The best thing about Christmas is that you get a few free days — and I manage to spend them without worrying too much about not working. If I want to be more sympathetic, I think I can pretty much agree with Ian Anderson’s (from the good old Jethro Tull) views on the subject:

“My views on Christmas? Well, I’m not exactly a practising paid-up Christian but I have grown up and lived with a so-called Christian society for 55 years and still feel great warmth for the nostalgia, festive occasion and family togetherness, so much a part of that time of year. Maybe without Christmas we would have that much less to celebrate and enjoy in this troubled old world. But it’s really all the Winter Solstice and the re-birth of nature overlaid with the common sense and righteous teachings of Mr. C.

A Christmas in this modern world should, in my view, accommodate the leisure needs and affections of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and agnostics, as well as Fido the family dog and Felix the cat. Throw in a few lost cousins and that dreadful man from next door and you have it! Sip the sloe gin, pull a cracker (so long as she’s not the daughter of that dreadful man from next door), kiss and cuddle under the mistletoe, toss Vegan disciplines aside, gobble the turkey (steady on, now) and have a therapeutic respite from the rigours of daily life.”

An article on introverts by Jonathan Rauch — it also has been published in “The Best American Science and Nature Writing” 2004 volume (edited by Steven Pinker):

“With their endless appetite for talk and attention, extroverts also dominate social life, so they tend to set expectations. In our extrovertist society, being outgoing is considered normal and therefore desirable, a mark of happiness, confidence, leadership. Extroverts are seen as bighearted, vibrant, warm, empathic. “People person” is a compliment. Introverts are described with words like “guarded,” “loner,” “reserved,” “taciturn,” “self-contained,” “private”–narrow, ungenerous words, words that suggest emotional parsimony and smallness of personality. Female introverts, I suspect, must suffer especially. In certain circles, particularly in the Midwest, a man can still sometimes get away with being what they used to call a strong and silent type; introverted women, lacking that alternative, are even more likely than men to be perceived as timid, withdrawn, haughty.

Are introverts arrogant? Hardly. I suppose this common misconception has to do with our being more intelligent, more reflective, more independent, more level-headed, more refined, and more sensitive than extroverts. Also, it is probably due to our lack of small talk, a lack that extroverts often mistake for disdain. We tend to think before talking, whereas extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours.”

Interesting take on the science – and art – of maps: cleverly colored and distorted cartograms of the 2004 elections show that the US is not as ‘red’ as it might seem at first sight. Would be interesting to try to add more dimensions to it – for example, with self-organizing maps.

A nice quote from “The Scientists” about Kepler and Galileo:

He was a man of his time, poised between the mysticism of the past and the logical science of the future, but whose stature as a voice for reason stands even higher in the context of a world where princes and emperors still depended on the prognostocations of astrologers, and where his own mother was tried for witchcraft. At the same time Kepler was carrying out his great work, an even more powerful voice of scientific reason was being heard further south in Italy, where although there was as mutch superstition and religious persecution as in central Europe, at least there was some measure of stability and the persecution always came from the same Church.