personal AnGoL – Page 92

May 17, 2009

Happy Days

I still haven’t posted and even finished the pinatubo, vigan , potipot after trip posts and I even have the David Archuleta/ David Cook concert (It’s not about the concert but that day, I was really very happy. ) outlined.
I just bought really high quality fins, googles and a simple snorkel, I’m really looking forward in using them.
Hope the trip I am planning to tag along to pushes through.
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans –John Lennon
I have to confess that I view these words two ways.
One is from the fact that I feel so very alive when I am anticipating something, I delude myself enough that I can be honest with myself on how not so great an experience is and not feel depressed.
Two is from how it seems that the things we aim for longterm are just small inflection point, sometimes doscontinuities that are just a small part of life, most of our time is spent on the planning and how we live in the moments!
Damn These Are Really Happy Days!
Thanks to my Family and My Friends for being part of the reason that I am having such Happy Days!

May 12, 2009

Had To Share::Lessons Learned: Fear is the mind-killer

This resonated with me alot. I get lost alot. This is why I tell people when we get lost , “Don’t Panic I’m An Expert At Getting Lost!”. This is also why I think It I feel comfortable going to places only with a certain type of personality. The Fuck I Dont Care Types of people. See i’ve been lost too many times to fear being lost. I take it as a truth that there are good people everywhere, some have more, some have only a few, but Everywhere I’ve been lost I’ve always found special people to help me. To be honest I also do some stuff to minimize the effects of being lost, which means almost always bringing emergency money, and being prepared to walk tens of miles to get home is definitely a way to minimize the fear of being lost.
The specific advice is about developing software and I have to confess that I use to fear programming a lot. I use to have a lot of paranoia with screwing up the computer. I eventually outgrew this by a combination of the stated techniques below. nice article all in all!

The interesting thing about fear is that to reduce it requires two contradictory impulses. First, we can reduce fear by mitigating the consequences of failure. If we construct areas where experimentation is less costly, we can feel safer and therefore try new things. On the other hand, the second main way to reduce fear is to engage in the feared activity more often. By pushing the envelope, we can challenge our assumptions about consequences and get better at what we fear at the same time. Thus, it is sometimes a good idea to reduce fear by slowing down, and sometimes a good idea to reduce fear by speeding up.
via Lessons Learned: Fear is the mind-killer.

May 8, 2009

Best Read:If You Have 3 Or More Priorities You've Got To Read This:Mud Rooms, Red Letters, and Real Priorities | 43 Folders

Even though their influence informs every decision we make on the most tactical level, thinking about priorities happens at a strategic, “why am I here?” level. Right? Maybe? Disagree? Pretty sure you can make priorities like biscuits or shuffle them around like Monopoly pieces?
Got news for you, Jack: if it moves, it’s not a priority. It’s just a thing you haven’t done yet.
Making something a BIG RED TOP TOP BIG HIGHEST #1 PRIORITY changes nothing but text styling. If it were really important, it’d already be done. Period. Think about it.
Example. When my daughter falls down and screams, I don’t ask her to wait while I grab a list to determine which of seven notional levels of “priority” I should assign to her need for instantaneous care and affection. Everything stops, and she gets taken care of. Conversely — and this is really the important part — everything else in the universe can wait.
via Mud Rooms, Red Letters, and Real Priorities | 43 Folders.

I’ve probably read this 5 times at least some parts probably more than 10. I am trying to live. I am trying to find the/my priority. I am incomplete, I am confused, I am human.

May 7, 2009

rePost:Need To Lose Weight?:Obese young men have less hope of marriage

from inquirer here: http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/breakingnews/breakingnews/view/20090508-203813/Obese-young-men-have-less-hope-of-marriage
Obese young men have less hope of marriage
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 10:41:00 05/08/2009
Filed Under: Food, Food and Diet and Nutrition, Research, relationships and dating, Youth, Lifestyle & Leisure
AMSTERDAM — Men who were grossly overweight at the age of 18 had nearly 50 percent less chance of being married by their 30s and 40s, an international conference on obesity heard in Amsterdam on Thursday.
The findings, which held true regardless of the men’s intellectual performance or socio-economic position, could suggest that women rank a man’s appearance higher than other traits when choosing a partner.
“Yes, that may be one explanation,” researcher Malin Kark of the Swedish Karolinska Institute medical university, told AFP on the sidelines of the four-day gathering hosted by the European Association for the Study of Obesity.
do I even want to get married? Do I even still think that she exists? I am beginning to have my doubts.

