The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes.

Oscar Wilde said that. Oscar Wilde is an interesting dead man. His short, witty, to-the-point sayings have experienced an extreme revival with the advent of the internet. He’s quoted often by people who don’t even know who he was, or only know the Wikipedia summary of his life. He’s quoted because he fits into the construct of the internet: the quotes are relatively concise, interesting, and have an element of romantic elegance (“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”) that is easy to relate to. They are not very threatening to the neo-hippie-but-tech-saturated-generation that rules the internet today. They just fit, and they’ve become a staple overnight.

The internet’s ability to do this terrifies some people, notable Nicholas Carr, a self-preservationist Enyclopedia Britannica editor who wrote a piece in The Atlantic titled, “Is Google making us stupid?” In the article, he insinuates that short-span reading, like skimming articles or browsing facebook, is changing the neuroplasticity of the brain.

But I disagree.

Carr himself explains a chunk of my argument:

In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates bemoaned the development of writing. He feared that, as people came to rely on the written word as a substitute for the knowledge they used to carry inside their heads, they would, in the words of one of the dialogue’s characters, “cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful.” And because they would be able to “receive a quantity of information without proper instruction,” they would “be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant.” They would be “filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom.” Socrates wasn’t wrong—the new technology did often have the effects he feared—but he was shortsighted. He couldn’t foresee the many ways that writing and reading would serve to spread information, spur fresh ideas, and expand human knowledge (if not wisdom).

The arrival of Gutenberg’s printing press, in the 15th century, set off another round of teeth gnashing. The Italian humanist Hieronimo Squarciafico worried that the easy availability of books would lead to intellectual laziness, making men “less studious” and weakening their minds. Others argued that cheaply printed books and broadsheets would undermine religious authority, demean the work of scholars and scribes, and spread sedition and debauchery. As New York University professor Clay Shirky notes, “Most of the arguments made against the printing press were correct, even prescient.” But, again, the doomsayers were unable to imagine the myriad blessings that the printed word would deliver.

These analogies are fitting for the internet. I do think the internet is changing things. For one, it’s making us way, way smarter. I learned programming only via free online resources. I learned a skill, which I sell as skilled labor professionally. I learned it for free. I sell it for money. Thank you, collective internet contributors. Just as the unforeseen benefits of the printing press outweighed the negatives, the internet will create super intelligent humans. We have essentially built a hive-mind of information.

Everyone agrees the internet is awesome in this sense, but what about the changing neuroplasticity of the brain? As Carr uses mostly anecdotal evidence for this, mostly of his own experiences with reading, I will use anecdotal evidence as well. I read articles online all the time, I program, I facebook. I love short snippets of information. But when Dance with Dragons was released, I spent 2 days devouring 1,040 pages of gritty, descriptive fantasy. I do read less than I did as a kid, mostly because I spend less time reading books I don’t enjoy. This means the quality of my reading has risen. And unlike Carr, I have no “mental fog” when trying to read a long complicated novel. (There are few things in life more complicated than the story lines in Song of Ice and Fire) On top of that, this series is fairly popular, meaning other people have no problem reading thousands of pages as well as posting online on the crazy ASOIAF forums and participating in the huge online community for this book. These are techy people, and they read. A LOT. Since Carr’s article also kind of attacks the younger generation, I’d say look at the readership of Harry Potter. Think about the sheer mass amount of tumblrs dedicated to Harry Potter. These kids (and adults) love short sweet info, but they also love reading Harry Potter, a considerably long series, renowned for it’s depth and quality of writing.

10 years ago you were limited to the information that fit your social class. Now, the limits are removed. But Carr should be worried. His position as an encyclopedia editor is under attack. Now we have hive-mind expertise contributing to Wikipedia for free. Like the scribes that were not needed after the printing press, Carr is no longer needed. I guess it makes sense to write a book about how you lost your job. We all gotta put food on the table.

There’s a couple apps that I feel need a mention on my blog.

Android | iPhone | Online

This is basically a calorie tracking tool. It has a massive database, badges, social options, goals, and more. There even is a pricey scale you can buy that will automatically update your account with your weight, as well as a step counter that will add the steps you take to your calorie burn count. It’s faster than looking up calories for every food while keeping a food journal, and the graphs and visual aids help you see how well you’re doing. It’s all free, and if you stick with it, I think it is incredibly effective. Losing weight can be alot more complicated than just eating a set number of calories, but Lose it! will help you see which of the foods you eat are the real culprits and which exercises have a good enjoyment:calorie burn ratio. It’s a learning tool, in the end. And if you’re wondering, I have lost weight by using it. And the more I use it and track my food, the healthier I eat and the more I exercise. It’s pretty motivating.

