reckless LJ spamming. I must be working at home.

[lagilman]

Writing. Laundry. E-mail. A couple of phone calls. More writing. Excitement R us.

My morning reading: Mental Mirrors: Special Cells in the Brain Mimic The Actions and Intentions of Others, Forming the Basis of Empathy and Social Connections (adapted from MIRRORING PEOPLE: THE NEW SCIENCE OF HOW WE CONNECT WITH OTHERS, by Marco Iacoboni, FS&G, on-sale next month). I'm not sure if this is just something I already knew, or the author is really good at explaining the topic (I suspect a little of both) but a lot of it seems "well, yeah, obviously" to me. Not uninteresting, but obvious. However, the combination of the article and some people-watching I was doing last night is making me wonder about the nature of competitive conversationalism a la nature vs nurture. If you show awareness/interest by involuntarily mirroring the confederate, is it the lack of mirror neurons that prevents you from doing that? Or is it also a learned social dominance game-trait? In other words, is the person who runs roughshod over you and refuses to return social cues missing mirror neurons in some capacity or another (a sliding scale from 'rude' to 'low-functioning autism,' for example), or can you have a full compliment of mirror neurons and still not acknowledge* the other person/people in the equation, either intentionally or through lack of what we like to call social skills?

It would be nice to say "oh, so-and-so can't help it, they're chemical that way," but I've always thought it was a bit of a cop-out. Maybe I'm wrong, and the cold and conversationally abusive among us need more help than Miss Manners can provide...

*not in the 'cut direct" way, since that's a reaction itself, but as though the person wasn't even there.

Or maybe I need more coffee. Yeah.



And a bonus photo, for those interested:

Coke bottle shown actual size.

Comments

[blackmonkeymage.livejournal.com]

Hmm: I zoomed in on the photo to try and guess what operating system you got, and it's giving me conflicting impressions. The window decorations look like Windows XP, but the taskbar has no Start button.

[lagilman]

It's a specifically-customized version of Linux for the Eee.

[blackmonkeymage.livejournal.com]

Cool.

I'd heard they were going to release a Windowfied version of the Eee, and I was wondering if the sort of person who wants an Eee would buy such a thing. And, uh, I was wondering whether to be happy or sorry for you on the subject of this computer.

The computer looks a lot cuter than I'd thought before. The keyboard looks all Maccy.

[lagilman]

They've done up a version of XP for the newer Eees, but I saw no reason to opt for it -- when running a stripped-down machine I prefer a stripped-down OS.

And I'm quite thrilled with Toke so far. He's never going to replace my laptop or desktop, but as a traveling machine the Eee is ideal.