How many home furnishing ecommerce sites can the market support? There’s a bunch already: HomePoint.com, HomePortfolio.com, MyHome.com, GoodHome.com, living.com, Furniture.com. Then there are related sites such as OurHouse.com, Tavolo.com, SurLaTable.com. Will the online shopping economy support lots of places to buy furniture online or will there be an eventual consolidation into one or two?

The new Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History is ready to greet the public and, as you can see from these night photos, it’s a real beauty. “The Planetarium, as well as the ‘Big Bang Theater’ — a dramatic re-creation of the first minutes of the origins of the universe — is situated inside a sphere 87 feet in diameter, which appears to float in a glass-walled cube.” It is part of the new Rose Center for Earth and Space. A beautiful structure for an awe-inspiring subject.

From House & Garden magazine: “The newest nonstick material on the market is Cybernox, an alloy developed for the French aerospace industry.” This material isn’t as effective as usual non-stick coatings, but it will stay non-stick for a lifetime and you can clean it without worrying about scratching off the coating. I’ve been looking for a new non-stick pan since mine has given up even the pretense of being non-stick. I am leaning towards just paying $30 for a cheapy one, but cheap stuff just isn’t made as well as it used to be. Where have the decent quality mid-priced products gone?

This Economist article on the biology of music is fascinating. It describes various experiments which have analyzed how our brains process music. These have shown that music and language are processed independently of each other and that the processing of music is broken down into several tasks handled in different parts of the brain. Perception of rhythm and pitch are handled in separate areas. Being a musician, I was especially intrigued by the study done on musicians and nonmusicians which found that blood flow increased to the left brain of musicians but not nonmusicians when they listened to music. A musician’s training affects the way she perceives harmony. I definitely listen to music differently if I want to “pay attention” to how it is constructed, and as I learned more about music theory I found it harder to turn off the thinking part of my brain when listening to music. The last part of the article discusses the connection between music and emotions, stating that the place where music has its most profound effect is in the brain’s emotional core—the limbic system. When men and women were asked why music was important in their lives, “emotion turned out to be not merely an answer. It was, more or less, the answer.” It has been proven that music elicits emotions, not merely expresses emotions that people recognize. Another study showed that music’s emotional and conscious effects are completely separate. I’ve always been facinated by how tightly music is interwoven into my emotional state of mind. And I’m always taken aback by people who don’t seem very emotionally affected by music. Surely they’re missing out on one of the profound wonders of the human mind.

Apparently it’s not enough that I get spam email as a result of my Network Solutions registration info. Last night I got a spam phone call. Argh. Bulkregister.com (I’m not even going to give them the benefit of a link and I’m not going to look at their site!) phoned with an Important Service Announcement for Network Solutions Customers (so official sounding, yes?). They wanted to let me know that thanks to new legislation I can now register for my domain names with them instead. Yes. I know. And I’m definitely not going to now!

Wired’s article on Silicon Valley recruiters is enlightening if you haven’t run across the concept of the power broker recruiter before. The valley’s best and brightest are akin to Hollywood stars with their agents tracking down hot leads for new companies and enticing positions. I feel lucky to have cultivated solid relationships with three decent, straight-shooting recruiters over the years, using them for hiring and finding new jobs for myself. They know to check in every once in a while and they know my personality quite well. And I know they won’t screw me over. They try to be persuasive, of course, but they know when to stop. The biggest gold mine of jobs for me, though? People I’ve worked with before. It is so comforting to have a network of contacts who periodically check in to see if I’m “interested”.

Tom Merritt from ZDTV also has a commentary on Günter Grass’ opinions on writing and computers which I mentioned on 2/9/00.

Anyone want to bid on an Original Lip Print from Jerry Yang? I’d rather have a signed photo of him with the lipstick on! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that out of the list of celebrity kisses, Gillian Anderson’s is going for the most (by a wide margin).

I am always amazed by how instantly our brains process input and create a reaction. I react instantaneously to many things which I find funny. From something someone said, something I read, or a situation I see, it takes almost no time for my giggling to commence. Sometimes there is a delay while I figure out the humor in something, but I react to the funniest things right away. How do we do it? How do all those calculations of “well, that’s ironic because he hates fish sticks” or “that’s bitingly sarcastic and I’m amused because it is so true!” or “look — his underwear is pink too” click through so rapidly and trigger the laughter? How did this trait evolve in humans? It’s not like a sense of humor kept us from being eaten by wolves. Or maybe laughter does scare away predators. It certainly is, as the saying goes, the best medicine.

Bob Greene, a Chicago Tribune columnist (who, unlike me, apparently was not cured by an English teacher of an overuse of dashes), has mused in his past few articles about reading the newspaper online vs. on newsprint. First he discovers that, thanks to the Internet, he has readers all around the world. Then he considers the attachment some people have to newspapers in the bathroom and the comfort of the Sunday paper. Third, he directly confronts the reality that readers are canceling their subscriptions and reading online instead. Lastly, he winds up with the good news that people are personally attached to their newspapers, on paper or online. Readers wrote him about “my paper”, not “your paper”, and he sees that as a sign that newspaper people are doing their job right. I know many people who only read the paper online. I read a large amount of news online, but I still practice an almost ritualistic reading of the physical paper; so much so that I get antsy when some else reads my virginal paper before I get to it. Sunday is especially ritualistic, involving a sorting technique (ads in this pile, news in this pile, classifieds in the recycling bin, comics last) and relaxation that I look forward to. I can envision reading my news online only, and in fact I read the New York Times online because I can’t stand the idea of wasting even more paper. But I am so attached to the browsing, turning, rustling, and clipping. Will it all go away someday? Maybe.