The Twitter/Facebook Infinite Loop Syndrome

Thanks Jacco!

Excerpt: "2 Kinds of Photographers"

"One of these days I'll share my resume with you. I haven't bothered so far. I prefer to let my photos speak for themselves. I make loads of mistakes and learn by paying attention to them, not by reading some chat room. Keeping an open mind lets me get smarter. I still have a lot to learn, but after over 30 years of continuous experimentation I also have a lot to share.

"I am always learning." Michelangelo.

'The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do." Steve Jobs, Apple Computer. Sure, I'm crazy, and so were Copernicus, Galileo, DaVinci, the Wright brothers and Neil Armstrong. Some of these guys did their most important work while imprisoned for crazy views. For five years after the Wright brothers flew, the most respected scientists of the day were still writing articles proving flight was impossible and media derided these first flights as hoaxes!

"If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking." Ben Franklin.

Genuine experts told us all that airplanes, telephones and light bulbs wouldn't work, even after they did. Do you really want to listen to a bunch of anonymous chit-chatters? I prefer to do my own photo experiments, and you should, too." - Ken Rockwell on "2 Kinds of Photographers"

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it". The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. "Thus, the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others."

The Downing effect describes the tendencies of people with below average intelligence quotients (IQs) to overestimate their intelligence, and of people with above average intelligence to underestimate their intelligence. An individual's predictable propensity to misjudge their own intelligence was first noted by C. L. Downing who conducted the first cross cultural studies on perceived intelligence.

Illusory superiority is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others. This is evident in a variety of areas including intelligence, performance on tasks or tests and the possession of desirable characteristics or personality traits. It is one of many positive illusions relating to the self, and is a phenomenon studied in social psychology.

Snake Pit

I'm cursing at myself, at my inability to keep my mood swings under more control. I'm already trying to keep the evil voices at bay. "You need more discipline..." How is this an exercise in discipline? They say smiling helps, so hoping for a rush of happy hormones I strain a smile. It feels strained. I try harder to make it look more convincing... and it's not helping my case at all because I'm supposed to hold that for a few minutes. I'm imagining myself and I think and feel ridiculous with that look on my face. I recognise that this situation isn't one of those tests... The truth of the matter is I'm just hormonal, uncomfortable, nervous and compacted with being there. So I relax the muscles in my face and take a deep breath in, "This should be easy, I've done this before." But as the night progressed, the more I controlled myself, the more I just shut down mentally. Lesson here? Sometimes "having more discipline" is not the answer.. exactly. The answer is to just... do something else. I haven't figured out what that is just yet.

As the night progresses onward, my stomach is in knots and I get that familiar feeling of dread. I notice that my back is getting more progressively slumped, as if I'm about to join my forehead with the table and then continue melting down to the floor. I don't want to assume, but judgments are already being made from all sides, including mine. So, snapping out of my self-induced coma by pressuring myself to "perform", finally I say something and ask her about herself in order to further understand her and who she is, where she is coming from. She replies readily and jauntily in that manner I admire her for. I explain our many similarities and differences. But the monster inside nips at me. So to keep it at bay, I do what I normally do and talk in hopes of creating a connection. I tell her a story about a weakness of mine. Suddenly she's a pit of writhing snakes and I'm burning up in rage about to take a bite out of one of them. Don't take the bait. Don't take the bait. Suddenly I see red and we both say things we shouldn't have said. I tell her quite angrily in that very laughable and over-affirmative Popeye-esque way that "I yam whats I yam!" Thankfully she changes the topic and the conversation immediately picks up on a more harmless topic of dating. She is again charming, delightful, and very funny and I am enjoying this much more.

Later on that evening, that dreaded feeling finally left me and I was relieved. This evening wasn't so bad, it could have been that extra shot of sake and pleasant conversation. But as we walked around with the aim of finding a main road to catch cabs, I suddenly found myself where I didn't want to be. And the feeling overwhelms me all over again and as she asks so innocently, I explain the reasons for why. Desperate not to start bawling, I look away wishing I could call someone up and cry into the phone. What have I learned? Always keep your friends numbers at hand, talk to someone when you feel like shit, and regrettably, "don't go against the grain unless you can handle it".

Synthesis of Happiness

"Is it really the case that gall bladder surgery and a trip to Paris are just the same thing?"

"Stop Paying Attention: Zoning Out Is a Crucial Mental State"

Alcohol tweaks mind wandering in a particularly interesting way, as Schooler and his colleagues report in a new paper entitled “Lost in the Sauce,” published in Psychological Science. The psychologists ran the War and Peace experiment again, but this time after serving their subjects some vodka with cranberry juice. Drunk readers actually reported less mind wandering than sober people did. That does not mean that you should swill vodka if you want a laser focus on Tolstoy’s deathless prose, though. Schooler has shown that there are, in fact, two kinds of mind wandering: mind wandering when you are aware that you’re thinking about something else and mind wandering without awareness. He calls this second kind “zoning out.”

