Psychology:
* Persistence of Myths Could Alter Public Policy Approach (Washington Post). A clear article summarizing psychological literature on why myths remain, and why it's often not a good idea to try to counter a myth. If you don't feel like reading it, listen to the story The Truth of False (WNYC's On The Media via NPR).
* The Marketing Sí Change (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). An interesting piece about the ways in which marketers target hispanics and how it's different from targeting anglos. I especially enjoyed the discussion of the problems translating the Got Milk campaign into Spanish and how they decided to fix it. That part starts at 2:50. If you're interested in the topic, read the lengthy original article, How Do You Say 'Got Milk' En Español? (New York Times). The radio segment is simply a few of the article's highlights.
Technology:
* The Sex Drive (WNYC's On The Media via NPR). One often hears about pornography being a major impetus of technology, pushing the advancement of, for example, the printing press, photography, and motion pictures. This radio segment is interesting because it describes how pornography isn't pushing the edge of the latest technology: Web 2.0. Sure, pornography's at the forefront (in fact, judging by the segment, pornography's using more Web 2.0 interactivity and community features than I expected), but it isn't driving the technological improvements.
Economics:
* The Wealth of Nations: A country's competitive edge can spread industry to industry, like a disease (Science News). This is the sort of research I want to do: discover interesting patterns from mounds of data.
Mathematics:
* Ancient Islamic Penrose Tiles (Science News's MathTrek). I'm not surprised to hear that old architectural designers implicitly used knowledge of complex mathematical techniques. Nonetheless, it's still an interesting story about how Islamic buildings managed to have such large and perfect decorative patterns.
Biology:
* Rethinking Bad Taste: How much mimicry is outright cheating? (Science News). It's nice to see such fairly realistic, outside-the-lab biology studies. If you want a copy of the article, ask.
Health:
* Believers gain no health advantage (Science News). Surprisingly, a study found no psychological advantage to holding spiritual beliefs--i.e., there's no belief-in-god placebo effect. The abstract of the source article, Spirituality, religion, and clinical outcomes in patients recovering from an acute myocardial infarction (Psychosomatic Medicine), is freely available.
Other:
* Times to Stop Charging for Parts of Its Web Site (New York Times). In short, if there were some interesting articles I've mentioned that you previously couldn't read because of the Times's old policy of only leaving articles freely available for a couple of weeks, you can read them now. And you can read the columnists for free, too.
Interesting Articles: September 2007
Disneyland & Disney's California Adventure
I was in Anaheim from Monday, February 4, 2008, to Wednesday, February 6, 2008, in order to visit Disneyland. I took a few pictures and videos on this trip.
I didn't do anything the day I arrived. Although I'd planned to do something, the hour-and-a-hour bus trip from the airport (Burbank) to my hotel (Embassy Suites Anaheim South) drained my energy, making me not want to get on a bus to go somewhere else. And, having only eaten a bowl of cereal, a yogurt, and a pack of peanuts, my low blood sugar likely contributed to this lack of desire. Instead, I remained in my hotel. I ate what I'm sure was a 2000+ calorie dinner (judging by the size of the chicken sandwich and the pile of fries) at the restaurant in my hotel. Mostly, I relaxed in my hotel room, a pretty snazzy two-room suite on the sixth floor.
Tuesday I had breakfast in my hotel (eggs, sausage, bacon, roasted potatoes, french toast, and lots of fresh melons), then headed to Disneyland.
- Disneyland Railroad. A relaxing way to sit and see some greenery.
- Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters. The best non-roller-coaster attraction I rode. You have a gun and you're supposed to shoot Zs as you sit and ride around a Buzz Lightyear battle scene. It keeps score. Think about it as laser tag practice.
- Star Tours. A relatively lame simulator-based ride.
- Space Mountain. A roller coaster in the dark. Only (fake) stars are visible. I kept attempting to determine, given my guess at the planar way the stars were mounted, the location of panels and which way we'd go next. My engineering mind at work.
- "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience." A 3-D movie.
- Innoventions. An exhibit which included many interactive games, including many xbox games. It also had some exhibits on health. (I got my BMI read.) Shadow soccer (see picture) was slick.
- Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. A fun roller coaster. I liked this more than Space Mountain, perhaps because I also could take joy in anticipating the movements that would come.
- Haunted Mansion. Not scary. Nevertheless, they do cool things with holograms.
Then I went to the adjacent amusement park, Disney's California Adventure.
- Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Perhaps my favorite ride! In the dark, an elevator drops precipitously, giving one the temporary feeling of weightlessness. Somehow, despite liking this, I couldn't bring myself to get on the Maliboomer, which is a similar ride except outside in the daylight.
- Muppet Vision 3D. What can I say? I like 3-D. And I enjoyed seeing Statler and Waldorf.
- Mission Tortilla Factory. A demonstration assembly line showing how tortillas are made. Fairly neat. They distribute free tortillas coming off the end of the line, though sadly don't provide any toppings. (Perhaps that's because there's a Mexican restaurant next door run by the Mission Foods company?)
- The Bakery Tour hosted by Boudin Bakery. A demonstration sourdough bakery. Like the tortilla factory, there was a video. However, the factory itself was less interesting because not much seemed to be happening.
- Sun Wheel. A cute, huge gondola.
- Orange Stinger. Basically, a giant circular swing set. Simple yet fun.
- Mulholland Madness. I apparently don't like roller coasters that don't have banked curves. It just doesn't feel right.
When I returned to the park, it was reserved for employees from my company. I hit the rides I still wanted to try but previously missed. There was no or practically no line on any of them, though sometimes it took five or ten minutes to walk from the entrance through the winding waiting areas to get to the ride itself.
- Matterhorn Bobsleds. A great ride, nicely banked, entirely downhill. It had great nighttime views of Disneyland. I accidentally rode this twice because the people at the front of my cart asked to go around again. As there was no line, the crew indulged the request.
- Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. A simple yet satisfying ride of a car that dips and turns sharply, smashing open doors to reveal new scenes. I knew I rode this in Florida as a kid. The memories came flooding back.
- Indiana Jones Adventure. A pretty good ride in a jeep-like vehicle. I especially like how projected light made it look like rats, snakes, and spiders were crawling on the wall. I also thought how the ride made it seem like a boulder was rolling down at us, with us dropping into the floor, was well done and scary.
- Pirates of the Caribbean. A surprisingly sedate cruise on a boat past countless, intricate, elaborate scenes of pirates fighting, a pirate village, a treasure island, etc.
After the rides, I grabbed food. I appreciated the fact that food was free because the company had reserved the park and agreed to subsidize the food. This allowed me to try a lot until I got something that satisfied me. First I tried a bowl of gumbo, which wasn't really a gumbo except for the fact that it was a thick stew with rice and okra. It came with a pretty tasteless dinner roll. I threw most of these away. Then, at a grilled meat joint, I got a chicken skewer, which was served coated in an overly sweet sauce, and a beef skewer, which was too spicy and too tough in texture to eat. These came with a light, toasted bread stick. Though certainly better than the dinner roll, it wasn't particularly good. I ate about half of this meal before giving up. Finally, I chose a pulled pork sandwich, which was satisfying. It came with baked beans and a wedge of pickle.
After dinner, I briefly explored the dance area and party, decided it wasn't my scene, and grabbed a hot chocolate for the bus ride back to my hotel.
The following day was devoted to flying home. The flight attendant who made announcements was a comedian--he told fairly good Google jokes.
French Vanilla Ice Cream
Neat fact of the day: in the term "French Vanilla," as in French Vanilla Ice Cream, French is not an adjective that applies to vanilla. Rather, it applies to ice cream, saying that's it's made in the French style, meaning it includes eggs or egg yolks. (Ice cream usually only includes dairy products and sugar.)
I learned this after doing a tasting of Dreyer's regular vanilla versus Dreyer's French vanilla. The tasting was originally inspired because I noticed the cartons don't make it clear what the difference between them is. The difference in taste was obvious: the French vanilla was more eggy. I preferred the normal vanilla.
Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
On Saturday, January 26, 2008, two of us decided to do something interesting. We drove north to the opposite side of the Golden Gate Bridge, parked, walked across the entire bridge, and walked back. The weather was surprisingly pleasant, especially given the forecast of rain for the whole weekend, a forecast made more believable by the large amount of rain the previous day. As expected, the bridge had good views of the bay.
