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Meta
Monthly Archives: July 2009
a guilt-trip down memory lane
When I lived in Oakland, I was twice approached after sunset by a panhandler who announced, “I’m black but I’m not a mugger!” Both times I flinched and, of course, felt guilty. It now occurs to me belatedly that, if … Continue reading
Posted in California, psychology, race
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more meaningless zeros
A quirk in DVD subtitles: a phrase like “ten minutes before seven” is consistently rendered as 10 minutes before 7:00. Why not go all the way and make it 6:50? I am amused to find that 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 … Continue reading
Posted in cinema, language
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mind tools
Someone recently told me that it’s easier to memorize a sequence, such as a text, from the end: when you recite it you’re moving toward familiar ground. Friday I gave this trick a modest test, when I had to copy … Continue reading
Posted in language, me!me!me!, psychology
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a perverse incentive in customer service
Awhile ago I worked out that, if you want to watch a different disc every evening using Netflix, your quota (the number of discs you have out at a time) needs to be at least five: three for the mail … Continue reading
Posted in cinema, economics
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where’s my fix?
For two or three years I was never without a supply of navel oranges, because the Australian (or before that Chilean) crop came in just as the California crop was ending; but the antipodean goodies have not (yet) shown up … Continue reading
Posted in economics, food, me!me!me!
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Nero Wolfe and the Drones Club
P. G. Wodehouse and Rex Stout were contemporaries and friends, I recently learned. The opening pages of Stout’s Champagne For One read like a Bertie Wooster story: an acquaintance known as Dinky, feigning laryngitis, rings to beg that the narrator … Continue reading
I watch stuff
I’ve been relatively quiet here since I stopped listing my Netflix rentals. I could do that some more.