My Klinging Mind Jog

Synchronicity

2011-04-05T19:31:00.000-07:00

Skimming through papers on Jung's Synchronicity, I want to know whether people's selectivity is identified as the similarity of meaning between events. Also, has probability been determined?

The study from the University of Wisconsin [4] studies similarities college students can identify between each other. Life is not a controlled environment and trying to measure the likelihood of, for example, two robberies at the same fast food franchise may be too difficult.

Does Jung consider that people are really good at finding connections, no matter how loose they are? We have the Six degrees of Kevin Bacon meme that showed that most actors are well connected to Kevin Bacon based on co movie productions. Someone else went on to find that there are even better connected actors out there.

But who has stopped to think that just as a study about similarities between University of Wisconsin psychology students, actors in Hollywood are bound to have roles together. It has been taken for granted that the other billions of people in the world do not have Kevin Bacon numbers because they are neither film actors nor Hollywood film actors. This is a tight knit group of people to begin with.

The prior was the notion that people take initial similarities for granted. Swimmers in the Olympics will have similarly really good times, because they were hand picked from those who swam in Olympic trials. But how about "accidental" similarities ?

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity
[2] http://www.hulu.com/watch/222871/fringe-stowaway
[3] Phil Dowe and Mitch Parsell University of Tasmania, "Jung’s Concept of ‘Coincidence’"
[4] THOMAS C. ROWE AND DOUGLAS B. HENDERSON, "Establishing Prevalence of Commonalities in Randomly Paired Individuals as a Method for Assessing Synchronicity", Dept. of Psychology, University of Wisconsin at Stevens Pt. , 1995.

[5] Malcolm Gladwell , Tipping Point

Searching for "love"

2011-02-22T11:04:00.000-08:00

Blekko [1] is a search engine that appears to have a fresh new adaptation to search. Their new algorithm is very clearly represented and it is even a clever way to speed up search. Transparency and optimization aside, how do they handle recall?

In a nutshell, their algorithm depends on experts or maybe let's call them selfperts or self-proclaimed experts, to tell you what sites have what you are looking for. In the olden days, if you had a question, you would be keen on hitting up your local librarium or talk it down with your professional colleagues. The system of tubes we colloquially call the inter-net started out as a tight group of peer universities sharing ideas through a few mail programs and maybe more [DARPA reference needed]. Maybe some pubs were opened up for discussion ( both doctoral publications and public pour houses ), but you could not yet know how a teen pop/rocks fan truly felt after listening to some Bon Jovi tunes. It was not until much later after the 1990s [ref.] that you and I asked Jeeves about how stuff works. These days, the Googles ( Project Guttenberg, Amazon ebooks, Google Books, NY Times digitizers and the Asian text book pirating community at large ) are providing virtual and simultaeous viewing access to volumes of works otherwise only available for free in print at your library.

The real challenge of searching engines is to point you to which of those digitized sultry romance novels makes allegorical references to tragic figures through a socio-pathic love-gasmic pop fiction lens. Maybe Blekko.com feels those algorithms are not yet up to snuff and says we need to all help each other out about where best to look. A helping hand will show the way.

My hope is that when I do my looking around online, I can feel empowered when other people find what they want using slashtags I create. Maybe free commerce will vote down the ones that are not good enough or perhaps
Blekko will even downrate the slashtags I forgot to update for over a year.

I know that no matter how many biblical romance novel subject matter experts I support out there, I would still like to form my own opinion with the widest range of sources possible. And for that, I might not tag along on the SHIFT- revolution just yet.

References

[1] blekko.com

Deceptive visualizations

2011-02-16T22:23:00.001-08:00

The daily pothole NYC DOT blog shows off this "pretty" summary of potholes covered during the last 31 days [1]. That's great, but because the map is so small, these dots look like they cover a large area while the dots themselves are big so you can see them.

The problem is similar to the one during te Dec 2010 snow storm. It was difficult to know what streets were getting cleaned up and which needed to be cleaned again. The City uses the beautiful 311 system to crowd-source to get updates on potholes and road snow issues. But because that infrmation is not presented along side potholes that were fixed, you do not get a complete picture about the city's overall responsiveness .

I still love the effort they put into this data collection. Makes me proud.

[1]
http://thedailypothole.tumblr.com/photo/1280/3316951936/1/tumblr_lgonom6bBN1qg9dmn

House MD and why we like distractions

2010-03-23T19:11:00.000-07:00

House is able to keep a medical diagnostic discussion going on while juggling his staff's emotional and personal lives at the same time. This keeps them distracted enough to keep them stimulated and diagnosing away.

Now is there also something related to having your mind tickled with frolicking subjects? Yes I think humor during a class lecture can keep you focused, for example. How about when you are the subject of ridicule? Others are amused at your expense and you are in reaction mode. Does that make you a better analyst?

