Influence, sourness

The famous Infl people book says when faced with the choice of punishing or rewarding people, you should do the latter. Otherwise you have lower chances of accomplishing your goal and you may leave people to be sour against you.

Congratulating someone can be funny when taken out of the context I am referring to.

leaves ppl sour. Reward helps.

Health INS companies want punish? No just get money , riskier smoker clients? But this ends up being penalizing

Being "a" crazy interesting

Another connection I am thinking of with How to Win friends and influence and the "be a random interesting thingsmabob" to meet lots of friends in the world.

Carnegie says to be like a dog: show lots of love. That's what the fun value outpouring person does too.

PayPal's Bill Me Later sounds like a cool way to make money using loans from friends

"Bill me Later" sounds a lot like "pay me later". That's what you usually hear from friends who are really loan sharks. Hey Pay Pal is an awesome service for its privacy benefits. It is free and the make-money-from-customer-end-free-services is a difficult problem. I think PayPal's latest solution is quite smart.

So because we trust PayPal after so many years of using it for free ( just as you do things for your friends for free ), now we trust them when we are hard for cash.

Trust

A bajillions people hav already written about this, I'm sure, but I don't have what they wrote in front of me.

What does it take for people to form bonds with others, no matter how weak? People in small cities or rural areas seem to know all their neighbors. But those in big cosmopolitan megatroplises can pass a thousand souls in a day without as much meeting their eyes.

[we] big city folk don't have sticks stuck up our behinds, we just needed a [natural?] way of dealing with the onslaught of faces. I recently learned about a famous Marijuana researcher's discvery of the effect of forgetting caused by the plant's female variety. The extension of the research was that forgetting is a good way not to overflow your brain with perhaps useless information. Now I am starting to think that people may also have natural behaviors which prevent you from taking in situations to-be-remembered in the first place.

If you memorize the face of everyone in your proximity on the train ride to work, would you go crazy? And is it only pruning which prevents you from having their faces inyour brain? It is roughly an oblivion not to extend your eyes out to those passerbys.

So in the case of talking to a stranger , we require very little trust. But there is enough potential variation there for your interaction to go from what we call "small talk" to a possible friendship.


I was a bit stunned when reading the comments on this [1] article at kansan.com. The author was talking about how particular cultures' social norms dictate how we act. First off, I think our social behavior is not only influenced by culture, but also your hard-wiring. People can read each others' faces and body language to try to tell if someone is trying to swindle us.

One commentor at [1] went so far as to say approaching strangers to help them out is a form of discrimination, because you judging their "needy" "appearance" is really insulting their right to be left alone.


.........
Thinking people recognize the difference between appearance and reality: "Looking like" is not the same as "being" something. You should not make this judgment about a stranger. Most people today don't like being messed with by strangers in public--it scares them. It's just not smart to trust jerks who would try insinuating themselves into others' lives so offensively--might be a thug or a mugger.

Discrimination means treating people differently. Per civil rights law it's illegal to regard or treat people as having a disability--it creates an uneven playing field
.........

I heard in some cities it is not legal to tell someone who looks like a man not to use a women's bathroom, because you are stereotyping that because he looks like a man he is a man. This is to protect against transgender discrimination I think. I have not heard this play out in real life, but this regulation seems slightly silly, especially when someone may end up making other people uncomfortable by using what to most doesn't look right the right bathroom.

I think the tradeoff between sometimes offending people and making someone's life easier may be worth it. Besides, there are subtle techniques you could use to show your help inclination without making your target get all self-conscious. You can simply make eye contact and smile. If they pull their eyes away, then you have your answer. If they smile back, then you can offer to help.


It is all in how you frame it. If you _tell_ the other person, 'let me get that for you,' then pity comes to mind. But if you _ask_ if you can help, then you are more likely perceived as 'compassionate'.




References
[1] http://www.kansan.com/news/2009/oct/29/ho-social-cue-ignorance-offensive/

Re Power of Now

I feel Power of Now doesn't help me answer "How do you balance being goal oriented with feeling satisfied with what you have?"

I spent like 30 minutes flipping through this book at a store and I felt disappointed. Tolle's style is to talk about the same thing over and over again and never actually get to the point.


A really awesome practical book I loved was David Allen's Getting Things Done [3]. He explains that you have to quit using your mind for remembering what to do, otherwise you get inundated with 'mental reminders' through the day.

