Stuff we're reading / watching / listening to

[Giovanni Schwartz]

That randomly reminded me of the episode of Modern Family where the gay guys are like "We really need to do something about the elephant in the room."

[mic0]

That randomly reminded me of the episode of Modern Family where the gay guys are like "We really need to do something about the elephant in the room."

That was a great elephant, too.

[Digit]

Where does "don't wear white after Labor Day" come from? According to this, snobby millionaires over 100 years ago.

[bobtheenchantedone]

I am never watching The Green Mile ever again.

[Digit]

Medical Marijuana Helps Stem 6-Year-Old's Seisures
Interesting case. From 22 anti-seisure pills per day and being immobilized due to the side effects to being able to run and play again going on a year now.

[Portia]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qok9Ialei4c

The Killers's "Miss Atomic Bomb." Good storytelling, and I like the animation.

[UffishThought]

I just watched We Bought a Zoo, and I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it was going to be the one with Kevin James (is that his name?) getting dating advice from animals, and I liked the real plot of this one much better.

Sometimes I'm a movie talker, sometimes I'm not. But my roommate had already seen it, and I only talk when there's no dialogue, so I felt free. I was feeling all nostalgic because zoos--I don't get to talk animals and enclosures and so on very often. And then I'm teaching high school English, so (1) I was really interested in the problem child high schooler, and (2) I was loving the symbolism and foreshadowing. They compare this cranky old tiger to the son pretty strongly, and they things they did made me near giddy--especially when the son walks into a room wearing an orange sweatshirt and the light slants just right to make stripes. It's fun to notice things like that.

But my roommate thought I hated it, because I was laughing (with joy!) and pointing those things out, and worrying out loud about the relationship between the father and son. It surprised me. I thought it was obvious I was invested and enjoying myself, but I guess not. Does no one else analyze what's going on in a movie for fun? Does it make a difference if you're doing it during or after the movie?

[Yarjka]

I just watched We Bought a Zoo, and I was pleasantly surprised. I thought it was going to be the one with Kevin James (is that his name?) getting dating advice from animals, and I liked the real plot of this one much better.

I watched that on a plane ride a while back, and was similarly surprised. A rather enjoyable film, really.

[Portia]

House of Mirth. Gillian Anderson is my new beauty/style idol. What happened to her?!

[Emiliana]

I'm reading "The Wind in the Willows." It's pretty much adorable.

[Digit]

"Going Galt" in international waters.

Ocean state would have no welfare, no minimum wage, and few restrictions on weapons

I wonder if the allowance for paying workers less than minimum wage would be utilized. Do the peons live on the island/states or do they commute by boat from San Fran every day?

[Emiliana]

I'm reading the original Bram Stoker Dracula. I started it yesterday at work, and then when I was driving home I saw a hearse, witnessed a car accident, and generally managed to freak myself out.

[C is for]

I'm almost done watching Lark Rise to Candleford. It's ideal for having on one screen while I work on the other because it's basically the British version of Little House on the Prairie.

Amazon Prime free trial has been great.

[Digit]

Interesting New Yorker article titled Why Smart People Are Stupid. An opening brain teaser:

A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

If you don't get the right answer on your own, don't feel bad.

And here’s the upsetting punch line: intelligence seems to make things worse. The scientists gave the students four measures of “cognitive sophistication.” As they report in the paper, all four of the measures showed positive correlations, “indicating that more cognitively sophisticated participants showed larger bias blind spots.” This trend held for many of the specific biases, indicating that smarter people (at least as measured by S.A.T. scores) and those more likely to engage in deliberation were slightly more vulnerable to common mental mistakes. Education also isn’t a savior; as Kahneman and Shane Frederick first noted many years ago, more than fifty per cent of students at Harvard, Princeton, and M.I.T. gave the incorrect answer to the bat-and-ball question.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

I got the right answer, yo. $1.00 and $.10, right? : )

[Digit]

I got the right answer, yo. $1.00 and $.10, right? : )

But then the bat costs 0.9 more than the ball.

[Giovanni Schwartz]

I know...

We run into the whole "Sarcasm and the internet thing" again. That's why I put a smiley face at the end.

[C is for]

I got held up because what kind of baseball set is this that the ball only costs 5 cents??

[Digit]

Yard sale

[Yarjka]

Is it possible to be smart, but very bad at math? Because that's me.