Thinking processes are better when your thoughts can bounce from place to place. Randomness is glory.

That's why House likes two way interactions which lead to his well known epiphanies. When enough subjects coagulate and auto-associate with each other, relationships are formed where none existed. Why is it that varied environments spur on more creative outcomes? I don't know when, but I did read that children's exposure to a higher variety of stimuli strengthens their analytical abilities for the future.

And the same goes for the diagnostic methods. Higher exposure to stimuli force patient responses without waiting for them to happen on their own. Increasing the number of symptoms to help you understand the hidden variables in this graphical analysis is akin to accelerating evolution in that experiment in the Soviet Union when the kinder and gentler foxes were bred in succession. Okay maybe that process was more selective, but expediting the process is key in both cases.

So I think I am in need of a work efficiency booster and this is a good path to take for a mental stimulus.

The even wider subject is not how to be a more efficient worker, but what are the processes behind association and mental sub-conscious voting mechanisms. You know, we're talking about voting to select what enters into your consciousness.

It is also quite interesting to try to understand why we get bored. Can we understand the mind to the extent of how much we need to excite it for it to be healthy? This is entering the realm of concepts like "fun".

And why is interior design is so important. Animals in are in green shrub/tree zoos today, but they used to be packed into cement jungles a half century back. Today we know from scans that brain development in cement containers is heavily restrained. The same connections can be made to humans. Singing in the shower makes us come up with ideas as much as walking in a forest does when all of our senses are diverted. Does that mean listening to wordless music is best for concentration when working? Focus on a particular task is more difficult when distracted unless that one task is creating storms in your brain.

Ironically these investigations are the reasons why TV shows these days flip between multiple subjects for our stimulus-hungry minds to be happy and interested. Did someone say advertising? The benefits of advertising to concept-manufacturers outweigh the negatives to thought-consumers.

Advertising : Cross Show Appearances

2010-03-15T21:58:00.000-07:00

Here are more discrete and not so discrete advertising examples. Both of the images below are from hulu.com [3] and seen just seconds apart on Mar 16th 2010.

The first is of Rod Blagojevich apparently appearing in a show called the Celebrity Apprentice. Talk about guest appearances being used to help upstart past careers? Eliot Spitzer has been trying to do TV appearances as well as writing articles for Slate [4], among other places. This was after he left the NY governor spot. Blagojevich is of course the former governor of Illinois.

The next example is Jerry Seinfeld appearing on SNL. Now, there is no direct mention, but Jerry was recently on this other TV show called the Marriage Ref on NBC [5] . In this SNL skit [1] , Jerry helps out in sort-of relationship advice related to the subject of former Congressman Eric Massa. Massa is currently in the news as a result of his resignation in March 2010 [2].

References
[1] http://www.hulu.com/watch/134724/saturday-night-live-really-with-seth-and-jerry
[2] http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/vacancies_pr.html?pr=house&vid=31
[3] http://www.hulu.com
[4] http://www.slate.com/id/2205995/
[5] http://www.nbc.com/the-marriage-ref/

Border control

2010-03-06T22:51:00.007-08:00

I recently heard about Boeing's contract with Homeland Security to build a virtual fence on the US - Mexico border. They were comissioned in 2006 and were to complete a full >1200 mile stretch near 2008-2009, but less than 28 miles are completed. Almost a billion dollars have been spent. I am learning about this from a recent 60 minutes podcast about the topic.

As far as problems, the system uses radar to identify motion, but radar has issues when it rains. Maybe rain is not common on the border, but terrorists planning on using this border will likely make their way during a storm given this information.

Remote tracking was to happen through remote laptop control, but the dry-sandy conditions were causing problems for intended laptops, because the parts were almost off-the-shelf and not military grade.

On top of that, it is reported that the users of the intended system were not consulted for their needs and requirements.

This looks like a classic problem of porting a lab tested project to a real world environment. Not enough design work was done in planing and anticipating rials to the system.

Emotions over text

2010-03-06T22:51:00.005-08:00

How good are we at putting feelings into text? Into text messages? Are paintings left to interpretation just as hand written letters between friends? Poetry can be really moving, but maybe that is because a portion is left over for self expression. Written text has many examples of being very clear of course, it just takes good editing. But personal feelings flow just like a brainstorming. So maybe we have a balance between actually saying what you want to say (well written letter) and speed of the tongue. But yes, sometimes the best expressions come from bursts of neural activity in the heat of the moment.

What solutions can we offer to those stressed about being misinterpreted over text messages or emails? Of course, we can apply a "revision process" to email protocols. So your intended recipient doesn't get the message. Instead you get it after a few minutes and get the chance to rewrite. This may be time consuming. How well can NLP be applied to lift sentiment from your text? We may apply the same analysis to pairwise interactions between two endpoints whose pairing is unique, keeping track of it. You can learn about how you communicate with particular people even more fully when we apply speech recognition.

