where-bleg "People attribute themselves emotions based on their perception of their physical state."

where did I see this:

People attribute themselves emotions based on their perception of their physical state.
i.e. people whose heartrate is high because of exercise will tend to think that they're nervous, if you ask them their present mood / emotional state.

I can't think of any good keywords to search this in the blogosphere.

online encyclopedias

I just wrote my first Wikipedia article: Independence-Friendly Logic. I can imagine this being very addictive, watching your article grow, and seeing people do things with it.

Did you know that you can license Wikipedia for your site? Here's an unusual one:
http://www.biologydaily.com/biology/Dialect_continuum

Some online encyclopedias that I know:

Wikipedia
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Plato)
PlanetMath

orkut

What did orkut ever do for you?

Through it, I found bondage_and_tea, but that's it. I've used it for more than a year, and I'm the moderator of a community with 17k people.

How do you approach someone you'd like to get to know on Orkut?

Often I don't have anything to say to someone, except "you seem interesting", which is, of course, boring. I'm sure we'd have enough to talk about IRL, though. Maybe I should invite them for a hike rightaway?

I think orkut is a great "yearbook" sort of thing, with tons of interesting people in it (and almost every Brazilian I know), but I just don't see the "networking" thing happening: I, at least, tend to just browse silently, far and wide. I'm a geek voyeur (in both senses).

At the moment, I'm looking for an interesting IT job. Can my orkut friends help? If so, should I send one of those mass messages? I'm not sure, but I think most people stopped reading their Orkut messages when they started getting friend-of-friend spam.

eye-tracking Google usage

via breyten

This cool visual is the result of a study in page rankings and positions. It was made using eye tracking equipment. It seems like that whole SEO thing actually makes sense. Also, very revealing is the number of people that watch the ads in the sidebar. Not more than 50%, and they only view one or two ads. Yet half of Google's revenue comes from those ads. That's quite an achievement.

Edit : Via Ascription is an Anathema to any enthousiasm.

blegging Richard Nisbett

does anybody know the name of the researcher who studies "cultural cognition", and who has written about that experiment, where you ask someone to describe a picture? Chinese people will describe the background first, whereas westerners will talk about the prominent fish in the picture.

There was also something about US Southerners being quick to anger (than US Northerners) because their Scottish ancestors were shepherds.


EDIT:
Richard Nisbett is the guy.
He wrote "Culture of Honor: the Psychology of Violence in the South."