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	<title>nicknelson.net</title>
	<link>http://nicknelson.net</link>
	<description>intrigue, cognomina, and handcrafted masterworks</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:27:45 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>If you were being tried for murder&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8230;and there is enough evidence to conclude the truth of the matter&#8211; and you are innocent.  Would you rather the jury consist of 12 people who carefully examine the evidence and base their decisions and their understanding of the world on the analysis of this evidence, or would you rather the jury consist of 12 individuals whose understanding of the world is guided by faith?
What if the same scenario is repeated, except that the evidence suggests and the truth is that you&#8217;re guilty?
]]></description>
		<link>http://nicknelson.net/2011/12/if-you-were-being-tried-for-murder/</link>
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		<title>A Joke</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A muttering man of religious bent, late for an assignation, says aloud: &#8220;Jesus, if you&#8217;ll only find me a parking space, I swear to God that I&#8217;ll give up the women and the Irish whiskey for the rest of my life.&#8221;  Sure enough, a parking space appears, and he turns in.  &#8221;Never mind, I found one myself.&#8221;
]]></description>
		<link>http://nicknelson.net/2011/12/a-joke/</link>
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		<title>6 Tips to Figure Out if your Salad has Gone Bad</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Sometimes you buy a salad.  before you eat it, you wonder, &#8220;has this gone bad?&#8221;  Here are some quick tips to figuring it out:
1) It smells gross
Smell your salad.  Does it smell gross, like a 3-day old animal carcass?  Then it&#8217;s probably gone bad.  Normally, salad smells almost like nothing&#8211; or, vaguely, of something good.
2) It tastes disgusting
Generally people enjoy salad for its taste, and low calorie content.  But if it tastes disgusting, like you just chugged from the large intestines of an entire village ...]]></description>
		<link>http://nicknelson.net/2011/04/6-tips-to-figure-out-if-your-salad-has-gone-bad/</link>
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		<title>The Idiocy of Online Reviews</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Just for fun, I decided I would go and have a look at Amazon Canada member reviews for BBC&#8217;s 2006 nature-doc stunner, Planet Earth.  It rates a pretty solid 4.5 overall, kudos BBC, kudos, David Attenborough.
If you&#8217;ve seen the show, you know that it&#8217;s the best thing you had ever seen up to that point in your life, by and large.  That said, it struck me as shocking, bizarre, outrageous even, that there were *5* ratings of 1-star-out-of-5.  That is to say, *5* people rated it the lowest possible value.
To ...]]></description>
		<link>http://nicknelson.net/2010/04/the-idiocy-of-people/</link>
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		<title>&#8220;Crazy&#8221; 8s</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m sorry to take a dump on your favourite childhood passtime, but dump I must.  You see, I disagree with the idea that the 8s were &#8220;crazy&#8221;.  The 8s were the trailblazers.  The 8s were the ones who bucked tradition.
All the other cards have to &#8220;follow suit&#8221; &#8212; you know, oh, a club, well, you have to be another club if you want in.
That shit is basically racist!
Not to mention conformist.  It&#8217;s sad really, it makes me sad.  Sad like a boy stroking the hair of his ...]]></description>
		<link>http://nicknelson.net/2009/08/crazy-8s/</link>
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		<title>Good Morning my Ass</title>
		<description><![CDATA[How many times has some fuckhead been like &#8220;good morning!&#8221; to you, all chipper?  This makes a number of GROUNDLESS assumptions.
Groundless Assumption #1 : That this is a morning.
Groundless Assumption #2 : That this is good.
Okay, generally it is morning. Though, oft is the case, I will call someone who works in a &#8220;place of business&#8221; at around 12:05pm and they will proudly answer the phone with &#8220;Good morning, Gerhardt (for example) speaking&#8230;&#8221; and I will be quick to say &#8220;this is no longer morning.  If you check the ...]]></description>
		<link>http://nicknelson.net/2009/07/good-morning-my-ass/</link>
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		<title>What happened to the fade-out?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It's just too easy.  A conclusion is the capstone of the work.  To merely reduce the physical stimulus of a work until it is indistinguishable from background noise is an insult to all involved.  It's an analogue to drifting slowly to sleep.  How could these proud artists subscribe to such a thing?  I would wager that they didn't even do the fade-out themselves, some ornery audio-boardsman who fancies himself a "technician" likely finger-straddled fader and rode it down to -999db. 

Thankfully, for reasons that nobody understands now, the fade-out has itself faded from the public discourse, being replaced by bombastic and confident conclusions that divide themselves from the great whisper of nothingness with maximum contrast.  Conclusions are drawn hard and there can be no mistaking when a work of art ends and nothingness begins.  ]]></description>
		<link>http://nicknelson.net/2009/07/what-happened-to-the-fade-out/</link>
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		<title>The myth of non-conformity</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In non-collectivist societies, most individuals seek to impress upon others their distinction, their originality, their uniqueness&#8211; this isn&#8217;t surprising, considering the emphasis on individualism in assessing the value of a person.  Personal value&#8211; value as a human, and social status, run in lockstep with job status, income, intelligence, and other indices that all rely on exclusivity: something that one individual has that others do not.  These indices and collections, of friends, of money, of unique attributes, serve not only to reinforce an individual&#8217;s value but establish it.
Money is a valuable ...]]></description>
		<link>http://nicknelson.net/2009/07/the-myth-of-non-conformity/</link>
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		<title>Why Polite Is Not</title>
		<description><![CDATA[People are always so polite.  Sometimes, if you are impolite, polite people look at one another and slowly, gently, and disappovingly, shake their head.  They slightly and politely pucker their lips and slightly and politely sneer-up their nostrils.  They glance at eachother so slowly, so politely, and with such brevity, that the shared message is &#8220;the fellow is so impolite that I&#8217;m giving you the bare minimum response needed to acknowledge what we both know: that this urchin is despicable.&#8221;
I contend, however, that their politeness is false; is a travesty.  ...]]></description>
		<link>http://nicknelson.net/2009/06/why-polite-is-no/</link>
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		<title>Tim Hortons needs Branding Advice</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When one goes into, say, your Starbucks, or even, dare I say, your Timothy's, one is greeted with a brand phalanx.  Everything from the music you hear to the layout of the tables to the presentation of the napkins is a fastidiously orchestrated fugue that belabours the brand ethos. ]]></description>
		<link>http://nicknelson.net/2009/05/tim-hortons-needs-branding-advice/</link>
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