Manwhore [1] spoke on how even your messy room can wreak havoc with your confidence and Erika@Awakening [2] similarly spoke about the end "vibe" / incongruence a woman will pick up when she talks to you if you are not true to yourself let alone to other people.

This does connect to Tolle's words that you cannot be present if you are not taking control of particular emotions tangled in you.

I think I am realizing that you can never _really_ get your hypothetical _shit_ together, so you should 'accept' your current state , plan your life goals and ENJOY THE JOURNEY.

References
[1] http://www.the21convention.com/2009/05/17/manwhore-2008-day-3-1-of-2/
[2] http://www.the21convention.com/2009/09/08/erika-awakening-t21c-2009/
[3] http://www.davidco.com/

Litmus test

Hmm Republican Litmus tests... How good are they as "classifiers" , for predictores .

Can you shortcut how people will vote

On Social interaction at a young age

Switching languages has advantages beyond language itself For children.


Social interaction effective for learning while not through a television screen.

That is from an interview I heard on a recent NPR /WNYC podcast. However, I recently read this New Yorker article about robots being tested out in clinical trials where they would function to encourage patients on a course of rehabilitation. It also turned out that human -like robots were involved with higher success rates as opposed to people being encouraged through a voice in a television screen.

Types of programs included people retraining an injured arm or Alzhrimer's patients keeping memory sharp.


Per the WNYC interview:
Born w max neurons but through your life, connections get formed and pruned

On Social interaction at a young age

Switching languages has advantages beyond language itself For children.


Social interaction effective for learning while not through a television screen.

That is from an interview I heard on a recent NPR /WNYC podcast. However, I recently read this New Yorker article about robots being tested out in clinical trials where they would function to encourage patients on a course of rehabilitation. It also turned out that human -like robots were involved with higher success rates as opposed to people being encouraged through a voice in a television screen.

Types of programs included people retraining an injured arm or Alzhrimer's patients keeping memory sharp.


Per the WNYC interview:
Born w max neurons but through your life, connections get formed and pruned

Possible issues with cap and trade

I have been wondering whether Cap and Trade may unfairly burden Utility companies since they are the ones who are in the business of producing usable energy. You may say that to avoid the potential problems, they should start producing energy in a clean way. Well that is the equivalent of starting a new company and dumpin the dirty one you have.

I was thinking that Cap and Trade carbon trading should force companies who "use" dirty energy to be just as burdened by needing to offset their carbon credits as those who produce it. Otherwise, you do not spread the pain fairly.

How about businesses who output no carbon of their own and they get their energy from renewable sources. Should they be able to sell thei available credits?should they even get credits to sell off? The Cap and Trade market is unfairly slanted in favor of those who are clean. Yes it is an incentive to be (a) cleaner or (b) make yourself appear cleaner. But, it is really a disguised regulation I think with addition of giving already green companies an extra source of income.

What is another argument against C&T? Well if energy becomes too expensive to produce and therefore not profitable enough, then we may run out of local energy companies? Huh? Does that make any sense? Of course we will not. Another indistry will pop up to snap up energy market share. But in the meantime, can we expexct our energy sale based GDP to falter? Perhaps.

And by the way this is not easy. We need an efficient energy distribution grid before alternative like Solar Arizona energy can be used. But what does that mean? It will concentrate energy sale incomes unevenly around the south western states. Today, coal is practically all over the place and so taxes from sales can be collected by many states. Fact is these sorts changes will redistribute wealth. We must ask : are there alterior motives in any proposals?

How about benefits to Cap and Trade? Well it is one of a category of proposals for cleaning up our collective act when it comes to releasing carbon into the air.



This is all related to a larger issue of distribution of fairness. For that reason it is related to the Mara river level dropping Wikdebeast suffering issue in Kenya. There, the Kenyan government is trying to stomp out a Wasai population which is cutting trees at the root of the Mara river . They feel they are not treated fairly becUse they do not even see the Wildebeast migrTion, as they live far away. The government has to act on behalf of all parties and make it's decision.

Point in understanding health care debate

I heard a very concise description of the differences regarding health care policy today. On the topic of pre-existing conditions , the Democratic versions of Senate bills include wording to force companies to accept new patents regardless of preexisting conditions. Here in is the brunt of the differences. Republicans identify that you cannot force insurance companies to take on anyone, by the burning home analogy. That is, you wish o prevent people from purchasing fire home insurance while their home is burning. Similarly, you want to prevent people from buying insurance when they are already sick.

