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Genius, genius obit of the man who made ELIZA, “a misunderstood parody of a Rogerian psychotherapist” which, it is brilliantly demonstrated, fails the Turing test.
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Gourmet cooking with a microwave
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Critical of MBCT – “what their programme incorporates is a westernised version of meditation, made palatable to our delicate sensitivities and only loosely linked to the kind of traditional meditation techniques taught in the east.”
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Brain plasticity and meditation, mental health.
As in brick shithouses?
alpha bullshit
Presumably someone somewhere has to sit down and write this stuff. I wonder how much they get paid for it.
The product, should you be consumed by an irresistible desire to acquire it as a result of reading the description, is a light switch.
Don't buy an Olympus camera
Just don’t. Really. I have no idea why anyone ever does. I so wish I wasn’t tied into the damn things. They’re probably fine and dandy if you’ve got shed-loads of cash. If you haven’t, they absolutely stink.
Take, for example, the subject of a ring flash for macro photography.
If you are fortunate (or sensible) enough to have a Canon or Nikon DSLR not only will you already have a high quality, reasonably priced macro lens (unlike the pathetic misguided – and I use the word advisedly – Olympus owner) but you will also be able to acquire a perfectly adequate ring flash for a mere £128 or so, no doubt considerably cheaper in dollar terms if you live in the US.
If you own an Olympus then dream on. There’s no third-party ring flash for you. Should you want a set-up like your happy Canon or Nikon owning friends you have to shell out for the notoriously over-priced Olympus branded accessories. So a mere £470 (lowest price I could find) is all that’s required. Unless of course you actually want to – gasp – use it with your macro lens. In which case you also have to shell out for the “optional Flash Adapter Ring FS-FR1” (in what sense “optional”, I ask myself, when the fucking thing won’t actually fit on the lens without it) which is a no doubt highly engineered piece of kit looking suspiciously like a plastic tube which costs the absolutely trifling sum of £85.
To summarise. Nikon or Canon? £128. Olympus? £555.
And don’t get me started on lenses. Just don’t. I might have an embolism or something.
Don’t buy an Olympus camera
Just don’t. Really. I have no idea why anyone ever does. I so wish I wasn’t tied into the damn things. They’re probably fine and dandy if you’ve got shed-loads of cash. If you haven’t, they absolutely stink.
Take, for example, the subject of a ring flash for macro photography.
If you are fortunate (or sensible) enough to have a Canon or Nikon DSLR not only will you already have a high quality, reasonably priced macro lens (unlike the pathetic misguided – and I use the word advisedly – Olympus owner) but you will also be able to acquire a perfectly adequate ring flash for a mere £128 or so, no doubt considerably cheaper in dollar terms if you live in the US.
If you own an Olympus then dream on. There’s no third-party ring flash for you. Should you want a set-up like your happy Canon or Nikon owning friends you have to shell out for the notoriously over-priced Olympus branded accessories. So a mere £470 (lowest price I could find) is all that’s required. Unless of course you actually want to – gasp – use it with your macro lens. In which case you also have to shell out for the “optional Flash Adapter Ring FS-FR1” (in what sense “optional”, I ask myself, when the fucking thing won’t actually fit on the lens without it) which is a no doubt highly engineered piece of kit looking suspiciously like a plastic tube which costs the absolutely trifling sum of £85.
To summarise. Nikon or Canon? £128. Olympus? £555.
And don’t get me started on lenses. Just don’t. I might have an embolism or something.
links for 2008-04-02
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This woman feels like a psychic twin.
Animal love – risible and respectable
Here’s a carefully crufted alternative:
links for 2008-04-01
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Knitted brain, heart and guts. Fab.
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Beautiful empathetic review.
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Art, creativity and depression. Related? Via Pica
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via Hg
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Wow. Send her your stereotypes, youtubers. (Interesting word that. Like “you turnips”. Only not.)
Macro
I wept last night alone for loves lost, missed chances, hopes unfulfilled and those who I have known who are now dead. For the grey grief of the turning globe.
It is not wrong, I think, to mourn. To deny would be to cut out half the world.
What is sad, I think, is not to move the mind from loss to life.
To miss the thrust of winter into spring.
We are as fragile as the raindrop on the petal. It is our curse to know. And perhaps our consolation.
So when from grey sky and black branches there falls a shower of song we bathe in the bliss that is the blessing of our death.
links for 2008-03-31
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Obviously another trailer for the BBC’s no doubt hugely annoying “science” programme on meditation. I shall watch it nonetheless.
frizzyLogic 