FAIL at the highest level
I love magical little moments like this [via]:
Blendor
it’s like hitting a piñata filled with exciting blog postsArchive for September, 2008
Photography site update
I’ve finally redesigned my photo site. Take a look and let me know what you think – it’s a work in progress, and I’m open to suggestions.
Founding Floyd member Wright dies
Gilmour said: “He was such a lovely, gentle, genuine man and will be missed terribly by so many who loved him.”
Writing on his website, he added: “And that’s a lot of people. Did he not get the loudest, longest round of applause at the end of every show in 2006?”
Wright’s spokesman said in a statement: “The family of Richard Wright, founder member of Pink Floyd, announce with great sadness that Richard died today after a short struggle with cancer.
Getting Sweded
I have settled into the hotel here in Stockholm after a very long journey. I left London at 8pm yesterday, landed in Amsterdam a little after 10pm, wandered the streets of Amsterdam all night, didn’t get stabbed, flew to Stockholm around 6am, and walked around like a zombie most of the day. I hopped on the train with Tim and a couple of his coworkers to the central station, where we walked around a street market and inside a shopping mall. I bought a trendy-ish scarf at one of the three H&Ms on one block (no exaggeration). I think I’d like to also buy a nicer scarf somewhere this week, too. Stockholm’s a very fashionable place, so I think I’d do well to shop a bit – but only a tiny bit. It’s Norway-expensive here.
If anyone has any recommendations for places to see and things to do, please let me know. Here are a few pictures from the trip so far (click to super-size):
Waiting at Heathrow:
I felt very welcome at the mall:
Balloons over Stockholm (from the hotel window):
On decision-making and framing
This essay is focused on political decision-making, specifically with regards to how the Obama campaign should frame McCain, but I find its arguments applicable in general:
But post-Palin, the Obama-Biden campaign seems to have become the Gore-Kerry-Hillary campaign. They are running on 18th Century theory of Enlightenment reason: If you just tell people the facts, they will follow their self-interest and reason to the right conclusion. What contemporary cognitive scientists have discovered (See my new book, The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st Century Politics with an 18th Century Brain), and what Republican marketers have known for decades, is that the Enlightenment theory of reason doesn’t describe how people actually work. People think primarily in terms of cultural narratives, stereotypes, frames, and metaphors. That is real reason.
For me, these insights offer a potential way through stubborn beliefs many hold regarding health, medicine and science. I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the political successes of Republicans in the last couple of decades – and especially in the last eight years.
There’s more good stuff here:
Taxation is not an affliction. Tax cuts will not create jobs. These are facts, but stating them as we just did just reinforces conservative frames. The right framing for the truth must be available and used for the truth be heard.
If the truth doesn’t fit the existing frame, the frame will stay in place and the truth will dissipate.
It takes time and a lot of repetition for frames to become entrenched in the very synapses of people’s brains. Moreover, they have to fit together in an overall coherent way for them to make sense.
Effective framing on a single issue must be both right and sensible. That is, it must fit into a system of frames (to be sensible) and must fit one’s moral worldview (to be right).
(Thanks to homunculus.)
Skandinavia!
Sorry for the blog neglect. I’ve been busy with:
- Family stuff, running around Southampton
- My first British (and European) music festival, Bestival (think Eeyore’s birthday on MDMA); I also caught myself a cold there from camping in cold puddles – it didn’t stop pouring the whole weekend
- Deciding on a school, finally – Brunel in London; though the offer from Southampton was tempting, I just didn’t find myself drawn to the nutrition focus of the course.
And now I find myself embarking once again to the land of the Vikings – Sweden, to be precise. It turns out that Tim is there for work, and the timing worked out perfectly so that I can hang out with him for a week and be back in time for my move-in at university. Incidentally, I just tried out the new Flickr homepage, and received this strangely intuitive greeting:
