Do you remember the first time you met someone you dated? They were all you could think about. You were excited and anxious at the same time. You wanted to spend every single second talking to them or doing something with them. Turns out that’s normal and it’s your brain making you feel that way. A recent study found that people who recently “fell in love” thought about the other person 80% of the time and that your brain treats them “like a reward” so you want to spend time with them.

“It’s a motivation; the person [we're in love with] is a goal. Emotions come and go. We feel euphoria, but we feel anxiety, too. This core system that is driving the person who is in love toward their sweetheart, that is much more important in a sense than an emotion.”

It also goes on to say that people can be as passionate about their love at all ages… from 8 to 80. (So eat that Kansas AG Phill Kline… that 15 year old having sex with another 15 year old could be “making love”.) Love is a powerful motivator. Just today on Oprah (yes Oprah… I’m writing… not channel surfing) there was a story of a guy that was in an accident and was told he’d never walk again and he was determined to walk down the isle to marry his girlfriend. And it’s the card/flower/crappy stuffed bear/chocolate companies that are counting on this to steal your money on this made up holiday, Valentines Day. Next year remember that.

… when the parodies start coming thick and fast.

Broke Mac Mountain

Brokeback to the Future

Enjoy!

My favourite science writer deviates from his usual “Bad Science” column to describe how, with just 5 minutes access to his girlfriend’s cellphone and £5 plus tax to a website operator, he was able to track his girlfriend’s movements on a minute-by-minute basis. Ben describes the scariness of this:

Your mobile phone company could make money from selling information about your location to the companies that offer this service. If you have any reason to suspect that your phone might have been out of your sight, even for five minutes, and there is anyone who might want to track you: call your phone company and ask it to find out if there is a trace on your phone. Anybody could be watching you.

This was with a UK-based GSM phone, but what with all the hoopla around being able to purchase cellphone call records here in the US, I wouldn’t be surprised if such a “service” existed here too.

In an effort to appease some who are Travel, Food and People starved, I’ll write about my latest experience in Columbia/Lexington, SC.
I was excited about this trip cause it would give me a chance to get back to an area of the country that I grew up in. Yes, I grew up in the Carolinas and I still have family and friends that live there so any chance to get back to see some actual mountians, hills and trees makes me happy.
Of course on the trip out we were delayed and missed our connection in ATL. When we finally got rebooked, that flight was delayed getting us in way to late to actually work. On top of that they lost our bags. No big deal, I’ll just brush my teeth with soap in the morning. We find the nearest food joint with WIFI and settle in for a long night of phone calls.
The next morning our bags had arrived. Actually they arrived at 2 a.m. and I know this because I got a phone call telling me so at 2 a.m. We dine on some Chic-fil-a for breakfast every morning (fyi- chicken biscuits are the breakfast of the gods). The weather is perfect all week. Blue skies, no clouds, 70 degrees, elevation wasn’t too high so I could breath just fine. Mountian air is really good for your lungs…
We had to try some legendary Carolina BBQ (it’s usually shredded pork sandwhich with a Vinegar and brown sugar based BBQ sauce and cole slaw on it) so we asked some locals about good places. One night we went to Maurice’s BBQ. There, in addition to the food, you can also purchase books on how Wal-Mart is taking over the world. Good reading while on the plane . The second night we had BBQ we went to Hudson’s BBQ. They were in the process of expanding and had only 3 walls and a sheet of plastic but there was a huge line so we figured it would be good enough. Underneath the outdoor propane heater, I had one of the best Carolina BBQ sandwhiches ever. The pork was so juicy it would just explode when you bit into it. The sauce, a near perfect combo of sweet and sour, did a 1, 2 punch on my tongue and the aftertaste was something woody, fruity and smokey. It would cause me to pause longer than normal between bites just to enjoy it a little longer. Also the shoe-string fries left nothing to be desired.
Also, being a quasi-local, I was on a mission to find 2 other things. Both beverages and both hard to come by outside of the Carolinas. One was a black cherry soda called Cheerwine and the other was a ginger-ale made with real minced ginger called Blenheim. Cheerwine was easy enough to find cause it was EVERYWHERE. Blenheim on the other hand was very elusive. It was like tracking down a UFO crash site 50 years after the fact. It could be just over Hobknob hill past Johnson’s farm or was it at the Publix on Starcross RD? Finally we found it at Bill’s Pack n’ Sack by the airport. If you like ginger and aren’t afraid of a little bite in your refreshment, this is what you need. It’s so tasty… and then it burns. It starts with the lips then moves to the tongue, cheeks, and throat. And it burns in only the way Ginger can.
The flights coming back were on time but that’s not saying there wasn’t some shooting rampage moments. The CRJ we took from Columbia to Atlanta decided to pair it’s 2 widest passengers in the same row. Needless to say I was shoulder to shoulder with this gentleman and I was cause for all traffic up and down the isle to pause, turn and suck in. There were many awkward “butt or crotch” moments. And the flight from ATL to OKC is everyone’s greatest nightmare… sitting next to the screaming child. Dameon is the name I came up with. He was sitting on her lap and she did everything but beat him to try and control him. I don’t know what was worse, sitting beside him or sitting in front of him. I think getting my chair kicked and pushed on every minute would be more annoying the just getting kicked in the leg. My ipod was cranked to no avail. I have hearing loss now because of it and I’ve decided to sue Apple. At some point I was going to suggest some corporal punishment be used on the child but then I realized he was just as frustrated with women (his mom) as I was. But with age I’ve learned not to kick, cry, scream and flail around when I get upset over a woman… well maybe not kick anyway.

