Movie poster of the week

Why do some ideas rapidly take hold while most others fail? Turns out it’s the moment as much as the innovator. Consider Cubism… more»

As the U.S. and Iran inch a bit closer to actually talking to each other at next week's UN General Assembly, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has jumped on board the trend of heads of government writing op-eds in American papers. Writing in the Washington Post, Rouhani tells readers that "we must work together to end the unhealthy rivalries and interferences that fuel violence and drive us apart." Rouhani also offers to help mediate talks between the Syrian regime and the opposition. The president's account tweeted out a series of quotes from his piece.

I’m committed to fulfilling my promises to my ppl, incl my pledge to engage in #constructive interaction with world. http://t.co/7cTzRutT0B

— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) September 19, 2013

Key aspect of #constructive interaction entails sincere effort to #engage w/ neighbors & other nations to identify&secure win-win solutions.

— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) September 19, 2013

This is a message the newly elected leader, who answers to Supreme Leader and head of state Sayyed Ali Khamenei, has repeated to the U.S. in recent days. In his first television interview with an American outlet on Wednesday, Rouhani told NBC that his country would "never" pursue a nuclear weapon, and that he was open to talks with the U.S. that would include the possibility of allowing Iran to keep a verifiably peaceful nuclear program. That's an idea the U.S. is open to discussing, too. Spokesperson Jay Carney said on Wednesday that "the window of opportunity for resolving this diplomatically is open, but it will not remain open indefinitely." Going into his first General Assembly in New York, the new Iranian president is clearly going all-out with visibility to the American public: he's also promised an interview to CNN while he's in New York next week. On that trip, Rouhani be accompanied by the country's only Jewish member of Parliament, Siamak Moreh Sedgh.  

In his op-ed, Rouhani sought to explain the intent of his country's nuclear program once more: 

To us, mastering the atomic fuel cycle and generating nuclear power is as much about diversifying our energy resources as it is about who Iranians are as a nation, our demand for dignity and respect and our consequent place in the world. Without comprehending the role of identity, many issues we all face will remain unresolved.

He also addressed the conflict in Syria, which should read as a touchier issue for his American audience here. Iran has been a firm supporter of the Syrian government through the years-long conflict in the country. In the current conflict, Iran has sent Syria weapons, and Iranian forces have travelled to Syria to fight on Assad's side. While Rouhani has acknowledged the use of chemical weapons in the conflict, he's declined to place blame. Here's what he had to say in the op-ed:

We must join hands to constructively work toward national dialogue, whether in Syria or Bahrain. We must create an atmosphere where peoples of the region can decide their own fates. As part of this, I announce my government’s readiness to help facilitate dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition.

President Obama is open to meeting with Rouhani under certain conditions while he's in New York next week, though plans to actually do so are far from a done deal. 

theatlantic:

Today in Selfies: Bill Clinton, Bill Gates

A tale of two Bills.

Read more. [Image: Bill Clinton via Bill Gates via Ow.ly]

The longtime and still primary feedstock for biodiesel has received a bump up in its demand and value. Figures from the United Soybean Board show that in order to meet this year’s federal requirement of 1.28 billion gallons of the green fuel this year, it will take 9 billion pounds of vegetable oils and animal fats, with a majority, at least 4.8 billion pounds, coming from soybean oil. That equals out to 430 million bushels of American soybeans.

“There’s value for soybean farmers from the growing market use of soybean oil for biodiesel,” says Gregg Fujan, a USB director and soybean farmer from Weston, Neb. “It expands the market for our soybeans, which also increases the price we receive.”

According to research commissioned by soybean farmers in Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota through their state soy checkoff boards, biodiesel contributed to a $15 billion increase in soybean-oil revenues between 2006 and 2012. Over that time period, this raised the price of soybeans by 74 cents per bushel.

Biodiesel already qualifies as the Nation’s first EPA-approved Advanced Biofuel. Guess that makes soybeans the first advanced feedstock.

The science of the improbable. Are coincidences evidence of the coziness of the universe, or the quirkiness of our minds?… more»

For the past five years, highway officials in Polk County, Wis., have gone shopping at cheese farms — but not for cheese. They just want the brine, which they slather on roads instead of spending thousands of dollars on salt. And the idea seems to be catching on. Businessweek interviews Moe Norby, who thought up the idea of the salt alternative for the western Wisconsin county. Saltmakers are expensive to buy, but it's Wisconsin — swing a cat and who'll hit a dairy farmer who uses brine in…

thenewenlightenmentage:

Read Richard Feynman’s physics lectures for free online

Physicist Richard Feynman was particularly famous for his lectures, which were known for being an engaging and accessible introduction to a number of scientific topics.Now Volume One of The Feynman Lectures is available in its entirety online.

