2007-04-16 Does The Name 'Pavlov' Ring A Bell?

Today we had a spontaneous barbecue at Alex's place. First barbecue of the season, I almost forgot how good it is.

***

This morning at work we talked about Pavlov, the guy who got a Nobel Prize for first describing classical conditioning. He did the following experiment with a dog: Every time it was fed he rang a bell, so that the dog associated the bell with food. After a while, the dog drooled when it heard the bell, even when no food was available. So basically Pavlov made the dog believe that something good was going to happen while he himself was more interested in the dogs reaction to the expectation than in feeding it.
At that point I looked around in the office and realized that it doesn't take a dog. Computer scientists are just as good.

***

Word of the day: "add insult to injury" (or phrase, actually). It means "to make things worse". The German counterpart is "Salz in die Wunde streuen" (to sprinkle salt into the wound). There is no actual event which made me chose this phrase, it's just that today I heard it for the first time and liked the sound of it.