Constructionistically, I agree that you should not allow pre-existing conditions when it comes to purchasing health insurance, but then again I do not believe in the idea of health _insurance_. rather, I think we must have health financing.

Not everyone's car will burn down, but everyone will get sick. Then again, not everyone will get the same diseases, but most childhood vacinations and all preventatve care is standardized. Also, everyone gets the cold. There is practically no escape. Perhaps insurance shoud only exist for the unknown portion of medicine.

That was a massive side track. I meant to say that Tepublicans rather not support te pre-existing conditions anti- discrimination, because it means essentially everyone mus be required to be covered. And this in turn means everyone who cannot afford to buy into the program must be subsidized or perhaps must receive some reduction in benefits or cost or reduced priority? At any rate, subsidy implies the gvernment has to shell out lots of money. At this point, the Republicans say financing is difficult, while some say taking money from medicare is a possibility.

That is the money puzzle.

Hook worms allergies and hygiene hypothesis

The Radiolab episode about hook worms being removed from people's symbiotic circles made me think of diabetes. The human condition today is made of several artificial frames we are living side by side.

People exercise less because the economy of money lets you exchange services for money. yYou would have otherwise labored for those services.

People have an over-abundance of food in many cases. Starvation does exist and I cannot rule it out, but a very high percentage of the US is obese and other parts of the world are sadly following suite.

response to Rep. Michele Bachmann / Palin death panels ( Eugenics? )

I submit to the opinion that either Palin and Bachmann are ignoring the current the-provider-decides system because of an agenda or because they don't know enough about health care. Also, hearing Bachmann quoting Ezekiel Emanuel ( current White House Chief of Staff's brother ) on the topic made me realize she did have a point to criticize this Administration.

I recently heard an interview with Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe on the Leonard Lopate show [4] . They covered Sarah Palin during part of her campaign. They brought up that Palin had helped shoot down an unpopular component of current health care legislation. I read about Palin's contribution at [1], which had also linked to Bachmann's video at [2].

Emanuel was quoted to say that "[...] doctors take the Hippocratic oath too seriously as an imperative to do everything for the patient, regardless of the cost and effects on others [...]", paraphrasing this from Bachmann's [2] video . This quote spread like wild fire. It was taken from the Journal of the American Medical Association [8], where Emanuel had written "The Perfect Storm of Overutilization" over a year ago. Sean Hannity from FOX [7] and the NY Post [6] had their bite at it, but the Wall Street Journal [5] threw its two cents in too. Of course the Huff Post [1] was already mentioned.

Now to me, the fact that Emanuel wrote this article in JAMA is very interesting, because I remember when reading Edwin Black's War Against the Weak [10], I recall Black noted that JAMA had been a center stage for the Eugenics movement. I also did a quick search and found another article [9] on "Eugenic Sterilization[...]" which wrote out which American medical journals did and did not cover Eugenics in editorials during the period of 1930 to 1945. Of nine journals which they reviewed, JAMA and New England Journal of Medicine had published nine editorials together. The other seven journals had paltry mention of eugenics; one editorial at most was found.

Of course JAMA has completely disassociated itself from eugenics long since. I think including Emanuel's journal article is important. I believe that it is best to consider even the most radical ideas in peer-reviewed journals like this first. This way a policy-maker's words and beliefs are clear for everyone to see, but more importantly, the ethics and merit of those ideas will be tested and challenged before they even get a chance to be borrowed into law.

As far as I understand, Palin's contribution was to underline that it is a good thing that doctors adhere to the Hippocratic Oath. We want them to be like military contractors and spend spend spend when it comes to people's lives. Should a doctor be considering whether a particular treatment should be omitted because the person will die anyway? I have to completely paraphrase a Time mag article from memory here: 'the spread of a person's medical costs through his/her life is skewed more heavily to the last two years'. I tried to create a frame of mind where this idea went in line with eugenic thinking. Eugenics says you should 'forcefully implement' survival of the fittest by getting rid of the inferior in order to create a stronger people. Of course this is as ridiculous an idea as radical communism and not just because power-hunger agendas will turn utopian plans on their heads, but because people don't know what traits should be pre-selected for optimal survival.

