The Pensive Penguin

I’ve always thought it was a curious fact that Americans are typically xenophobic to an irrational degree considering that she is a nation and culture built of, by and for such a diverse group of immigrants. It occurred to me today, though, that there is a logical reason for American culture to be so suspicious of anything foreign, particularly ‘within our borders’ or ‘among us’. Look back to the American Revolution; an event so patriotically dominating the national consciousness at the moment. Now remember the logically sound point that the person most acutely aware of being stolen from is a thief. So it does follow, and make rather good sense, that a national culture born of such a deceit-driven revolution would be unnaturally suspicious of falling victim to cloak-and-dagger revolutionary activities (because remember that the difference between a terrorist and a revolutionary soldier is nothing more that a matter of which side you’re on).

…wait, does that make the Boston Tea Party the true first terrorist attack on American soil?

Anyway, I’m just trying to say that I kind of understand now that suspicion is the natural condition of the American Identity. This has been your public service announcement for the day.

I’m often pleasantly surprised by the accuracy of the algorithms employed by Amazon, Netflix, Itunes, et al., and was just yesterday telling someone about how annoying it is having to click “I already own this” on my Amazon suggestions so often in order to get it to recommend anything I don’t already have.

On a loosely related note, today I stumbled upon a listing titled The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, 2nd edition (Hardcover) and couldn’t help but think of the phrase intellectual masturbation… the book’s title is a seven word synonym for ”Graphs”… then it occurred to me that I got to the listing from a link on my page of recommendations.