Videos of several of Feynman’s lectures are already online, but now Caltech and The Feynman Lectures Website have made the text of the first volume of his textbook, authored by Feynman, Robert B. Leighton, and Matthew Sands based on the lectures Feynman delivered at Caltech, for free. Huge thanks to everyone involved for making this valuable work more accessible to the general public.

The first volume is 52 chapters long and focuses mainly on mechanics, radiation, and heat. The team that brought us this volume also hopes to bring us Volumes 2 and 3 at some point in the future. In the meantime, dig in!

The Feynman Lectures on Physics [via MetaFilter]

A new paper presents hitherto unknown evidence that appears to close the book on the cause of Christopher McCandless’s death…

As new details emerge about the origin of the unexpected compromise to avoid American military strikes against Syria, they reinforce that the United States' role in that nation's conflict is — and has always been — largely tangential.

When Secretary of State Kerry blurted out the idea of trading strikes for Syria abandoning its chemical weapons arsenal, it seemed like an accident. A report from the Wall Street Journal detailing the history of the idea suggests that the moment of introduction may have been an accident, but the concept itself was well-worn. First introduced at the G20 economic summit in 2012, it was largely finalized at the summit this year after the August attack that has been the focal point of American efforts. Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, spoke multiple times about the structure of a deal in the interim, setting the stage for a meeting between Obama and Russian president Vladimir Putin for 20 minutes on the last day of the summit.

Mr. Putin mentioned the plan to remove the weapons from Mr. Assad's control, and Mr. Obama agreed it could be an avenue for cooperation, both sides confirm.

They agreed to have Messrs. Kerry and Lavrov shape a proposal. But discussions about it were still preliminary—and the administration had doubts that it would work.

When Kerry opened his mouth, those doubts moved to the back burner.

It is, of course, in the Obama administration's interests to suggest that the provenance of the idea is far longer and more complex than an accidental eruption from the country's top diplomat. Particularly since Russia's rapid embrace of the idea quickly fixed the idea that it was the "Russian proposal," leading to critiques such as that from Slate: "If your foreign policy has to be rescued by a dictator, you are doing it wrong." Russia's ownership of the idea is understandable: it fits squarely within the country's foreign policy objectives and, yes, allows it to look like the calming agent in an unstable situation. The desire to be the ones who came up with the idea that prevented war is global; Poland now says it was the originating country, according to BuzzFeed. (Sadly, its involvement seems belated.)

Whoever came up with the idea, America was always a co-participant focused on a small part of the broader Syrian conflict. This isolationism was intentional; neither the administration nor other elected officials in Washington were eager to have to intermediate the complex factions in the Syrian war. Even after Obama got approval to arm the rebels in an effort to resolve the conflict, the CIA apparently delayed doing so, worried about introducing more arms into the volatile mix. As Obama said in his speech on Tuesday, "America is not the world’s policeman. Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong."

Even before that speech, the American-Polish-Russian plan had already moved away from being one centered around the United States. France and Russia disputed details of the plan at the United Nations, the United States largely standing in the background, holding its sword over Syria. America doesn't want to be the world's policeman, but it is generally cool with being the bouncer.

We won't know until the inevitable Bob Woodward book whether or not the president really wanted to intervene in Syria, even before the chemical weapons attack(s). Given the harsh response to his call for a congressional vote, it's hard to imagine that he's terribly upset about having the country step out of the spotlight.

Tracking Time, Camilo Jose Vergara


Tracking Time, Camilo Jose Vergara


Tracking Time, Camilo Jose Vergara


Tracking Time, Camilo Jose Vergara


Tracking Time, Camilo Jose Vergara


Tracking Time, Camilo Jose Vergara


Tracking Time, Camilo Jose Vergara

Tracking Time, Camilo Jose Vergara

Patrick Stewart Recites a Poem In His Native Huddersfield (Yorkshire) Dialect (by j4ckkkkkk)

It was a glass box. A house in deep woods. It was remote. It was designerly on the interior, animaled on the exterior. It was mine—for a summer. It was two summers ago, and it was intended for critical project studies. “I’m spending the summer upstate,” I would say, as some New Yorkers do. “To write. To play music.” “Where, again?” they would repeat, not being familiar with this particular breed of remote. They’d tick off train stations as I shook my head. No, this was not those. No, this was a remote summer alone from the city, designed to “Make Projects.”

