What the @$%#?
So if you’re headed to South Pasadena this week, be sure to turn down the volume on that Snoop Dogg CD, and, if the little old lady from Pasadena cuts you off in traffic, don’t even think about flipping her the bird.
Not that police will slap cuffs on you and haul your sorry, er, butt off to jail in light of the proclamation passed Wednesday by the City Council. But you could be shamed into better behavior by the unsettling glares of residents who take their reputation for civility seriously.
“That’s one of the purposes of this,” Mayor Michael Cacciotti said of his city’s proclamation designating the first week of March as No Cussing Week. “It provides us a reminder to be more civil, to elevate the level of discourse.”
The proclamation will be in effect until Friday, and then the first week of every March hereafter.
Read the story here.
Mind Mining
Scientists have developed a computerized mind-reading technique which lets them accurately predict the images that people are looking at by using scanners to study brain activity.
The breakthrough by American scientists took MRI scanning equipment normally used in hospital diagnosis to observe patterns of brain activity when a subject examined a range of black and white photographs. Then a computer was able to correctly predict in nine out of 10 cases which image people were focused on. Guesswork would have been accurate only eight times in every 1,000 attempts.
The study raises the possibility in the future of the technology being harnessed to visualize scenes from a person’s dreams or memory.
Read the story here.
It’s in the Genes
You can’t buy happiness but it looks like you can at least inherit it, British and Australian researchers said on Thursday.
A study of nearly 1,000 pairs of identical and non-identical twins found genes control half the personality traits that make people happy while factors such as relationships, health and careers are responsible for the rest of our well-being.
Read the article here.
How to Become a Rock Star
If Jonathan Coulton were to write a song about his own success as a rock star, there would be little mention of the booze, drugs, one-night stands and lonely road laments that typically play out the power chord mix of mythic guitar heroes and music idols.
Instead, Coulton would refer to escaping a life awash in Fritos and Mountain Dew, stuck at his desk writing computer code — “The Office,” set to music. It is, by his own admission, a fairly accurate description of his own former life as a software engineer.
In the fall of 2005, Coulton told his wife he was quitting his software job to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a rock star. He could have barely picked a more inauspicious moment. At 36, he was bearing down on middle age — and his wife had just given birth to their first child, a daughter.
“I have known some bitter people in my life who never did what they wanted to do, and I didn’t wanna be that person,” says Coulton.
Watch the video here.
The 23rd Los Angeles Marathon
Ryan Alsop #12358
Distance MARATHON (26.2 miles)
Clock Time 03:31:45
Chip Time 03:30:40 (Ryan’s finish time)
Overall Place 539th best time (out of 17,000 marathon finishers)
Gender Place 484th man to finish race
Division Place 92nd (35 to 39 age group)
Age Grade 59.4%
Start time 00:01:05.35
Pace 8:02.2 (per mile)
Split10K 0:46:19 (6.1 miles)
Half 1:39:24 (13.1 miles)
Split30K 2:22:03 (18.3 miles)
See the LA Marathon course here.
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Slainte!