Month: July 2002

Moving would be easier, I think, if I had started packing a few weeks earlier or if I was anywhere in the neighborhood of neat. I’ve still got a lot left to do, and only a week left to do it.

Because I know not everyone reads Metafilter or Boing Boing — geez, what do you do all day? — and because I think it’s interesting: scientists create big-brained mice.

We’re not exactly talking Pinky and the Brain here, of course. The mice were killed soon after birth, and their relative intelligence was not tested. Increased brain folds don’t necessarily mean increased smarts. And, as I mentioned at Boing Boing, I’m reminded of something Roger Ebert wrote in his review of “Deep Blue Sea”:

“Its premise is that the shark brains have been increased fivefold, with a corresponding increase in intelligence, so that the sharks can figure out the layout of the station and work together to batter down watertight doors, swim down corridors, etc. The most obvious problem with this premise is that just because a shark is smarter doesn’t mean it has more information; the smartest shark in the world would only know how to be a smart shark unless it had a way to learn.”

Of course, this is all just assuming that Earth isn’t just an enormous super-computer built by mice…

Back, after a brief hiatus, the Friday Five. I don’t know…do my one or two regular readers enjoy this, or would you prefer more original content and pretty pictures?

1. Where were you born? North Shore University Hospital, which, unless both memory and Google completely fail me, is in Manhasset, New York. I grew up, however, in Westbury.

2. If you still live there, where would you rather move to? If you don’t live there, do you want to move back? Why or why not? I went to college in Pennsylvania for four years and then just…kind of stuck around. I’ve been here three years now, and it seems like every year (or at least every winter) I think about moving back to New York. Or somewhere else. People sometimes tell me that, at this point in my life, I can go almost anywhere I want — which, frankly, has always felt like part of the problem. I don’t quite know how I would feel about moving back to New York. I don’t especially want to work in the city (even if the jobs I tend to apply for here are in much greater supply there), and I don’t think moving back in with my parents is a great idea, but I don’t know how much more of this particular Pennsylvania I can take.

3. Where in the world do you feel the safest? Dunno. I don’t know if safe is exactly what I should be looking for now.

4. Do you feel you are well-traveled? To a certain extent, yeah. We went on a lot of family vacations when I was a boy, and I got to see quite a bit of the country. But I’ve never been outside the United States, except for a few days in Canada once, and there are plenty of American cities I’ve never seen, like Seattle or New Orleans or Chicago.

5. Where is the most interesting place you’ve been? Hmm. Tough call. Austin, Texas, is a great town, as are both Boston and San Francisco — all three of which I’ve unfortunately only visited once. Las Vegas was neat, although I wasn’t old enough to gamble at the time, so I may not have gotten the full effect. Nashville is…unique; Philadelphia is always interesting; downtown Baltimore near the waterfront deserves the name Charm City; and the Grand Canyon was as spectacular as they tell you it is. I don’t know that there’s any one place I’ve ever visited that strikes me as being the “most interesting”.

Want to know what this, or any other, website sounds like converted into music? Sure you do. And now, thanks to WebPlayer, you can. You’ll need Shockwave to run the application, and the results aren’t exactly what I’d call toe-tapping, but it’s an interesting experience nonetheless. (Found via Metafilter.)