To follow up on my Trader Joe’s story, apparently, there’s an instinctive element to how easily you deal with math:
There is intrinsic interest in what Angier reports: evidence that how good you are at subitization, the instinctive quantity-assessing ability you share with many animal species, is correlated with, and perhaps even determinative of, the extent to which you will readily develop abilities at linguistically formalized manipulation of mathematical concepts.
This makes sense to me – in addition (ha) to being very poor at doing even simple math in my head, I’m also entirely unable to come up with answers to questions like, ‘About how big is the room, like, how many feet?’ or ‘About how many inches thick is the manuscript?’ or ‘About how many people work at your office?’ I just have no freaking clue. There is no corresponding visual in my head. If you were to ask me about how many inches the laptop I’m currently typing on is, I would say that it’s squarish, and about the size of a phone book, but thinner than a phone book.
The Manhattan equivalent of a wardrobe to Narnia is being posted all over the blogs this week: it turns out that 190 Bowery is not, after all, an abandoned building, but rather is a big, fat, jealousy-inducing single-family home. Now, I think that no matter where you live, this apartment looks pretty cool, but to people living here, it’s absolute personal space porn. And these people are certainly the last living people to ever have such quality of life in Manhattan. Between the economy, my very un-earnings-focused life, and my general mental block when it comes to contemplating finances, I very much doubt that I will ever own any sort of home, much less the giant, empty expanse of space I crave.
In addition to an intense longing for unpopulated spaces, NYC has also bred in me the intense desire to have the ability to kick a lot of ass. So I’m glad to hear a 5-foot tall grandmother is currently training the Italian military in hand-to-hand combat.
I also love this: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People I Know.
And finally, for the Bottle Rocket fans out there (incidentally, a DVD of Bottle Rocket was another thing that the Alaskan boy bestowed upon me – I’m not saying he didn’t have good taste), here’s a transcription of Dignan’s entire 75-year plan (via Kottke). Sadly, I have very similar lists, composed in all earnestness.
