Tag: Arts

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Paradox Of Choice Experiment::Is less always more? : Cognitive Daily

Such a simple but illuminating experiment, click through to find their results!

But is less always more? Most of the studies on number of choices have either given participants a very small or a very large number of options. Does this mean just one choice is the best? Or is there some larger number of choices that is optimal?
To find out, Avni Shah and George Wolford set up a table in a busy corridor at Dartmouth University and asked passersby to help their department select the best pen to order for its supply closet. They varied the number of pens sampled from 2 to 20. Each pen was similarly priced at around $2, and while each pen was different, all were “roller-ball” style pens with black ink.
via Is less always more? : Cognitive Daily.

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Ted Talk: Elizabeth Gilbert On Nurturing Creativity


I liked this alot because I still haven’t developed that discipline in creation where you can force yourself to write/dance/code etc. It has to be from an overwhelming desire to do something. That’s my problem with work oft times, I pass mediocre (at least in my standards) whenever I have to code because of a deadline. I can only write stories when I am inspired, and I can’t sing alot of songs when I am not in love with somebody(like now).

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MRT at Midnight

I intentionally went to work at around noon and left work at around midnight, this was all done to ensure that I would be at the MRT station after midnight!
Some observations:
-I have to confess a certain fantasy that a scene in my sassy girl would be repeated. (No Go)
-I had to wait about 18 minutes for the train to arrive.  I am told that the trains arrive every thirty minutes, but it also depends on the number or people wanting to ride, they adjust depending on demand.
-It’s either surprising because the plain was relatively full without being shoulder to shoulder with other people being the first day, or it is full because it is the first day, I suspect a combination of these two.
-It’s surprising for me that most people were going out at the north avenue station not the cubao station. I believe this is because after around 5 stations taking the mrt is more economical than other transport options.
-I was unlucky enough to be caught in the middle of the downpour. Half of my body was wet.
-Surprising how many of my friends were awake at midnight.

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

Sam Seaborn
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.

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: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.

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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.

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Fate is…..


Let’s say that I was really depressed yesterday but It was fortunate that we were going to watch Monsters Vs Aliens at the IMAX theater and we just walked around mall of asia. (We being me chuck vince and marc). We went home at around 9:30 and I was really very sleepy, luckily marc read this on the headrest of the seat a few rows in front of our seat(at the back of the bus). I recognized it instantly, and what follows is what I pictured in my minds eyes as the mystery surrounding this act of vandalism that really cheered me up.
Scene at the back of a jackpherlyn bus:
A girl looks far outside the large bus windows as the bus traverses the Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard. It is already late in the afternoon and the sun is slowly setting and at the moment was directly perched aone of the peaks of the Mall Of Asia structure.
The bus stops frequently because it is a slow day, april 6; The Bataan/ Araw ng Kagitingan Holiday has been moved to monday, and most people were either enjoying thier houses, out of town or are still at the malls.
A lady with really large face hugging shades is slowly humming the song “I believe”, we know nothing about this woman, she has a small frame and wearing the typical summer shorts and bright green top that was either a short very short one piece dress or a retro circa 1980’s top that went well with leggings.  Her glasses are all fogged up. She keeps saying to herself as if trying to convince herself that it is true “fate is….”.
A man with round features tinge with a roughness that stems from a sense of organized unkemptness. He is obviously out of it.  (probably a girl told him that she’s just not into you at all (sorry him, I was thinking of a friend (ouch),  no really (and double ouch))).
He sits down beside her it’s the only seat left in the bus and he of course takes it. Sits down dazed, unconsciously rolling/twidlling a marker/pen. It’s like he is existing in another dimension prallel to this one. It seems he is living in a bubble. His face moves , he has good hearing , then he writes “building bridges of chance for someone you love”.
She stops speaking. she turns her head slowly, as if caught stealing something.
He looks down, seemingly interested in every minute detail of his black chuck taylors. Not really aware that someone is looking at him. He drops the pen. He tries to retrieve it.
She sees him lose the pen, she tries to retrieve it.
Thier hands touch. Thier eyes meet. He says HI!, She says Hello!

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What's Playing: All You Need Is Love by The Beatles

.not everything is black and white. there's a ...
Image by just.K via Flickr

All You Need Is Love
Performed by The Beatles
Composed by Lennon/McCartney
From The Blue Album
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy.
There’s nothing you can make that can’t be made.
No one you can save that can’t be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you
in time – It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.
It’s easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
I’m writing this at the bottom on the unlikely possibility that someone other than me and a handful of my closest friends and cobloggers are reading this. Let’s call this sharing.
Let’s just say that I am a very sensitive person,I ‘ve been given insane amounts of empathy and symphat, I feel that if as chuck told me about mirror neurons (read more here) , I have an overabundance of mirror neurons. This has led me into ways of thinking and actuations that in a sense are extremely weird when viewed in the outside but in some ways still rational at least to me.
I’d like to make this along post but I’ll keep it short. I’d like to believe that all you need is love , I’d like to believe this so much. The thing is Loving hurts , it hurts a lot, it opens you up, (I have a lot to do I’m writing a post on vulnerability later I’ll call it vulnerable , all you need is love part 2)

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What's Playing: Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles

Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles
Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.
Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It’s getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn’t matter much to me.
Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.
No one I think is in my tree, I mean it must be high or low.
That is you can’t you know tune in but it’s all right.
That is I think it’s not too bad.
Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.
Always no sometimes think it’s me, but you know I know when it’s a dream.
I think, er No, I mean, er Yes but it’s all wrong.
That is I think I disagree.
Let me take you down, ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields.
Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.
Strawberry Fields forever.
Strawberry Fields forever.
Strawberry Fields forever.

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