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December 28, 2006

Top Astronomy Photos of 2006

From Slashdot ...

Here's a webpage featuring the Best Astronomical Photos of 2006. Here are two that just blow my mind ...



Space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station silhouetted against the Sun.



The Planet Saturn eclipsing the Sun.

Posted by Steven at 06:06 PM | Comments (0)

December 22, 2006

Wisdom Teeth ... Away!

Alanna had all four of her budding, impacted wisdom teeth out today. We chose this date so she would have as much time as possible to recover before the Solo and Ensemble competition in February, and not conflict with All-Region Band. She's home now, zonked out on meds while we all ride out the holidays at home.

Posted by Steven at 07:36 PM | Comments (1)

December 14, 2006

The Chemistry of Limerence?

From today's New York Times (Select):

A radio interviewer in Dublin recently asked me why, in my view, people in Ireland were no happier now that their booming economy had brought them a sudden tide of prosperity. In answering, I cited well-known data showing that once people leave poverty and are able to satisfy their basic needs, there is little to no correlation between earnings and happiness. Or as the Beatles put it, “Money can’t buy me love.”

Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel-winning psychologist at Princeton, has explained the paradox of the unhappy rich in terms of “the hedonic treadmill”: as we earn more income, our material expectations ratchet inexorably upward, so there’s never enough money. The chase for ever more expensive pleasures never ends. As a result, the rich end up needing more to be as satisfied as the poor are with less money and lower expectations.

Like many friends (and boomers) I've experienced this. Some of my treasured tools and toys are really, really pricey. I like to think they give me more bang for the buck, but there are two exponential curves are work here. The first is the curve of cost, which the article points out (and needs no repeating). (It's also worth pointing out that a lot of manufactured items become exponentially inexpensive over time.) The second curve is the perceived emotional value of things from the past. Money cannot by the most treasured thing (once one is old enough to appreciate it): time. The value of something goes up exponentially as it passes away at the speed of time.

So things you once had are worth less, but more intrinsically more valuable, if you don't retain them. And if you do retain them, they become inordinately valued, relative to their actual value. My collection of old Apple ][ computers is a good example. As modern computers go, they are worthless. As heirlooms, they are nearly priceless to me.

In 2004, Kahneman reported data from a survey of 2000 women showing that good personal relationships – far more than money – determine how satisfied people are with their lives.

The emerging field of social neuroscience, which studies how people’s brains operate during interactions with others, is beginning to explain Kahneman’s conclusions. Satisfying relationships, it seems, have powerful effects on brain function, particularly the neural centers for pleasure.

Consider, for instance, research that has been done on attraction. Neuroscientists scanned the brains of men while they looked at photos of various women. Only when a man looked at a woman who was attractive to him and appeared to be looking him straight in the eye (as if she were interested in him, too) did his brain secrete a dose of dopamine, a brain chemical that delivers pleasure. If the man was not drawn to the woman, or when her eyes looked elsewhere, there were no molecules of joy.

At University College London, researchers recruited men and women who were “truly, deeply and madly” in love to have their brains imaged while they looked at photos of their romantic partners. As the subjects gazed at the pictures, their brains lit up neural areas that also activate during another kind of euphoria: narcotic addiction. Apparently, the intense happiness of romance owes much of its ecstasy to the same brain receptors that respond to opiates. Jaak Panksepp, a neuroscientist at Bowling Green State University, in Ohio, proposes that a couple falling in love go through the neural equivalent of forming an addiction – to each other.

These findings are old news to me. I've experienced this first hand for a long, long time. I called it limerence (the word was coined by Dr. Dorothy Tennov) but it amounts to the same thing. The longing and the sight of a limerent object drives a limerent person crazy with addictive neurostimulants. I think limerence and bi-polarism go together, too. The mood swings are stronger, more pronounced and triggered by the psychology of limerence. Another stimulant in this equation is hearing -- music triggers the emotions and the stimulants, too. I suspect they'll find similar results with music.

So why did you get into music, performing or doing radio?

Posted by Steven at 05:18 PM | Comments (1)

December 13, 2006

Christmas Party Season Has Arrived

Anne and I are attending a bunch of events in the next few days ... and then it's going to get very quiet around here.

Tomorrow my company is hosting a holiday lunch at the Benihana in Irving (Anne won't be there).

Friday night Alanna's high school band is having it's first party exclusively for the students ... and they've asked me to DJ. Zounds. I'll put on my glowing-lace quads ...

Saturday we have two parties ... Martha's oppulent feast, and then later that night, Simon's infamous "fur lined codpiece" Xmas party and White Elephant Gift Exchange *featuring* said "thong". It can get pretty wild.

Sunday we are attending the Schmalzried's first house party in the afternoon.

Then ... nothing, until Christmas Eve when we have some neighbors over, and the next day, it's just us at home for the first time in a long while.

I'm technically on vacation starting the 20th, but I will be "on call" all holiday and I'll be working on a bunch of projects, some work related, so I'll stay busy.

Posted by Steven at 10:18 PM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2006

Hardware Wars

I found this gem on YouTube.

It's an interview with the "producer" of Hardware Wars.

Posted by Steven at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2006

Traveller Wiki

Someone's created a Wiki for Traveller, the Games Designer Workshop RPG I used to play back in my LHHS and RPI days.
Sadly, GDW protects their copyright so well, very little of the actual game info is here.

Posted by Steven at 12:35 AM | Comments (0)

December 04, 2006

Guy Kawasaki Interviewing Steve Wozniak

As part of his book tour, the Woz was interviewed by former Apple Evangelist Guy Kawasaki.

Joe Bob sez "check it out."

Posted by Steven at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)