[Stairway to Heaven on Harp | YouTube]
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Pareidolia
The Best of Wikipedia is a continually updated collection of some of the most interesting Wikipedia articles. Here’s one from yesterday:
Pareidolia – Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. There have been many instances of perceptions of religious imagery and themes—in 1978, a New Mexican woman found that the burn marks on a tortilla she had made appeared similar to the traditional western depiction of Jesus Christ’s face. Thousands of people came to see the framed tortilla. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.
(via Best of Wikipedia)
Arm Wrestle
Over the weekend I went to my good friend Duane’s stag in Banff. We were lounging around in a bar sometime after midnight. My friend Niall was sitting beside me in a little love seat, in front of us sat a coffee table and on the other side two ladies were chatting with us. Out of the blue, one of them challenged Niall.
She declared, “I’ll betcha $20 that my friend here can beat you at an arm wrestle.”
I looked at Niall and then back at the girl—she was very tiny. I thought wow, this girl must be tremendously strong or have some kind of trick, because there’s no way she’s going to beat Niall, she’s just too small. He’s not a particularly big guy, but big enough. He’s about my height and weight, which lead me to ponder what this girl was thinking.
We moved some empties out of the way, they set up, a small crowd had gathered. It was over almost as quickly as it started.
Niall kind of shrugged and picked up his cash. I suggested to him that maybe they figured he would buy them some drinks and therefore they wouldn’t really be out any cash. Niall’s response was priceless.
“Fuck that. They can buy their own drinks.”
Pearl Jam
I’m off to see Pearl Jam and others at the 2008 Virginfest in Calgary. I’m having the busiest summer in memory so posting will continue to be light for the next while.
Update: Here’s a photo of the crowd at the Pearl Jam concert. I’m right up there, second from the front.
Wikipedia’s List of Common Misconceptions
I enjoyed reading through Wikipedia’s list of common misconceptions.
Sasquatch Gathering
This weekend I’m in Easyford, Alberta at the Sasquatch Gathering. (Not to be confused with the Sasquatch! Festival.)
Honestly, I’ll be more surprised than you if we actually gather any Saquatches. Sasquatchi?
Edit: Here are some photos and video from the Sasquatch Gathering.
Cocksure
Malcolm Gladwell’s new article, Cocksure, is about the psychology of overconfidence. In it he postulates that the brashness of experts caused the current financial crisis.
Since the beginning of the financial crisis, there have been two principal explanations for why so many banks made such disastrous decisions. The first is structural. Regulators did not regulate. Institutions failed to function as they should. Rules and guidelines were either inadequate or ignored. The second explanation is that Wall Street was incompetent, that the traders and investors didn’t know enough, that they made extravagant bets without understanding the consequences. But the first wave of postmortems on the crash suggests a third possibility: that the roots of Wall Street’s crisis were not structural or cognitive so much as they were psychological.
Three River Rendezvous
My kayaking friend Gemma recorded some footage at the Three River Rendezvous last May. She’s finished editing and tossed it up on YouTube:
[Three Rivers Whitewater Rendezvous 09 | YouTube]
I make a couple of appearances in the video — I’m the guy with the bright yellow helmet, blue PFD, and red dry top.
The Bad Review Revue
I Love You, Beth Cooper: “Wants to emulate a John Hughes film, in much the same way that a crack whore wearing a dime-store tiara wants to emulate Queen Elizabeth.” — Eric D. Snider, film.com
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: “If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.” — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs: “if you want some jokes that aren’t prehistoric, you’re better off letting this Ice Age defrost.” — Jeffrey Lyles, Gazette (MD)
Bruno: “The new Sacha Baron Cohen movie, ‘Bruno,’ really isn’t a movie at all. Calling it one is sort of like calling mutton the new white meat.” —Christopher Smith, Bangor Daily News (Maine)
The Proposal: “It sounds like a faint recommendation, but trust me when I say that calling it ‘not terrible’ is high praise indeed.” — Marshall Fine, Hollywood & Fine
Backmasking in Michael Jackson’s Beat It
Despite the continued media frenzy surrounding Michael Jackson’s death, I have to admit I’m kind of over it.
However, I felt inspired to look for the “backmasking” message known to be in the song “Beat It”. So I now present, for your skeptical analysis, a new addition to my backmasking page, Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”.