The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Dan R:

I remember being caught up in a rolling wave of euphoria as history washed across Europe and the Soviet empire crumbled in the (two?) years leading up to the fall of the wall. I lost that giddy sense after the events in Tiananmen Square five months before.

Of the two events, I think Tiananmen colours my outlook more. I actually mis-remembered the sequence, thinking that Tiananmen was after Berlin. Until Tiananmen, it seemed like all the people had to do was assert their collective desire. Afterward, nothing seemed so certain, and apparently the fall of the wall didn't make me more sanguine.

FWIW, as a middle aged man I've been invisible for up to 20 minutes in a shoe store whose target demographic is young women. I was looking for slippers for my daughter's birthday, and I couldn't get eye contact from anyone (all 20-something women), whether or not they were with another customer. When new young women came in the store, they were immediately approached and asked if they needed help.

(Dan R. - not to be confused with DanR)

Albatross @19: I agree for the most part. Nothing is simple. I would take the word "large" out of my first sentence if I were editing.

Also, I should have said "survivor bias" rather than confirmation bias. I've just been reading Taleb Nassim's Fooled by Randomness, and got the two terms mixed.

There is a large element of confirmation bias in the assumption that criminals are stupid. The ones that are caught are stupid (or unlucky). The ones that get away are not part of the sample.

Come away oh human child
To the waters and the wild
For the world's more full of weeping
Than you can understand

abi @56. The quality of thought while biking has much to do with the environment I'm riding in. Commuting in low traffic or on a pathway is best: I'm not preoccupied with automobiles traffic, and the route is familiar enough that the pleasant scenery doesn't distract too much.

The only place for contemplation that compares for me is in the shower.

One of my fondest memories of a six month sojourn in France was coming across an elderly farm couple on ancient bicycles, herding their cattle from the pasture into their walled farm courtyard.

Living in Ottawa, cycling to work can be easy, although we've had a horrendous summer of fatal or near fatal bike/car and bike/bus collisions (the most recent). I've done about 3000 km of commuting since the start of the season in late March, much of it on the city's recreational pathways, including a 3 km stretch along the Rideau canal. In winter, I'm able to skate to work on the entire canal skateway (about 6km) when it's open.

Sorry, with Password Safe Link here

#67:

So, on that thumb drive with Little Brother, add a copy of Bruce Schneier's Password Safe

I have a friend who worked for a Canadian company in Germany, and was given an all-expenses-paid company BMW.

He discovered that driving the autobahn faster that about 180 km/h (112 mph) actually increased his total travel time, due to the decreased fuel efficiency and the increased frequency of fueling stops.

I noticed many NL stickers on the cars in a campground in Austria. My first reaction was
"Why is Austria so attractive to Nederlanders?"

immediately followed by

"Of course!"

It would be nice if there was a disemvowel feature in Leetkey.

My spouse is writing a mystery set in rural Quebec. An interesting artifact of machine translation (that she's since worked into the story) was the rendering of the name Pierre Benoit as Sanctimonious Stone.

My personal favorites are plain within-language parsing problems, such as "out of sight, out of mind" = "invisible, insane", which I suppose are the basis of these translation gems.

I'll be returning from Katahdin on my way to Ottawa at the beginning of August, and Google maps has me traveling through Colebrook at about the half way point. I know where I'll be stopping for lunch.

Rather than forcing us to scan the open threads for ROT-13 posts for the Dollhouse discussions, could someone please create a "Thoroughly Spoiled Dollhouse" thread a la Harry Potter?

see 124

Interrupting this open thread-in-progress to let you know that this week's This American Life podcast closes with a discussion of This is Just to Say - a deconstruction and a bunch of parodies. The theme of the TAL episode is Mistakes were Made.

I wonder how much was known in earlier decades about the proper procedures to follow after a concussion.

I was knocked unconscious during a football game played during gym class when I was 13. I have no memory of anything between the game and waking up in a hospital bed about four hours later. I had apparently be out for about a minute, had finished school and gone home on my bicycle. My mother took me to the hospital after dinner when I started acting strangely and being unable to answer simple questions.

Jo Walton's account above makes me feel much more lucky about what might have happened, but it also begs the question about school and teacher responsibility. In 1969, should a gym teacher been more proactive?

I was never one of the jocks, so I'd never had a good relationship with gym teachers.

Carol @ 91:

1. Get ROT13 from the dropdown box for Function Name.

2. Click into Key Shortcut Combination box.

3. Hit your shortcut combination (I chose alt-R). It will show as Alt +VK_R (don't know why!)

4. Hit the Apply button.

Whoa. Taran Wanderer, writ large.

It's taken me half a century to perfect gazpatcho, apple pie, cross-country downhill technique, and modeling permafrost thermal regimes.

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