There is no orange chicken anywhere near me.

Why has God forsaken me? (I mean, besides the not believing in Him thing....)

Reading Kafka improves learning?

New research suggest that exposure to bizarre, surreal storylines such as Kafka's "The Country Doctor" can improve learning. Apparently, when your brain is presented with total absurdity or nonsense, it will work extra hard to find structure elsewhere. In the study by the University of British Columbia psychologists, subjects read The Country Doctor and then took a test where they had to identify patterns in strings of letters. They performed much better than the control group. From Science Daily (Wikimedia Commons image):

People who read the nonsensical story checked off more letter strings –– clearly they were motivated to find structure," said Proulx. "But what's more important is that they were actually more accurate than those who read the more normal version of the story. They really did learn the pattern better than the other participants did."

In a second study, the same results were evident among people who were led to feel alienated about themselves as they considered how their past actions were often contradictory. "You get the same pattern of effects whether you're reading Kafka or experiencing a breakdown in your sense of identity," Proulx explained. "People feel uncomfortable when their expected associations are violated, and that creates an unconscious desire to make sense of their surroundings. That feeling of discomfort may come from a surreal story, or from contemplating their own contradictory behaviors, but either way, people want to get rid of it. So they're motivated to learn new patterns."

Go Team Kafka!

This sounds reasonable as long as it isn't a mechanism to avoid state regulation sort of like how all credit cards seem to come from Delaware.

That's pretty much exactly what it is.

Also, while Dreher isn't particularly hateful, he's not usually a good example of a rational conservative. He may not like Limbaugh to express his racism outright, but only because it exposes his own. He is on the Ed board of the DMN and can pretty much be counted on for any "why can't those muslim, black, hispanic, youngsters, women [insert minority here] just behave like us rich white men?"

(I mean, besides the not believing in Him thing....)

I know! He's so judgy.

That's pretty much exactly what it is.

Yeah, the two things I hear most from the Repub's on health care are tort reform and allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines. Reform more oriented to helping insurance companies than citizens.

I do think the latter can be done with federal regulations, but it probably couldn't fly like brenda said. I'm also sure that adding federal regulations is not part of the republican plan when they say that.

Tort reform sounds good, bring down the costs of malpractice litigation, but states have done that kind of legislation and it has proven not to have a big impact on costs.

It's hard not be cynical about motivations with a platform like that.

(I mean, besides the not believing in Him thing....)

Dude! God is not your orange chicken fetching monkey!

Also, aren't you in a big city? What kind of a big city doesn't have at least three Chinese restaurants within eight blocks of any individual's given location at any time?

I'm also sure that adding federal regulations is not part of the republican plan when they say that.

This is always my question when I hear comments like "OBVIOUSLY we need health care reform, but the public option will turn us into ZOMG SOCIALISTS!!11!!" I mean, as far as I can see, the options for lowering health costs are (a) public option to compete with private insurers or (b) massive federal regulation to cap prices.

I can't imagine (b) being popular with anyone vehemently opposed to (a).

Also, aren't you in a big city? What kind of a big city doesn't have at least three Chinese restaurants within eight blocks of any individual's given location at any time?

I'm in Evanston. Right now, anyway. Because I want God to fetch me orange chicken right now.

There is no orange chicken anywhere near me.

You will not be giving your jeans stains they like, then.

What kind of a big city doesn't have at least three Chinese restaurants within eight blocks of any individual's given location at any time?

Outside of Chinatown, Chicago is actually pretty sparse for decent Chinese, other than seriouly high-end. This is something Daley should be looking into.