When considering how small a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum visible light constitutes, it’s difficult not to feel cheated. I would like to additionally see ultraviolet and infrared. Technology could give me this ability now, but I’d much rather it manifest itself naturally through evolution, though it’s hard to imagine why such evolutionary developments would…
Here’s something obvious that nonetheless deserves to be written. A person’s reaction to stimulus (a comment, a picture, etc.) depends in part on their mood. This is illustrated below in words with the help of a language invented especially for this purpose, so that the reader is limited in their opinion of what is said…
Person M’s opinion of person N is influenced by the company person N keeps. This contributes to the notion that person N could be embarrassed as a consequence of what the person(s) in their company is/are doing, and hence phrases of the nature “Don’t embarrass me!” I don’t like this notion that part of how…
There are buildings which act as a buffer between the sidewalk and my preferred walking path. Occasionally I’ll see people in the distance leaning up against the buildings or walking in circles, taking smoke breaks from work or just killing time. Or there might be a USPS or UPS delivery van unassumingly parked in an…
If I ever marry, it’ll be to a girl whose first language is English. Having grown up in a bilingual household, I’ve witnessed the severity of the disadvantage associated with trying to argue your case in a language you didn’t learn until your college years. Even people who, under normal conditions, have a good grip…
Game developers need to stop striving to emulate reality. Eventually, virtual worlds are going to be so convincing that people will claim they were playing a video game when they committed a crime. “Um…your honor, when I took out the high school principal with a headshot, that was actually part of a covert operation that…
The process of creating a piece of work that didn’t formerly exist in the world can surround the author of the work in a cloud of bias that doesn’t dissipate for a long time. This may not be true for a majority of people, but I’ve noticed it in myself. I’m rarely more proud of…
Here’s something strange: in my experience, when people say “I have a bike,” they’re referring to a mountain bike. Ambiguity between road bike and mountain bike doesn’t exist because so often they mean the latter. None of this is strange yet. It makes sense that the abbreviated form of a word, or of groups of…
I’ve been visiting Seattle nearly everyday, recently. I sit at my computer desk chair with legs bent 90 degrees at the knee for about as long as it takes to fly to Washington. The effectiveness of the voluminous void underneath the desk drawer, which is supposed to provide plenty of legroom, has been compromised by…
When I was young, I would accompany my father on wholesale ice cream deliveries to restaurants and hotels. Some of these places were expensive and glossy, aimed at the rich senior tourist market, or the local affluent community. Yet, it soon became apparent that, no matter how successful an establishment was at impressing its guests…