As the world become increasingly more reliant on google, facebook, etc, so much so that they have become action verbs in common language, our general discontent with such mega-conglomerates grows. It reminds me to a certain extent of the discontent a teenager has for his parents who provide him or her everything but still has to, in order to maintain some social conformity exhibit disdain for authority. Along the same lines, honestly, I'd be interested to know if anyone really truly cares that Facebook would syndicate, sell, or otherwise monetize your posts. Or is it more of a socially acceptable jab at the mother-ship, something worthwhile that everyone can unite together to have an opinion on. Either way is fine with me, I just find it somewhat funny that something someone finds so useful, somewhat indispensable would be given a hard time for growing the business channels, without harming the user experience. IF Facebook started charging its USERS to read posts from your friends, now that's a whole new ballgame... but until then, I'm happy for them to make money, and translate those earnings into new features for all of us.

At the much anticipated secret meeting at Starbucks in Harrah's after the 2011 CES, Jobs announced to a handful of friends sucking down latte's and espressos, the all new iPhone42"
and... only the iPhone60" will have a front facing camera.

Amen

All I can say is: define:fishy

Chinese and Americans differ in visual analysis

An experiment conducted by psychologist Richard Nisbett suggests that Chinese and American people analyse scenes differently. The Americans focused on the main object in the picture, while the Chinese took a more holistic approach, and examined more of the visual context.

Traditionally, Western societies are characterised as 'individualistic' and Eastern societies as 'collectivist', suggesting that in countries like China and Japan, the focus is on society as a whole, rather than each person's individual characteristics.

Some have suggested that this reflects the different philosophical traditions of these cultures, with the West tending to approach problems by analytically breaking them down into component parts, and the East looking at problems in their wider context.

Nisbett's experiment suggests that this tendency may influence mental function even on the unconscious level, as his effect was found when participants were simply asked to view pictures, while their eye movements were tracked with an infra-red camera.

Importantly, the participants were unaware of the full intention of the experiment, and were told they were taking part in a study to test memory for pictures.

Why the picture of the Chinese girl? I just thought she looked beautiful.

Link to write-up from Science (with good example of eye-tracking result).
Link to New Scientist story.
Link to Scientific American story.

Mind Hacks8/23/2005 4:00:00 AM

Finally, I knew money can buy happiness

Boing Boing: Decrypt my wordless book, says Chinese code-novelist

I have interpreted the prose as follows:

Hey you crazy beady-eyed freak, did you have sex with mouse?

What!

I’m not going to ask you again what all these mouse turds doing in our bed. They are lined up in a row, with a small gap in the middle, apparently from your fling with a small rodent.

Well dear, your ass used to look so cute, with your off center hole. It was hard for me to keep my hands off of you. Now, however, with all the double chocolate fudge brownie iced cream you eat before bed, your ass has doubled in size. Furthermore, your hole is barely visible now.

In fact, the last time we so sweetly made love, you sat on my testicle, and as a result, my penis has grown very long and thin. So, actually, YES, I did have sex with a mouse.