Ah, what a sweet case of cognitive dissonance. What’s a good fundie to do, when an evangelical film company produces a Bible-thumpin’ film about missionaries converting an Ecuadorean tribe to Christianity, but the lead actor is openly gay? On the one hand, you have the president of a Baptist Seminary slyly suggesting that firebombing the production company wouldn’t be a bad idea (gee, how Christian of him!). And on the other hand, you have Focus on the Family coming out with this perfectly reasonable statement (I thought I’d never see the day!):

Do we at Focus feel compelled to check on the sexual history of everyone in a movie? Did they have a D.U.I.? Did they pay their taxes?”

How’s a good Christianist supposed to make sense of all of this?

I know you guys are probably tired of hearing about Google right now. But I found this intresting. How do investors feel about Google’s comprimises to get into the Chinese market?
Ooops!



I guess evil doesn’t pay. But is Google really evil now that it’s compromised it’s ethics to appease Jiang Zemin? I guess Google is only 43% evil… today.

Once again, I give you a link to an article in Der Spiegel. This time it’s about the current raging debate over a Danish paper’s decision to print a serious of cartoons deemed offensive to Muslims. Things are changing pretty fast – this story says that “the paper apologized for the Muhammad-critical cartoons and democratic values lost out to totalitarian ideology.” They did apologize, but free speech did not go down in flames. The Danish PM was on the news last night stating that their commitment to free speech was absolute. In the meantime, in an odd expression of solidarity, a number of other European papers have run the work that started the whole string of events.

In additon to the free speech debate, there’s a whole lot of nasty commentary kicking around about the Arab world’s reaction. There’s the “Boycott Danish” campaign that threatens to send the Saudis to the WTO and the “Buy Danish” campaign that is supposed to be a show of support to the Danes.

Globalization is crossing paths with free speech and there’s a firestorm at the nexus. And as an American, I can’t help but wonder: What if this battle was on our shores? What would George do? I’m thankful it’s not because frankly, while W never apologizes, I don’t trust him to uphold the first amendment.

Aside: Der Speigel’s English edition is outstanding reading for anyone who wants to get the view from the other side of the Atlantic. I read it every day.