I'm a genius!

You know those stupid things that when you do them they make you feel immensely proud of yourself?   This morning I was pouring olive oil from the 5 litre can to the bottle using a funnel.   You know what happens, the oil goes in very slowly because the air has to come out.   So after wasting 2 minutes filling 10% of the bottle I took a straw and I put it in the funnel.   It worked amazingly well.   I'm so proud of me today!

I read somewhere

I have a feeling that when we say "I read somewhere that..." it's often because we don't want to say where we read it.

Am I anxious?

Is it just me?  I can't find things in lists.  If the list is not sorted, even if fairly short, I have a hard time to find what I look for.  A good idea would be to start from the beginning and proceed in order, but I have no patience -- I start jumping back and forth on my list starting to think "it's not here!"

Simple explanations

If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck.
It's funny that a concept so obvious has actually a name: the Occam's Razor, and it originates back in the 14th century. (Sometimes I think that in the Middle Ages it was relatively easy to make history!)
This principle states that the explanation for a given phenomenon that has the fewest assumptions should be preferred over more complicated ones and can be used for instance to try explaining the Fermi paradox on the fact that we haven't found any prove of intelligent extraterrestrial life even though many think it ought to exist.

TO-DOs

- Become more aware of the world we live in.
- Read a lot more, and write more too.
- Meet new people and visit new places.
- Learn to wait.
- Learn to filter out the things that don’t matter.
- Become a better listener.
- Sleep more.
- Dream more.

Lazy brain

Why is my brain so lazy?  Sometimes to enter my place I start checking each one of my keys in sequence, instead of thinking which one is the right one.  This happens when I'm tired and I start applying the most stupid algorithm, the linear search.  Sometimes it's easier that way: 33% chance is a pretty high number, if I'm lucky I'll solve my problem with no brain power, and if I fail no one dies -actually- on my second trial I'll have an even greater chance to succeed: 50%.  Worst case, my third trial will be 100% guaranteed to succeed.  Not smart but certainly a way to get things going...

To brighten up your day

What's better after a stressful day than coming home and finding in your mailbox a pamphlet that says: "What you should know about Cremation..."?

Dogs and jokes

It is always somehow touching for me when I hear dogs howling when they hear a siren. I wish I could tell the dog: "It's alright, don't worry, I know it sounds to you like another dog's howl, but it's actually something else... now go back to sleep."  I find particularly disturbing when somebody is withholding information that could make someone else feel better. Like for that kids' joke where you hide the snack to your classmate and you watch him searching anxiously into his backpack. How's that supposed to be funny? I hate that kind of jokes.

Partial information

It's hard to accept that our knowledge is always partial. We get our knowledge through our senses, and throughout time. Every day we keep interpolating the reality based upon a few isolated samples, moreover affected by noise. Only if we concentrate on the same subject long enough, then we start to get close to what its reality is, assuming that our presence doesn't affect it. Awareness of partial information is the key, never stop sampling the world, never settle down on anything, don't discard any sample, just keep collecting -- we don't know where is the noise and where there isn't.

I love snow

We got some snow, it doesn't happen very often here. I'm finding that almost everybody claims to hate it and that he hopes it turns into rain, but secretly prays for more.  Why do we find so hard to admit that there is a child inside us that just wants something different to play with? Yes, I know, we say it to be dangerous, and sometimes it's true, but is this the real reason?

Things

A few messages back I was listing people that I like and people that I hate, I've done the same thing with things. Here it is:

Things that I like:
- taking off on a plane.
- when the song on the car stereo ends right when I'm arrived.
- 9 o'clock in the morning.
- the square shape.
- picking up photo prints from the store.
- listing stuff.

Things that I hate:
- useless noises, particularly untuned radios.
- superstore membership discounts.
- receiving promotional faxes over the phone.
- when people wait until the answering machine starts recording and then they hang up.
- to be called a "shopper", like in "Attention Shoppers" (public announcement in a mall.)
- keeping secrets.

Deal hunters

Why in superstores the big bargains are always presented in big messy containers? Like those DVDs for 9.95, where the 10 available titles are all mixed up so that people have to kill themselves to browse through. Do people actually like to fight their way to the good deal? Just like fishing, if it is too easy it's no fun?

100% real Kraft cheese!

Okay, I found them there, I was hungry, and I ate them. But I promise I won't do it again... Ritz crackers featuring real Kraft cheese? What's fancy about it!? Do people actually recognize Kraft as a cheese brand? Is that because of the "Kraft Dinner"? I'm speechless... So here is the fairy tale: At Christie Brown & Co. (the guys who make the Ritz) one day somebody found out that cheese goes well with crackers, so they decided to feature the world famous Kraft cheese for their snacks. At Kraft they were very happy to be chosen for their ancient tradition in cheese making, and to return the favor they started some catchy promotion of the Ritz crackers on their website: "For a fun and easy solution to after-school snacking, try new Ritz Bits Sandwiches Cheese Explosion Crackers. These mini delights are made with 100% real Kraft Cheese sandwiched between two bite-sized cheese-flavored crackers. With double the cheesy appeal, these cracker sandwiches pack a huge flavor punch."

The reality? Reading the back of the bag you can see that Christie Brown & Co. is just a division of Kraft, and the funny thing is that Kraft is owned by Altria, and "Altria" is just the new name of Philip Morris.

Two months off coffee

Now that two months have passed since I quit coffee, I realized that coffee was taking quite a bit of my day. Somehow it became a tradition, a no-brainer, something that you don't have to keep figuring out -- it was quite handy, actually.  Coffee in the morning? sure; coffee after lunch? of course; with bagels? coffee; feeling tired? coffee; feeling like you need something warm? coffee; your stomach is a little upset? coffee; meeting with a friend? "what about a coffee?"; very cold day? "let's stop for a coffee"; entering a movie theatre? "let me grab a coffee"; "did somebody make coffee?", "can I get you a coffee?", "how is coffee?", "what kind of coffee?"
So now I have to rethink all these moments, and find an alternative - or simply don't find any alternative. Did I become a little less boring?

Peculiar?

Why am I always trying to figure out why meaningless things are the way they are? For instance, I found three reasons why the last leaves that drop from a tree in the fall are the tiny external ones: they are younger and thus stronger, they offer less resistance to the wind, the sprigs they're attached to flex together with the leaves when there's wind.