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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Eric Zilli" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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06:03 pm
[Link] | logophiles, take note of this very cool site: http://www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info
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10:52 am
[Link] |
retrospective
what with the news looking like livejournal may disappear, I busted out the old ljarchive and downloaded all my posts.. 1307 of them, incredibly! (1308 now).. but I guess that's reasonable since my first post was january 24 of 2003
of the 4215 comments, ol' ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) tempter was the top contributor with nearly 400.. hyperform comes in second with around 250 and seserakh comes in third (cherie, get on the ball!)
I posted the most often in the first half of 2004, tapering off but then had another big spike in mid 2007 for some reason
top 10 most common words? (at least 4 letters and ignoring common words)
today, nice, movie, maybe, actually, http, guess, working, post, anyone
the word "cherie" is number 14 :)
oh the memories!
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07:12 pm
[Link] | I'm surprised this hasn't been in the news, but it will be meaningful to some of you:
Patient HM (whom we now know to be Henry G. Molaison) died this past Tuesday.
This is his obituary that is circulating in the neuroscience/psych community:
"Henry G. Molaison, 82, of Windsor Locks, CT died on Tuesday. He is known in the medical and scientific literatures as "the amnesic patient, H.M." He was born in Manchester, CT and graduated from East Hartford High School. In 1953, he underwent an experimental brain operation at the Hartford Hospital to relieve his seizure disorder. Immediately after the operation, Mr. Molaison showed a profound amnesia, which became the topic of intense scientific study for more than five decades. From age 27 on, he was unable to establish new memories for events in his everyday life and to acquire general information about the world in which he lived. His memory impairment was "pure" and not accompanied by intellectual or personality disorders. For this reason, and because the operation has not been repeated, he is the most widely studied and famous case in the neuroscience literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Mr. Molaison's contributions to knowledge about memory have been groundbreaking, and researchers worldwide are in his debt. Burial will be private."
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06:04 pm
[Link] |
broken window
The sound of firecrackers increases littering.
In a paper to be released this week in the journal Science, researchers from the Netherlands report the results of a set of interesting experiments. They were testing predictions of what is called the Broken Window Theory (more): disordered areas (e.g. covered in graffiti or litter) cause people to litter more, in an ever-increasing cycle.
The firecrackers were used in one of the experiments. They attached flyers from a fake sports shop that read "We wish everybody happy holidays" to a number of parked bicycles, then moved away and recorded how many people tossed the flyers onto the ground vs. how many disposed of them properly. Part of the time, they lit firecrackers in the distance (out of sight, but within earshot). 52% of people littered the flyer when no firecrackers could be heard vs. 80% when fire crackers were heard.
The most impressive experiment, though, looked at trespassing. They set a fenced gate across an opening to, I think, a parking lot with a "no throughway" sign on it and a sign for a temporary entrance a short distance away. The gate was left slightly ajar, however. Instead of using firecrackers to signal disorder, here they used bikes. The fence also had a sign forbidding locking bikes to the fence. In the disorder condition, four bikes were locked to the fence. In the orderly condition, the four bikes stood a short distance away from the fence (and were not locked to it). When the bikes were not locked to the fence, 27% of people went through the gate. When bikes were locked to the fence, 82% of people went through the gate. Three times as many people!
This was the case in all the experiments, whether people littered, trespassed, or stole: a visible violation of one rule greatly increased the chance that people would violate an unrelated rule.
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12:38 pm
[Link] | A while back an episode of No Reservations aired where Tony went to Saudi Arabia. It was quite interesting. On his blog about that episode, he pointed to a blog post by his (female) producer from that episode on being forced to wear an abaya in public.
I think it is worth reading for a point of view we aren't often exposed to (as well as, e.g. comment #48 on that page, and others like it). Other comments, you may notice, quite disagree.
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07:09 pm
[Link] | aah! google ruined igoogle!
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08:08 pm
[Link] | "I read the first two Harry Potter books this weekend," said Eric quickly.
"The stories are definitely entertaining," he exclaimed quietly, "but Rowling doesn't seem to be the greatest writer."
Eric went on to give other examples of why this seemed to be the case. But he was interrupted--it seemed as though something suspenseful was about to happen! But it immediately didn't.
"I'll still read the rest of them," he said sagely, "though."
