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An apparent interesting side effect of shooting your face full of rat poison is the loss of the ability to decode the emotional content of sentences that are sad, depressing or filled with anger. From the Newsweek article:

This is the first study suggesting that Botox affects the ability to understand the emotional content of language. “Normally, the brain would be sending signals to the periphery to frown, and the extent of the frown would be sent back to the brain,” UW-Madison professor emeritus of psychology Arthur Glenberg (and Havas’s adviser) said in a statement. “But here, that loop is disrupted, and the intensity of the emotion and of our ability to understand it when embodied in language is disrupted.” Even though the temporal delay is less than a second, says Glenberg, who is now at Arizona State University, “in conversation, people respond to fast, subtle cues about each other’s understanding, intention, and empathy. If you are slightly slower reacting as I tell you about something that made me really angry, that could signal to me that you did not pick up my message.”

This immediately made me think of my son and others on the autistic spectrum. He and others can have issues with facial expressions being appropriate for the emotions they are feeling. Could this study be hitting on some additional wiring issues that people with AS disorders have? Certainly worth a look I would think.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia runs an autism research center. Our family has participated in studies in the past that focused on the brains reaction time to visual and sound cues. They currently are building a study that will focus on how the brain processes facial expressions and social and nonsocial actions such as gestures and other movements. Makes you realize that facial expressions are more than just skin deep.

This month marks the seven year anniversary of my web log. I started it using a virtual DNS service and ran it off my home PC. It was slow and any time the service burped my ‘massive’ online presence would vanish until I returned home to reset it. Eventually I bit the bullet and bought some hosted space, used blogger for a bit, then Moveabletype and now I’m happily using WordPress. I initially set this up to learn about the plumbing behind the internet and to prove to myself that I could in fact set up a website in the days when pretty much everything you did on the web was set by hand, no plug and play like today. My posting frequency was rather high when I first began, averaging seventeen posts a month in 2003, reflective of the fact that I was playing with a new toy I guess. You can then see when my Warcraft addiction kicked in, the majority of my energy going into the game and sucking any and all creative thoughts I had away into a vacuum. My average posts of 15 per month in 2004, 4 per month in 2005, 3 per month in 2006, Under 3 per month in 2007, under 2 per month in 2008 and 2009 started off the same until October of ’09 when I quit and my thoughts of other things resurfaced.

In all the time I’ve posted here the sole reason has been to take ideas and thoughts that have no other home and give them that. During that time I’ve managed to reconnect with several people from various stages of my life, early childhood, young adult, college and early jobs. One of the benefits of a rather uncommon last name is that when people Google it you pop up. Many of them were nothing more than a ‘Hey! How have you been?’ but each was nice because for the most part those people had drifted out of my day to day memories despite playing a prominent part in my life at one time. Just as they surfaced they drifted away yet again.

Out of curiosity and the insistence of a fellow WoW player and friend who said something along the lines of ‘Sign up so I can see your old girlfriends’, I signed up for Facebook in the middle of last year. It’s taken me a while to formulate my thoughts on the social networking (facebook, myspace, plurk, twitter, whatever) phenomenon matter but here they are:

For someone that considers himself above average with the whole PC/tech side of things I have to say that the layout and navigation of these sites are absolutely horrible with Facebook taking the prize for the worst interface of all. I can only think that the reason they make it so obtuse is to increase the number of page views they are getting and thereby increase the perceived value of their property.

More than anything else, the creators of Facebook have managed to find a new clientele for gaming – middle aged women. The sheer volume of Farmville & Mafia Wars announcements represents a collective waste of time that may indeed put the lost productive hours spent on WoW to shame. Getting these people hooked on their free games is only the first step in monetizing their business model I’m sure. Women are a notoriously hard market to crack for the gaming industry and it looks like Facebook found the nutcracker.

It is very easy to spend a good hour jumping from one friend to the next, piggy backing off of their friend lists to see who you may or may not have missed seeing online. It is also very easy to see that some people have managed to maintain the very same friendships they had when I knew them, almost to the point where you wonder if they have changed one bit since you saw them last. Most of the people you see are mostly fatter, sometimes balder versions of the people you remember from your past. Out of all the profiles I’ve seen just one was an ‘I can’t believe it’ jaw dropper, even at this point I’m thinking the person either had radical plastic surgery or they were kidnapped by some foreign government and replaced with a poor body double.

The field has changed but the game is the same. The same people that are pros at manipulating others show their abilities by posting short, vague statements about their lives to increase their own self-importance thereby soliciting the expected ‘omg – is everything ok?’ responses from a half dozen friends followed by the two or three equally cryptic comments by people that are clearly ‘in the loop’. Virtually published semi-secret hidden drama is just as good as the real thing right?

Ancillary sites have popped up in response to what can only be described as real life stupidity saved for eternity. If you have a spare hour or two go to Facebookfails.com to laugh and further reduce your faith in the future of humanity.

For people that find Facebook to be too slow or too big and clunky to manage Twitter and Plurk come to the rescue. Post every single silly thought in your head, hell, tell everyone when your ass itches! The world wants needs to know all about it.

The final impact that these new social networking sites will have is yet to be seen. Time Magazine and many others are sounding the death knell for the high school reunion as well as other time tested meet ups. Now that I’ve had the chance to see how a good 70% of my high school class turned out I don’t need to see them face to face right?

If you have some spare time and find yourself aimlessly wandering the internet be sure to stop by Passive Aggressive Notes for a laugh or two. A collection of pictures, screenshots, etc. of silly or mean notes from friends, coworkers, supervisors and strangers. For example:

Many people have found that the anonymity of the internet tends to draw out anger in even the nicest of people. I guess this just goes to show that has always been the case. You can be mean(er) if you think people won’t find out who you are.

This reminds me of the 80/20 rule I was taught when I was working retail:

10% of the people that work with or for you will NEVER steal from you, no matter how sure they are that they won’t get caught.

10% of the people that work with or for you will ALWAYS steal from you, no matter how sure they are that they WILL get caught.

The other 80% make a judgment and will only steal from you if they are certain they will get away from it.