It's a random question that recently came to me: what inconsequential, yet mind-blowing discoveries have you recently had? For the sake of context, I had a friend who didn't know that breakfast meant 'to break one's fast'.

 

Post away!

Before, I used to feel a bit sad for not studying to be a chef. Making great food seemed like the best way to make people happy, which seemed like a worthy goal. As a physicist you don't much ever make anyone happy.

 

I recently realized that it was silly, because as a chef I would be over-aware of bad food.

Now I can eat and enjoy pretty much anything. And if I ever feel like it, I can always learn some cooking if I feel like it. I bet it's a bit harder to go the other way, as I haven't heard of many chefs trying to learn physics.

I felt much better when I had this 'relevation' :)

I am going to steal these ones because I am vindictive like that.

 

Fedex has an arrow in between the e and x.

 

Amazon has an arrow that spans the first a to the z because they have 'everything from a to z'.

 

Hahaha I hate fun.

Hahaha I hate fun.

Stumbling on to the source of your avatar.

I am going to steal these ones because I am vindictive like that.

 

Fedex has an arrow in between the e and x.

 

Amazon has an arrow that spans the first a to the z because they have 'everything from a to z'.

 

Hahaha I hate fun.

 

Amazon has an arrow?

I am going to steal these ones because I am vindictive like that.

 

Fedex has an arrow in between the e and x.

 

Amazon has an arrow that spans the first a to the z because they have 'everything from a to z'.

 

Hahaha I hate fun.

 

Amazon has an arrow?

Oh that arrow, I guess I never really paid attention to their logo, I was looking for an arrow like the Fedex one in the text.

The running shoes are actually called "Asics", not "Oasics" despite the deceptive "O" shape at the start of the logo.

Ray-Ban isn't someones name. It's derived from "to ban rays".

The Caterbury Clothing Company logo is a NZ brand, and has C's on it that make the shape of Kiwi's

I feel like I'm reliving last week's reddit.

 

That being said, on aforementioned thread I learned the pun within Back To The Future's lines:

 

Doc: I can't go back to the past and meet myself, that would create a paradox!

 

(as in a pair-of-docs)

 

get it? Ha.

I don't know if this counts, but the reason why we're under the impression the mind is located in the head and not in the rest of the body is because most of our sensory organs are there, especially our eyes. Instinctively we place ourselves behind those sensory organs, despite the fact that, if my limited understanding of neurology is to be trusted, it can be said that the spine thinks. Am I being clear? If yes, am I being wrong?

I don't know if this counts, but the reason why we're under the impression the mind is located in the head and not in the rest of the body is because most of our sensory organs are there, especially our eyes. Instinctively we place ourselves behind those sensory organs, despite the fact that, if my limited understanding of neurology is to be trusted, it can be said that the spine thinks. Am I being clear? If yes, am I being wrong?

The spine doesn't really think, at least nothing complex. The grey matter located in the spine handles many of our reflexes (because it is closer to most of our body than our brian is, and can intercept certain signals and take action before our brain is even aware that something is wrong. If you touch a hot stove or step on a tack, you will have started moving before you are aware of the pain, unless you did it deliberately, in which case the brain can override this process.

 

I never though about placing ourselves in our heads because that's where our major senses are. Makes sense to me. Especially vision, since that is easily our primary sense. I never thought it before, but our other directional sense (hearing, and to a more limited capacity, smell) are placed so that all 3 directional senses are operating from the same perspective, so that we can hear and smell relative to our sense of sight.

This was a lot more elaborate when I had first thought about it, but I'm missing half of what I was thinking, including what idea I was disagreeing with.

It just occurred to me that one of the main elements of 1984, newspeak, has a very close relation to memes, and the fact that more and more people are using them in everyday conversation. Newspeak being the simplification of language to the point where expression becomes very limited and people become considerably more dim from the lack of thought required to express themselves.

 

Sounds like memes to me. Almost like the phrase "could care less", where people generally know the idea that's being expressed, but don't actually think about what they're saying, to the point where they don't even realize that the phrase makes no sense.

Sounds like memes to me. Almost like the phrase "could care less", where people generally know the idea that's being expressed, but don't actually think about what they're saying, to the point where they don't even realize that the phrase makes no sense.

Orwell covered that sort of thing separately.

It just occurred to me that one of the main elements of 1984, newspeak, has a very close relation to memes, and the fact that more and more people are using them in everyday conversation. Newspeak being the simplification of language to the point where expression becomes very limited and people become considerably more dim from the lack of thought required to express themselves.

 

Sounds like memes to me. Almost like the phrase "could care less", where people generally know the idea that's being expressed, but don't actually think about what they're saying, to the point where they don't even realize that the phrase makes no sense.

 

I think newspeak is more the elimination of words/idea from the vocabulary, not merely the simplification of it - although it would often get simplified as a result of this.

 

On the subject of 1984, I had a bit of a revelation when I noticed that Muse's album 'The Resistance' is based on 1984. Listening to the lyrics carefully, you can hear them mention the Thought Police, PR transmissions, and Eurasia (which is actually in the song title).

 

Don't really know how it took me any length of time to notice it to be honest.

Publicly, the idea of newspeak was to simplify language, to make it easier to communicate. However, its real purpose was to eliminate certain though processes.

 

For example, you can't think of something as "bad", only as "double ungood" (or something like that).

If we ever get to the level of people actually saying "double plus win" and such, remind me to kill myself.

Small revelation: these texts I don't understand are badly written.