Google has the "off the record" feature. This is a quick switch which can be used when you don't want analytics on your life. Do we trust our phone conversations to be private anyway? The day will arrive when self censorship will be all we have.

I would be interested in a sort of trust mechanism that needs to be established between you an your personal machines. Encryption is one thing. It is applied consciously. There are also ways to automate it. We may also apply rules such that it occurs only when we want it.

Those elements are purely for privacy, but NLP (or other tools) can ask you " did you really want to say that?"

Privacy and religion

2010-03-06T22:51:00.003-08:00

Plus psychology of getting scammed

Dreamfall and FRINGE

2010-03-06T22:51:00.001-08:00

I have no idea how no one else has noticed, but maybe there is only a small overlap of people who have played the game called dreamfall and also watched episodes from the FRINGE series on FOX. The following is a list of comparisons and they include lots of "spoilers" of course.

- Dreamfall is based in a 2-ply multiverse just like FRINGE.

- most people in each universe are clueless of the other.

- there are those few who have used some form of "technology" to cross between. In Dreamfall, there is a "portal" which can be created by Tibetan monks I think. In FrINGE, you can cross using unspecified strange technology . Patent pending.

- there are also those who have a special ability to cross

curbing littering in NYC ideas

2010-03-06T20:15:00.000-08:00

How about the use of self enforcing protocols to curb NYC litter?

The store receipt was invented primarily as an economic incentive against cash register theft [2]. If you do not get the receipt, your purchase is free. I saw this on Bruce Schneier's blog [2] . Similarly the cake cutting protocol [1] is another example of a self enforcing mechanism.

NYC Subways already have the "If you see something, say something" signs, asking customers to be the eyes and ears for everyone else. However, you really have no incentive to say something if you see something. Who cares? There is no economic incentive anyway. If someone is doing something strange, you can just get away from there. Who cares about everyone else?

But how about economic incentives? For example, what if returning old metrocards back to vending machines gave you a free fare or even just an extr a $0.05 off. Wouldn't you submit it to the vending machine as opposed to throwing it away?

The cool thing I noticed in Munich was the use of glassware even for "fast food" stands outside. You can't throw that stuff out, so there's no litter. Usually, you pay a small deposit on the beer stein ( maß glas ) and the value of the deposit is large enough so as to offset people stealing. Maybe we can't get Dunkin Donuts to start selling coffee in permanent containers, but Starbucks has filled up my coffee in containers I brought to them many times over. The incentive is a few cents off the cup actually. Pathmark also takes $ 0.02 off for every plastic bag you offset using your own bags. These are all ways to reduce the trash which may end up in the street.

Vigilante garbage collection. Well, I am curious to find out if the $0.05 value you can redeem from most plastic / aluminum bottles the result of someone's idea in the same direction of recycling. People essentially collect these bottles from all over the city to deposit them for the cash. This saves recycler fees of sorting all of those bottles out of the mixed trash piles and it guarantees part of the recycling rate ( what ratio of recyclables do get recycled ) .

But how about the every day person. Can we be vigilantes too ? Well I think street cleaning as a form of community service is a great idea when it comes to alternatives to jail time. The chain gangs in Arizona ( pink underwear ) are definitely part of an exaggeration, however.

References
[1] http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/value-self-enforcing-protocols-081009

[2] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/06/aligning_intere.html

cool marketting method : Toyota

2010-03-06T19:53:00.000-08:00

So now it looks like advertising is taking two completely separate paths: very subliminal and very direct. No one likes a salesperson telling you about crap you don't want. But the merchandise has to get sold. The two solutions are (A) subliminal advertising [1] and (B) very direct and obvious advertising [2], [3] .

Subliminal advertising is positioned below the radar and you have to be more than a casual observer to realize you are getting sold [1]. Now I think the opposite strategy is to be very direct about your intention, without beating around the bush or pretending you are doing something else. Even though the theme is parenthood in the Toyota Sienna commercials [3], it is still extremely obvious that this is an advertisement. The second unique part is the use of YouTube. Similarly, Verizon has their Big Red themed [4] silly ad. They bring you back to remember this chewing gum commercial, resurrecting its catchy idea, but reusing it to their advantage. The fact that their advertisement references the chewing gum is not at all a secret. They are playing with the idea right in front of you and you know it. There just happens to be something very appealing about a partnership.

A similar partnership is the combination of familiar Family Guy stylings into Priceline [5]. Will Shatner is reborn at the hands of Seth McFarlane. The concept is not hidden from your view at all, but the viewer is curious about what is going to happen. They are "committed" to the Family Guy perhaps, to the idea itself, and they are therefore more willing to hear what is going to happen in the ad.

