Category: personal AnGoL

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Stumbling and Mumbling: The power of stereotypes

FHM Babe - Loraine
Image by peterjaena via Flickr

This is sad to read. In the Philippines people are labeled early on because of close family ties, where 2nd or 3rd degree relatives see each other at least once a year. One thing I observe in these awkward situation is the way people give young kids labels that tend to be based on superficial reasons that then I believe sometimes become self fulfilling.

The power of stereotypes
Reputations can be self-fulfilling prophecies ; if you give a man a bad name, he‘ll live down to it. A new paper (pdf) by Thomas Dee shows this.
He did an experiment at Swarthmore College, asking a group of students to take a GRE test. Before the test, some students were asked about their sporting activities, and whether these conflicted with their academic work, whilst others were not asked.
And Mr Dee found that the athletes who were asked these questions performed significantly worse than the athletes who weren’t.
This suggests that when people are primed to be aware of a stereotype – “jocks are dumb” – they are more likely to behave in accordance with it.
Stumbling and Mumbling: The power of stereotypes.

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-rePost-Book/Film Guessing Games-Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Amazon's Kindle and the Recovery of Readerly Naivete; or, Were-Bats–the Big Bug Scourge of the Skies!

The Kindle 2
Image by jwordsmith via Flickr

When I was in high school and for most parts of college I kept my watch handy at all times. The MTRCB approval was needed for any film shown commercially and it listed the total run time of the film. The combination of my watch/(and for two years a stopwatch) and the knowledge of the running time of the film has saved me from being naive about a film, if their were any surprise twist left etc.  The bad thing about this is that I began to be less emotionally involved with the film I was watching; When I was bringing stopwatches/watches to theaters I was always checking it to see how the pace was going, the action to chatter ratio. The exposition versus the confrontation ratio and other minutae that was although nice to discuss with other film lovers was mainly an exercise in film intellectual stimulation. When I discovered Roger Egbert’s online reviews I was mainly entraced by his love for film, it seemed he had different levels of looking at films. As a film critic, as a film lover, as a lover of stories , and a lover of emotions. I began to see that in trying to one-up other people’s/stranger’s/friend’s observation skills and views I lost that connection to that part of me that just wanted to be escapist and enjoyed a film, whether the lighting/camera work is not as good as it could have been or how smart a film is. I got this back by only being conscious of the time whenever I watch a movie for the second time. I haven’t used a Kindle and I suspect that as long as we (Philippine Consumers) are forced to jump through so many hoops to get a kindle I won’t be using one anytime soon, but I think that it would really improve my naivete !

In a normal book, an author cannot have the antagonist fall with an ensorcelled death-sword in its belly with one-third of the pages left to go and expect the reader to be surprised at what comes next. The thickness of the pages beneath one’s right hand scream: “THAT’S NOT THE ANTAGONIST, SCHMUCK!!!”
Reading it on the Kindle–the sudden appearance of the were-bats has an extra punch that it cannot have in the hard copy…
Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Amazon’s Kindle and the Recovery of Readerly Naivete; or, Were-Bats–the Big Bug Scourge of the Skies!.

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rePost: Excellent Ranty Advice from Paul Wilmott:Paul Wilmott's Blog: Copulas and Cults

American model and television host Michele Merkin.
Image via Wikipedia

Can’t say I blame him.  People generally hate being different in a real way. The way I observe things, it seems most people just want to stand-out in the center of attention kind of way and not in the different trailblazing kind of way that I admire!
What you think of as just you job consumes probably from 2-10 hours of a 24 hour day. If you add in all the stuff you do because of work like commuting/preparing reports outside office hours/even shopping for office clothes/stuff etc . You can’t deny that what you call as just your job consists of the majority of your usable waking hours.
We need to take charge of our lives and have pride in what we do, and as human beings we have the capacity to think and analyze complex stuff.  Why are we not doing exactly that?
As for the picture, for somer strange reason Zemanta thinks it’s relevant!

But that’s only part of the problem. Far more serious, because it extends to all of finance not just to a single model, is the poor education that people get in university financial engineering programs and also the blind-following-the-blind behaviour that is so common throughout the industry.
The copula model is not robust to changes in model assumptions. Black-Scholes is. Did you know that? Or maybe I’m wrong. Would you like to know the truth?
Yes, I could tell you. I could spoonfeed you. You’ve got used to being spoonfed, haven’t you? But you’re passing the buck there, putting an awful lot of responsibility on my shoulders. I can cope, as I’m sure David Li can cope. But you’re a big boy/girl now, you should be able to think for yourself. Isn’t that part of your job description?
It’s getting quite tedious me telling people to get off their backsides and test the models for themselves. Don’t believe anything I say, don’t believe anything Nassim, also quoted in the Salmon article, says. Question everything. Switch your brains back on.
Paul Wilmott’s Blog: Copulas and Cults.

