anamnesis

Got back from a party at an affluent acquaintance's penthouse downtown. The affluent part plays a factor in the story. Had a great time and was very impressed with a particular bottle of wine. One of about 4 or 5 I think we went through. They were all good, but this particular one had a nice smokey, rich flavor that was just outstanding. Probably the best red wine I've ever tasted. It was a Barbaresco from Northern Italy. So on the way back home we stopped by the liquor store and I wended my way through the isles of spanish, portugese, chilean imports until I got to the large italian section, and sure enough, spotted the very label we had that evening. I started to grab one or two when I noticed the price tag ---holy crap, $65! I put it back reluctantly. Time to get busy on some projects and maybe something I can look forward to in the future. In the meantime, I grabbed a porter from a local micro-brewery. It'll have to do :-)

Perhaps not the most fitting Thanksgiving topic, but it did come up during thanksgiving celebration today with some old friends. We had some guests at the table from Sweden, and for some reason the topic of Nederland, a small town north of Boulder, and technically part of Boulder country, came up. Now Nederland is an odd town to begin with. One of many little mountain havens in Colorado that march to their own drummer. In the more urban centers we have pesky things like zoning and big tracts of houses that look pretty much the same. Not so in the mountain towns. The dwellings are as colorful as the inhabitants and their stories. This particular story is about an old codger named Grandpa Bredo. Grandpa Bredo died in 1989, but that was really just the beginning of his story, and how he got from Norway to a shed in Nederland is probably best described in the Nederland Chamber of Commerce page here . Each March the festival has grown, there's been songs and youtubes about Frozen Dea

Saw this news article on H1N1 Vaccine Recalls in Canada after Marbella's experiences. It merited a little more investigation. The first thing that struck me as odd was this statement The batch under investigation by the federal government and GlaxoSmithKline bears the lot number A80CA007A brand name Arepanrix, which is the version that contains adjuvant, a chemical additive that stretches supply and boosts immunity. The term "adjuvant" was new to me, so I had to look it up . A couple of surprising findings surfaced. Adjuvant is basically a "filler." Apparently it's routinely used in vaccines ---without an adjuvant, a vaccine is much less effective. So it appears the vaccine without adjuvant may be used in cases like pregnancy or infants, but they'd be at far greater risk for getting the virus or they could use the adjuvant, like the rest of the general population and perhaps take another type of chance. Adjuvants are kind of scary. They are typically a

This sucker is GOOD. Wait toward the end when he starts to mimic camera shutters and chainsaws.

I keep a dream journal on my headboard. Last night, I discovered my dreams keep dream journals too. Several, in fact. I caught them writing down stuff that happened during MY day, when I was conscious. I guess my "waking life" is their dream life. Snippets of conversations and things that were said. They were trying to piece it together and figure out what's happening outside of their dream world, or what it means in their own terms. Kind of like dream interpretation, but reversed. I don't blame you if this sounds confusing, I'm confused too. I wonder if me writing that down in my dream journal would be part of what they are writing in their dream journal which I am writing about and whether I might someday find myself in a strange recursive loop with a white coat and lots of shiny buckles trying to squeeze a word in edgewise to prove I'm still sane?

Wait for the Siamese ones... hearing that noise those poor elephants made brought tears to my eyes.

And what happens when we pretend we do. This interview is just too sane.

A cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it." The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than relatively more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others." Ever notice that the more you know about something the more cautious you are about making sweeping generalizations? This may com