References
[1] http://myklingingmindjog.blogspot.com/2010/02/fringe-subliminal-earthquake-adverts.html

[2] http://myklingingmindjog.blogspot.com/2010/02/smart-advertising-new-category.html

[3] http://www.youtube.com/sienna

[4] http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2010/02/verizon-does-big-red-de-beers-ad-parodies.html

[5] http://www.pr-inside.com/priceline-com-negotiates-with-seth-r1030262.htm

Demasculinization in the media

2010-02-08T16:35:00.001-08:00

Men outside of their normal SinCity tough guy roles have been creeping into the mainstream and now It is getting covered in the news. The Feb 8 Brian Lehrer show covered this topic with respect to the superbowl ads.

Dodge showed men mentally submitting to their wives whims to "be allowed" to indirectly reclaim their manhood. That Manhood is currently located in a vice jar under the sink and is thematically being compensated for with said car.

In a Dockers commercial, men are walking proud without pants and Dockers says men need to put the pants back on. Then Dockers is at least also being critical of unmanly men.

Men eating Doritos at the gym? Nah that is a "stretch" of an argument.

But the What About Brian show from TV did show the main character to be a very indecisive guy. The last few episodes showed Brian painting and cleaning and fixing for two women who moved in as his new neighbors. His friend the lawyer was much more decisive and indifferent for my taste.

I think that maybe male characters of earlier decades may have been more unrealistic in the other direction, but they were something better to look forward to. Cool hand Luke, Steven Segal, Bruce Lee, Charles Bronson in his westerns, Clint Eastwood in his westerns, Vin Diesel, The Rock, Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver, Pierce Brosnan in 007.

Speaking of The Rock, why is he a tooth fairy now? His image of the past has been cancelled.

This is the type of Neuro Linguistic Programming I was talking about in the earlier post. What is being advertised is not a product, but an image of man I frankly do not want to be exposed to. I am not saying we know enough about the mechanics of the rearing of boys to say what reprecutions this will have, but I do think that people I general need role models.

Well on the other hand, we have the Active.com run called Tough Mudder. The French-army-forces-designed obstacle course is a 7 mile run. The next in the series is being held in May.

Radiolab new normal human domestication

Experts and bias

2010-02-08T00:02:00.001-08:00

Does becoming a noted expert mean you stick to your high horse? Is changing your mind become a quality experts should be immune to? Why was flip flopping seen as such a foible in the 2004 and 2008 US presidential campaigns?

I do remember Richard Dawkins had once recounted one of his professor's humble acceptance of having been wrong about one of his theories in favor of being witness to a new discovery.

Pride may be a reason for not accepting any of your opponent's reasoning, but it makes you appear stubborn, to put it crudely.

Or maybe sticking to your position is just your inability to be a clever argumentarian such as Socrates. I think credit should be given when it is deserved and accepting when you are wrong shows you to be the better man. That is, you may maintain your pride by being gracious at the fellow with whom yor are speaking for enriching you with something you did not know before.

Smart advertising. A new category?

2010-02-07T18:09:00.000-08:00

Hulu Adzone , sponsored by Coke. Using Tweets FILTERED by the word "coke". So smart! Another perhaps 'category' for advertising?

FRinge subliminal earthquake adverts

2010-02-07T16:37:00.001-08:00

The last Fringe included an earthquake that was not really an earthquake. It was the mixing of two universes concentrated on a building . The significance was that I believe it was no coincidence there was an Earthquake in Haiti.

It is perhaps already a many year long turn we are experiencing from boxed Ads you know are clearly ads. These are the ones we consciously avoid. Then there is product placement. When Jon Stewart puts an Apple Air laptop on his news desk or when Cadillacs are the car of choice in the Matrix movie, you are likely very aware of the Brand recognition.

But when a fiction quake is the center of a TV episode while Haiti is ruling the headlines, then we have entered the world of Neural Linguistic Programming.

The messages are delivered through side channels very creatively. I think that NLP advertising is a challenging new career uniting the experiences of psychology, marketing and graphic design.

When I was checking out a Picasso titled the Accordionist [1] at the First Fridays event at the Guggenheim two nights ago, I thought the description added a new
Twist. Apparently one of the owners of the work did not know the Cubistic painting's subject. The image is so abstract that he did not see an accordion or a person. Well art is that way. So then does that mean that everyone is affected by NLP advertising differenly? Do we need to tap Jung's archtypes to sell a product? And does the ability to see through the NLP smoke and mirrors come from one person 's individual collection of experiences ?

It has been said recent on On The Media I think that the puns and references delivered by TV personalities today are sometimes getting lost on younger viewers. They have not seen MASH or Cheers or experienced Ford or Carter.

The human experience of imagery is an illusion and we are strting to understand more about how it works. Hopefully the bountiful new areas of advertising steganography and anti-advert-filter-steganalysis will prove to be an interesting battle for those who think they must maintain control over their awareness and those whose job it is to invade it.