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Can't We All Just Get Along–Where is the love? — Crooked Timber

Barack Obama and Michelle Obama
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A part of me was reluctant to post this (I found this January 9), But then I realized nobody reads this blog and what the hell! Great read, in the same vein as the previous post about this same issue.

I think if the revolutionary Jesus of the New Testament ever thought his ‘love the sinner, hate the sin’ message would be perverted and abused in this way, he’d have given us a few reminders like ‘judge not lest ye be judged’ or reminded his followers of the special power of religious hierarchy to corrupt. Oh, hang on, he did already!
I’ve sat with the Rick Warren inauguration thing for days, hoping to feel less angry and betrayed, hoping to see a chink of light in the reasoning behind it – anything beyond the tortuous over-thinking and callous calculation it betrays. I give up. Why couldn’t Obama give the people who voted for him one perfect day of happiness? God knows things are gloomy enough besides. And God knows too many people have spent the last 8 years excluded from the party. We live in a fully imperfect world the other 364 days, and reason says Obama can only disappoint us in the future, no matter how hard he tries. So why not share this one beautiful day of unadulterated happiness?
Here’s what it comes down to. The religious fundamentalists simply don’t want other people to be happy. The only joy they can conceive of is that which they allow. There’s no rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s for them. The law of their angry God is inadequate by itself, and needs to be enforced by the laws of men and the power of the state. Their joy is won only in a zero sum game. Sharing it destroys it. Why else do they fight so hard to exclude gay people from the ‘sanctity’ of marriage?
But we’re not two year-olds. We are grown-ups who know that sharing our precious toys doesn’t ruin them forever. If marriage is so great – and I think it is – then why hoard it? Why keep the light under a bushel? There is something so selfish and grasping about the religious right’s vendetta against gay marriage. It’s unworthy of anyone who professes to follow Christ.
I keep on keeping on in the Catholic Church, mostly because it’s what I was brought up in and where I most feel the pain and joy of just being alive. I’ve even been lucky enough to find a home from home in a Catholic community that not just welcomes but celebrates every person in it. But days like today force me to ask myself if it’s even the right thing to continue to associate myself with an institution whose leadership behaves so shamefully. If I believe Barack Obama should dissociate himself from Rick Warren’s Prop 8 hatefulness, what right do I have to keep going to a church I love but that doesn’t fully love all its members?
I can’t argue myself into it, or perhaps even justify politically and intellectually why I should go on enjoying my community of faith. But I do feel it comes down to the joy. The happiness for and amongst others I experience there, and the practical hope that I can keep on doing my bit (whenever I truly figure out what that is). Shutting down or shutting off that profound source of joy would make me feel the bad guys have won. The religious right don’t have a monopoly on happiness, and we shouldn’t let them think they can.
Where is the love? — Crooked Timber.

I’ve been trying to avoid this issue but reading the above quoted passage I’d like to write donw my views. Whenever I like to censor myself, or hide within my personal beliefs I sometimes have to read the xkcd comic about dreams and silently whisper to myslef FucK ThaT ShiT!

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Had To Share:Touching Story:The old lady in Copacabana at Paulo Coelho’s Blog

Photograph of a medieval artwork, showing a gu...
Image via Wikipedia

I posted this a week ago but I wanted to say a little something about this now. I don’t know , can’t we say most of people probably including me does a lot of things not to be alone? It is sad but it is the truth. I probably am bipolar and whenever I am at one extreme I seem to feel the need to connect with people while at the other extreme I have that overwhelming need to be left alone to my own thoughts! The problem is most often when you want to be left alone, those are the exact times people can’t seem to leave you alone, and vise-versa. That’s why sometimes I just leave my phone at my room and don’t check emails for a couple of days. Or why I suddenly message people in facebook or comment on random people’s blogs. It sates the need for aloness/connectedness without real friction.