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12:58 pm
[Link] | the day the saucers came
(or listen to him read it)
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06:59 pm
[Link] | could have been worse
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01:53 pm
[Link] | I'm really enjoying pictures for sad children
this is one I really like
also, loved dr. horrible's sing-along blog.. for those who missed it, it is on hulu currently
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01:39 pm
[Link] | bummer, Randy Pausch's cancer finally got the best of him
I watched his famous Last Lecture Achieving Your Childhood Dreams back shortly after the video was first put online and remember enjoying it.. worth watching if you have the time
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12:49 pm
[Link] |
timeline
Play a game?
Below are 10 events that have occurred this calendar year. Without peeking at the answers below or looking them up online, copy them into notepad (or something) and put them in temporal order from oldest to most recent (instead of the current alphabetic order) as best you can, then post your answers as a comment. If you don't remember something happening, omit it from your answer. If you think two things were next to each other in time but don't recall which was first, mark them with, e.g., a star.
Barack Obama give his race speech in Philadelphia
Benazir Bhutto is assassinated
cyclone Nargis hits Burma
Eliot Spitzer resigns as governor of New York
Fidel Castro resigns as president of Cuba
George Carlin dies
Heath Ledger dies
San Francisco Olympic torch run and protests
US presidential election Pennsylvania primary
Valentine's day 2008
Yes, unless you spend a lot of time reading and thinking about the news, this can be difficult! I certainly wouldn't do very well.
( answers )
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12:41 am
[Link] | new paper published
this paper has a sibling that I'm currently doing revisions on and which may end up being better, but I think this is a fairly good paper, even if it is a little too mathy
also, you'll notice the full text of this paper is available, as this is an open access journal.. while I was not quite happy with the particular journal (PLoS ONE), I do very much like the idea of open access journals and intend to publish in them often (this paper's sibling is in another open access journal)
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01:40 pm
[Link] |
memories
What a clever thing I did. During what must have been junior year at K, I took the mind/body PE class. One of the continuing assignments was to fill out pages in this journal, following the topical prompts they provided. Since the teachers were not going to read the journals, but just flip through them to make sure they were filled out, I eventually stopped following the prompts and began making a list of all of my memories.
I started with memories from my youngest days and worked my way forward. I aimed for completeness, especially for early memories and I think I wrote down pretty much every one I could come up with. I wasn't writing full sentences, just a phrase or two for each memory, enough for it to be meaningful, which also meant it didn't take a ton of time to do it all.
I mention this because I've been searching for my Diablo 2 CDs and just found the journal in a box earlier and re-read the list of memories and very much enjoyed being reminded of all those things I hadn't thought about in a long time (perhaps 7 years, in some cases!). And if I hadn't written them down, I surely would have forgotten about many of them.
These types of autobiographical memories, for those who care, are called episodic memories (but with an asterisk, because "episodic memory" doesn't have a formal definition and some of the earlier memories may actually be semantic memories, which is to say: remembering the fact that one experienced something instead of remembering actually experiencing it, if you follow).
It seems that, the older these memories get (and the more often they are recalled), the more distributed (or "consolidated") they become in the brain, and so more resistant to damage. Most brain injuries, if they cause a loss of memory, will preferentially effect more recent memories.
But, like a giant mansion in which new rooms are always being added, you can only enjoy a memory if you actually remember that the particular memory exists. So I think old me was clever to have written down reminders for all of them in a safe place. If only old me had left Diablo 2 in an easy to find place, too.
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11:17 pm
[Link] | WALL·E = yes
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09:51 am
[Link] | clearly, this wins
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12:21 pm
[Link] | george carlin died yesterday
it's a bummer (he owed me $5!)
we're now at the age when the giants we grew up knowing are increasing disappearing.. or maybe the age when we're actually paying attention to them all disappearing
in better news, a paper I've been trying to get published for months has finally been accepted (at PLoS ONE, a journal I do not intend to go back to).. it has a more mathematically dense brother paper that is in review.. I hope that one has better luck than this first paper!
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12:36 pm
[Link] | new winner for best spam subject line: "what a stupid face you have here digfarenough"
Current Mood: subjunctive
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11:53 am
[Link] | ughs.. it is not noon yet and it is 94 degrees F (96 F heat index)
this means it is almost to the point where one could cool off by climbing inside of another human
and past that point: pure anarchy
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11:13 pm
[Link] | Suppose you have no medical training and see an old man get hit by a car. Which of these is the proper response?
A. Call 911, but don't attempt to provide medical care.
B. Run out and start messing around with the body to make it very clear that you are very concerned.
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It seems the consensus is that the correct answer is B.
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