Android | iPhone

I have a love hate relationship with waze. I don’t care for it’s GPS navigation stuff or even the traffic info. However, what waze does which is awesome is it tracks all of your driving (via GPS). It tracks your speed and how long it takes you to drive on certain roads. Then it updates it’s own database with this information, from all of it’s users. What happens is it gives you much faster routes than Google maps. For example, there’s a ton of speed bumps on one entrance to my neighborhood, and that is the side that Google maps tells me is the fastest (to get to the freeway, for example) Waze tells me to take a back exit, avoiding speed bumps and a light. This ends up being much faster in reality. So Waze uses user-generated content to figure out real world fastest routes. And I love it for it.

Camera Zoom FX

Android

Time lapse photography on my phone. Nuff said.

Go Launcher Ex, Go Launcher To-Do List, Go Launcher Calendar

Android

Go Launcher redesigns your phone and gives you several extra widgets. Their calendar and To-Do lists are sleek, elegant, and I constantly use them.

That’s it for now!

xoxo
Noemi

Linux? PC? We are Mac-guys, Chuck. We are IT artists.

-Chuck, Pilot Episode

#1

I can’t seem to find Adele’s “Someone like You” in its original format.

#2

It’s a complete memory hog on my phone, much much worse than Pandora. My keyboard/touch screen acts up while it’s running. Not to mention the battery usage is way too much, once again, when compared to other music streaming software.

#3

Maybe I’m blind, but I can’t find a “tracks similar to this” feature.

Oh well.
Uninstalled.

3 Points:

• I need to learn more about the existential twinkie ramblings.
• Where do I plug my modem in?
• When I grow up, I want to be a “cyber journalist.”

When I hear people talking about it I don’t even know what they’re saying. For example. this blog post, explains that an IRL troll on twitter is someone who posts on twitter during the timeslot where they canceled a meeting. Wait, what? Another type is the link-jumping troll, someone who posts links without reading them. What do any of these things have to do with trolling? Even beer pong trolling (not making a shot an entire game) makes more sense than this.

Or maybe everyone’s just trolling me.

Just as the four hour body explains, you don’t need to eat less, you just need to eat less of the wrong food. Eating less in general is too simplistic. But what about eating “good food”? What does that mean? Isn’t that just another simplistic statement? Unfortunately all the weight-loss companies, diet trends, bad science and false advertising makes it impossible to find out what specific foods actually do to our bodies. 4HB has it’s own list, but the New England Journal of Medicine has broken it down to 5 terrible foods for you and 5 good foods for you. Also included are behaviors that modified weight loss or gain.

This is how these numbers break down. The number in the parentheses indicates the weight gain or loss over the course of 4 years, for each serving of this food a day.

The Good

Vegetables (−0.22 lb)

Whole grains (−0.37 lb)

Fruits (−0.49 lb)

Nuts (−0.57 lb)

Yogurt (−0.82 lb)

Physical activity (−1.76 lb)

The Bad

Potato Chips (1.69 lbs)

Other Potatoes (1.26 lbs)

Sugar-sweetened beverages (1.00 lb)

Unprocessed meats (0.95 lb)

Processed meats (0.93 lb)

The Ugly

Other lifestyle factors were also independently associated with weight change.

Alcohol use (0.41 lb per drink per day)

Smoking (new quitters, 5.17 lb; former smokers, 0.14 lb)

Sleep (more weight gain with <6 or >8 hours of sleep)

Television watching (0.31 lb per hour per day)

I think the bad is all pretty well documented, but the good had some surprises. Fruits are more effective at weight loss than vegetables, apparently. This goes against the 4HB recommendations to avoid fruit because of the sugar in them. Of course, this is a correlation, so its important to examine all the effects of fruit, like curbing appetite and/or replacing high fructose corn syrup in one’s diet. Yogurt is kind of a random one to have almost 4 times the weight loss effect of vegetables, but since I am a yogurtofile, I love it. Now I have an excuse to eat it for breakfast lunch and dinner. The effect of potatoes is quite depressing. I wonder how potatoes stack up next to other carbs? Whole grains apparently help with weight loss, another point where the study differs from 4HB dogma.

