Microblog

People these days use the word "dopamine" as if it was something they snort lines of: "I got a hit of dopamine when…". Yes, I know you think this makes you sound educated, but actually you're revealing that you barely know what dopamine is or does. Heightened dopaminergic activity is neither necessary nor sufficient for pleasure; ask all the Parkinson's patients on L-DOPA if you don't believe me. It would be more honest to say that you got a hit of one of the four humors, because then the casual listener would more easily apprehend that you're talking out of your tuchus.

While you're at it, stop using the word "DNA" to mean "character". You're not misinforming people about physiology with that one, but it's a no less buffoonish abuse of a scientific term.

I was deep in the archives of an obscure mailing list the other day and I saw an argument in which one guy said "First, to be clear, I do not support" a proposal, without elaborating, so the other guy said "It's hard to respond to an objection without a rationale." That's a mood.

I think it's a tad hypocritical when people who are urinating in public get mad at you for looking.

No man is an island. In fact, in today's highly interconnected world culture, no country is an island, either. Even the island countries aren't islands. Especially the island countries.

"You know, that might be the answer—to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail." —Colonel Korn (Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, 1961)