According to Tim O’Brien in the Atlantic, when we choose verisimilitude over imagination to tell our stories, we reach the following:

Batman weighed 188 pounds. His hair was black. His complexion was fair. Young Batman grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, where he spent an unhappy and decidedly disturbed childhood. His grandfather was well known in town as the man who had invented the machine that lays down lane stripes on highways all across America. Batman’s mother was an insomniac. She could sew pretty well. She loved a good pork chop. Batman’s father, by contrast, preferred seafood. The church Batman attended was made of limestone. His school was a brick structure. The family car was an Oldsmobile.

Reading this monotonous paragraph calls back the ghosts of multiple consumer segmentation descriptions I’ve come across over the years.

Psychology Today’s “Sleep Doctor” advises that a 20-minute nap is the most effective way (above caffeine) to power through afternoon yawns. He adds that coupling the two is the “dynamic duo.” From personal experience, this nap-a-latte, or caffeine nap, has made me ill about drinking coffee ever again.

A professor has figured out that it doesn’t really matter what you say, it’s how you say it:

The research, by Don Moore of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, shows that we prefer advice from a confident source, even to the point that we are willing to forgive a poor track record. Moore argues that in competitive situations, this can drive those offering advice to increasingly exaggerate how sure they are. And it spells bad news for scientists who try to be honest about gaps in their knowledge.

Which explains how some people ever get to where they are in life.

(via daring fireball)

Of Wired’s 100 Things Your Kids May Never Know About, eight things on the list elude me.

1. Using jumpers to set IRQs
2. Tweaking the volume setting on your tape deck to get a computer game to load, and waiting ages for it to actually do it
3. Daisy chaining your SCSI devices and making sure they’ve all got a different ID
4. Archie searches
5. Concatenating and UUDecoding binaries from Usenet
6. Starbuck being a man
7. A Marathon bar
8. Omni magazine

(photo taken by sunside on flickr)

Last April, the USS Bainbridge was integral in rescuing Captain Philips of the Maersk Alabama. The hostage situation brought the growing issue of Somali piracy to the forefront of public attention. This month, Scott Carney has detailed the piracy enterprise in Wired, with an economic analysis and an intriguing Q&A with an ocean hijacker.

Armed men are expensive as are the laborers, accountants, cooks and khat suppliers on land. During long negotiations our men get tired and we need to rotate them out three times a week. Add to that the risk from navies attacking us and we can be convinced to lower our demands.

Wired even includes a strategy game — where your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to vicariously live out this difficult managerial occupation. Makes you think twice about hijacking a ship on open waters, eh?

(photo via wikimedia)

Scientists warn that another giant jellyfish invasion is on the horizon off the Japanese coast. National Geographic published this amazing photograph during the last spawning in November 2007, when damage caused by the giant jellyfish cost fishermen billions of yen.

Good Magazine has put out an interesting chart on the best and worst seafood to consume, based on overfishing and health risks.

For the seafood I love (and I love seafood) –

• American crab, check
• Lobster, check
• Salmon (if Alaskan), check
• Oysters, check
• Sea Bass, darn
• Tuna, darn
• Shrimp, darn

A Canadian doctor posted all ten (public domain) Rorschach plates on Wikipedia, sparking a storm of criticism from angry psychologists. Said one, “The more test materials are promulgated widely, the more possibility there is to game it.” (via NYTimes)

Ever since Watchmen was released, I think of the movie every time I hear Rorschach. Am I the only one?

It’s always great to revisit George Orwell’s beautifully written essay on how to write.

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never us a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

I forgot to wish my dog, Jack Bauer, a happy birthday yesterday! Bauer turned four years old, but the picture above is of when I first got him in September 2005.