Mark Wieczorek

Computers suck air in & blow air out.

Air filters suck air in & blow air out.

Computers get filled with dust & particles.

Why not combine computers with air filters and turn your computer into an air purifier? Not just small filters on those little fans that you see on most computers, but a large fan & air filter outside the main beige box. Many air filters are about the size of a computer case, and it would be easy to make one that simply attaches to a computer case.

It could move much more air than a standard case fan, keeping the computer much cooler and cleaning the air at the same time. It may use a little more electricity than just a computer, but not more than a computer + air filter would already use, and perhaps just a bit less because you won’t also have to run case fans.

"Tragedy is bad things happening to good people. Comedy is bad things happening to bad people." - Aristotle’s Poetics

Jim Halpert is that loveable everyman from The Office (US). He has two hot girls chasing after him, he has to deal with idiots at work, and most importantly, he always turns to the camera and makes goofy faces. The faces says, "Oh my God, he’s such an idiot, I can’t believe he just did that." It let’s the audience know that they’re in on the joke. It lets them feel superior, and a lot of comedy is about feeling superior - watching idiots do something stupid & laughing at them. It’s what Seinfeld did, Alex Reiger did it in Taxi, however subtly. Seinfeld chose his friend, though - he loved their zaniness. Jim Halpert, like Alex Reiger use the job as an excuse to keep them around these entertaining simpletons.

When the Volkswagen "Zero Ego Emmissions" commercials came out, I said to myself, "they just gave away the keys to the castle. They just said explicitly what’s implicit in every VW ad." But nobody else seemed to catch on, at least, nobody I talked to said something like that.

Nearly every VW ad says "We’re not stuck up, we’re just better than everyone else." What better message for a "German Engineered" car that’s not that German Engineered car to send? You’re better than those that can’t afford German Engineering, and you’re better than those that go for the obvious choice because of their own insecurities.

The Mac vs. PC ads are iconic & by the 2nd paragraph you knew I was going there. Something about the Mac guy just makes me want to smack him around, though. His smug superiority & PC’s sincere attempts at coolness just doesn’t do it for me. If PC was like Dwight and almost malicious in his stupidity I might buy it, but PC is just PC. Mac’s exasperation at PC’s shenanigans quite obviously convey a sense of superiority. It’s not even hidden here, it’s palpable.

If you don’t think Mac is Jim Halpert, take a close look at Mac in the Mac vs. PC Vista ad. Just as PC’s personal bodyguard says "You are coming to a sad realization, cancel or allow?" Mac looks off and makes a face. In fact, he spends much of the commercial making funny faces.

Look at the Zero Ego Emmissions ad again, it happens at least 3 times. They make a face while staring directly at the people who are acting crazy, the female passenger looks at us/the driver and makes a face, and then they shrug as they toss out their megaphone.

This we’re better than you attitude isn’t just the purview of shiny toys for metrosexuals with too much money on their hands, the "we get it, we’re with you, this is stupid" attitude has been around for a while.

I’m not sure who did it first, but I first became aware of the general technique of "letting the audience know you’re in on the joke " during the Sprite "Image is nothing / Obey your Thirst" and "Make 7-Up Yours" campaigns. These were ads that said "Yeah, advertising is stupid, we get it too. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. See, we’re one of you." These didn’t have a Jim Halpert-esque character in them, but like the Peter Stormare "Unpimp Your Auto" VW ads, they’re pure camp and acknowledge that on some level, all ads are artificial.

The Jim Halpert is all over this early Washington Mutual ad (one of the first with "The Banker’s Pen"), and indeed all the WaMu ads. The Geico Caveman is a master at it, but does it more as indignation at the stupidity of those around him. In a clever twist, the Caveman is superior to the people whose product you’re being sold, disarming the Geico folks and making them seem more approachable for their fallibility. This hearkens back to the "Make 7-Up Yours" ads where we’re being told that ads are stupid. Even though it’s a Geico representative that’s being an idiot, he really represents all the old stodgy insurance firms.

Let’s review the ingredients for a Jim Halpert.

1. You have to have a character the audience will identify with.
2. He (or she) has to be surrounded by idiots.
3. He has to react to the idiots. Preferrably by looking aside, possibly even straight at the camera, and making a face.
4. Optional. For "cleverness" brownie points, make the people selling your product the idiots.

It’s a really fun way to make ads - you can have a lot of fun inventing all sorts of idiots, and by putting someone in the ad who realizes they’re idiots, you can make your customers feel superior to everyone else.