And off I went, trailing instruments and sewing devices and writing material and dog. Yet sixty days later, I was back in the city. And just like that, it was over.

The remote remote

What people who make things know is that ideas fold you in a remote space—inside a cabin, at a writer’s corral, inside your head, at a coffee shop—then ideas press you back out into the world, rubbing your eyes on your behalf. To have an idea is, at some point, to retreat into quietude. With you is the material of the world, the people, their exchanges, the sound of footsteps, the thing people do when they get together, their life sounds. You fold those into your pocket as you fold yourself into your space. And the making begins.

The road leading to the summer house was windy, punctuated with weathered signs. “National Scenic Bypass,” you could make out, barely, on the days it wasn’t raining. The signs, proud proclamations once, were threadbare from weather, as this particular bypass of beautiful that I had chosen to live on was cursed with weather. The deep-mountain woods kind.

Expansive river views, long motorcycle roads, sunsets and rises, farmers’ markets, endless woods—these quickly lose their charm when it rains. Particularly for weeks at a time. Satellite internet, too, loses its certain magical property once rain and storms come. And power goes down. So many days, I would sit, “making projects,” with neither power nor internet.

Making projects

Within a week, the project became just surviving. “Light!” That was a project. “Survived my first tornado…” “Rattlesnake!” These “challenges,” though, as challenging as they were, may not have stood between my creative project-making so distinctly if I had been listening.

Rebecca Solnit:

To hear is to let the sound wander all the way through the labyrinth of your ear; to listen is to travel the other way to meet it. It’s not passive but active, this listening. It’s as though you retell each story, translate it into the language particular to you, fit it into your cosmology so you can understand and respond, and thereby it becomes part of you. The word empathy originally meant feeling into, and to empathize is to reach out to meet the data that comes through the labyrinths of the senses. To enter into, we say, as though another person’s life was also a place you could travel to.”

Rather than listening to the city, I left it. I didn’t meet the urban data halfway, making it part of me, but packed it up and moved its shells upstate. As it turns out, my material is urban. It’s loud, and it’s messy. It has feet and wheels and voices and opinions. It’s anti-pastoral. And without it, I have nothing to create against.

Ideas need material to draw upon first, and a place to draw them out second. And to take hold, ideas, like people, need a home.

This thought was first published by The Pastry Box Project

8 years ago, for the 100th anniversary of the theory of relativity [Tom] decided to test the general theory of relativity.

As he was going to Mt Rainier (5400ft high) with his children for the weekend, he brought in his van 3 cesium clocks while leaving other atomic clocks at his home for comparison. The theory behind the test is that if you’re are at higher altitudes, then your speed (in a galactic coordinate system) is higher than the one you’d have at sea level and therefore time would go “slower” than at lower altitudes.

[Tom] brought 400 pounds of batteries, 200 pounds of clocks and left his car turned on during his 2 days stay in the ‘Paradise Lodge’. He used 120V DC to AC converters and chose to bring 3 cesium clocks to have a triple redundant  setup. When he came back home, he had the good surprise of finding a time difference of 23ns. This is a great application for those rubidium sources you’ve been scavenging.

[Thanks Indyaner via Reddit]

Filed under: clock hacks, hardware

Who knew Russian president Vladimir Putin was the modern day Pablo Picasso of our time? Putin showed his sensitive side to some school children during a recent visit. Truth be told, his artistic ability is more in line with Calvin, from Calvin and Hobbes, than a luminary like Picasso or Rembrandt. But, never the less, Putin showed a classroom full of children and reporters what he could do on Sunday when he graced them with a lovely portrait of... a cat's butt. 

The Russian leader, at odds with the U.S. right now over plans to attack longtime-Russian ally Syria over that country's use of chemical weapons, was making a routine visit to Middle School No. 7 in the Siberian Kurgan Region on Monday to celebrate the first day of the new school year. The school that recently received federal money to upgrade their equipment and repair their facilities. This English report from RIA Novosti fills in the rest: 

Putin took an interest in an interactive whiteboard in the school’s IT department, and after learning it could be written on simply using a finger, he sketched an image that was not immediately recognizeable to everyone. “This is for you to remember,” he told the students.

When one asked what the doodle was, Putin answered with a smile, “It’s a cat - from the back.”