[1] http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/show-full/piece/?search=Accordionist&page=&f=Title&object=37.537

HTML5, AJAX, Flash and A{ppl,dob}e

2010-02-02T22:57:00.000-08:00

discussions about the new HTML standard :

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/

some cool stuff, because as I have learned, the indirect effect would make Flash and similar technologies obsolete, by enhancing what you can do with HTML.

I am rough-specing the description, but the behind the scenes say the low down is that Apple and Google are in charge of the HTML5 specification and Apple does not particularly like Adobe ( current owners of Flash ) :

http://mashable.com/2010/02/01/steve-jobs-google-adobe/

I may have been getting more excited than I should have been. I think HTML5 does introduce a lot of new dynamic content, but the point is that AJAX really is what they were talking about for the most part. AJAX ( which is under HTML after all ) already does replace a lot of the cool interactive interfaces that people are using flash for. The other subset of uses of flash, interactive youtube videos, may be more accessible by HTML5 if their embedding technology improves. Frankly I don't know, but working with existing standards like MPEG is great and the ability for Javascript to wonderfully capture what the user is doing could be enough of a "layer" to make the embedded MPEG content interactive so as to implement what Flash is doing in a non-standard way.

Risk in pick up art

2010-02-01T19:46:00.001-08:00

Gladwell's New Yorker article [1] on entrepreneurs who avoid risk got me thinking about the so called naturals of the pick up art. Is the behavior or strategy taught in the pick up community successful when it is less or more risky?

I think one who reads this article lightly may think that no risk is best, but maybe that is not the point. I think the misunderstanding may be that not taking a risk is the key to success in life. This is not an appropriate generalization. Maybe it is better to say that success comes from both chance and taking that chance, while maintaining that you should minimize your risk. This is a tricky concept because it does not leave you at either end of the spectrum.

There is a good Chinese proverb on the tip of my tongue. Hmm a search recovers these:

- "you cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind" (author unknown)

- and I rember this from a Hamlet soliloquy I had to memorize: "a thought which quartered , hath but one part wisdom and ever three parts coward, I do not know why yet I live to say, 'This thing's to do' ."

And there are so many quotes on perseverence, that one could fill a few pages.

"men are made stronger on realization that the helping hand they need is at the end of their own arm" ( Sidney J Philips )

And from the world of Security, I remember a friend saying that really many things in life can be compared to talking to a woman in a bar. There is very little personal risk, but the possibilities are there only for those who try and they are many.

And more from among my other favorite quotes on and related to the pick up art: "there is no growth in your comfort zone and no comfort in your growth zone". That is, you cannot grow personally, without leaving your comfort zone.

Then we have to combine the business risk article and the world of taking a chance when the opportunity arises, along with the teachings from the world of pick up and so many other realms that you cannot really wait for things to happen. You have to make your own opportunities.

Essentially, you must do as John Paulson, the money analyst did, per the Gladwell article. You must do your homework, but also before everyone else does. And to enter the world of the 20-80 rule or the 5-95 rule or the 1-99 rule, you must do what no one else would. Most people are perhaps not aware of what a risk which is not a risk looks like. Talking to an attractive woman in a bar is, again, something which could make most people lose their bladders, but in reality it really is not something akin to going to war or investing your life savings to start a business (not advisable).

References
[1] "the sure thing", jan 18th 2010 New Yorker issue

Thoughts on the issues of women in the work place

2010-02-01T19:14:00.001-08:00

I once read about the effect of the 1970s slow wilting of the race professional career barrier. More non-white people were able to get hired within their fields of study and as a consequence, more nonwhites decided to go to college ( don't have the statistic). But there was a side effect as well.

It is to the credit of the general race and gender barrier deterioration that the quality of public school education was noticed to decline. One theory was that the highly educated nonwhites and women who could only teach in public schools were now leaving for their careers and their spaces were getting occupied by less educated people whose ambitions of money/success were bounded within reach of what salaries schools offer.

This theory related to the unfortunate fact that schools do not attract enough talented people. This is not by virtue of some natural desire for talented people to stay far away from K-12, but related to low teacher salaries. I think the lack of women or minorities for that matter in STEMs is very related to the fact that salaries are not competetive as compared with other fields. The recent passing of the Lilly Ledbetter Act may help to de-anonymize wage discrimination, but it goes to show that unequal gender/race distribution in the sciences could be societal and not "genetic". Women may be choosing their field of study based on wage potential.

What can colleges do, through marketting and/or awareness spreading? It seems difficult because it is like trying to prevent a dam from breaching with water by cleaning up the mess as opposed to not building the dam in the first place.