April 27, 2009

Thought Provoking Post::Stumbling and Mumbling: The state and equality

: Image via Wikipedia

I’m a big West Wing Fan, and in someways it has shaped how I view things. I still remember a scene where Sam Seaborn‘s declarations, I pay a lot of taxes and I love it! I may have an unhealthy regard for my abilities but I have no doubt that in the crucial ways I am me because i was fortunated enough to be born to my parents. I was lucky, this was no fault/act of mine. Taxation is a transfer, I love paying taxes, just hope there was more ways to ensure that the transfer is not a transfer to the swiss bank acounts of government officials! .read the whole thing!

But of course, these are only a part of the link between the state and inequality. Tawneyite socialists claim that spending on (say) health and education are forces for equality.
But are they? Julian Le Grand famously argued in a book in 1982 that the rich actually got more than the poor from these services – a claim supported more recently by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
In the case of healthcare, the claim is also supported by this paper (pdf). One reason for this is that the poor under-estimate their ill-health and so are less likely to make claims on the health system. Another reason is that the rich live longer (pdf) than the poor, and the bulk of health spending on most individuals comes late in life.
via Stumbling and Mumbling: The state and equality.

April 21, 2009

Standing Still

There’s Fight Or Flee But there is a third option to standstill.
I can’t help it if I am going to just pretend that something really didn’t happen and just go on with it!

April 20, 2009

:Snarky Anti Strunk And White's Element of Style Rant:Overcoming Bias: Fake Grammar Experts

I promised friends to no longer be morose,depressed, etc etc. I will keep that promise but only as a companion. I’ll grieve in private (at least in my private space, the blog), I’ll be snarky only here!
I’ll be damned haha finally someone speaking something I have long been fucked about. Well I’ve read the elements of style book and I never got the way people seem to treat it as a kind of writing bible. I’ve always been a find your voice, something is wrong until something proves it right. Read something from DFW and I’d bet you he’d brake 5-10 commandments in a single 500-1000 word essay! The fact is, the reason I am riling against them is the Expert effect. See, I hear a lot of people who seem to want to abrogate their ability to reason, to think; Nooooo, people would rather take the easy way out and let other think for themselves. They’d rather reverberate something and sound smart, rather than(I probably am guilty of this) try to find that which they themselves thought about, no matter how awful.

April 16 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of a little book that is loved and admired throughout American academe. … The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence has not improved American students’ grasp of English grammar; it has significantly degraded it. …
Both authors were grammatical incompetents. Strunk had very little analytical understanding of syntax, White even less. Certainly White was a fine writer, but he was not qualified as a grammarian. Despite the post-1957 explosion of theoretical linguistics, Elements settled in as the primary vehicle through which grammar was taught to college students and presented to the general public, and the subject was stuck in the doldrums for the rest of the 20th century.
via Overcoming Bias: Fake Grammar Experts.

April 15, 2009

What's Playing: The Taxman by The Beatles

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Performed by The Beatles
Composed by George Harrison
One, two, three, four…
Hmmm!
One, two, (one, two, three, four!)
Let me tell you how it will be;
There’s one for you, nineteen for me.
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don’t take it all.
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
(if you drive a car, car;) – I’ll tax the street;
(if you try to sit, sit;) – I’ll tax your seat;
(if you get too cold, cold;) – I’ll tax the heat;
(if you take a walk, walk;) – I’ll tax your feet.
Taxman!
‘Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Don’t ask me what I want it for, (ah-ah, mister Wilson)
If you don’t want to pay some more. (ah-ah, mister heath)
Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
Now my advice for those who die, (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes. (taxman)
Cause I’m the taxman,
Yeah, I’m the taxman.
And you’re working for no one but me.
Taxman!

Of course I’d like more money to spend, but I acknowledge the fact that I am far more lucky than alot of people from simply being born to the parents I was born to. It wasn’t because I had anything special, it simply is. All taxation is a redistribution and I have no qualms about helping pay for roads or the mrt or healthcare for people who cannot afford it. It simply is in our best interest to help each other in this crazy and sometimes hopeless world we live in.

