Confessions of a Pro-Social Psychopath

Nicked from kristine_smith:

Neuroscientist James Fallon is a self-styled “hobbit scientist.” The rules are simple: Don’t talk to the press and don’t go out of your area of expertise. But when a fascinating new brain scanner enters the lab, Fallon can’t resist. He ends up breaking both rules, and learns a lot more about himself than he bargained for.

You know, it would be easy to imagine a world where kids were tested for this stuff and people with his particular divergences from the norm pre-emptively removed from contract with society (or medicated) but in this case he seems to be a functional, beneficial member of society without any of that intervention.

One of the reasons I read other people's blogs

I encountered these interesting discussions of environmentalism in SF.


In fact, I see I came in at the wrong end of the Puchalsky discussion:

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Given what people on metafilter think of me, I'd to clarify that I fall into the "anthropogenic climate change is real, nothing will be done about it, some degree of change is therefore inevitable, only realizable strategies involve adapting to the new conditions" camp. Granted, easier to do this hundreds of meters above sea level in an area that very well may not be desertified.

The quotation from Adam Roberts' "Anti-Coperniucus" reminded me a lot of Inherit the Earth

If only I had had my camera with me

I could have done an interesting study of a school bus at Charles and Queen. When I walked up to the intersection, there was a small car nosed out past the thick white line, signaling left. The bus pulled up *right* behind them, over the line but not technically out into the middle of the intersection. It's a busy street so the small car couldn't do the left until the light went red but as soon as it changed they got out of the intersection as quickly as they could.

At this point the bus smoothly pulled out and followed the small car's left turn despite the whole "turning left on a red" issue.

I was so suprised that the bus was doing what it did all I noted about it was that it was a school bus.

Wow

Nine, *nine* bits of blatant comment spam in dreamwidth today.

It's funny because it's true!

Doonesbury Sunday 18 September 2011

Nicked from Andrew Ducker

A detail in a book I read recently

How common are curfews for minors in the US?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I just now put two facts together: I am 50 and I've taken to wearing hats outdoors to keep the sun out of my eye.

I've become an old man in hat!

As pointed out on rasfw

An interesting discussion over non-compete clauses was pointed out on rasfw:

It is four weeks since my last posting. I have been adrift in the ethers, learning first-hand how deeply this digital revolution affects our lives, right down to our DNA depths. As an author struggling to survive in these recessionary times, I made a decision eight months ago. I joined the legions of writers who are now electronically self-publishing backlogs of their writing. I did this in innocence and exuberance, and a need for income. And yes, I did it out of ignorance, never dreaming that the reverberations of that decision would cost me my credibility in whatever is left of the world of print publishing.

More discussion can be found here.

I doubt the historicity of this version of Herod

(Has Mayall ever played a school master?)

About the True Grit remake

Does it have any virtues not found in the original?