People are capable of making rational decisions, but the moment you introduce stress, that ability goes out the window. It’s already been demonstrated that being around friends can impair your memory, and now research shows that people lose the ability to perform calculations in stressful situations.

“People tend to have a hard time evaluating numbers, even when the numbers are clear and right in front of them,” Arvai said. “In contrast, the emotional responses that are conjured up by problems like terrorism and crime are so strong that most people don’t factor in the empirical evidence when making decisions.”

So we can’t remember things when we’re with people, and we can’t think clearly under stress. What chance do we have to make good decisions? Pretty good, actually. Gary Klein in his book Sources of Power studied people who made decisions in high-stress situations - fire chiefs, nurses, etc. What he found was that when placed in a high-stress situation (and any deadline situation is a high stress situation, even if that deadline is 6 months away), rather than listing alternatives and weighing possibilities, we came up with a scenario, ran through it looking for flaws, and then acted on it. The best way to train for these situations is to live through them, or to listen to the stories of people who have. This allows us to build a mental model of how things should go & identify, however subconsciously, when it’s going wrong.

Read: Decision making isn’t always as rational as you think (or hope) (via Crazy on Tap)

Even though EEGs (electroencephalogram) aren’t that much use to medical science, I’ve always wanted one. They’re smaller & easier to use than fMRI machines. EEGs work by reading the electrical activity on your scalp which, believe it or not, registers some brainwave activity. EEGs are where we get the terms “alpha waves” and “delta waves” which correspond to different levels of consciousness (I mean sleep, not some foofy new-age thing). By the time you reach delta waves, most of the brain you can read from an EEG is firing in sync so you get these nice big slow waves. This contrasts with the frenetic & chaotic pattern associated with waking life.

The OpenEEG Project gives anyone the means to make a DIY home EEG machine with just a few simple household items… well, okay not just a few simple household items, but it’s still cheaper than an MRI and it should look at least half as professional as Jim Carrey with a colander on his head.

read: Welcome to the OpenEEG project

In my neuropsych class I learned that if you’re in an accident & the brain’s ability to control the body is damaged, you’ll actually be amazingly calm. Sure you’ll be freaking out, but since the brain can’t send a signal to the body that tells it to increase your heart rate, to pespire, to breath faster, etc., you don’t feel nervous. This has been confirmed by people who’ve either recovered, or whose condition only affected them from the neck down & who’ve found other ways to communicate, such as blinking.

While a lot of scientists are looking inside the brain for the root of emotion, others look to the body.

This is brought home by two things I’ve recently read. One is a recap of an important experiment in which subjects are divided into two groups - both receive a stimulant (adrenaline), but one half is put in a friendly environment with people who are playful, and the other half is told that the drug they just took will make them nervous. Both groups have a heightened experience, but they have vastly different ones.
They all had the same physiological activity, but the interpretations were vastly different. The group that was surrounded by positive influnces had a great, positive experience. The group that was told they may experience some nervousness, did. The source of the emotions was the physical response to the adrenaline, but the interpretation of it was due entirely to circumstance.

This is part of why I like to be on time for job interviews - if I’m late, I may have to run to catch the train, and I know I can’t distinguish a faster heartbeat from genuine nervousness in those situations.

So you get caught in a feedback loop of sorts - the brain tells the body to prepare for “fight or flight” and when the body does it, the brain interprets what it feels as nervousness and the cycle continues. The same can be true for excitement and happiness, though such extreme happiness is, sadly, rare in our culture. Given this, it’s easy to see why anxiety is such a difficult problem, and why sedatives and muscle relaxants are so popular.

The other article I read is of a woman who has brain damage & shows no signs of responsiveness, but when they put her in an MRI machine, all the right areas light up when she’s presented with stimulus (such a people talking, or being asked to imagine acting in certain ways, such as playing tennis). Some scientists think this is original thought, others believe it’s just a reaction to the stimulus, like aeomeba moving towards or away from light.

It’s hard to imagine a life where you cannot contact the outside world, not even to communicate whether or not you’re conscious or alive, though given what we know about emotions such as fear & anxiety, it’s possible she isn’t as scared as we would imagine.

The next time you experience an extreme emotion, take a moment to think about it - where is this emotion located? Is it a thought or is it something in the body? What differentiates this emotion from other emotions?

Read: Buried alive in your own skull.

Read: Europhoria Induced by Experimental Trickery