most importantly, reduces risk of falls for seniors. The results of the study showed that 31 48-year-old or older women who played DDR 30 minutes twice a week lost up to 20 lbs. The more they weighed, the more they lost, and their blood pressure dropped up to 20 points. ( continued below cut ) Current Music: www.wumb.org |
| Sunday, July 6th, 2008 |
daily_alice
|
4:45p |
New Spray Pool  |
| Saturday, July 5th, 2008 |
daily_alice
|
4:44p |
Big Girl Bike  |
| Friday, July 4th, 2008 |
daily_alice
|
4:41p |
Watermelon!  |
[ << Previous 25 ]
|
