April 28, 2007 at 4:24 pm · Filed under General
I suspect the vacuum seal is nonexistent, but the brushed stainless steel and cylindrical design scream sex appeal like few (if any) other mugs. This mug is a keeper, especially now that I’ve scraped off the REI logo over the course of many weekly meetings… Unfortunately for y.t., the caps that hold the pin into the carabiner-like handle fell out, which likely would have resulted in me covering myself with 3rd degree burns, one spill at a time. I debated taking the handle off altogether, but in the end, came up with the ultimate solution: epoxy (so often, the solution, really). Amazingly, the epoxy went just in just far enough to prevent the pin from slipping out, but didn’t interfere with the spring or the motion of the carabiner. No more spills for me. Or at least, none that I can blame on my mug. And then I found $40 in the alley. (seriously!)
April 23, 2007 at 8:14 pm · Filed under General
I have a couple of critiques for the flickr people:
- when viewing a slideshow, it would be very nice if black background continued all the way around the image, instead of the current window-frame behavior.
| bad (currently): |
better (proposed): |
 |
 |
- when viewing someone’s photos, show many, many more thumbnails per page. thankfully there is a greasemonkey script to do just this (the only problem is, it likes to load all the images. I just want the first hundred or two)
- allow searching by resolution — this is something google still hasn’t capitalized on, entirely, but at least they allow some granularity
April 22, 2007 at 2:52 pm · Filed under General
It turns out I like Robert Wright, even if the last couple chapters in Nonzero feel a bit out of place. I just came across some passages I had copied from The Moral Animal, and I may as well post now as any other time. Here they are (best one is last):
The proposition here is that the human brain is, in large part, a machine for winning arguments, a machine for convincing others that its owner is in the right — and thus a machine for convincing its owner of the same thing. The brain is like a good lawyer: given any set of interests to defend, it sets about convincing the world of their moral and logical worth, regardless of whether they in fact have any of either. Like a lawyer, the human brain wants victory, not truth; and, like a lawyer, it is sometimes more admirable for skill than for virtue. (280)
Backing a friend means verbally defending him when his interests are in dispute — and, more generally, saying good, status-raising things about him. Whether these things are true doesn’t especially matter. They’re just the things friends are supposed to say. Friends engage in mutual inflation. Being a person’s true friend means endorsing the untruths he holds dearest. (283)
The argument runs as follows: Of course all these criminals have free will, regardless of the state of their endorphins, blood-sugar levels, and everything else. Because if biochemistry negated free will, then none of us would have free will! And we know that’s not the case. Right? (Pause.) Right? (353)
