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…
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…
Things don’t have to make sense. And it’s okay.
If you are charged with a task that, when complete, will profoundly alter an obvious aspect of the unit being dealt with, it may be better to finish the task quickly than to work at it in installments over a longer period of time. For the purposes of this post, consider that finishing the task…
When the family dog is lying on his side in an effortless display of sublime relaxation, I can’t help but crouch down on my knees and pet him. If the sun is shining through the living room windows and onto portions of the floor, he’ll choose a spot where he can sunbathe. If you start…
Buttoned shirts. 2 things: -As I button and unbutton shirts, I wonder how much damage I would sustain, and whether I would survive, if a bullet went through my chest at the location of the button my fingers are working on. -One of the advantages buttoned shirts have over t-shirts is this: they can be…
Selecting a handful of family pictures out of tens or hundreds is a depressing activity. This has very little to do with it being tedious, and has mostly to do with having to glance at images of smiling people one after another. Speaking personally, looking at a few stills of smiling relatives evokes a similar,…
On certain instruments, the time between the musician’s action to play a note and when that note is heard isn’t negligible. For example, when I press a piano key, there’s some milliseconds between when my finger first touches the ivory and when the hammer strikes the string. Does the brain compensate for this delay when…
Similes are like other things….ahahahaa! So something has struck me about comics. It’s happened recently with two, Shoe and Doonesbury, shown below. The width of each frame in a strip is limited, so if a character is watching tv, they must be drawn in close proximity to the screen. The artist could choose to take…
1. Why does waiting a few days to check email result in a confidence that when it is checked, there will be something good to read? Basic odds, I guess. More junk but also higher likelihood of receiving something of interest. It’s a curious, sad, and funny phenomena. 2. Why, when looking at a digital…
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