Here's video of Putin's work, per RT:

The RIA Novosti report connects Putin's feline portraiture to similar paintings from former U.S. president George W. Bush. Bush may or may not have entered a cat period in his latest leaked masterpieces. 

Not to leave out any Putin-related news, he also went on a field trip to an aquarium on Sunday where he high-fived a walrus. "Vladimir Putin is basically the Newt Gingrich of Russia," Talking Points Memo's Hunter Walker said on Twitter. Newt Gingrich, like Putin, also enjoys animals. 

Vangelis - Blade Runner 2002 (Esper Edition) (by Sir Darco Eddie)

0:00:00 Prologue And Main Titles 3:54 
0:03:54 Leon’s Voight Kampff Test 1:09 
0:05:03 Sushi Bar — Damask Rose 2:46 
0:07:49 Spinner Ascent 1:21 
0:09:10 Blush Response 5:43 
0:14:53 Wait For Me 5:12 
0:20:05 Deckard Meets Rachael 1:36 
0:21:41 Rachael’s Song 4:20 
0:26:01 Tales Of The Future 4:53 
0:30:54 Bicycle Riders 2:10 
0:33:04 Chew’s Eye Lab 1:15 
0:34:19 Memories Of Green 5:35 
0:39:54 Blade Runner Blues 10:01 
0:49:55 Pris Meets J.F. Sebastian 1:47 
0:51:42 One More Kiss‚ Dear 4:04 
0:55:46 Deckard Dream 1:10 
0:56:56 Thinking Of Rachael 1:18 
0:58:14 Esper Analysis 2:34 
1:00:48 Animoid Row 2:34 
1:03:22 Taffey Lewis Night Club 2:02 
1:05:24 Salome’s Dance 1:23 
1:06:47 Zhora’s Retirement 1:42 
1:08:29 I am The Business 2:29 
1:10:48 Love Theme 4:58 
1:15:46 I Dreamt Music 4:32 
1:20:18 Morning At The Bradbury 3:46 
1:24:04 The Prodigal Son Brings Death 4:07 
1:28:11 Deckard Enters The Bradbury 3:37 
1:31:48 Dangerous Days 0:57 
1:32:45 Wounded Animals 10:53 
1:43:38 Tears In Rain 2:51 
1:46:29 Rachael Sleeps 2:08 
1:48:37 End Titles 4:06

tacticalneuralimplant:

Altered Carbon artwork

An award-winning economist, University of Chicago professor, and new mom is declaring war on the traditional rules for pregnancy. In her forthcoming book, Expecting Better: Why the Conventional Pregnancy Wisdom Is Wrong — and What You Really Need to Know (out next week), Emily Oster combs through hundreds of medical studies to debunk many widely followed dictates: no alcohol, no caffeine, no changing the kitty litter. Her conclusions are startling, not least among them the revelation that there's no good evidence to suggest that light drinking during pregnancy has any negative effect on the baby. (She concludes that woman should feel comfortable with one or two drinks a week during their first trimester, and up to one drink a day during the second and third.) She finds the evidence linking caffeine to miscarriage similarly flimsy, advising that one or two cups of coffee a day while pregnant are fine.

Oster advocates a more relaxed approach to pregnancy, and narrows down the huge restricted food list to a few items: rare meat and poultry, unwashed fruits and vegetables, raw-milk cheese, and deli turkey.

Expecting Better walks women through medical literature surrounding every stage of pregnancy, giving them data to make informed decisions about their own pregnancy. She spoke with the Cut about her conclusions, and why it’s so hard to find reliable studies on pregnancy. 

For your book you looked at hundreds of studies that assess the effects of certain behaviors and medical procedures on pregnancy. It can be difficult to find reliable studies conducted on pregnant women, right?
Yeah. What you’d really like is to randomly tell some pregnant women to drink alcohol and some women not to — but there are some ethical problems with doing that, for reasons I’m sure I don’t have to explain. The biggest issue with the studies that do exist, then, is trying to separate correlation and causation. These days, we’re all told not to drink alcohol when we’re pregnant, so the kind of women who tend to drink alcohol while they’re pregnant tend to be different from women who don’t in a lot of dimensions. Yes, one of those dimensions is that they’re drinking alcohol, but they also tend to be poorer, not as well educated, and more likely to be single moms — things that we know are also risk factors for poor performance in schools. So the big problem here is when you then observe that the children of women who drank alcohol during pregnancy are now doing worse in school, it’s difficult to tell if that’s about the alcohol, or one of the other myriad problems that group has — the myriad ways in which they’re different from the group that didn’t drink. In the case of alcohol, many of the studies I relied on come from Europe, because there the prohibitions on alcohol during pregnancy are much more lax: They tell you to cut down, but it’s typically thought to be fine. So, you still have some women who drink and some women who don’t drink, but the two groups tend to be more similar, and so it’s easier to compare them and make conclusions.

