Following on from the last post, I was reminded that I happened across a pretty fun thing the other day: "The Kissing Experiment." (I suppose if you have a really uptight workplace, you might call this one mildly NSFW.)
Author Sheril Kirshenbaum says this is part of preliminary work for a planned cognitive neuroscience experiment, and solicits your input thus:
Below the fold you’ll see a 15 photos (labeled A-O) of couples kissing. We need you to help us categorize them into three groups:
1) erotic - passionate/sexually-charged kiss
2) friendship - kiss between friends
3) relationship - affectionate kiss implying commitment
Don't get me started on people who needlessly say need, especially when they're asking a favor,* but apart from that, an interesting idea and a bunch of nice pix to look at.
* Sorry, pet peeve. This might stem from my first microeconomics class, where Prof. Sawdy hammered home the concept that there were very few actual needs, that almost everything was better thought of as a desire that people could, say, be persuaded to do without based on price. While I've grown out of the simplistic thinking that turns most Econ 101 students into free-market dogmatists, and sometimes even (*shudder*) John Galt wannabees, I've always found that idea about needs -- i.e., "needs" -- worth keeping in mind.
Not sure if this persistent peevishness grew out of that, or is a lingering resentment from my surly teenage years, or an impatience with the robo-corporate-speak they train flight attendants and security guards to use, or what, but it drives me batty when people say "I need you to" when they mean "Please." It just seems rude.
Also, when you talk about how much work you're doing when you're just standing there, holding something heavy, you are likely to get a wag of my finger, since while you're applying a force to what you're holding, you aren't applying the force through a distance …
Wait, where ya going?
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