A Little Book Of Coincidence
John Martineau

A most unusual guide to the solar system, A Little Book of Coincidence suggests that there may be fundamental relationships between space, time, and life that have not yet been fully understood. From the observations of Ptolemy and Kepler to the Harmony of the Spheres and the hidden structure of the solar system, John Martineau reveals the exquisite orbital patterns of the planets and the mathematical relationships that govern them. A table shows the relative measurements of each planet in eighteen categories, and three pages show the beautiful dance patterns of thirty six pairs of planets and moons.

We picked this up at The Museum of Jurassic Technology a couple of weeks ago and I really don’t regret buying it. This is a nice little guide through the solar system with some glam. It doesn’t tell you what to believe, it just says there might be something big to believe somewhere if we keep looking. It’s a geometrical way of looking at things. It might not be 100% accurate, but its enough to put a little magic back in the sky.

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SEPTEMBER 13 - 16, 2007 LOS ANGELES CONVENTION CENTER South Hall (J and K) LOS ANGELES

This fall, WIRED Magazine is bringing its vision of a new world’s fair to Los Angeles. Experience more than 160 exciting exhibits from scientists, researchers, and inventors around the globe. WIRED NextFest features innovations in communication, design, entertainment, exploration, health, play, robots, transportation, security, and green living.

Miss Disaster has been bugging me about this for months and I have never took the time to look at what she has been talking about. Next Fest seems like the coolest con/fest out there. It’s only 20.00 bucks, so count me in.

Also if you happen to be a Spoon fan….

If you buy a ticket for the Spoon concert on 9/10/07 at the Fonda for $20.00 you get a free ticket for the Next Fest, which is $20.00.  So if you like Spoon you get a free concert.

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After a long weekend of nothing with a side dish of nothing, I’m refreshed, and ready to be educated. Step 1…how to emulate your grandfather.

In 1999, researchers at the University of Western Ontario in Canada decided to investigate the antioxidant properties of martinis and how they are affected by the martinis’ preparation.

…

They studied the martinis’ ability to deactivate hydrogen peroxide — the stuff that’s used to bleach hair and teeth, or to disinfect cuts and scrapes.

While the detailed chemistry is not fully understood, shaken martinis are much more effective than either gin or vermouth alone at deactivating hydrogen peroxide, and about twice as effective when shaken as opposed to being stirred.

So…if your liver is failing, and martinis are the cause, you never have to worry about those antioxidants. Red wine is good for you. Beer is good for you. Martini’s are good for you (only if shaken). Why then do I still feel so guilty when I go on a weekend health binge?

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Priming

 Here is a snippet from LiveScience about consciousness that made me ponder…what made me check that website in the first place?

For instance, while we can be aware of some of our urges, we are often unaware of the processes that created them. “My eye may have scanned a picture of a hamburger in a magazine, and then a few minutes later, I have this urge,” Morsella said. “We’re unaware of the evolutionary sources of a lot of behavior.” Other times, we’re not even aware of the urges.

Research has shown, for instance, that compared to what would be expected by chance alone, more men named “Ken” move to live in Kentucky and more “Florences” move to live in Florida; more men named “Dennis” become dentists and more “Lauras” become lawyers. According to John Bargh, a psychologist at Yale University, these surprising findings are most likely the result of our evolutionary-driven attraction to things similar to us—an urge stemming from the idea that we should mate with people who resemble us because they are more likely to share our genes and help to propel them into the next generation.

If this article sounds interesting at all please check out Blink.

It’s a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, “Blink” is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.

You could also say that it’s a book about intuition, except that I don’t like that word. In fact it never appears in “Blink.” Intuition strikes me as a concept we use to describe emotional reactions, gut feelings–thoughts and impressions that don’t seem entirely rational. But I think that what goes on in that first two seconds is perfectly rational. It’s thinking–its just thinking that moves a little faster and operates a little more mysteriously than the kind of deliberate, conscious decision-making that we usually associate with “thinking.” In “Blink” I’m trying to understand those two seconds. What is going on inside our heads when we engage in rapid cognition? When are snap judgments good and when are they not? What kinds of things can we do to make our powers of rapid cognition better?

