It is so nice to go to a foreign city and have faith that the food will be a pleasant experience.
It is even more excellent when unlikely things like food halls have delicious, freshly-made salads in them.
Sydney, gets multiple points from me.
you wish you had thought of yourself.
Crimes Against Popular Culture
Cantankerous Beat
Who'd be the NZ cricket team.
They can't afford not to go to Zimbabwe because they let the Sri Lankan cricket team go back home after the Boxing Day Tsunami.
Perhaps we should all donate to a fund which would enable them to afford to stay home.
Every now and then I feel like living in Wellington is like living in a happy, yet unrealistic bubble of sanity.
This cartoon confirmed my fancy.
There's a concept in web design called (you guessed it) "sniff of scent".
It means that so long as a user feels/thinks that they are getting closer to the information they want, they will keep clicking through the site.
It replaced the previous dictum that all information should only be 3 clicks away from the homepage (which is practically impossible for any site with much content).
I recon you can extend that principle into a pretty wide range of human activity situations. For example: On Wednesday night, I (for want of anything better to do) started trying to kick a soccer ball at a set of rugby goal uprights. The idea was to bounce the ball back at myself so I did have to run around the field after myself.*
Funny thing was, the first kick hit the upright and bounced off to the side. I was so surprised i nearly fell over. But then I tried a couple more times and hit the goal post once. I then spend the better part of half and hour mostly missing (I think I was trying to hit it from further away).
I think the reason I could keep going to as long as I did, was the early success, a sniff of the scent of the game actually working out, if you like.
I also think that other activies, like asking people out, or singing in tune or answering mathmatics questions follow a similar dynamic. The aim has to match the experienced results enough that the player can see how they might succeed.
You think about it, and its a required part of human behaviour. Otherwise a substantial number of people would still be attempting to fly from their garage roofs with umbrellas. You gotta know when to let something go.
* Readers must bear in mind that the goal posts had the big padding sleves on, which made things somewhat easier.
My only comment is that Shane looks like a dancer, but Norm looks like a miracle.
Go, little bowling ball, go!
Cullen's enthusiasm for getting the Government books into the black looks pretty sick when you realise he counts the $7b student debt as an asset.