Can colleges help secure entry for women into STEMs careers? Yes. I have seen this with my own eyes. Unfortunately, a sort of reverse-discrimination occurs where the bar is lowered for hiring women in order to meet hiring quotas. It is one method, through college-corporate networking and feedback-policy decision-making, where more women end up in the technical work force. This is a reality. The general argument I am aware of against reverse-discrimination other than "fairness" is that subjecting companies to a potentially lower quality female work force may really hurt the case for men and women being of equal ability. That can have dangerous consequences, because employers are always conservative with respect to factors which contribute to company wealth. One of the conservative components is unfortunately a bias against women.

What then can be done instead? I don't think this is a lost cause. I think wage de-anonymization may be effective, but can also have its form of negative feedback, where employers stop hiring women so they do not have to pay them lower salaries and risk getting sued or risk paying equally. In fact I think the monetary threshold of settling on getting sued instead of paying women more has not yet been reached. No even women in management may not be able to change the situation right away, because of the pre Civil Rights Movement "uncle Tom" effect borrowed from what happens to black men and women when they do not form policy that the whites who hire them want. Their higher status may therefore
Be almost a puppet status. Booker T. Washington is a man who has been considered by W.E.B. Dubois to be such a high figure who was characterized as mainly a mouth piece for the likes of presidents (Wilson?) and other power players (Carnegie ?) .

So where is that positive note ? Maybe that can be arrived at later. I think awareness is the best tactic against discrimination we are _aware_ of.

Your interest in what you do

2010-01-14T21:57:00.001-08:00

Paul Erdös co-authored papers with over 500 different people. Some of the topics are described as not part of his real life interest.

Entrepreneurs. They try to start businesses in areas that they do not necessarily hav an interest in, but where they observe a nitch in a market which needs to be filled

Influence, sourness

2009-12-30T19:45:00.003-08:00

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

2009-12-30T19:45:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-16T19:27:00.001-08:00

"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

2009-11-11T22:08:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-08T13:56:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-04T17:33:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-04T17:18:00.005-08:00

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

2009-11-04T17:18:00.003-08:00

Possible issues with cap and trade

2009-11-04T17:18:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-03T20:24:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-03T20:06:00.001-08:00

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? )

2009-11-03T09:52:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-02T21:01:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-02T20:56:00.001-08:00

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

2009-11-01T14:07:00.003-08:00

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?

2009-11-01T14:07:00.001-08:00

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

2009-10-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-23T14:24:00.000-07:00

" 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

2009-02-17T16:39:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

"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.

Talking with a believer

2008-12-12T09:52:00.000-08:00

I just want to document my dialogue with another person about religion.

( I am responding to a message my fellow online user had posted. His message was in video form, so I can't quite paste in the transcript )

Me:

For now, I would just like to respond to the 'God is not a mythological god' argument. The obvious thing to say is that neither the Intelligent Spaghetti nor Lunos are 'recorded' myths, but that isn't good enough. The main point I think that Dawkins was trying to make is that all gods who have been seriously followed by people up until now, have shared an important characteristic. That is, none of their existences can be easily verified. I know, I know, you will cite several written statements of eye-witness accounts, the utter billions of people still believing today and maybe even 'miracles'. Actually, gods are only alive in 'our hearts', figuratively speaking. Gods exist through faith exclusively for now and that is why religion has no place in the areas of science, by the way.

Him:

I appreciate your honest answer. And yes, the existence of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob isn't easy to verify. But there is a characteristic that I think Richard Dawkin has missed. The God of the Bible put a test to humans as to the honest integrity of his Word. If a future oracle spoken by God doesn't come true it is not the Word of God. And historically the future oracles of the Bible have time and time come to pass. The Israelites becoming prisoners for 400 years in Egypt was told to Noah hundreds of years before it occured. The captivity of the Israelites in Babylon was spoken less than 100 years before it occurred. Daniel's prophecy of the Empires of the Medo-Persians, Greeks, and Romans hundreds of years before it occurred. And most importantly the prophecies of the Messiah's birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection was written in the Old Testament hundreds of years before they occurred. Especially Christ' birth could not be manipulated, because Jesus couldn't have told Mary and Joseph where he was to be born.
It's a good attempt to label the God of the Bible into the box of mythological beings, but God is not man that He should lie. Thanks for your intelligent conversation with me.

Me:

Thanks for your response. I don't know enough specific details to comment on the different events you listed, but I did see a video where Douglas Wilson said the foretelling of Christ's resurrection was what made him confident about his beliefs.

Here's what I think. We know that most religious texts are said to be written by people. Moreso, we know the Old and New Testaments both had several authors. When it comes to proving something in physics, such as the photoelectric effect ( allowing for solar panels today for example ), the burden is very heavy and there is a wide review process that must take place before any results are taken seriously. Everything must be tested experimentally and the math has to match the outcomes. Similarly, if a drug company wishes to release a new vaccine, they end up testing their new compound for years. Even the law has a heavy burden of proof. Eye witness accounts not good enough to convict someone of murder. The evidence must be cold and hard.