You say part of the reason the “no drinks” rule has persisted for so long is that doctors tend to think that if a woman has one drink, it may be harder for her to stop — so therefore it's better just to tell her not to drink at all, rather than explaining the risks.
I think there’s a general feeling that women should like rules. One of the reasons to have rules is so it’s like, "Well, you don’t have to think about this, because we’ve already thought about it for you." And sometimes that’s okay, but it was frustrating when I did want to think more about it, and it was like, "Well, we’re not really equipped to help you with that."

Another thing I will mention is that when I came to research what I call “the vices” — alcohol, caffeine, tobacco — there’s sort of a similar level of disgust with alcohol and tobacco. Like, don’t drink, don’t smoke. But in reality, it’s basically fine to have a glass of wine, but it’s really not okay to smoke; smoking is really bad. There’s plenty of evidence for that, and I go through a lot of it in the book. And in researching that I came to think that telling people that all of these things are terrible might lead them to say, Well, I’m already having a glass of wine, so I might as well smoke, whereas telling them, Look, here are the things you really need to focus on: It’s fine to have a glass of wine, it’s fine to have a cup of coffee, but do not use cigarettes. You get the same thing with the food prohibitions. There are like 5,000 things on the list, but really there are only six foods you should really avoid. I would say, "Why don’t you focus your time on not eating the things that are actually dangerous, rather than carrying around some six-page list restricting every food you might ever enjoy?"

How are the rules and guidelines for pregnant women established?
The official information is put out by the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and just like any sort of public-health rules, they tend to move slowly. If they’ve had a rule in place for a long time, a lot of new evidence has to come out before those guys are going to change their rules. That’s just the way those things happen. But even with that I noticed while I was researching that there are a lot of cases where the ACOG recommendation seemed to me basically correct, yet it’s not what’s happening in practice. So there’s both the issue that the general recommendations take a long time to change, but also that the way medicine is practiced isn’t always up to date.

In the book, you mention a number of instances where you found conventional wisdom and doctor’s recommendations for pregnant women to be overly cautious. Did you come across anything where the recommendations weren’t cautious enough?
I had always been told that you shouldn’t clean the litter box when you’re pregnant, because of your cat. And I think that is overblown — unless you have, like, three kittens in your house that are living outside and eating raw meat, this shouldn’t really be a significant source of concern. But gardening, which would have never occurred to me to worry about, is actually a more common source of this particular parasite than cat litter, probably because there are potentially more cats living in your yard than in your house. I’d never heard anything about gardening being dangerous during pregnancy, so it was a total surprise.

What do doctors think of your book?
I had a medical editor who read the book and I think she — well, I don’t know, but I think she liked it. I’m curious to see what the broader perception will be. I actually think that for many doctors there’s a sense in which having your patients be as informed as possible should be good, because you have a limited amount of time with your patient, and most doctors don’t have time to go through evidence like this, so having patients come in who are more informed and can really have an opinion is something I think many doctors will value. 

Read more posts by Erica Schwiegershausen

Filed Under: emily oster ,pregnancy ,interview ,motherhood ,rules ,drink up

geekboots:

seananmcguire:

birthdaycakesforanimals:

‘Krakatoa, a 75-pound, 7.5-foot long Komodo Dragon, celebrates his eighth birthday with fellow eight-year-olds from R.B. Hunt Elementary School at his enclosure at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm and Zoological Park in St. Augustine, Fla. The children sang Happy Birthday to the large lizard as he was presented with a meat cake topped with mice.’

Komodo dragon in a party hat is basically the best thing that has happened to me today.

HOW THE FUCK DID THEY GET A PARTY HAT ON A FUCKING KOMODO DRAGON

In 2010, Prince famously told The Mirror that "the Internet is completely over" and proclaimed that "all these computers and digital gadgets are no good." Three years later, the Purple One has begun tweeting. This is what it sounds like when luddites cry. Might you say he's gonna party like it's 2009? (Sorry.)

The Twitter account for Prince's group, @3rdeyegirl, has been active for some months now, but the funk star himself apparently never tweeted until yesterday, when this bombshell arrived:

PRINCE'S 1ST TWEET... TESTING 1, 2...