Medicine is not a system for perfecting the human race. At that, it is a hit and miss game. Medicine is best used to treat patients with existing illnesses and it does a really good job at that as a technology and health management system. Yes and so medicine was not designed to improve the well-being of people across generations just as a system of government is best at dealing with and reacting to events which are happening at the present time, such as natural disasters and foreign attacks. But, the gov't is not so great at predicting/preventing future events. Okay maybe the medicine-government analogy is pitifully worked out.

My point is that this representation of eugenics/medicine can be compared with what Emanuel says about overutilization. He and eugenics proponents have two completely disparate goals in mind. He wants the US to save money and eugenics wanted a master race. Period. Why do I even bother comparing the two? It's because the end methodology may end up looking the same: curbing medical technology advancement and reducing spending on medical expenses of the elderly and disabled implies you put your money with those who are healthier. Ironically eugenics ended up spending their money on the 'unhealthy' ( mentally or otherwise ) by using it to try to sterilize them or keep them in asylums. But, the intent was to increase benefit to the prosperous.

This is a blog. I'm just putting my disorganized thoughts on "paper". I doubt this was coherent, but maybe I'll use it later.




References

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/07/palin-obamas-death-panel_n_254399.html

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CHBvKGmevI&feature=player_embedded

[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-reardon/the-death-panel-already-e_b_256089.html

[4] www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate

[5] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574374463280098676.html

[6] http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/deadly_doctors_PU6S0iok2FbS368B7d7mAM

[7] http://forums.hannity.com/showthread.php?t=1566861

[8] Emanuel's "The Perfect Storm of Overutilization" on (Journal of the American Medical Association, June 18, 2008).

[9] Andre´ N. Sofair , "Eugenic Sterilization and a Qualified Nazi Analogy: The United States and Germany, 1930–1945 " ,
, http://www.annals.org/content/132/4/312.full.pdf

[10] http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/

Johnny Depp

Depp playing mad hatter in Alice in Wonderland, I feel, is a cool alternative to the standard idea of a sequal or "part 2". I have not seen this rabbit hole movie, but his funky far out character is just an extension of the psychopathic Willy Wonka persona.

And the Pirates of the Carribean character? The persona is different. There, he is more wrecklooss without a plan. In the first two movies I described Depp is on auto pilot roles directing the action.

Some more life observations

When Microwaves finish cooking food, they should say "The End" instead of "End".


Microsoft originally introduced SpellCheck in order to prevent illegal magic from being used in Word Documents.



When the current Internet generation grows up, they will not be saying "Whats my name" when making love, but "Whats my username?"

Classifiers

Logical comparison of Blink decision making , with Pinker described 'wisdom' and bayesian decisian trees or bayes statistical classifiers in general.

If the doctors in Blink could be bested by the 3 step test which statistically had better insight into whether patients would have a repeat heart attack, the can we use this as a case for classifiers?

J

Berlusconi not allowed to go on with possible philandering lifestyle as Italian pimping playboy prime minister.

Apparently camabis law in Califirnia is that it Is allowed for certain medicinal uses, but Federal law forbids it. So you have a conflict . But I learned also about the science history on cNnabis over the past several decades. One Israeli scientist was responsible for identifying the THC in cannabis which is the substance that causes radical reactions , as in rats. That was in the 1960s when cannabis use was wide in the US. The gov't was asking Mexco to spray its marijuana crops with chemicals to kill it. The problem was that some crops were sprayed just before picking and there was a scare in US that products sold had vbeen contaminated. People sent their purchases to labs to determine if their samples were clean. That was the irony. The effectiveness of the spraying did not have to be very effective, but the possibility of taint was what brought people to grow their own pot plants.

Later on that same scientist discovered what chemical the human brain produced which like THC caused particular receptors in the brain to get triggered. These receptors existed in " memoery forgetting" visual, decision making and other parts of the brain.

The amazing detail there was that the brain has a forget trigger . The reasons are likely related to the Radiolab episode about deception. There, equally capable swimmers outperformed each other if they lied to themselves (by personality) about their inabilities. That is, the swimmers who told themselves they were really good were better just for telling themselves this. This also reminds me of the "self actuizers" I have heard about recently . You should write down in text messages tocyouself "I am a confident man" . They do give people results

responding to cool Erika Awakening talk at relationship convention

Re: http://www.the21convention.com/2009/09/08/erika-awakening-t21c-2009/

[just copying/pasting what I had commented on that site:]
[ The talk was about limiting beliefs people have which cause them problems with relationships and with their lives in general]

I completely felt the the pink shirt guy's anxiety too. He was layering fake comedy on top of it constantly. When Erika referred to him trying to pick her up he went silent for a while and his face was stunned. He kept on modifying his facial expressions on command and his body was shifting constantly. Very nervous he was.


