collision detection: Study: Positive-feedback-loop explains why beautiful people are paid more

Physical beauty produces a virtuous feedback loop. People constantly give you the sense that you’re better than everyone else, so you begin to believe it yourself — which just means that everyone is more likely to pick up on your radiant self-aura, and assess you even more highly. This, of course, falls squarely into the “yeah, I pretty much knew that already” camp of social-science research. But it’s always nice have new data confirming one’s grim opinion of humanity. It tracks nicely with recent findings that parents are more likely to be violent and neglectful with ugly children than with cute ones. Or the recent study finding that tall people make more than shorter ones — an extra $789 in annual pay per inch, in fact.

Pretty interesting. Perhaps instead of college for everyone, plastic surgery may be in order. Hm!

Also goes to show how buggy our human brains continue to be.

WSJ.com - Portals

The difference between traditional and SAAS-style software is roughly the difference between cooking in and ordering out.

That’s one of the best quotes I’ve read in a while.

My new favorite flight tracking website is FlightAware.

While not the flashiest (or ajaxiest) site, it provides a ginormous wealth of information about every flight.

For example, as a registered user (free), you can find out the take-off and landing time of American Airlines 177 (JFK-SFO) from today, all the way back to December 12th. Does it seem like that last flight of the day from SeaTac to San Jose is always late? Confirm your suspicions by studying the history of AS 324.

One good thing to note is that the times listed are take-off and landing times. That’s not the same as when the plane left the gate and when it pulled up to the gate. So for example, AA 177 will often leave the gate relatively on time at around 6pm EST - but it won’t actually take off until 7pm or afterwards because it takes a while to taxi from the gate to the runway, and then you have to wait in a line of other aircraft waiting to go during rush hour.

Looking at the records of the last 4 months, what I thought was the longest flight ever from JFK to SFO on February 18th wasn’t true. It was actually the second longest flight at 6 hours and 36 minutes. The longest was the day before… clocking in at 6:39 - just 3 minutes longer. Yeah that was nasty.

Check out the site!

I’m probably the last person to blog about Boot Camp, but oh well.

For a few weeks I’ve been thinking about buying a new PC for my home. The perf on my Dell from Summer 2002 isn’t that bad - it’s just that I maxed it out at 1 gig of memory, and now it thrashes a lot when I have Outlook and Photoshop open. Quite annoying.

I’ve also been thinking about getting a Mac to replace my G4 500 from early 2000.

Now, with Boot Camp, I can just buy 1 Mac and get both.

All I’m waiting for now is the 2nd generation of the upcoming Intel Mac Tower.

Why second generation? Well, I hope you remember how the first generation of G5 towers were.

Sheesh, I’m finally done with my taxes for 2005.

I thought I was done yesterday, until I reviewed the print outs this afternoon - and noticed that California numbers didn’t match those of the 1040. This triggered my immediate loss of confidence in TurboTax so I had to go through all the forms again.

This time it came out right. Good thing too - in the first iterations, I owed California. In this iteration, California owes me. (Well… owes me a whopping $25 anyway.)

I’m exhausted. Fortunately, I’ve improved my record keeping systems as a result, so that 2006 should be a breeze.