April 14, 2009

In So Much…

Pain.
Damn, sure hope Proust was right when he said that the time when he was in so much pain was the happiest time of his life is true.
I’m not making sense. Part of me want to think that there is a rainbow hiding somewhere in this fucking blizzard I am in right now.
Fuck Fuck Fuck. But part the dominant part of me just can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. All I see is the darkness I am in.
Good thing nobody reads this blog so I don’t have to censure my words. (Sorry to my 4 readers read no further if you do not want to peak inside the mind of a fucked up bipolar guy going through one of his fucked up mood swings in the shit depressed mode that seems to just hit you when you are least ready to deal with it.)
As I said in my fate is… short story post (that I am in no mood/temperament to continue (I hope this ends soon because I soo want to make that into a passable story to add to my lit folio) I got rejected by a girl last monday and because I was lucky enough to have scheduled a Monster‘s Vs Aliens Imax 3D viewing with some of the member’s of (I think it was la’s brainchild) the SAWI partylist (Yep we are that lame). I’d have to say the company of friends really helped me a lot in burying the pain, come tuesday and wednesday and me and my officemates were really into trying to beat each other in billiards , plus lots of work to finish before the long weekend helped me forget her temporarily. Damn fuck I keep telling myslef if she doesn’t want you then go find someone who would except knowing something is so fucking different from actually being able to do the damn thing.
FUUUUUCK.
I went home wednesday, and seeing my granny after 2 years was really a treat, that helped me during the long weekend. The thing is the weekend is over and surprise surprise I see her today just before I go to work. I confess that I tried not to looka at her but the fact Is I stole a few glances, and I have to say that during times like this being especially in tune with your emotions and the way your mind works really make it Oh so very hard to delude yourself.
I think I’ve written about this before, but i know I’ve definitely talked about this with really close friends.
When you ask me if I care for someone I’d just have to look at him/her and know, this I cannot hide from myself. If I care for you, you are beautiful to me, If I Love you, to my eyes you are the most beautiful woman.
(I’m writing this after a day of learning how to do a few stuff, reading Nick And Norah’s Infinite Playlist and doing some things I’d rather not talk about).
I’m still grieving , It is still painful, but at least It seems that in trying to forget, to bury I’ve been reading alot faster, learning more, and all in all thinking too clearly. It is as if I was taking aderall (I’m imagining how it would affect me). I feel like Bruce Wayne, retreating to hyperrationality, retreating from emotion. See I can think of what i am feeling, I can even reason out quite well, why this is all in all a good enough outcome. I can even imagine alot of the reasons and the 3rd , 4th, 5th step that makes this a net win for me, Except it does me no good, it still hurts, it still feels like I’m in the verge of tears at any moment. Like this world is an empty , empt place.
I can’t even summon any small grain of something to get mad about. Damn, I just care too much , can’t seem to cross the small line that separates love and hate.
This too shall pass, just hope I like the person that I become after this ordeal.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (filmreviews.ie)

April 14, 2009

rePost:Please Send This To All My Teachers In College hehehe:Stumbling and Mumbling: In praise of dumbing down

remember sir Ken Robinsons TED talk here, of how schools kill creativity, he says something there like “college produces college professors”, I love my professors but sometimes feel this sentiment. same with the board exams, the EE board exams produces exam takers/passers not electrical engineers. red the half of the post i didnt grab

In praise of dumbing down
Complaints about “dumbing down” have become a cliché. However, in narrow technical terms, the dumbing down of exams could be a good thing, as this recent paper explains.
The intuition is simple. Exams can only measure a subset of the skills required for most jobs. If you set tough exams, people with good skills which the exam doesn’t test will either fail or not even enter. The result is that employers who look for exam grades plus other skills will not get a pool of able candidates.
In such cases, the dumbing down of exams can help. They’ll allow those people with good but non-tested skills to now acquire credentials as well. And as these people can now get jobs ahead of good exam-passers with poor other skills, so labour productivity might improve. This would happen if the decline in average tested skills is small, relative to the improvement in average non-tested skills of the new exam-passers, or if non-tested skills are very important for job success.
It’s possible, therefore, that dumbing down can be good for the economy.
So much for theory, what of practice?
via Stumbling and Mumbling: In praise of dumbing down.

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