Author: Brian

This is for Tracy, who unknowingly walked right into a “Pinky and the Brain” reference this morning.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJPFSNu_QNs&rel=1]

Man, I miss those guys.

Everyone knows that if you’re buying an Apple computer, you’ll pretty much get the same price everywhere you go. Without using the “m” word, the prices are very close to the same everywhere, due to Apple’s implementation of a Minimum Advertised Price policy.

But there are ways, sneaky but legal, around that. For instance, Apple used to offer really steep discounts to students and teachers. These days, the discounts aren’t as good, but they’re still there. But they work out to only around 5% off – which is nice, sure, but hardly anything to write home about.

If you’re OK with buying a refurbished computer, one that had been sold before and returned to Apple, you’ll still get the full one-year hardware warranty, though you can’t purchase AppleCare to extend that warranty. And you may end up dealing with someone else’s problems, problems that had not been fully resolved during the refurbishment process.

So here’s a little trick. It’s good for a one-time-only steep discount on a full system (computer + monitor + accessories).

<a href="http://developer.apple.com/products/student.html
“>Go here and sign up for the Student Developer program ($99). You’ll need to provide proof that you are, in fact, a student. It helps if you are, in fact, an actual student – but just knowing someone who is a student will work, too, as far as I can tell.

Then go here and use your one-time Developer discount.

Even paying the $99, you still get deep discounts on the hardware. For instance, getting a MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.2 GHz):

Retail base price: $1999
ADC base price: $1599

You still save $300!

It’s not just a delicious beverage.

It’s also a hand-warmer on a cold winter morning.

Is there nothing it can’t do?

Happy Primary Day to all the New Hampshirans and political junkies out there.

My guy, Senator Dodd, dropped out after Iowa (but wouldn’t he make an awesome Senate Majority Leader? Much better than Harry “Give ’em Hell whatever they want” Reid), so now I’m rooting for John Edwards. Or Barack Obama. Or Hillary Clinton. Or Bill Richardson.

Yes, in that order, most to least favorite. And I think all of them are light-years ahead of the Republican candidates.

I’m going to try to go to the Venue Restaurant tonight to drink and watch the results. Feel free to join me and others…

I really, really wanted to be in bed early.

But I spent an hour and a half figuring out a problem involving the external drive I use for backups. Before I knew it, it was nearly midnight.

Ugh. Fixed it, though.

For the record, and you can go back and check yourself if you don’t believe me, I have a 100% resolution rate on my New Year’s resolutions for 2007.

That’s entirely due to the fact that I made no resolutions in 2007.

Don’t tell me that’s actually a 0% resolution rate. You can’t divide by zero. It’s infinite or something.

It’s almost 1:00 PM. I’m sitting at Backspace, my unfinished manuscript still in my backpack and untouched, unread, since I put it in there a day or two ago, my third or fourth cup of coffee of the day nearly empty, my laptop open and a bunch of unread Safari tabs open with different time-wasting sites.

I have HDS syndrome: Haven’t Done Shit.

Last productive thing I did was around 12 hours ago, when I renewed the registration on three of my domains for another year. I was up late because I’d been out drinking with Tracy and a friend of hers. Such fun. I’m still mentally on vacation. Or maybe I’m always mentally on vacation.

Yeah. HDS. I should work on that.

Here’s an interesting Craigslist ad that may or may not have anything to do with me.

Post Xmas iPod sale – 30GB & Nano

Reply to: sale-529397656@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-01-05, 11:34AM PST

Didn’t get the iPod you wanted for Xmas? Santa brought me an iPhone so now I have two extraneous iPods – take advavantage of my misfortune! Or fortune. Or…

Anyway, I have a 30GB, 5th Generation iPod, in white. It’s been in a case almost its entire life and looks brand-new! Includes earbuds, USB-to-Dock connector cable. I’ll toss in a Griffin iTrip FM transmitter (the slim model with the LCD screen) and the clear hard case. I’ve got a few other accessories for it – ask me and if I’ve got it, I’ll toss it in! I’m asking $225.

I also have a 4GB 1st Generation iPod nano, in black. I used it for running. Earbuds and USB-to-Dock connector cable included. I have the original Nike sport armband which I’ll be happy to include, as well (don’t worry, I’ll wash it before you get it). I’m asking $120 for this.

I also have an Apple Universal Dock, with adapters for both of the above iPods (and several others). It provides easy docking and line-out and S-video out, and infrared control. Includes a USB-to-Dock connector cable and an Apple Remote. Add this item to either of the above for only an additional $15… or buy both iPods and get the Universal Dock for free!

Hurry now… quantities limited!

Location: Sellwood

This was originally going to be a comment over at Athena’s blog, specifically in response to this post (where she expresses her frustration at not being listened to), but I realized I was dangerously close to a threadjack and potential flamewar, so I decided to move my comment here.

here’s a metric ton of links from Mark Lieberman debunking “the brain-sex gospel” (I’m not sure if that’s Lieberman’s phrase or not): the links are at the bottom of this post.

A single post that lays out Lieberman’s point of contention with the specific meme that “studies show that women speak more words than men in a day” is this one. Here’s a quote that summarizes his argument:

Louann Brizendine’s book The Female Brain, published last August, featured a number of striking quantitative assertions about sex differences in communication. The jacket blurb claimed “A woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000”, while the text (p. 14) gave the same numbers in the other order: “Men use about seven thousand words per day. Women use about twenty thousand.” Dr. Brizendine gives a set of references in her end-notes, but none of them support those numbers. In fact, no study of any sort has ever measured any numbers at all like these, as far as I’ve been able to find.

What are the facts about sex and talkativeness? There’s an enormous amount of individual variation, and each individual talks more or less depending on mood and context. Against this background of variation, many studies have measured how much women talk, on average, compared to how much men talk, on average. The differences that they find between men and women as groups have always been small compared to the differences among men as individuals or among women as individuals. And more often than not, these small group differences actually show men talking a bit more than women do. For additional details, see the links at the end of this post.

Even more links at the bottom of that particular post. Elsewhere he links the idea that there are gender-based differences in brain structure to the debunked (as far as I’m concerned: see Stephen Jay Gould’s “The Measure of a Man”) idea that there are “race”-based brain differences, in that both ideas are supported by nothing more than prejudice, rather than science. The reason the gender-based idea is more “popular” is because its proponents have couched their arguments in terms that appeal to feminist prejudices, as well.

I’m simply summarizing someone else’s views. I understand that massively quoting one source does not a scientific argument make, and could be characterized as the logical fallacy of appeal to authority, so if you disagree with the idea I’m presenting above, I’m not going to spend a lot of time arguing against you. I’m not an authority on gender or language, and I’ll admit right now that Lieberman’s idea feeds my bias that we’re all more similar than we are different; men, women, dark skin, light skin, tall, short, young, old. Why focus on the tiny percentage that is different? Why group people by the basis of superficial examples of natural genetic and historical variation? At least, that’s my opinion and my underlying assumption.

Feel free to challenge my assumptions, though. Nothing is more entertaining or liberating.