In Romania, in the countryside, potatoes are traditionally grown to fatten pigs. We do have some potato dishes, but eating them all the time is viewed as a poor man’s thing. Because you really have to be starving and poor to need a pure carb like that. I find it interesting that slighting older cultures than mine value good food.  That being said, people that do hard physical labor in the countryside do eat a polenta-style dish called mamaliga with sour cream and Romanian cheese. This stuff fills you up instantly. But it fits the culture – if you worked hard physical labor all day, having 1 or 2 of your meals just be corn wouldn’t fatten you, it would actually make your body more efficient. Although, in cases like this where there is alot of physical activity, meat is actually the ideal meal, it is just not viable in a countryside village setting to eat meat every day. You’d run out of animals.

Math Time!

If this was your meal plan for almost every day for 4 years, you’d lose 6.8 lbs. every 4 years.

Breakfast: Yogurt (2 servings) and Fruits (1)

Lunch: Whole grains(1) and Vegetables(2)

Snack: Fruit (1) and Nuts (1)

Dinner: Vegetables (1) and Whole Grain (1), Fruit Desert(1)

15-30 minutes (let’s say the 4HB routine) : Physical activity (−1.76 lb)

* Also including all the random stuff they didn’t mention in the study like dairy. *

Does that seem paltry? Well, read the next section.

What I don’t like about this study

1. They should’ve studied body fat %, not weight. Weight is really misleading! It’s different for men and women, people with muscle and people without, and in certain cases, gives you bad information or at the very least mixed signals. I do believe this study has validity, I just wish I could have a more accurate representation of what these foods actually do to your body fat.

2. More foods need to be included so one can properly create a meal plan from this study. I’d like to know the effect of eggs, milk, certain types of vegetables, diet soda, cheeses, types of meat, butter, etc. I know they are trying to use this study to explain that higher quality food is better and there is a theme of unprocessed food winning over processed food (sugar soda, refined grains, etc). But I want more facts! Science is about specificity. It is not a novel, it does not need an overarching theme. Now get to it, scientists!

xoxo

Noemi

PS, while I traveled, yogurt was my go-to meal. It just makes sense!

I don’t want to write this post right now, but I have to. I damaged my wrist pretty badly yesterday and its in a splint. So here goes blogging with my non-dominant hand. I designed the website Jumpino.com. Recently me and my brother have been getting lots of comments on the similarities with Google+.

I care more about my wrist right now, honestly. Because I write with my right hand, I draw, I paint, I sew, I sketch, I type/use the mouse with it. I can’t even continue my lighting project without my right hand. And this is the crucial difference between me and Google – I am a creator. Google is a company. They pay people well to come up with ideas, to design them, to market them, and to monetize them.

I got paid nothing, I took a break from school, I didn’t work – I dedicated half a year of my life to creating something I thought at the time was revolutionary. Give me a break, I was a teenager. Two people. Zero funding. and a HELL of a lot of determination. More importantly, I gave all this up for a project that ultimately failed – and I’d do it again.

So did Google steal my idea? No.

Ideas are a dime a dozen and if you put 10 smart kids in a room and tell them to brainstorm on social networking ideas, the Jumpino idea (live discussion grouped in the construct of social circles) will be brought up much faster than you think. It’s a great idea, but not a genius one. I am no Tesla. In fact, I’m surprised I was the first person to use the term “Private Circles” in the context of live web discussions.

So did they steal the design? Maybe.

I think there is a good chance my design heavily inspired Google+

Here are four solid things that feel uncomfortably similar:

1. The terminology, specifically, “Private Circles.”
2. Hand drawn crayon style, specifically arrows and circles.
3. Circle Icon. You can make a circle a million different ways. The red, the edge thickness, the fact that it’s hollow. This was the first thing that struck me.
4. Multiply Color Effect.

I think all of these separately don’t mean much – but in the context of an app based on the similar idea of social circles, it raises a few flags. I’m still willing to believe it might be a huge coincidence or synchronicity.

I think watching our “ad” videos, looking at the graphics below and visiting the Jumpino site will help you make up your mind.

Crayon style design elements. Still on the live website today.

Similar terminology. Still on the site.

Circle icons. still live.

