Brian Kim offers an article entitled “Top 5 Things Every Extrovert Should Know About Introverts.”
By nature I’m an introvert and I think this is a good read. I was particularly struck by this point:

If you really want to engage an introvert in conversation, skip the small talk. Introverts tend to love deep conversations on subjects that interest them. They love to debate, go past the superficial and poke around the depths in people’s minds to see what’s really going on in there. Most, if not all introverts tend to regard small talk as a waste of time, unless it’s with someone new they just met.
. . .
Extroverts thrive on small talk.
Introverts abhor it.

This is generally true for me, though I hadn’t consciously linked it to being an introvert. The fact is that I’m sometimes reluctant to engage in the “how’s it going”-, “how about this weather”-type conversations because they seem so painfully obvious that I feel silly starting them unless I think they will quickly lead elsewhere. I know that’s not the mindset of a good conversationalist, but it’s my inclination.
In a broader sense, I suppose this characteristic is a reason I am deemed “shy” in some social situations. If I don’t feel I have something compelling to add to a discussion, I may not add anything–which may lead me to be branded as “quiet.” As Kim notes, this is a really more of social preference rather than an indicator of what I think about the people at the gathering.

Via Daily Kos, there’s an image here (or here) which is supposed to reveal if you are predominately a right brained or left brained person:

THE Right Brain vs Left Brain test … do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?
If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.
Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

The first couple times I glanced at the dancer, I initially saw her turning counterclockwise. But in subsequent tests I’ve seen quite a bit of clockwise rotation. So the results are mixed. Other tests I’ve taken suggest I’m left brained. Sometimes I think both sides are malfunctioning.
More on brain division here.

In the first question of his first presidential debate, Senator Fred Thompson was asked why a majority of Americans feel we are headed toward a recession. His response?
“I think there is no reason to believe we that are headed to a recession.”
Really? I guess 2/3 of Americans have an active imagination. Perhaps the senator should read news headlines a little closer:

The battered housing sector took another blow Tuesday, with an industry group reporting that a gauge of pending home sales tumbled to its lowest level ever as the credit crunch restrains purchases.

Closer to home:

The price of a loaf of bread has gone up nearly 50 percent in the past few months.
The Second Harvest Food Bank has just about everything, except bread.
“We haven’t seen a loaf of bread in a really long time,” says Executive Director Elaine Machiela.
The rising costs of bread have forced food pantries to cut out bread. And due to the drought, networks of donations have also dried up.

Something is clearly wrong with the picture when food pantries can’t stock bread.
I don’t know if we will dip into a recession or not–recent odds are at just under 50%. But there is plenty of evidence about that we might be experiencing an economic downturn. Senator Thompson would be well advised not to ignore it.

How can we get the biggest food bang per acre? The question becomes increasingly important because the number of humans is increasing and the amount of arable land isn’t. Moreover, as on-going food inflation indicates, the kinds of foods people eat impact global food prices. People in China and other developing countries have been adopting a more “westernized” diet, thus driving up demand for more agriculturally-intensive products.
Researchers at Cornell compared 42 diets with varied meat composition in terms of how much land it took to produce the food. Unsurprisingly, it takes a lot less land to grow the food feed a vegetarian than to feed a heavy meat eater:

“A person following a low-fat vegetarian diet, for example, will need less than half (0.44) an acre per person per year to produce their food,” said Christian Peters, M.S. ’02, Ph.D. ’07, a Cornell postdoctoral associate in crop and soil sciences and lead author of the research. “A high-fat diet with a lot of meat, on the other hand, needs 2.11 acres.”

However, a strict vegetarian diet is not necessarily the most efficient in terms of land use because it takes higher-quality farmland to raise crops than it does to raise animals:

Thus, although vegetarian diets in New York state may require less land per person, they use more high-valued land. “It appears that while meat increases land-use requirements, diets including modest amounts of meat can feed more people than some higher fat vegetarian diets,” said Peters.
. . .
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average American ate approximately 5.8 ounces of meat and eggs a day in 2005.
“In order to reach the efficiency in land use of moderate-fat, vegetarian diets, our study suggests that New Yorkers would need to limit their annual meat and egg intake to about 2 cooked ounces a day,” Peters said.

Not only is such a diet more economical, but it’s healthier, too.

Via Crooks and Liars, here’s a familiar-sounding argument:

“I made my arguments and went down in flames. History will prove me right.” — Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush after voting against realignment and a new wild-card system during a Major League Baseball owners meeting in September 1993. Bush was the lone dissenter in a 27-1 vote.

As Jerry Crasnick notes, the post-season success of wild-card teams, coupled with Major League Baseball’s growth in attendance and revenue, strongly suggest that Mr. Bush was wrong.
But what do we know? I’m sure that years after we have all died, people will suddenly awaken to Mr. Bush’s wisdom in opposing baseball’s reconfiguration. And in invading Iraq.