The Crippled God by Steven Erikson My rating: 4 of 5 stars For a couple years a coworker told me to read this series. I bought the first book, but it sat on the shelf as a reminder. Finally, I caved, and he gave me the rest of the series. It started off confusing and…
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Other Writings by James Weldon Johnson My rating: 4 of 5 stars As a mixed race man, though much darker of skin color, some people easily identify me as Black. Others have no clue and try to figure it out with, “Where are you from?” as though no…
(This post is part of a series. Intro > 1. Illusions > 2. Labeling > 3. Math > 4. Multitasking) This one combines the worst of Illusions and Math. We trust our senses and inadequately assess risk. We have limited capacities for attending to what happens around us. Two or more objects are not being held at the same time in memory. We switch between…
(This post is part of a series. Intro > 1. Illusions > 2. Labeling > 3. Math > 4. Multitasking) Behavioral economics fascinates me. Humans have amazing abilities to miscalculate risk with extreme confidence they accurately assessed it. These appear to be rules of thumb which work in certain situations, but really are not applicable to others yet most people do. Part of the…
(This post is part of a series. Intro > 1. Illusions > 2. Labeling > 3. Math > 4. Multitasking) Homo Sapiens Sapiens cheated evolution in one critical way by creating language. Rather than rely totally on instincts passed along by genes, we pass along an enormous amount of information to our proteges through memes. These may not even be the descendants of our…
(This post is part of a series. Intro > 1. Illusions > 2. Labeling > 3. Math > 4. Multitasking) We like to think only those things we experience exist. Or even can experience. What about those things we can experience that do not or never did exist? That is what illusions are. They are cases where we trick…
We humans laud our superiority over the rest of the world. We even claim to be better than other humans. The chief attribute we compare is intelligence. An interest of mine regarding Psychology in college was failures of the mind. Phineas Gage suffered a brain injury that drastically changed his behavior. That was really cool! Yet, that…
Background: We got a notice a few minutes before last week’s maintenance window that side work to configure a tool ran into a snap. Today we found out that the server intended to be used did not have the right .NET version. Why did they not just install it? Good question. This made me curious…
Parents of young children posts lots and lots of photos on Facebook. Tags in the photos of their children are of either or both parents. Children under thirteen are not allowed on the site. Babies lack the motor control to operate a camera or computer. So expecting children to have their own identities on Facebook…