I don't think this is live anymore but it was on the about page for a while

an early icon for circle linking

About 90% of people I’ve asked that compare the graphics say that there was probably some inspiration going on. For one, I guarantee there is someone at Google who has the responsibility of scoping out competitor products. We did that and we were just two people. (Fun fact, there are lots of other startups based on the same concept, but only our’s has this design and only ours used the term circles pre-Google+)

So what is it that I want? Nothing, actually.

I don’t need the recognition. I already know what I made, what I’m capable of, what I will make and that I will figure this life out without a footnote in the commented code of some big corporation. I know my startup failed to get a huge following and the lessons I learned were priceless, which brings me to:
I don’t need compensation. I’m lucky enough to get freelance work here and there on top of having a loving family that gave me a roof and sustenance and a computer to start programming on at the exciting age of 7. I have enough – and I have the tools to create more.
and lastly,
I don’t want Google plus to fail. After all, I use Google Reader, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and much more.

I’ve already won – because I make stuff without caring about recognition and compensation. Google – How many of your Google+ employees would still work if you never paid them or gave them credit for their work? Maybe one, two?

Google can’t afford authenticity.

This is why real web innovation will still come from kids and young adults screwing around with code, people with or without degrees, of any gender(!), ethnicity, and class. I think alot of people get discouraged when they hear about what happened with Dodgeball and Google – but remember that we have the drive and the authenticity to move the web forward. Your competitor is not Google or Microsoft or Apple. You are competing against yourself and against time. Small time developers have this huge advantage of actually caring about what we program. We are 5 steps ahead of Google, all the time. How else did I come up with a similar idea to the circles in Google+ 2 years before they did? I’m not a genius, I’m just passionate.

I would say I’m off to make the next big thing but I’m really just going to google wrist injuries, elevate my arm, eat ice cream, and take a nap.

xoxo!

Noemi

Season 2 Ep. 11

Yes, I filmed the most raggedy dog I could find. Because raggedy is adorable.
I was born here in Galati. But I am not a Gălăţeanca. I don’t speak with the East Romanian (“Moldovan”) accent and I’ve also never been extremely attached to this city. There’s a distinct smell as soon as I came near the city. The smell of years and years of steel production, from the combinat Galati is known for. I’ve tuned out the smell now, but the industry in this city is undeniable. I’m pretty sure there’s heavy metals or something in the water. The pollution and feel of the city is similar to Bucharest. Nothing you’d call elegant or grand in any way. Not quaint either. Just kind of blocky, busy, dirty, and a bit sad. There are a few buildings with classic Baroque architecture, but they are few and far in between. I went through lots of little streets today, wanting to get lost, and I kept remembering places, street corners, even some shops are still the same. I lived here only a short amount of time and visited a bit last time I was in Romania but memories keep springing up, it’s very emotional at times. Most of the poverty I grew up with is gone, but there are little remnants, a few people trying to sell random wares on the street, a few beggars (so far I’ve seen two). I have little pity for most of the people living here, and my heart goes to these adorable dogs that people abandon. Some of these dogs have little clothes on. I assumed they were lost and not strays, but apparently not. Several dogs rubbed up against my boots for just a little bit of warmth. I’ve seen dogs and cats cuddling together underneath trees, with no animosity whatsoever. They have the biggest eyes and it seems that every dog has a distinct face, while every person looks the same, cold and lacking that Romanian tandreţe I once felt. After a skinny orange stray rubbed up against me, pleading me with eyes as big as the sea, two women walked by, in their fur coats, hair extensions, huge earrings and leather boots talking about some Jenny Craig diet. I really have trouble seeing the “recession” these people are in. They consume so much and I know their income is low but they definitely don’t act like it. They do not respect the life around them nor do they respect themselves and litter needlessly. I have not seen one angry or rabid animal yet. In fact, every single animal that has approached me, came with it’s head bowed low, and tail between it’s legs. They look at me with their beady eyes and tremble in the cold. There is nothing I want more than to start a shelter for these animals, help neuter/spay them and try to curb the overpopulation. It is not necessary to make them all suffer like this. On the bus I saw a sign “Shar Pei puppies for sale 600RON”. 600 RON is roughly 200 USD, more than a month’s rent here in Romania. There is a negative attitude towards strays as it always has been here in Romania. I know at least one third of them are pure-bred or look pure-bred. At the point where most citizens can obviously afford expensive fashion, silly energy drinks, so much food they become overweight and have to pay for a diet, you can afford to take care of your animals.

I know, I am so American. Unapologetically. Forever.