— PRINCE 3RDEYEGIRL (@3rdeyegirl) August 14, 2013

Apparently treating Twitter like some befuddling soundcheck, he followed it up with "PRINCE'S 2ND TWEET." By his third, he'd joined the masses by figuring out how to tweet pictures of his meals. Bravo! It's unclear, however, if he'll ever top his "1st selfie."

Joining the twitterati in the middle of 2013, Prince finds himself facing an unusual challenge: can he top the various Prince parody accounts that have been sending 140-character missives of wisdom in the Funky One's absence? The best of the bunch is @PrinceTweets2U, which has racked up more than 78,000 followers with cryptic, delightfully Prince-like dispatches such as :

i saw a peacock 2day

— Prince (@PrinceTweets2U) May 11, 2013

i did not do a song on the new daft punk album because i am scared of robots

— Prince (@PrinceTweets2U) May 7, 2013

i just gave a seductive wink 2 a drum machine

— Prince (@PrinceTweets2U) March 29, 2013

When the (apparently real) Prince announced "hi im prince," the (apparently fake) Prince promptly replied, "hi me 2." At press time, Prince 1 had not replied back to Prince 2. But aren't we all Prince inside when you think about it?

Here's the song snippet the official Prince account also premiered:

tanjents:

"My Mac has been acting up like a mother fucker!" AdamCurry tells SteveJobs #podcasting #DSC180 2005

What people who do write do understand:

Woody Allen recently:

What people who don’t write don’t understand is that they think you make up the line consciously — but you don’t. It proceeds from your unconscious. So it’s the same surprise to you when it emerges as it is to the audience when the comic says it. I don’t think of the joke and then say it. I say it and then realize what I’ve said. And I laugh at it, because I’m hearing it for the first time myself.

Whenever I find myself in a bout of nonwriting (not writer’s block per se, but an extended period of nonwritingness), I know it’s this. Not a lack of ideas, not a lack of the right space to write, the right drink, the right order, the right methods, the proper instrument, not a deficit of time. It’s simply my conscious getting in the way. I would be better off saying things more wildly, then looking at what I’d said. Do first, think later; many things can benefit from this method — falling in love, taking your first job, speaking up for what you believe in. Write first, think later. Repeat.

This thought was first published by The Pastry Box Project

Is evil innate or groomed? Is immoral behavior more a consequence of where you are than who you are? Let’s ask a war criminal… more»

Freeman Dyson

Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center
by Ray Monk

Twice I had a reason to talk with Oppenheimer about bombs. The first occasion came in 1958, when I asked for a leave of absence from the Institute for Advanced Study to work on a project in California aimed at building a nuclear bomb–propelled spaceship. I told him how happy I was to be putting his bombs to better use than murdering people. He did not share my enthusiasm. He considered the spaceship project to be an exercise in applied science, unworthy of the attention of an institute professor. The only activity worthy of an institute professor was to think deep thoughts about pure science.

© Todd Saunders


© Todd Saunders


© Todd Saunders

Lookout

There's no reason small talk should exist. Humans have created ways to order food without calling restaurants, tools to talk to one another without speaking, and images to express emotion through emojis. Despite those advances, small talk continues to exist and haunt the human race, and it's still used to foster some friendships, spark some romances, clinch deals, and land jobs. 

In the face of this universal, man-made evil, humans remain undaunted and will continue to cheat the system (partly because they want jobs) and give other humans rubrics and guides on how to deal with the awfulness of small talk. The latest guide comes from The Wall Street Journal's Elizabeth Bernstein who examines the five-step process of a chit-chat: 

• Getting Started
• Personal Introduction
• Pre-Topical Exploration
• Post-Topical Elaboration
• OMG MAKE THIS STOP Wrap Up

It's all pretty self explanatory and perhaps transactional—be nice, find a topic, make sure someone knows your name, and say goodbye. But following that script is a lot easier said than done. If it were easy, then we wouldn't need endless news articles and tip sheets about it. Sometimes a conversation goes on a bad tangent, or someone won't stop talking, or someone is talking about that one time they did this one thing that you've heard them say a billion times. It's these hangups that got me thinking of the different types of conversation styles and small-talk traps humans tend to fall into: 

The Dominator: Remember: it's a conversation, not a monologue. One way to tell you're a dominator is that when you stop talking, people have left your conversation circle and you didn't even notice. Just kidding, sorta. Bernstein says that if you pause, or take a breath, and someone changes the subject it means that you killed that conversation.

