Caterina.net

Back when I had more time (an idiotic statement, since I have exactly as much time now as I did before (though perhaps that statement is even more idiotic, since I have markedly less time now than I did "back then" whenever "back then" was)) I used to trawl the interweb for interesting syllabi on subjects I didn't know much about, but wanted to learn.

I just found a really good one, quite by accident, as I was searching for an image of a triskelion, in particular one of those three-legged symbols that looks more Gnostic than not. And the syllabus is from a Mathematics course at Dartmouth onGeometry in Art and Architecture, and includes a bunch of essays and pictures, including this a picture of a Penrose tiling, and which led me to this page about Penrose tilings, also known as "aperiodic tilings" at The Geometry Junkyard, which, if you're at all a geek, is a huge resource of many fascinating things, those things being geometrical things.

I'm kind of obsessed with street design, and missed this article in Wired, Roads Gone Wild:

People whose brains are damaged in their emotional centres are not only unable to express joy or sadness, they are unable to make decisions and they are unable to choose. Because you make decisions based on what you would like, what you fear would happen if you chose to do another thing instead, what you fear would happen if you don't do this particular thing in time, or what you desire the outcome to be. As it says in Lovemarks, which I have been reading since this morning, "emotion and reason are intertwined, but when they are in conflict, emotion wins every time. Without the fleeting and intense stimulus of emotion, rational thought winds down and disintegrates." As much as we'd like to believe we make decisions based on a dispassionate and unswerving adherence to the facts, it's just not true.

(via fait accompli)

My friend up in Edmonton was complaining about how flights all over Canada get backed up sometimes for days whenever it snows in BC, because it hardly ever snows here, and there's apparently only one snowplow at the airport in Victoria. I'm picturing some plow operator, used to relaxing 362 days of the year, with sweat streaming down her brow driving up and down the jetway for three days plowing snow in a blind panic, as planeloads of irate and exhausted travellers in Newfoundland, Toronto, Whitehorse and Montreal wait for her to finish.

You can follow along with the changing weather here by checking out Vancouver tag on Flickr. (photo by mafue).

I found the word "eustress" on a page from an online book or workshop about Stress Management page by a professor named Wes Sime, whom I was reading about in Steven Johnson's book Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life. He distinguishes two kinds of stress:

Didn't know this word existed. Useful distinction.

I've been meaning to write an extensive excoriation of the Bruce Mau Massive Change exhibit (by Bruce Mau!) that was at the Vancouver Art Gallery, but haven't had a lot of time. It was poorly designed, like being trapped in an enormous book. My neck actually hurt when I left from trying to read the walls. It was also like being trapped in a gigantic ego. Worst of all, it had that sanctimonious, holier-than-thou delivery you encounter on public radio. And nothing moved. The exhibit's interactivity consisted mostly of exhibits that forced you to figure out how to read them. Did I mention it was created by Bruce Mau?

Technorati has launched the ability to search tags from Technorati, Flickr and del.icio.us -- in other words, blog posts, photos and bookmarks. Here are the search results for tags of japan, guitar and swimming. Way cool.

Gosh, no blog posts reference the Caterina tag, so I will rectify that with this very post! I also noticed today that Amazon's Google powered search A9 has added images to their search results, though the results can be less than optimal as you can see from my search on "notepad".

Steven Johnson, in Mind Wide Open, writes about a scientist, Robert Provine, who studies laughter and wrote a book called Laughter: A Scientific Investigation. He started just by observing conversations and counting the times that people laughed when another person was speaking. But the weird thing he discovered was that the speakers laughed more than the listeners.

This list made me laugh out loud, which is a rare enough occurrence, because Provine found that laughter is mainly reserved for the company of others. He concluded that rather than being a response to any intrinsic humor in a conversation, laughter is an instinctive form of social bonding.

(photo by urumandimi. See the rest of the Laughter photoset for some more great laughing photos.)

• It's Art's Birthday on Monday.
• Circadiana is a blog about sleep.
• The sleep tag on Flickr is still one of my favorites
• Zulu Records may be the best record store ever! I spent an hour there yesterday listening to all the staff recommendations on the wall of listening booths. I ended up getting music by The Arcade Fire, Yuki Honda (formerly of Cibo Matto), The Fiery Furnaces, the Folk Orchestra and Pinback.
• OK, I apologize for the last bullet point. Aquarius Records is still the best record store ever

Demonstration "post to blog"! I was doing an interview with a journalist using Go To Meeting (where someone on the other end can see your desktop), and was showing her how easy it is to post a photo to your blog.

I was in the grocery store picking up some fruit, in that musing, detached condition of a person not anticipating human interaction, when I was surprised by an elderly fellow smiling and winking at me. Startled, I smiled back, and continued through the store. There he was again in the dairy section, smiling, leering, winking like a camera shutter, and, doubling back to get some bread, there he was by the English muffins, smiling, winking. My goodness. Then today, I was standing in the line for coffee, deep in thought, when I heard someone say "Boy you shure are pretty!" to the counter girl, and there was Captain Winky McLeersalot again! He didn't notice me, transfixed as he was on the counter girl, but in spite of his non-participation in contemporary social mores, he seems like a sweet, harmless fellow. I bet he is really lonely.

Then there's a woman who is a little bit nuts -- OK, more than a little bit nuts -- who is in her 70s or 80s and wanders up and down Davie street with the trampiest clothes on: tiny miniskirts, thigh-high spike-heeled boots, her shirt completely unbuttoned, sometimes wearing just her underwear. I saw her again yesterday, in the coffee shop, dressed normally, her acute trollopitis apparently in remission. I knew woman in college who was bipolar who behaved in a similar way whenever she was having a manic episode. She'd stop taking her meds, and the next thing you knew she was tossing her clothes off in the cafeteria.

Having worked in a nursing home when I was young, I long ago left behind the notion that old age is a venerable estate, full of dignity, long case clocks, pipe-smoking, cravats and acting like John Gielgud. The biggest tragedy is how our culture has become so stratified by age, and how old people have been shunted aside. Whenever I would go visit my relatives in the Philippines, there would be big dinners every night, and 4 generations would be present, often all living together in one house; here that just doesn't happen. At least Captain Winky is out in the world, smiling at pretty girls -- though it's debatable whether or not our geriatric floozy is better off. Some of the people at the nursing home had just been warehoused there by their families, who never gave them another thought, and never came to visit. It was one of the saddest places in the world.

• Some Dr. Seussical trees and hessian trees. They are quite beautiful. I was amazed in Cuernavaca by all the trees with their trunks painted white. I was told by a local it was to keep the insects from eating them.
• I learned a little about the physics of ice spikes today.
• Heavy metal umlaut in Wikipedia (via ongoing)

I love a good Venn diagram. (from Mike K).

I found a page on Eva Hild's Ceramics by way of Beverly's blog. I get very nervous when I'm around ceramics because I grew up in a house full of ancient Chinese vases, and was constantly warned not to run, or bump into furniture, or even play the piano too loud. I broke a vase or teapot once and got in lots of trouble. But as for playing the piano too loud, my sister once hit a chord that made three Christmas ornaments shatter all at once! That was an incredibly fun moment, perhaps never to be repeated!