Moods

"One way moods differ from the grosser feelings of emotions, psychologists tell us, has to do with the ineffability of their causes: while we typically know what has caused an outright emotion, we often find ourselves in one or another mood without knowing its source. [Experiments] suggest, though, that our world may be filled with mood triggers that we fail to notice--everything from the saccharine Muzak in an elevator to the sour tone in someone's voice.

"For instance, take the expressions we see on other people's faces. As Swedish researchers found, merely seeing a picture of a happy face elicits fleeting activity in the muscles that pull the mouth into a smile. Indeed, whenever we gaze at a photograph of someone whose face displays a strong emotion, like sadness, disgust, or joy, our facial muscles automatically start to mirror the other's facial expression. ...

"We mimic the happiness of a smiling face, pulling our own muscles into a subtle grin, even though we may be unaware that we have seen the smile. That mimicked slight smile might not be obvious to the naked eye, but scientists monitoring facial muscles track such emotional mirroring clearly. It's as though our face were being preset, getting ready to display the full emotion. This mimicry has a bit of a biological consequence, since our facial expressions trigger within us the feelings we display. We can stir any emotion by intentionally setting our facial muscles for that feeling: just clench a pencil in your teeth, and you will force your face into a smile, which subtly evokes a positive feeling.

"Edgar Allan Poe had an intuitive grasp of this principle. He wrote: 'When I wish to find out how good or how wicked anyone is, or what his thoughts are at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my own mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.' "

Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence, Bantam, 2006, 18-19.

Auto-storytelling

Similarly, Bell and Gemmell would like software that organized the contents of the archive into movies—something, at least, to compress and shape it, to summarize its parts. “Auto-storytelling,” Gemmell calls it. “My dream is I go on vacation and take my pictures and come home and tell the computer, ‘Go blog it,’ so that my mother can see it. I don’t have to do anything; the story is there in the pattern of the images.”

Dinner Soon

Cha Soba, Concombre et Tofu

- 225g (8 ounces) cha soba (green tea buckwheat noodles)
- 2 tablespoons Japanese soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon Japanese rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon mirin
- 1 tbsp sesame butter, a.k.a. sesame paste, tahini, or neri-goma
- 300g (10 ounces) firm tofu, diced
- 1 large cucumber, deseeded and diced
- Sesame seeds, toasted

Serves 2 to 3.

Cook the soba according to package instruction. Plunge in ice water to stop the cooking, and leave in a colander to drain.

In a small bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, rice vinegar, mirin, and sesame butter. Add the soba and coat well. Fold in the tofu and cucumber, sprinkle with sesame seeds, and serve.

Dinner

Meal for tomorrow or the next day. To serve with a Champagne.

ingredients
2 cups water
1 1/2 cups canned unsweetened coconut milk
2 teaspoons (packed) golden brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups basmati rice (about 13 ounces), well rinsed, drained
1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut, lightly toasted
preparation
Combine 2 cups water, coconut milk, sugar, and salt in heavy large saucepan. Bring to simmer, then stir in rice. Cover, leaving slight opening for steam to escape. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 12 minutes. Cover tightly, remove from heat, and let stand 10 minutes. Transfer rice to bowl; sprinkle with toasted coconut.


ingredients
1 14-ounce can unsweetened coconut milk,* whisked to blend
1 1/4 teaspoons Thai curry paste*
1 large red bell pepper, cut into 1/3-inch-wide strips
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 pound chicken tenders, cut crosswise in half
1 tablespoon (packed) brown sugar
1 tablespoon fish sauce (nam pla)*
1 cup chopped seeded tomatoes
1/3 cup thinly sliced fresh basil
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
preparation
Bring 1/4 cup coconut milk and curry paste to boil in large skillet over medium-high heat, whisking constantly. Add bell pepper and onion; saut
 5 minutes. Stir in chicken, remaining coconut milk, sugar and fish sauce. Cook until chicken is cooked through, stirring often, about 5 minutes. Stir in remaining 3 ingredients and simmer 1 minute. Season with salt.

*Available at Asian markets and some supermarkets nationwide.

Hegemonic Stability Theory, Anyone?

The implication is this: If nothing changes in how globalization currently works, Americans will be increasingly exposed to downward pressure on incomes and living standards. "Yes," says Gomory. "There are many ways to look at it, all of which reach the same conclusion."

I ask Gomory what he would say to those who believe this is a just outcome: Americans become less rich, others in the world become less poor. That might be "a reasonable personal choice," he agrees. "But that isn't what the people in this country are being told. No one has said to us: 'You're probably a little too rich and these other folks are a little too poor. Why don't we even it out?' Instead, what we usually hear is: 'It's going to be good for everyone. In the long run we're going to get richer with globalization.'"

What could be more European?

Eating cheese. Drinking Bordeaux. Reading Kant's "What is Enlightenment?"

Should Crazy People be Accomodated?

"Namely, people who are different from the norm not only get scrupulous fairness under law, which even John Locke advocated, they also get what is called rights of “accommodation”, namely, they do not have to observe certain laws that burden their conscience, unless there is a “compelling state interest”. In other words, if you are a Jew and you receive a subpoena to testify in court on a Saturday, you may refuse without legal penalty. If you are a Roman Catholic priest and you are testifying under oath in a criminal trial, you may refuse to divulge information you heard in the confessional, without paying any legal penalty. If your religion forbids military service, you are exempt from military conscription, and you don’t have to go to jail for your conscientious refusal. And: if your religion requires the use of illegal drugs in sacred ceremonies, you may be exempt from the drug laws in that context. I believe that this tradition of “accommodation” expresses a spirit of equal respect for minorities living in a majority world. Writing to the Quakers about why he was not going to require them to perform military service, our first president George Washington says, “The conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with the greatest delicacy and tenderness”. I wish I saw more of this delicacy and tenderness in Europe today." - Martha Nussbaum

So if one holds irrational beliefs, you get more rights?!!?

Hah-vahd

"Emerson's Harvard was a small, nondescript place, half boys school, half center for advanced study. It had fewer than two hundred fifty students. Emerson's class had sixty, with most of the boys coming from Massachusetts and New England, and with 27 percent of the students coming from elsewhere. There was a marked southern presence, ... 18 percent were from South Carolina alone. In Emerson's day, a student commonly entered college at thirteen or fourteen, graduating at seventeen or eighteen. As a result, college life had at times a certain rowdiness. In Emerson's sophomore year an epic food fight broke out on the first floor of University Hall. The fight quickly got beyond the throwing of food and almost all of the school's crockery was smashed. But it would be a mistake to assume this was the dominant tone of college life. Young people grew up faster then. Emerson could read before he was three; he taught his first class at fourteen. Girls were little women, boys were little men. The curriculum shows that Harvard was not like either the high school or college of today; it offered a combination of basic and advanced studies, functioning as a sort of early college.

"Emerson took the same set of required courses that everyone else did. He learned enough Greek to read both the Iliad and the New Testament. In Latin he read Livy, Horace, Cicero, Juvenal, and Persius as well as Hugo Grotius's De veritate religionis Christianae. He studied algebra, plane geometry, analytical geometry, and spherical geometry. He took Roman history in his freshman year and in his senior year he studied the principles of American constitutional government, reading the Federalist Papers. In science he did physics and astronomy as a junior, chemistry as a senior. ...

"Back in the college yard, there was class football every day at noon. ...

"Emerson himself said later that even though you knew the university was hostile to genius, you sent your children there and hoped for the best."

Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson, University of California, 1995, pp. 6-7.