The Doormat: While dominators tend to run conversations into the ground, there are conversations that never get off the ground. This might be the work of a doormat who offers little to information about themselves or the observations they have. What doormats have to remember is that people are genuinely interested in talking to you or what you have to say. A smart observation here or a little bit of insight into your job could brighten the conversation and keep a dominator in check (which they should thank you for later). 

The Junkie: From politics, to fashion, to Orange Is the New Black, to umami burgers,  to whatever Pitchfork just wrote—you are on top of it, and you love talking about it. There's one problem though, not everyone is an expert and you run the risk of dropping a reference that your fellow small talker won't pick up. The bigger problem, as The Wall Street Journal points out, is that you tend to dominate the conversation and run the risk of creating a monologue no one wants to take part in. That said, picking a more neutral topic is probably better and allows a two-way discussion. Don't worry though, there are plenty of Internet forums and, well, Twitter too, to satisfy your junkie cravings. 

The Downwardly Mobile: Stop looking at your phone. Right now. We mean it. 

The Amnesiac: "Oh my god I don't know this person's name," the Amnesiac is thinking. Don't worry, this happens to everyone. Don't let it faze you. Be polite, listen, and be engaged—as tempting as it may be, don't drift off trying to remember the person's name because it'll make you seem uninterested. 

The Name-Dropper: Unless you have a great story about Angelina complaining about Brad Pitt's flatulence, try and refrain from name-dropping. "It's really cool that you went to school with the daughter of some famous celebrity and that tells me so much about you and how interesting you are," said no one ever. It's not your fault, are probably friends with a One-Upper.

The One-Upper: Everything anyone can do, you can do better. We trust you, and sometimes believe you. That doesn't mean people like you, though. One-upping is a bad habit, and you run the risk, like the Name-Dropper, of dominating a conversation. There's a fine line between being engaged in a conversation and completely hijacking it. Trust us, the people around you have some fun and interesting things to say, stop and listen before it's too late.

The Mean Girl/Boy: Your style is high-risk, high reward. "Oh my gosh, this party is terrible," a mean boy may say. "She is inhaling that slider," a mean girl might muse. While you're a hit at weddings, you also run the risk of alienating people who may be friends with the girl wolfing down that slider and chewing with her mouth open or the couple throwing this godawful party. Snark just isn't a good way to make friends right off the bat when someone doesn't know you. Starting off with a compliment and leaving it there is a lot easier, and more successful way to start conversations with people you can eventually call and complain to when you're at your next awful party. 

The Fear Monger: You are afraid of awkward pauses. There are bigger things to worry about, say scientists and don't feel the need to fill the pause with useless noise. What's worse is that your anxious look puts a lot of pressure on the other person. "Experts say don't worry when it gets quiet. The other person is probably just thinking of something to say," The Journal explains. 

The Wrecking Ball: Conversations are like buildings that are made up of teeny, tiny topics. For example, you could start with the weather,  then talk about the place you'd rather be, then move on to the last great trip you took, and go wherever the conversation takes you. Responding to, "Nice day outside." with "Sorry, I'm married." might make you a wrecking ball.

The Jokester: You are sort of like the storyteller but you think you're funnier. Like the storyteller, moderation is key. 

The Weatherman/woman: "We really needed this rain," the weatherman says. "The weather report says it should be nice this weekend," the weatherwoman will say. As people have pointed out, talking about weather is a huge cliché, and job interview guides tell you to try and shy away from it only because everyone does it. It's easy to see why though: weather is safe. Everyone experiences weather and probably can weigh in. But safe gets boring, and small talk is all about keeping interest. 

The Storyteller: We all really love stories. But we don't really love hearing those stories over and over. At the heart of it, you're a secret dominator that takes over conversations with this really great story about what happened to you that one time. There's a time and place for that story, no doubt, but opening with that same story in every conversation you start spells trouble. Moderation is key and keep your audience wanting more. 

The Tipsy Parson: Alcohol has a magical way of turning you into an eloquent speaker, you may think. Sorry to break it to you, but that's not true. "Alcohol doesn't make you a better conversationalist. It only makes you feel that way," Bernstein explains. Pace yourself, friend.

