Logic puzzle

Last time we asked whether ‘cannot be meaningfully described’ is a meaningful description. Today we consider the following screenshot, a list of tags from Technorati:

‘bez-kategorii’ and ‘nicht-kategorisiert’ both mean (more or less) ‘has no category’. Does ‘has no category’ have a category or not? Maybe Bertrand Arthur William Russell can tell us.

Labor Day Cat Pix

Vented fur…

Sunday cat pix

Musa doesn’t try to be cool. She is. Eternally, like Thelonius Monk.

Musa, 1 Sep 2007

Psychographics: obsessive-compulsive

The brain apparently has a “checklist”—a means of recording that some sequence of actions is finished (see MIT Neuroscientists Describe Brain's ‘Checklist’, Science Daily 8 Sep 2003, on work by Ann M. Graybiel and Naotaka Fujii). A malfunctioning checklist might lead to obsessive-compulsive behavior. Kevin Burton, Feedblog.

Sunday cat pix

Musa finds something to sleep next to. Doesn’t have to be much.

Easy hair removal

Sometimes in the midst of one’s toils in the archives one comes across passages that cannot await the eventual publication of one’s research to see the light of day. Not long ago, for example, I came across the following irresistible bits.

The first seems to epitomize an age. In this case, the age known as Last Week. It’s from an interview with Devorah Rose, editor of a magazine called Social Life (not to be confused with Social Text).

Still, there’s one thing I can’t understand. Why is a self-professed “introvert” who loves the work of her profs Sam Lipsyte and Ben Marcus, and whose real goal is to write serious fiction, working at a magazine that’s basically a house organ for a nonexistent club that, if it had a name, would be called something like “the especially attention-craving Manhattan rich kids D-list association?”

“Um,” she said, “Because it’s easy?”

Next: hair removal—a rite of passage, like wearing your trousers rolled.

“When a girl removes hair for the first time, it’s a life-changing moment,” said Stacey Feldman, vice president for marketing at the women’s health and personal care division of the Church & Dwight Company, which purchased Nair in 2001.

The last sentence of this would fit nicely into an Ashbery poem.

“The whole hair removal situation has changed,” Ms. Feldman said. “Now people are removing hair from eyebrows to toes, and using all kinds of different products. People are more open about it and they feel more confident, cleaner.”

Sources:

Emily Gould, “‘Social Life’ editor Devorah Rose was never a stripper”, Gawker 10 Sep 2007.

Andrew Adam Newman, “Depilatory market moves far beyond the short-shorts wearers”, New York Times 14 Sep 2007; via Alex Balk, “Bring on the smooth young girls!”, Gawker 14 Sep 2007.

Words words words

There must be something about gossip reporting that gives you an irresistible urge to neologize. Today’s example, which I like, hails from Deadline Hollywood, one of the more sedately styled blogs of its ilk.

Now Wesley Snipes finds himself on the hook for $1.7 million to United Talent Agency, which may never collect on the debt. The tenpercentery filed suit July 2006 in Los Angeles Superior Court accusing the Blade trilogy star of breaching a verbal agreement dating back to November 2002 to join the agency and pay 10% commissions.

Nikki Fink, “Wesley Snipes Ordered To Pay UTA$1.7M”, Deadline Hollywood Daily 18 Sep 2007

Bonus item:

Expectedly, Jodie Foster's star turn in The Brave One was good enough for the top spot of the U.S. box office.

“Jodie Foster’s ‘The Brave One’ Weak #1”, 15 Sep

Is there any regularity discernible in the collection of negative adjectives (“disgruntled”, “unwieldy”, and so on) that have no corresponding positive?

Pattern of the week

Click the View button to see the pattern used as a background. Download it.

©

Sunday cat pix

LG uses Emerson’s Miscellanies for a pillow.

Dial

‘Dial’ is my name for certain designs I’ve made using various filters provided in OSX’s Core Graphics framework, especially the Kaleidoscope filter. You can access these filters in many graphics programs, including GraphicConverter and ImageTricks (look them up at Macupdate).

Click on the ‘View’ button to see the latest dial. If the script doesn’t work, you can see it here.