Not long ago I read Clay Shirky's now infamous "Rant About Women". He says one of the reasons women bump their heads against glass ceilings is women don't self-promote as aggressively as men. He is not, however, just talking about positive self-promotion, such as pointing out your achievements whenever relevant. Clay Shirky thinks that truly ( Read more... )

A while ago my 4-year-old Erika asked me about death. She already knows that everybody dies, and that most people die when they are old. She asked me if she was going to die too, when she's very old. "Yes," I said. She got grumpy. "I don't want to die! I don't want to close my eyes!" (Apparently, like most people, she equates death with sleep ( Read more... )

• 22:05 A person requests to add you as a friend on Facebook with a message "mind if I ass you": is that supposed to be attempt at humor or a typo? #
• 22:22 Newtonmas: now that's a winter holiday I could get behind! tinyurl.com/8g323w #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Here's a very interesting article in Washington Post, that ties in to some degree with Clive Thompson's article on ambient awareness (discussed in my recent blog post):

Bytes of Life: For Every Move, Mood and Bodily Function, There's a Web Site to Help You Keep TrackIt reflects a lot of my own thoughts about what part data plays in our lives, and ( Read more... )

There is a great article by Clive Thompson in New York Times magazine:

Brave New World of Digital Intimacythat explains the appeal of Twitter. Like many people, when I first heard of Twitter, and even long after I signed up for it, I thought it was pretty useless. At the very least it seemed useless for verbose bloggers like me, who don't like to ( Read more... )

From Washington Post:

The Impassive Bystander: Someone Is Hurt, in Need of Compassion. Is It Human Instinct to Do Nothing ( Read more... )

... but it's always good to hear an authority say it. An authority on humor, no less. And British! Aren't British supposed to be foremost experts on humor. It is thus with a huge sense of validation that I present this news:

From this article on msnbc.com:

The president of the humor society, British sociologist Christie Davies, offered insights ( Read more... )

The Itch: Its mysterious power may be a clue to a new theory about brains and bodies (New Yorker) is one freaky article. You might not think of itch as a Job-like misfortune, but in the cases featured in the article, it is. Those cases are almost biblical in their bizareness, too. :-) There's a woman whose head itched so persistently and ( Read more... )

Turns out, cavemen loved to sing, says an article headline on msnbc.com. How, one wonders, do modern scientists figure out such things? This article is interesting not just in that it reveals specifics of life of prehistoric civilizations, but also that it shows how scientists reach conclusions about things as nebulous as leisure preferences of ( Read more... )