The Vapor Trail: Whether you do it consciously or not, you are are really terrible at ending conversations, and this is not a good thing. Maybe you're too polite, or maybe you just really don't care all that much about Broadway, but a graceful exit is a crucial component of a conversation, and much preferred over an awkward silence or you gazing into your cell phone. The simple act of sharing business card or giving out your Facebook info will signal to someone that the conversation is over and that you want to stop talking without burning bridges, Bernstein writes.

Photos by: bluefox via Shutterstock, Mean Girls, SNL, Harry Potter

UPDATE: A Chipotle spokesman disputes the characterization of the company's reported shift in the type of beef it uses, noting that antibiotics will only be used in limited situations.

Oh, Chipotle, is it really worth saving a few dollars if it means serving us beef that has been potentially treated with antibiotics? Don't you realize how many people carve out six minutes each day, line up next to your stainless-steel troughs, and respect your sneeze-guards so they can be ensured that their barbacoa is precious and antibiotic-free?  

Chipotle is likely going to at least partially break its years-long promise (and that cute commercial) of naturally-raised meat today, with the company announced that it may start serving up beef (barbacoa and steak) treated with antibiotics. "The burrito seller will use meat from cattle treated with antibiotics because of an illness, which previously wasn’t permitted to be sold in its restaurants," a spokesman for the company said in an e-mail, making clear Chipotle doesn't approve of antibiotic-treated beef if drugs were used to make the animals bigger.  

The move isn't taking place because the company wants to stray from its original promise. The company is probably aiming for to cut costs, Bloomberg's Leslie Patton explains: "The change in Chipotle’s practices comes as U.S. beef production is projected to plunge to a 21-year low next year, threatening higher costs," Patton writes. 

So what do consumers think? Will the change in beef change the way consumers pick their burrito? A visit to the SoHo Chipotle near The Atlantic Wire office revealed that no one really cared about the coming change—perhaps signaling that no one is really too invested in Chipotle's meat credos. And that Chipotle eaters are not major food snobs.

"I grew up in Ohio, so it's whatever," a middle-aged man told us, while his dining companion stated: "It matters, but I'm not going to run away." Younger patrons felt the same way. "I feel better when it's natural, but yeah, I'm still gonna eat it," a teenage girl told us, with her friends nodding in agreement. The line was out the door when The Wire left the Chipotle premises. 

Bong Joon-ho's new sci-fi action/adventure film Snowpiercer features movie stars and Oscar winners, looks great, and is already a hit in Korea. But it's still unclear when we'll get to see it here in the U.S. and Harvey Weinstein may have something to do with that.

Variety's Patrick Frater reported this morning that the film—which tells the story of a class system on a train traveling around a dystopian world—won the South Korean box office for the second consecutive weekend. The film has passed 4 million ticket sales in record time for the country.

It's obviously not a given that a foreign hit will immediately translate to box office success in the U.S., but there's a catch with Snowpiercer. Though Bong is Korean, his film is an English-language one starring our very own Captain America, Chris Evans, alongside Oscar-winners Octavia Spencer and Tilda Swinton, who looks to be giving a fascinating performance, false teeth and all, as one of the leaders of the upper-class section of the train. Evans and Spencer are among the revolting members of the lower classes stuck on the train, which has perpetual motion engine that has kept members of the human race alive following a global warming experiment that caused an ice age. The film already got a fantastic review from The Hollywood Reporter's Clarence Tsui, who called it "an epic yet nuanced, contemplative yet entertaining vehicle that uses its titular locomotive as an allegory for human existence as we see it in the here and now." 

The film, Frater explains, was something of a risk. Though $40 million may seem like chump change to the U.S. film industry, that made Snowpiercer the "biggest budget Korean-made movie of all time," according to Frater. The fact that it was made in English made some feel it might fail in its home country, despite the pedigree of its director, who made the successful Mother and The Host. 

With the film's strong reception in Korea, importing it as-is would seem like a no-brainer. But as rumors would have it, the film is facing a Harvey Weinstein-shaped roadblock. Last week, Australia's Inside Film reported that Weinstein, whose company has distribution rights in the U.S. and elsewhere, wants to chop 20 minutes off of the 126 minute film. (Considering a number of this summer's blockbusters ran around two and a half hours, 126 minutes doesn't seem very long to us.) Inside Film sourced British film festival programmer Tony Rayns, who said the cuts would make the film a more traditional action movie that would appeal to the "presumed level of American mid-west hicks." Frater, however, implies that Weinstein actually may have Oscar gold in mind when considering a U.S. release.

For now we're left just wondering whether this film is the sci-fi social allegory that Elysium wasn't. And if we'll ever see it.