“Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all
― John F. Kennedy [Commencement Address at Yale University, June 11 1962]
facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of
opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
Persillade (French pronunciation: [pɛʁsijad]) is a sauce or seasoning mixture of parsley (French: persil) chopped together with seasonings including garlic, herbs, oil, and vinegar.
Mirepoix – mixture of diced vegetables cooked with fat (usually butter) for a long time on low heat without coloring or browning.
Gastrique – caramelized sugar, deglazed with vinegar or other sour liquids, used as a sweet and sour flavoring for sauces.
How to use Dicord:
Paul Bloom in his 2010 book How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like:
“It is true that we can imagine cultures in which pleasure is very different, where people rub food in feces to improve taste and have no interest in salt, sugar, or chili peppers; or where they spend fortunes on forgeries and throw originals into the trash; or line up to listen to static, cringing at the sound of a melody. But this is science fiction, not reality.
One way to sum this up is that humans start off with a fixed list of pleasures and we can’t add to that list. This might sound like an insanely strong claim, because of course one can introduce new pleasures into the world, as with the inventions of the television, chocolate, video games, cocaine, dildos, saunas, crossword puzzles, reality television, novels, and so on. But I would suggest that these are enjoyable because they are not that new; they connect—in a reasonably direct way—to pleasures that humans already possess. Belgian chocolate and barbecued ribs are modern inventions, but they appeal to our prior love of sugar and fat. There are novel forms of music created
all the time, but a creature that is biologically unprepared for rhythm will never grow to like any of them; they will always be noise.”
Fluency Heuristic – a cognitive heuristic in which, if one statement or idea can be processed more fluently, faster, or more smoothly than another, the mind infers that this statement has a higher value. In other words, the more skillfully or elegantly an idea is communicated, the more likely it is to be considered seriously, whether or not it is logical.
Gravid – pregnant – from Latin gravis, meaning “heavy.” It can refer to a female who is literally pregnant, and it also has the figurative meanings of pregnant: “full or teeming” and “meaningful.”
Elements of Design
- Line — the visual path that enables the eye to move within the piece Shape — areas defined by edges within the piece, whether geometric or organic
- Color — hues with their various values and intensities
- Texture — surface qualities which translate into tactile illusions
- Tone — Shading used to emphasize form
- Form — 3-D length, width, or depth
- Space — the space taken up by (positive) or in between (negative) objects
- Depth — perceived distance from the observer, separated in foreground, background, and optionally middle ground.”
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism, – a questioning attitude or doub toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the person doubts that these claims are accurate. In such cases, skeptics normally recommend not disbelief but suspension of belief, i.e. maintaining a neutral attitude that neither affirms nor denies the claim. This attitude is often motivated by the impression that the available evidence is insufficient to support the claim. Formally, skepticism is a topic of interest in philosophy, particularly epistemology. More informally, skepticism as an expression of questioning or doubt can be applied to any topic, such as politics, religion, or pseudoscience. It is often applied within restricted domains, such as morality,
atheism (skepticism about the existence of God), or the supernatural.
Epistemology – the theory of knowledge. It is concerned with the mind’s relation to reality. What is it for this relation to be one of knowledge? Do we know things? And if we do, how and when do we know things?
Relentless Robin 