Very good book that asks a lot of important questions. How we do everything determines the outcome in ways we never thought. For example studies have shown that just by asking the question of race on a test minorities will score lower on tests and the question was orIginally put there to help minorities. Another study being done showed how short people were the most discriminated group in the corporate world all with out anyone really knowing. And yet another study showed people predicting divorce among newlyweds from the first 3 minutes of a marital conflict discussion. The book is a must read, but it might make you think…..why am I reading this…right now.   

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In the interest of full disclosure (I’ve always wanted to say that) let me begin this post with this. Yes that’s me wearing my seven-year-old’s Harry Potter glasses, and the monkey on his back bears a striking resemblence to the same protagonist. I took him to the midnight release party at Barnes and Noble for Harry Potter and was SHOCKED at the frenzied scene (notice the crowd outside as well). I know in Harry Potter terms this post is very late in coming, it’s been 3 weeks since the release. But it wasn’t until I finally read the latest Harper’s weekly review that I felt compelled to reflect on what the Harry Potter spectacle means. This week’s review has nothing about HP in it, but the weekly review from July 24 does. Nestled in between news of Japan’s rearmarment and a six-year-old hanging himself is a reckless spoiler for the book. It states that Hedwig dies. Hedwig (for those who don’t know) is Harry’s pet owl. What the next week’s review does have is a lot of pissed off letters in response to the spoiler:

TO: Harper’s Weekly FROM: Cynthia Patricia I am writing because I am extremely upset by Paul Ford’s Harper’s Weekly, in which he blatantly gives away a spoiler in the final Harry Potter book. I’m not sure how dorky I sound here, but it’s the kind of thing that you just don’t do. It had no relevance to the sentence whatsoever, and I find it in poor taste to send it out to all the subscribers who generally enjoy reading the review but who haven’t gotten around to getting a copy of the book yet, even if it’s been over 48 hours and 8.3 million people know what happened already. Let’s hope Harper’s wont make it a habit to follow the poor judgement and standard of the Times.

FROM JOSH RICHARDS: Shame on you for giving away even a small detail of the new Harry Potter book, buried mid-paragraph, with no warning. Shame.

FROM KEN KOONTZ: It’s the totally gratuitous nature of the Harry Potter spoiler that bugs me. How lame.

FROM KATIE BOMBICO: Thanks for ruining the book for me.

FROM D.H. PRESCOTT: I found your action to be indicative of a flippant and condescending attitude.

FROM REBECCA EWING: How mean-spirited of you.

FROM PAUL LARSON: Bad form.

FROM JOE WINTER: That’s just rude.

FROM PATRICK DEVITT: I would think that a magazine published since June of 1850, as you advertise, WOULD UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF A “SPOILER”!!!

FROM BARBARA CORNETT: Paul Ford is an asshole for telling that Hedwig dies in the Harry Potter book. Nobody does that sort of thing. Who does he think he is. What makes him above everyone else so that he does not have to abide by the rules and at least warn people if he is going to spoil a book or movie by telling things about it that the writers intended for readers and movie goers to experience and not some asshole like Ford to spoil for them. I hope a wizard puts a hex on him and his dick falls off.

FROM LEVI FULLER: Fuck you very much, assholes.

