Electroverts!

At lunch, we were talking about introverts and extroverts (among other things, Scott mentioned that these traits are correlated with tolerance for pain). But, I thought, I have a lot of friends who aren't quite introverted, because online, they're a whole different person. And Eric said, "Electroverts!" The word is so perfect, I'm surprised it hasn't been coined already, but Google shows only 2 hits - one is the name of a band the other appears to be some sort of equipment. I'm sure that we'll be seeing a Metrosexual-ish article about Electroverts in the Times any day now.

Trivial Pursuits

Wow, what a boring weekend! Of course, it did give me a chance to recover from staying out late playing pub trivia at The Overdraught (thanks for letting me tag along Bryan!) and then spending some time at the Phoenix Landing. Got fed Indian food Friday and rented Wall Street Saturday and watched T3* Sunday. Also finished Hedda Gabler audiobook and some Borges stories and started the Moneyball audiobook (all excellent). Everybody seemed to be out of town. Also decided to use miles to have my brother visit, since SAN to BOS tickets are double their usual price.

One random tidbit. I forgot who I had been trying to convince that pink and blue were reversed for baby boys and baby girls at one time, but I found a web page describing it, and, as we all know, everything you find on the web is true.

*T3 tangent: There's a great quote where John is shocked to find out he's going to marry Kate (Claire Danes) and Arnold says something along the lines of, "Why not? She's a healthy female of breeding age." In trying to find the exact quote, I hit some other fun ones at IMDB, this weird parent's guide, and this amusing New Yorker review.

Poking through my referrer log

I love poking through my referrer log. It's endlessly fascinating. There are the people searching for ways to get pot in The Sims, for Braitenberg vehicles, for popular sites, for my paper, for people, for quotes. There are the links from the Google intranet (you think they of all people would be smart enough to obfuscate referrers!). A link from a site I can't read and people I've met and others I haven't met at all. Apparently Metabuzz made an appearance on blogdex and popdex, which is neat, if circular. More when I get around to digging it out.

Two bits don't make a byte

I've run across some interesting odds and ends lately...

For example, I saw a link from the Yahoo! newsletter to Dressed to the Nines, an exhibit about baseball attire. I don't really care about baseball attire, but it did make me wonder where the phrase came from, especially given my recent foray into etymology. I found this cool site which points to "1793 in the poetry of Robert Burns: 'Thou paints auld Nature to the nines'."

I also love it when my reading happens to randomly coincide. For example, there was a New York Times Magazine article about how stimulating parts of the brain can lead to savant-like activity. (I found some some good pointers to related material.) And just yesterday, I read "Funes, His Memory" (in the translation I'm reading) or "Funes the Memorious" (in others). Here's the text of it. The similarities between Funes ("He was, let us not forget, almost incapable of general, platonic ideas.") and those with an autistic infant ("whose mind 'is not concept driven. . . . In our view such a mind can tap into lower level details not readily available to introspection by normal individuals.'"). I've always considered myself the sort of person who thinks better conceptually than in detail, and yet many computer people exhibit autism-ish symptoms. If there's a spectrum, how do I figure out where I am on it?

Lastly, I thought the Nicholas Lemann article about the Michgan case was fascinating. The heart of it (for me) is that: "Nor do universities share the public's view of admissions as a rewards system, which must be conducted with absolute fairness to each applicant. Instead, universities consider themselves to be rarefied autonomous institutions." I've often been annoyed with admissions and hiring policices because they seem an un-meritocratic disbursement of awards. But if I accept that university admissions are shaping an inevitable elite class, I suppose I'm willing to afford them more latitude. Questions about whether privilege is inevitable keep coming up in conversations I'm having.

Happy birthday to me

Wow, what an awesome weekend (after inauspiciously locking myself out on my birthday). Friends visiting, sitting outside waiting for the fireworks (beautiful, but why did they have to start sooooooooo late? pretty offensive to make us wait for the sake of the television audiences), going to the beach (thanks Mike!), good dinners. I think every weekend should be a long weekend.

Friendster update: 70,336 people through 12 friends. 39 single girls 21-24 in Boston. Hmm.

Cremaster? I 'ardly knew 'er!

Saw Cremaster 4 and 5 last night (thanks to Chad!). I'm glad I went...I'd like to see the other ones. It was pretty fascinating, though the fact I was half asleep and a bit tipsy by the midnight showing undoubtedly helped. Both were beautiful and engrossing, though a little long, especially 5, which I dozed through a bit. Also strange was that 5 was filmed in part in Budapest, including shots of the bridges, the Citadel, and there is a whole scene that occurs in the spa I went to. I'm not sure I really understood it...I decided that 4 was about birth and 5 about death, but I guess it's not that simple.

In other news, saw Blondie in Government Center. The new stuff is a bit strange, the old stuff was fun. I'm up to 8 friends, 40,762 people. Also found a great pub.

Peanuts Acting Like Women?

Although this is one possible origin of the phrase peanut gal-lery (other recent bad puns - what do you call a storm during knighting ceremony? a knightingale! what does a knight ride on? a knightmare! what do you call a knight's shadow? knightshade!), it turns out to not be the actual one. Somebody wrote me asking if I knew where the phrase came from since I used it in the title of my paper (further proof that people are far too generous in ascribing expertise to people who make web pages). I looked it up. First Google result informed me:

Peanut Gallery is American slang dating to 1888 referring to the balcony section of a theater--presumably from hoi polloi eating peanuts in the cheap seats. The term was popularized in the 1950s by the television show Howdy Doody, in which the host Buffalo Bob would call the child audience the peanut gallery. In doing so, Buffalo Bob was combining two different slang traditions.

Peanut is also slang for something small or inconsequential. This use dates to the 1930s. By 1942, the word was being used to mean a small or inconsequential person, or a child. This is the origin of name of Charles Schulz's comic strip, and Howdy Doody got mileage out of both senses of the term.


In other news, I now have 5 friends and 1 testimonial. I'm connected to 26,846 people. How exciting!