The old lady in Copacabana
Published by Paulo Coelho on February 20, 2009 in Stories Paulo Coelho
She was standing on the sidewalk of Atlântica Avenue with a guitar and a hand-written sign that said: “Let’s sing together.”
She began to play alone. Then a drunk arrived, then another old lady and they began to sing along with her. In a short time a small crowd was singing together and another small crowd played the audience, clapping hands at the end of each number.
“Why do you do this?” I asked between songs.
“Not to be alone,” she said. “My life is very lonely, just like almost all old folk.”
I wish they all could solve their problems in this way.
The old lady in Copacabana at Paulo Coelho’s Blog.

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Right To Live-Wedding Ring Freakonomics

Sean Penn
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We must revise our views and accept they way people want to live. This is especially true for cases that does not entail an adverse effect against any thing but our sensibilities. We must not deny people the right to find their happiness if it does not directly affect our happiness in any meaningful way.  Part of me hated making Sean Penn win the Best Actor award at the 81’st Academy Awards for political reasons (Mickey Rourke was really that good!), and I feared that it may be the reason the Slumdog Would lose the Best Picture awards, TGFT. But prop * was California’s black eye and till they find a way to redeem themselves they would always feel shamed with what they weren’t able to prevent!

My Wedding Ring
By Ian Ayres
With great joy, I decided to put my wedding ring back on my finger this past weekend.
I had stopped wearing my ring because I was slightly embarrassed to live in a state where people like my sister couldn’t marry the people they love.
But I have no reason now to be embarrassed on this score, because on Friday the Connecticut Supreme Court struck down the statutory exclusion. You can read Justice Palmer’s opinion here. (Disclosure: An amicus brief was filed in the case on behalf of me and other Connecticut law professors, and my spouse, Jennifer Gerarda Brown, was the co-author of another amicus brief.)
My Wedding Ring – Freakonomics – Opinion – New York Times Blog.

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rePost: THE UNRAVELING OF KANYE WEST: DETAILS Article on men.style.com

Kanye West in 2007.
Image via Wikipedia

I played guitar hero the first time last night, at a house/birthday party of a friend. What struck me was the intensity of the people playing guitar hero. Let’s just say that most things we have in modern society is distractions and we seem to be concentrating so much in these distractions that we seem to lose energy to do the hard stuff, or maybe we use these distractions to not face having to deal with the hard stuff, as for me, I’m not playing guitar hero any time soon, I’ve been slowly saving up for an electric organ and in 8 month’s I’d probably saved enough for both an instrument and the turntable i’ve been dying to own.  Hope I can create stuff!

Inspired by his preteen Super–Sexual Mario Brothers project, West makes a pop-Freudian self-analysis. “People ask me a lot about my drive. I think it comes from, like, having a sexual addiction at a really young age,” he says. “Look at the drive that people have to get sex—to dress like this and get a haircut and be in the club in the freezing cold at 3 A.M., the places they go to pick up a girl. If you can focus the energy into something valuable, put that into work ethic . . . “
THE UNRAVELING OF KANYE WEST: DETAILS Article on men.style.com.

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Can't Lie

It seems to be the recurring theme of my life. The “Fuck I can’t Lie To My Self but I’ll try everytime i get a chance”. THis is getting stale, I need a new theme fuck happiness fuck depression. I am in limbo and it seems that both extremes won’t/can’t make me satisfied. This is not where I am meant to be!

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rePost:Belief In A Loving God/ A Loving Life:Who wants to go to heaven? at Paulo Coelho’s Blog

Zürich (Switzerland) - The Brazilian writer Pa...
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For those who believe in God or even who just believes in life, I’ve come to the belief(too many belief in this sentence) God/the Universe is not conspiring against me at worst it does not care for me/us, thus I try to live life in a manner that if not optimistic at least neutral. I still don’t knwo/understand life but I feel that If I am to continue living here I believe in Love!

Who wants to go to heaven?
Published by Paulo Coelho on February 16, 2009 in Stories
A priest – who saw the devil in the pleasures of life – went to the town tavern and asked everyone there to attend church that evening. Everyone obeyed. With the church filled to the last pew, the priest roared out:
– Stop all this drinking! All those who want to go to heaven, raise their right hand!
The entire congregation raised their hand – everyone but Manoel, who was held by all to be a dignified man who fulfilled all his duties.
Surprised, the priest asked:
– And you, Manoel, don’t you want to go to heaven when you die?
– Of course I do. But I still haven’t experienced the life that God has given me, and you want to take it away from me already!
Welcome to Share with Friends – Free Texts for a Free Internet
Who wants to go to heaven? at Paulo Coelho’s Blog.

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