We then headed to Sausalito, a town I've visited a few times before but always for a particular destination or reason, never to explore. It's a cute, small town, reminding me much of Carmel. The businesses in Carmel, however, are inland; in Sausalito, the retailers are arrayed on a road along the waterfront. Like the bridge, Sausalito had a pretty good view of the bay.
While walking on the waterfront, we saw many birds, some with enormmous wingspans. We watched a bird dive underwater and reappear with a fish in its bill. It then gulped it down.
In town, we spotted many intriguing art galleries. Some had art I've seen before at street fairs. We went in Fingerhut's Sausalito gallery, a high class art gallery, because it had a special exhibit of Dr. Seuss artwork. How fun! We also entered Petri's Gallery. It has stunning/amazing/awesome glass art. Yes, I was awed. I have some training in glass, and I have no idea how some pieces were made (especially the paperweights). Prices are high, sometimes in the thousands, but I was so impressed I thought the prices appropriate.
Sorry, I forgot to take my camera with me.
Clement Street Dim Sum Stroll
On Monday, January 21, 2008, I strolled down Clement Street in San Francisco's inner Richmond, sampling many items from the take-out dim sum joints. Like my previous such excursion, it was overcast, alternating among raining, drizzling, and simply being humid. We smartly carried umbrellas.
I suppose I should note that, during this excursion, I sampled
- dumplings (shark's fin, celery and shrimp (we got this by accident), and scallion and shrimp)
- a long rolled dumpling (with very little shrimp)
- shu mai (chicken)
- a wonderfully warming porridge
- a steamed pork-and-vegetable bun (eh: too bad it was pork and vegetable mashed into a meatloaf-like consistency; I should've gone straight for the bbq pork)
- a banana cake (dessert; made of mochi; heavier than the steamed bun, yet only a quarter of the size of it)
- some potstickers
- a banh mi sandwich (pork; nowhere near as good as those I used to get in El Cerrito while living in Berkeley)
Carmel
On Saturday, January 12, 2008, I drove to Carmel. It's a cute small town, easily walkable, with lovely beaches nearby.
We had a picnic on a bluff overlooking the beach. It included baguette sandwiches made with ham, cheese (various bries), basil, and tomato, accompanied by snacks of fruit.
We climbed onto the Pebble Beach Golf Course. The caddies were nice when giving us directions on how to find our way out.
We ran among the pretty houses in Carmel. Many have names! How fun.
In town, I went into an art store with many rip van wrinkle paintings, an English candy store, a cheese-and-wine shop, and a store with character that different people liked for different reasons.
I'm not going to bother to put my pictures online.
Police Beat
Some things that make the police reports, especially in safe towns, can be funny be read. Here are some excerpts from the "Police Beat" column of the San Mateo Daily News for Thursday, November 1, 2007.
- Let's Call The Whole Thing Off: Around 1 p.m. Tuesday, a girl called [the] police from El Camino Real in Millbrae to report her ex-boyfriend keeps calling and threatening to tell her parents things, "they don't need to know." The ex-boyfriend told police she's the one who won't stop calling, and he doesn't even have her number. Both were told to stop calling each other.
- Millbrae, Monday, Magnolia Avenue, 9:25 p.m.: Police checked on the driver of a car that had been parked in the same spot for a while. It turned out the driver was "thinking about life in general."
- Foster City, Tuesday, Lyme Lane, 9:42 a.m.: A man called 911 asking for his daughter. It was determined to be a misdial.
- Burlingame, Tuesday, 1100 block of Trousdale Drive, 9:39 a.m.: A resident reported his vehicle missing after leaving it parked with the keys in the ignition.
- Burlingame, Tuesday, 1500 block of Floribunda Avenue, 10:@5 a.m.: An unknown male called a resident and told her she had won $200,000 and that he would bring it to her.
- Burlingame, Tuesday, 1000 block of Burlingame Avenue, 3:03 p.m.: Someone reported two women behind the tennis courts possibly engaging in sexual activity. Police determined they weren't doing anything out of the ordinary.
Boston and New England: Saturday: Returning Home
I flew out on Saturday. These pictures and comments document my few activities of the day.
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