Why is it then, that events affecting billions of lives are not put under the same scrutiny. As far as I understand, most of the proof is given in the form of written text obtained after first hand testimonies. There are no clinical records showing Jesus' time of death. As for the predictions, you have to at least admit that fabrications of the written evidence is probabilistically more likely the actual events really occurring. That is, imagine that Mary is your wife in this day. She gives birth to Jesus, but you know you didn't sleep with her. And say that this very event was predicted long before it happened. Isn't it true that given the existence of the prediction, Mary could still just sleep with someone else and lie to everyone about it?

All I'm trying to say is that you should have a little bit more doubt, because a little bit of faith may not always be warranted.

Him:

I'll share some opinions but I'll tell you why I enjoy talking and sharing with those who don't really hold to a faith in what I believe in. I have lived the majority of my life in a church bubble that was so far outside reality and what is really going on in the world. What I mean is that the christian church in general has adopted a false approach to life. It is monastic in it's interaction with people. And even at a young age, I felt strongly that the church was doing things wrong. So I am a big time critic and advocate of "wakeup and smell reality" as I like to call it with the church.
So in essence, I am in a paradox. I believe strongly in Jesus Christ and I desire to obey his teachings, his approach to life, his antagonism against religious piety, but at the same time I'm frustrated with the church in general. If you get what I mean. So I love interaction with people who are walking in truth, searching for answers and desiring to live this life to the fullest.
That's alittle insight into my world. I appreciate the interaction you and others who may be agnostic, anti-religious, or atheist.

If you take the idea that Mary could have found the passage in Isaiah referring to a virgin giving birth to the Messiah, you have to realize a few things. Mary's conscience would be ripping her from the inside from the time she came up with the false claim to the time she died. Also, her cousin Elizabeth also would have lied because she was told that her husband had an angel appear and say that their child would be the one going before the Messiah. And finally Joseph would have to hold fast to the lie. Not to mention the shepherds who shared with the whole town of Bethlehem, this lie as well as pagan astrologers who came from the East. Not to mention Herod would be responsible for believing an Israelites lie and would have to account for the bloodshed of all the firstborn Jews that he murdered. Next the prophetess in Israel would have to have come up with the same lie in order to prophecy that baby Jesus would be the rising and falling of many in the nation. I mean it just goes on and on. There are two many factors to assume that Mary shacked up with a centurion and then came up with the story. Remember Joseph, her engaged husband had the right to public execution and humiliation of Mary. Somehow he believed it to be true.
And, Jesus himself was a catalyst for change in Israel. He hated the pride of the Pharisees. Multiple accounts of Jesus being crucified are spoken of by many extrabiblical accounts.
Just something to consider. Thank you for your response.

Why Islam

2008-12-10T19:30:00.000-08:00

I saw an ad for http://whyislam.org/ on the subway today. There is a wide and spreading or wide-spread and widening conflict over Islam between many groups of people in the US today. I don't have any good opinions right now, but I want to try to name some of the groups involved as well as some events that have taken place. I also want to collect people who have written about the subject. However, I have to confess that I have a bad opinion about organized religion in general, so I may have a hard time being objective.

On the one hand, there are groups that want to highlight misconceptions about Islam, such as whyislam, or create a Western Islamic following, such as the Muslim Student Association. I suppose both want to tell the West that Islam is a religion of peace and that Islamic Extremists, are, just that. I read on whyislam.org today the argument that people should consider the difference between how women are treated by Islam and how women are treated in Islamic countries. I accept the logical distinction, but I want to learn how many women living in the Muslim world ( in and outside of Islamic nations ) are actually free to educate themselves, drive a car, teach, etc.

On the other hand, people are speaking out, saying that too many women suffer in Islamic nations. Everyone who saw the movie or read the book, Kite Runner, was able to find out about 'honor killings' in Afghanistan. I also recently saw a video from a conference held in January 2008, where women who left Islamic nations got to give their perspective.

The talk was called "Women in Islam" and gave perspectives from Wafa Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Rosine Ghawji and Cyrus Nowrasteh. The moderator was Janet Levy. The link is http://www.guba.com/watch/3000134226 , but there is an accompanying link too:
http://www.horowitzfreedomcenter.org . Their views are less flattering and more revealing.

I also recently listened to the Dec 7 2008 podcast of 60 Minutes recently. So I learned that Saudi Aramco, the Saudi Arabian oil company ( most profitable company in the world, by the way ) used to be US owned and to this day maintains a portion of land within itself where women get to live as if in the West. That is, they can drive cars, for example.

I should also note that there is an extreme end to anti-Islam too. I think they call this reverse hate speech or, just hate speech. Yes, if you turn to YouTube, you will find that there are a few videos posted with harsh music in the background while Islam gets bashed. I am happy to say that I do not have the 'media-nurtured' negative reaction toward Muslims that I unfortunately do to black people. I fear that all the online hate speech and even the New York Times-style 'do not slander Obama as a Muslim because Islam is evil' bad mouthing is going to make the 'next' young people into Islamophobes.

