Friday Hodgepodge
Friday, September 28, 2018
Four Things
1. Whether you're getting ready to name a baby or find the subject of baby names interesting, you should give, "How to Name a Baby" a read over at Wait, but Why. Among other things is the following sage advice regarding really odd names:
Drawbacks: They'll have to spell out their name on phone calls 2 trillion times throughout their life; They'll have to watch people figuring out how to react every time they introduce themselves; They'll get made fun of at school; It might hurt their chances of getting job interviews; If the kid isn't awesome, the whole thing is awkward; If you were just in a phase and made a compulsive decision, that's shitty cause the kid has to live with it forever. [format edits]My wife and I adopted what she calls the "Key Chain Rule" an overall criterion when we named our kids: "A name should be common enough to find in a key chain display, and yet not so common as to be sold out."
3. Job hunting? A resume hack I've casually heard about several times is quite likely to backfire. Here's part of a Q&A from Ask a Manager (Go to Item 5.):
Someone I follow on Twitter posted today saying that he learned of the following resume hack: copy/paste a job description, make it super tiny (2.5 pt) and change the font to white, then post it in the footer of a resume to somehow get past a sorting algorithm. Is this a real tactic, or is embedding keywords from the job description into your resume (if relevant) just as effective?You'll look dumb as a bag of bricks to any human who looks at this. And you might not want to work somewhere that wouldn't catch something like this.
Definitely do not do that. Many/most online application systems will strip out that formatting and render the text into normal-sized black text, and it will look like you inexplicably and sloppily pasted the entire job description at the bottom of your resume. [formatting in original]
4. If you really like Joy of Painting re-runs, I have an article for you:
It would be 30 years before Richard learned this sensation had a name. He grew up, earned a Ph.D. and became a professor of biopharmaceutical sciences at Shenandoah University in Virginia. Then, around 2013, he was listening to a podcast when the hosts began explaining something called "ASMR." Richard was bewildered. People who experienced it, Richard recalls them explaining, "tended to really like Bob Ross. It caused them to have head tingles. I was like, Oh!"I'm not part of this club, but I'm open to the idea that this might be a real phenomenon.
"Yeah, but what does ASMR stand for?" you might ask. Follow the link.
-- CAV
2 comments:
I've had a similar experience to #4. I have always enjoyed swords, and there's a specific feel when you hold a blade that's well balanced. Never could explain it to other people. Then I read "Archaeology of Weapons. In it, an archaeologist built a replica of a tangless bronze sword from Ireland and couldn't figure out how to hold it. The hilt was too small for an adult human hand. Then he held it with his fingers in front of the guard (the way many rapier fighters hold their blades) and felt that exact feeling. It drastically altered the way we look at these weapons. That sensation, which I have never been able to describe to anyone else, turns out to be a valuable tool in archaeology!
It's a really amazing experience to have someone perfectly describe a sensation that you have become convinced no one else has experienced. It's a feeling of "Finally! Someone understands!" combined with a feeling of vindication that you are not, in fact, insane. Combined with a not-insignificant amount of "They're reading my mind".
Interesting.
Aside from an interest in neuroscience, it was the mention of Bob Ross that drew me in. That said, I merely found his style of delivery somewhat mesmerizing.
So there was no Aha! moment for me, but it was still interesting to read about.
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