Lather

Tonight's shampoo bottle began its instructions by asserting that it was 'too easy' and then instructing me to lather it in my hair. At this point I decided I did not, in fact, know what lather meant except by inference and so looked it up to be sure.

Now, where am I going to find a rod or whip for next time?

Edit: Whoops, I did not mean to give the impression I did not know the word lather. I knew what it meant from years of seeing it in use, what I meant to say is I suddenly decided I did not know it from the dictionary, officially, and set out to fix that.

Noise Channels

    A few hours ago I saw an advertisement for some Grey's Anatomy event called 'SOS'. I do not watch or care about the show so for me this was just useless noise, although I imagine it is intended to draw in curious and/or morbid new viewers. I am slightly curious about why Grey's Anatomy alone of all shows I know of has actual named events (which I call such because they remind me of housecleaning/ratings stunts the comics industry apparently pulls, and which seems best suited to a theoretically endless serialised drama) but mainly it reminded me of the way I (and, more obnoxiously, my sister's boyfriend) tell at unwanted/uninteresting promotions 'I don't care'.

    Well, he is actually more likely to say 'who cares' in a way that suggests because he does not care for it he should not be seeing it. And so we come to the central thought of this posting, which is that, at least for now, it is not possible to target advertising only at people who are actually interested in the product. Search engines and other companies are trying to change that, though, logging data so they can shift what is displayed to be more relevant to the user's interests.

    This can be useful because, well, you are getting a selection that is much more likely to appeal to you than a broader slice of what is out there would, but I also worry about falling into a sort of feedback loop. If the choices a person is presented with mostly resemble choices they have made in the past, then I think they are more likely to make the same choices in the future, even if they would have chosen something different if they had known it was available. It is like putting on blinkers and narrowing one's world and that scares me even if the world seen is a happier and more enjoyable one.

    Relevant Egan story: Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies. I read this as being about the way humans fall into beliefs nudged by external forces, our trajectories not actually under our control - as well as the communication gap between different belief systems often making proselytism a futile if irresistible activity.

    My reflexive stance is that we should not blinker our worlds and splinter into monolithic blocks with limited possibility for change or even mutual influence, but rather allow for an exposure to diverse viewpoints/experiences and, perhaps, the living of richer lives. At least we will have the illusion of choice*.

*In a different mood I may come down hard on such attitudes.

Time/Limit

Most of what I write about here I do not know in depth or research, nor do I have the time to remedy this. If at some point my ability to apprehend information were enhanced, I rather suspect so would be humanity's capacity to produce it. Thus, I see no solution.

Heroes & Villains

    Tonight, watching heroes, witnessing a character being telekinetically crucified with his own paint brushes, I remarked to my sister that although it is often frustrating that villains tend to make poor use of their abilities and are often not shown to be especially evil, when they are done well it tends to create a desire to crawl away and hide.

    This was only the third episode I have seen, mind, and all in a row, so I do not even know the names of the characters. If I had been watching from the beginning of the series I suspect having a feel for the flow of this show would have drained a lot of the tension from that scene. Maybe, maybe not.

    There was also some dialogue in this episode regarding a character violating the laws of physics, about which I was sufficiently annoyed to want to make retorts involving words like known and understandable.

Verbosity

Each of those posts would probably have fostered more discussion had I spaced them a day or at least a few hours apart. C'est la vie.