Old videos I’ve been thinking about
I like this guy’s take on things. Enjoy.
-Peter
Entries Tagged as 'Humor'
Coffee makes us happy
As if we didn’t already know, coffee makes us happy. Actually, any warm drink would do, it seems. And it’s not so much happy as it is cooperative and trustful. It’s Science!
Neuroscience Marketing reminded me of this phenomenon. I saw it first in a documentary about making decisions. It seems that the NYT noticed it a few years ago when it was published in Science.
What’s the gist? Well, it seems that if you handle a cup of hot coffee you are more apt to trust and accept people. They tested this by giving people either a hot or cold beverage for a minute. Then they asked people if they would hire a new acquaintance or not. Subjects were statistically more likely to hire the candidate if they had a hot beverage relative to a cold beverage.
Surprising? Maybe. Bear it in mind for interviews, I suppose.
Cheers,
Peter
From the Desk of the Jester: Dips and Chips
As you are undoubtedly aware, there is a vast conspiracy to put chips in everything. First it was cacti. Then it was airport workers and perpetual motion machine inventors. Soon it will be your brain!
They want to put chips in your brain. This is my point. Already Nintendo has a brain controller! As of now, you can control video games with your brain. How long before video games control your brain? As if they were not already controlling your very thoughts with their subliminal messages.
So, when They want to put the chip in your brain, just say no.
The Jester
From the desk of the Jester: Nutria Moisture
Peter is having “personal difficulties” this week and he asked me to take over. If he can’t get himself together, you all may be stuck with my special brand of collage and graph-based humor for a while. This week I was struck by an advertisement on the Daily Show (voted the best news on television), the only TV for which I will willingly sit through commercials.
The commercials were what caught my eye, in fact. Have you noticed the ubiquitous blue dye used as a stand-in for various bodily fluids in TV commercials? Whether menstrual blood or “BM leaks,” you can be assured that a sterile blue liquid will be used in its place.
Combine this with the propensity of marketing “people” to make up sciency words, and you get “nurtium moisture.” I heard it differently:
I liked it better my way.
-The Jester
Wired article on a 1982 artificial heart
Wired has an article today on the first use of an artificial heart back in 1982. The patient survived for 112 days – pretty remarkable. I wonder if he felt any unnatural urges toward appliances… robot love, as it were. I doubt it. It sounds like it was a pretty miserable 112 days. I suspect that subtle emotional changes toward toasters… or uncomfortable fantasies about R2-D2… were secondary concerns.
Despite the derision with which the heart’s mystical associations have been dismissed, it’s a rather complex organ with a great many feedback mechanisms to keep it precisely regulated. We’ve come a long way in 30 years. In addition to thinking in terms of an improved plastic pump, there is a lot of thought going into manipulating stem cells to make new hearts from meat, the way nature intended.
-Peter
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