This stuff is not magic by the way. Check out Richard Dawkin's The Selfish Gene or Steven Pinker's How The Mind Works. It is clear within the field of evolutionary psychology that people are built to both be good at detecting cheaters/liars ( Erika says they have incongruence ) and also interestingly a game theory analysis of evolution says that printing the emotions all over your face is 'evolutionarily stable'.

That basically means that genes for lying well and not being able to tell apart liars didn't survive. The why takes longer to explain. ( And there are exceptions ). Yes I know you probably think that genes for being a good lier should survive, but they don't basically because cheaters cheat each other, while non cheaters thrive together sort of ( it is more complicated ) .


Oh and I think that Emotional Freedom Technique probably works because it forces you to focus on exactly what you are saying through consistent distraction. And because emotions are actually just "shortcut memories", you can neurally rewire your associative memory with the new statements you say. It works proportionally to how often you do it, because human memory works using 'weights' (practice/reinforcement).

AFC Adam mentioned in his video here that he also heard tapping is a 'hard-wired' distraction technique, but he uses it to get into other people's conversations.

Yep, sorry no magic. This stuff has been entering the mainstream during the past decade or so. Also check out Paul Eckman's research on face/emotion studies.

notes from Eckhart Tolle talking

" I must do that or else I am nobody"

"I must fight him because he will get there before I do "

notes from Tim Geithner's Feb 10 remarks on new economic plan

The transcript of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's Feb 10th speech is at [1] . There's also a word cloud form summary at [2] from ritholtz.com , created by By Barry Ritholtz:




I was just taking some notes, below.


"Without a powerful Economic Recovery Act, too many Americans will lose their jobs and too many businesses will fail. And unless we restore the flow of credit, the recession will be deeper and longer, causing even more damage to families and businesses across the country."

Okay, but how do you make sure businesses use the money to hire more workers or keep those on the chopping block? And how do you get banks to use their share on loans?


"We believe that the policy response has to be comprehensive, and forceful. There is more risk and greater cost in gradualism than in aggressive action."

=> They believe acting now is more important than thinking clearly. But I guess that is true. There needs to be a reaction without knowing how effective it will be. Let's do something rather than nothing.

I want to compare this to doing something about global climate change.


"When our government provides support to banks, it is not for the benefit of banks, it is for the businesses and families who depend on banks… and for the benefit of the country."

Thanks!


"new framework of oversight and governance of all aspects of our Financial Stability Plan."



Summary of what they will do
- new oversight : financialstability.gov to see all the numbers spent and how
- strong conditions on executive compensation.

- improve banks' balance sheets, force them to reduce their lending risk , by enforcement and force disclosure too
- also reduce their lending risk with capital from Fed with conditions they need to meet

- a new public-private investment fund to help relieve the crappy investments that are clogging the system ( up to a trillion )

- and a new consumer lending initiative ( trillion )

- also help to reduce mortgage interest rages, and reduce mortgage payments for those near foreclosure





[1] http://www.treasury.gov/press/releases/tg18.htm

[2] http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/geithner-rescue-plan-cloud/

Facebook is sneaky: privacy is virginity

"You are allowing AT&T[...] to access your information." Sell my private information to a corporation? Heck no. Make AT&T and whoever else my facebook friend so I can use their whatever crappy facebook application? Of course I trust them with whatever I post to my FB page! I have known them since high school right ?

We all know employers peruse people's Facebook profiles. Whether it is in their anti-discrimination policy or not, they will do it. Whose fault is it? We decided to blame the dirty and scheming subprime mortgage lenders for fooling people who cannot afford houses to adjustable-rate their way into the American Dream. Well who are we going to blame for crushing young people's privacy ? Facebook users have been called exhibitionists. So is it the fault of the users for being careless in revealing their party habits or the corporate solicitors who are using clever marketing to get the ad revenue they want?

I say, your privacy is like your virginity. If you lose it, you can't get it back. But corporations will try to violate you. Suing them for all their worth is inefficient, so we need awareness campaigns to spread the good Word of protecting your information from harm's ways and means.