P.S., isn't it awesome that Jeremiah Write gets absolved 'after' it made a difference? ( Article at Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/21/meet-the-white-man-who-_n_92793.html )

YouTube censorship is so Rude

2008-12-10T16:49:00.000-08:00

Everyone who uses YouTube should read their new rules. They are trying to censor not only the people who make videos, but even people who watch the videos made by the people who make the videos! That is, YouTube wants to modify video 'hits' or the number of times a video is watched. If they change these numbers, they just plain end up lying.

If you check out the link, you will see the mass amounts of negative criticism about what they wish to do. I also enjoyed two video comments by Thundeff00t and TheAmazingAtheist.

I posted some comments on their site too, but they are probably unreadable in the disorganized mess of comments.

Hey at least YouTube is not censoring people's disapproval.

I have some compromise ideas: keep the new rules, but do not lie to us.

- At the very least, the new profanity rules should not apply to 'old' videos. - And I also don't know what 'algorithmically demoted' means, but YouTube should state numerically how ratings will be penalized. No more than 5 bleeps per minute or no bleeps at all?

-And most importantly, do not try to manipulate the # times watched scales. The compromise: age restriction.

So what happens if YouTube does not at least accept possible compromises? Well, it is always possible to create a 'separate' indexing site to independently maintain popularity. This way, you enter and view videos exclusively through this other site and 'hits' are tracked automatically, without YouTube's interference. Someone just has to make it.

whatever: interviews and then affirmative action

2008-11-29T10:09:00.000-08:00

The title doesn't matter to me here. I am just riffing. These notes may be useful to me later, but in general I don't want to always think about structure, so why not just get it all out first, then take the good parts--if there are any--and put them to good use.

Speaking of structure, I need to get a new job and I came across these stupid interview questions at business week. The author Liz Ryan, opinions that asking an applicant about their weaknesses is useless, because you will likely not get a real answer. A few years ago ( and likely long before ), reporters have asked still President Bush about his past mistakes without getting any answers. His work, if he has any misgivings about it or not, will be well documented in history. If he does not admit anything to himself, is that unhealthy? I tilt my head back to the Radiolab episode about Deception , where Jad and Robert investigated and found a study where lying to yourself helped you to be a better swimmer. They said lying to yourself could be an evolutionary adaptation to be more 'happy' about life.

I have gotten way off track, but I feel I agree that asking someone about their shortcomings in an interview may not give you any direct answer, but that answer is more important, the more serious the post is. So when it really counts, you should likely ask everyone but that person.

Speaking of interviews, I was reading this pretty good paper by Louis P. Pojman, "The Moral Status of Affirmative Action" in this text book ( not mine ) called 'Ethics in the Workplace' , edited by Robert A. Larmer. I haven't fully decided what I think about Affirmative Action yet, but this essay is good to read to learn about many of the core arguments for and against A.A.. There is another source, written some six years after that 1995 Pojman source, at the University of Amsterdam : http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/affirmative-action/ . I think I'll check that out soon too. At the least, I think reverse discrimination isn't fair. My morals tell me that blaming those who have innocently benefited from past injustices is not right. It is mis-directed blame. Okay, so then who get's the blame? I read somewhere--I don't know where--that money is the main way to resolve all losses in this country. I think no amount of money could repay damages to a generation of people wronged, but it just so happens that 'money used in a productive way' to balance out the education system and punish those who still try to discriminate is a much better solution anyway.

I am sure someone has created a time line of civil rights history and maybe someone has even tried to write out a plan to equalize our society. I think there are many clear steps--many of which have already been taken--to increase access to education and reduce discrimination in the work place.

Here are some more links to throw around:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html , Bill Moyers : Buying the War [in Iraq]

http://change-congress.org/

ali allawi , "The Occupation of Iraq"

Bill Moyers interview with Jon Stewart: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04272007/watch.html

Stephen colert's 2006 press secsretary dinner is cool.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa-4E8ZDj9s&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0r71L7cojE

Lincoln and Obama

2008-11-17T10:07:00.000-08:00

There has been quite a lot of Obama talking Lincoln for a while now. Obama has recently been interviewed again on 60 Minutes. When asked about what he has been reading, he mentioned Lincoln. As a follow up, it was pointed out that Lincoln had taken in many of his political opponents into his cabinet and the question was whether Obama would do the same. I guess Obama dodged the question, because he doesn't want to give 60 minutes any spoilers ahead of schedule? Though eventually, I think he should consider the benefits of a well-balanced cabinet.

I especially liked this quote when reading through the Lincoln-Douglas debates Wiki:
“ Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed. ”