Generally speaking, Harper’s intended audience is one likely to actually read long, very involved articles on complex subject matter. The magazine has very little advertising and the pictures either pertain directly to the article, or feature fine art. The back page of classifieds have ads for things like mail order berets, tea imports and dating service networking exclusively for the alma mater of the Ivy League. So when someone writes in that they hope a wizard hex causes Paul Ford’s dick to fall off, it carries a weight more excessive than if someone had written into US Weekly with the same comment. This isn’t to say that all of Harper’s readers are of the highest intellectual order, but is to say that the majority tend to actually value their ability to think, rather than run from it. So, it interests me to know that there are a number of readers (myself included) who also read the Harry Potter series. Not only read it, but (unlike me) feel impassioned enough about a spoiler (btw, Hedwig’s death occurred within the first 50 pages, it wasn’t as if it gave away the ending) to write angry letters.
Did they miss this part: a newborn was found in a trashcan at a Denny’s in Anaheim, California; a 17-year-old girl with blood dripping down her legs was discovered nearby, having just shared a meal with her family?
Or this: A French geologist stated that a newly discovered underground lake in Darfur, which was expected to help bring peace to the water-starved region, likely dried up at least 5,000 years ago. Topics that revolt and disappoint in equal measure– realities that should cause serious concern and invoke thought, or at least give pause. And while they may have, what people wrote in about was Harry freakin Potter. Or, at least, those are the letters that Harper’s chose to print. And they are funny. Harper’s letters are usually just as wordy as the articles themselves… so the Harry Potter letters add a sincere amount of humor– but it is a dark joke. A tongue-in-cheek reflection on the investment people have in their favorite fantasies. The entitlement felt that they have the right to individually discover the fate of the protagonist and his cohorts on their own time. The importance of individual freedom within leisure time–and the impassioned protection of it.

This is all understandable–after all, they’ve (presumably) read six other books that all lead up to this point. They’ve waited two years for the conclusion to be revealed, projected what might happen, passed the time with a new HP movie. I know leading up to the release of the new book my excitement for the series was renewed, my anticipation and speculation reinvigorated. But I wonder if we haven’t all missed the point. In the Harry Potter series Voldemort is the embodiment of dark hearted power. In Hitler-esq ways he hopes to cleanse the wizarding world of all those that aren’t ‘pure blood’, he hopes to take this strong culture he creates and spread its ideals throughout the greater muggle world. To subjugate them for their own good. After all, the muggles (humans) are unable to do soo much, they are without the abilities the wizards have, their culture is unimpressive, their accomplishments laughable to Voldemort and his ilk. And while this evil seeps into the muggle world from the wizarding one, people are unaware of it. They don’t understand that the pervasive sense of hopelessness and despair are really bad guy scary dementors sucking the joy from their very spirits. They are asleep. Most of those within the wizarding world follow the lead of their (presumbably democratically elected) leaders and deny that the evil take over that is occurring. They accept the twisted facts, read it as reality and go on with their lives. And then, of course, there is our hero and his fellow lofty do-gooders. Harry Potter–the innocent, accidental leader. The effort of JK Rowling in the HP series attempts to analogize the different levels of our awareness. Inside the themes of good v. evil are the cloudy in between states people drift towards when that war is waged.

It’s sometimes easy to become numb to the death toll in Iraq, to the lost children in America, to the dashed hopes for Middle East reconciliation. As a country as well as individually we are constantly in turmoil, often with no choice of involvement or voice with which to assert any power. Because of this, our focus can shift instead on the aspects of our lives–our experiences–that are controllable. The lack of a spoiler alert denied the impassioned readers that power. Their relationship to the story became fractured, leaving them feeling cheated. It’s just too bad we can’t all invest in the story that is unfolding right now–the soon-to-be history of the Bush administration, the impossible war on terror, the everyday process of contributing to our tangible lives– rather than retreating so fully into fantasy worlds. Even fantasy worlds that attempt to reflect the greater truth of our own.

Then again, I had already finished the book when I read the Harper’s spoiler… so what did I care?

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Tai chi chih, the Westernized version of the 2,000-year-old Chinese martial art characterized by slow movement and meditation, significantly boosts the immune systems of older adults. And researchers are making robots that move more efficiently by teaching them tai chi…….Read Full Story

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Idiot administrations are hazardous to the health of a nation. Studies have shown that quitting such administrations as soon as possible can greatly reduce the risk of wide spread idiocy and can stop the spread of fundamentalist influenced health policies.
Well, something like that.

The former Surgeon General of the Bush administration has recently spoken out against the administration. How many sticks need to be pulled out before Bush, Cheney and the cronies topple?

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it’s a bee invasion.

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