Month: October 2010

Jason Peters says we're entering the season of poetry:

There’s a certain slant of light now, and sharper teeth in the sometimes barking, sometimes snarling, always changing leaf-swirling wind that blows the barred clouds across the sky, a blue serene slightly different now, icier, sharper—sharper and yet more pale. The cornfields, so lately verdant, stretch into pale expanses of stark stubble, hard beneath the chilly air–but warmed by the low-riding autumnal sun.

In this season of swelling gourds the high priests cense the air with wood fires and charcoal stoves. Whether in backyards or stadium parking lots, men and women gather ’round brats and burgers and pork chops and beer, and inside the stadiums it’s drums and fight songs and nubile cheerleaders and the crack of shoulder pads and helmets and the arc of a ball going end-over-end toward the uprights, and above it all—above the Communubacations major wearing #72 and the General Studies major taking the pitch on the option—the lazy drone of a small plane trailing banners for Big Al’s Insurance and Sandersson’s Chevrolet.

Fall is here!

Famous poems on autumn here. And don't forget this goard season classic:

I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I'm about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it's gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is — fucking fall. There's a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

(Image from Flickr user Eyeline-Imagery)

Brian Boyd explains the science behind our love of fictional stories:

Wouldn’t you expect a successful species, as we seem to be, to spend its time focusing on what’s true in the world? But we, uniquely, often distract ourselves with what we know to be untrue. …

The amount of play in a species correlates with its flexibility of behavior. If behavior is not built in genetically, it needs to be learned to maximize flexibility. If a behavior is hardwired, there would be no point in exercising it in a way as expensive in energy and risk as play. But if there is room for flexibility, then individuals who can improve their execution of complicated behaviors and their judgment of situations in which they are needed, will fare better. ..

We, uniquely, gain most of our advantages over other species, and even over one another, not from physical but from mental strength and speed. Information matters for any species, but for no others is it so decisive as for ours.

Stef Willen reports from the charred front lines of natural disaster accounting.

Mark M. Smith stresses the importance of psychology in recreating the past with sensory details:

[T]wo studies – one performed in the 1960s in the UK, the other a decade later in the US – found that Brits disliked the smell of methyl salicylate (wintergreen) while Americans really enjoyed it. Historical specificity – the context in which noses smell – accounts for the learned preference: among a particular generation in the UK, the scent of wintergreen was associated with medicine and ointments used during the Second World War (hardly the best of times).

Conversely, wintergreen in the US is the olfactory cognate not of medicine but of candy (a minty smell).

Nokia is working with researchers at University of Cambridge to develop "a flexible circuit board that yields to your epidermis like a [second skin]. The electronic skin, which includes a touchpad, responds to touch and pressure even when it’s pulled like a piece of gum."

(Hat tip: The Rumpus)

Alex Goldmark explains the U.K.'s experimentation with the "social impact bond" and how its success may mean it's coming to a city near you:

Social entrepreneurs or community groups are loaned money by private investors to try out solutions to social problems. If the solution works, the government pays whoever invested in the solution a share of whatever spending is saved. In other words, as one writer put it, "It’s a way of transferring public sector savings to private investors who are willing to put money into preventative initiatives early on." …

This first use of the technique is to cut recidivism of those doing short-term prison sentences at Peterborough Prison, about two hours north of London. Right now about 60 percent of prisoners in that category re-offend, costing the state lots of money in policing, court costs, and prison operations. Simply put: If that recidivism figure drops, the government saves significantly.

To address this, investors pooled $8 million to fund three local charity groups, which will offer mentoring and drug counseling, among other things. If they meet their target of a 10 percent reduction in recidivism, investors will get their money back at between 7.5 and 13.5 percent.

“Pot Smoking Radicals Are Using the Internet to Turn America Into a Socialist Sex Utopia” – Christwire. Socialist? Excuuuse me.

“After The Day’s Business,” by Richard Hovey first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly in August of 1898:

When I sit down with thee at last alone,
Shut out the wrangle of the clashing day,
The scrape of petty jars that fret and fray,
The snarl and yelp of brute beasts for a bone, —
When thou and I sit down at last alone,
And through the dusk of rooms divinely gray
Spirit to spirit finds its voiceless way
As tone melts meeting in accordant tone,
Oh, then our souls far in the vast of sky
Look from a tower too high for sound of strife
Or any violation of the town,
Where the great vacant winds of God go by,
And over the huge misshapen city of life
Love pours his silence and his moonlight down.

PPP's latest poll shows Democrats winning self-described moderates 58-28:

The fact that Republicans are winning this election without showing much appeal to moderates is another reminder that the main reason for the pending GOP onslaught is the disengagement of Democratic voters. Conservatives will make up a much larger portion of the electorate this year than they did in 2008 and that's put Republicans in a position to make big gains without even having to develop a message that's appealing to the center.

That's the reason why this year's Republican resurgence may prove to be short lived and why much of what the party gains this year could be lost again in 2012. The formula they're using for victory this year- fire up the base, forget the moderates- may work for a midterm election but it's not likely to be particularly sustainable in a Presidential year. If Republicans want the 2012 election cycle to be as enjoyable for them as the 2010 cycle has been they have a lot of work to do to broaden their base.