When our minds wander, we lose touch with the outside world. We don’t actually black out, of course, but we are more likely to make mistakes, fail to encode memories, or miss a connection. Zoning out makes us particularly prone to these errors. Schooler and Smallwood, along with Merrill McSpadden of the University of British Columbia, tested the effect of zoning out by having a test group read a Sherlock Holmes mystery in which a villain used a pseudonym. As people were reading the passages discussing this fact, the researchers checked their state of attentiveness. Just 30 percent of the people who were zoning out at the key moments could give the villain’s pseudonym, while 61 percent of the people who weren’t zoning out at those moments succeeded...

Even more telling is the discovery that zoning out may be the most fruitful type of mind wandering. In their fMRI study, Schooler and his colleagues found that the default network and executive control systems are even more active during zoning out than they are during the less extreme mind wandering with awareness. When we are no longer even aware that our minds are wandering, we may be able to think most deeply about the big picture.

Because a fair amount of mind wandering happens without our ever noticing, the solutions it lets us reach may come as a surprise. There are many stories in the history of science of great discoveries occurring to people out of the blue. The French mathematician Henri Poincaré once wrote about how he struggled for two weeks with a difficult mathematical proof. He set it aside to take a bus to a geology conference, and the moment he stepped on the bus, the solution came to him. It is possible that mind wandering led him to the solution. John Kounios of Drexel University and his colleagues have done brain scans that capture the moment when people have a sudden insight that lets them solve a word puzzle. Many of the regions that become active during those creative flashes belong to the default network and the executive control system as well... CONTINUED...

Korean Konglish Jokes

What did the truck say to the bread? Bbang Bbang!
(Bbang=bread)

What do you call a smelly bird? Nem-Seh
(Seh=bird, Nem-Seh=smell)

What do you call a cute guy with no ears? Gwee-up-dah!
(Gwee=ears, up-dah=none, gwee-up-dah=cute)

What did a cookie say to another cookie when it wanted to leave... Gwajah!
(Gwajah=let's go/crackers,cookies)

What do you call a 5 year old onion? Oh-nyun
(Oh=5, Nyun=years)

Why did the korean smoker go to the horseraces? Mal-bo-ro
(Mal=horses, bo-ro=to see)

What did the byun tae (pervert) say to the mushroom (buhsuht)? Oht buhsuht!
(Oht=clothing, Buhsuht=take it off!)

"Come and Play"

Unnecessary Censorship: Sesame Street - watch more funny videos

@TEDxSeoul

From my father...

1950. 11. 24. 불타버린 서울역 앞 세브란스 병원.
Severance Hospital, in front of Seoul Station

1950. 10. 7. 불타고 있는 김포 비행장. Gimpo Airport on fire.

"It was around 59 years and 5 months ago when the North Koreans came. It was then around this time in November that I lost my father, your grandpa. I was only 8. Since then, the 4 of us (2 brothers and 2 sisters) had to go suffer through the bitter cold and hunger together, together at the very bottom and pit of life with your grandma. We lost our youngest sister who was born the day after my father's death. She died even before she turned one. I still can recall her big wide eyes. She had a pale complexion and a beautiful face... My eyes are tearing up as I type this to you, I am steeling myself, the emotions are threatening to overwhelm me."

Encyclopedia Britannica: Hubris

in Classical Athenian usage, the intentional use of violence to humiliate or degrade. The most famous example was the case of Meidias, who punched the orator Demosthenes in the face when the latter was dressed in ceremonial robes and performing an official function. Hubris could also characterize rape. Hubris was a crime at least from the time of Solon (6th century bc), and any citizen could bring charges against another party, as was the case also for treason or impiety. (In contrast, only a member of the victim’s family could bring charges for murder.)

The most important discussion of hubris in antiquity is by Aristotle, in Rhetoric:

Hubris consists in doing and saying things that cause shame to the victim…simply for the pleasure of it. Retaliation is not hubris, but revenge.…Young men and the rich are hubristic because they think they are better than other people.

Hubris fit into the shame culture of archaic and Classical Greece, in which people’s actions were guided by avoiding shame and seeking honour. It did not fit into the culture of internalized guilt, which became important in later antiquity and characterizes the modern West.

Because Greek has a word for error, hamartia, but not for sin, some poets—especially Hesiod (7th century bc) and Aeschylus (5th century bc)—used hubris to describe wrongful action against the divine order. From this usage modern thinkers developed the idea that hubris meant overweening presumption leading to an impious disregard of the divinely fixed limits on human action in an ordered cosmos. Modern literary critics often seek to find in hubris the “tragic flaw” of the heroes of Greek tragedy. There are figures in Greek myth and history for whom this usage may be appropriate, such as the Persian king Xerxes in Herodotus’s history of the Persian Wars, who tried to punish the sea for destroying his bridge over the Hellespont; Ajax in Sophocles’ play Ajax, who told Athena to help other warriors because he did not need divine help; or Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, who by unwittingly killing his true father and marrying his own mother fulfills the Delphic oracle’s prophecy of him. It is important to remember, however, that the modern connotation is not the usual meaning of the word hybris in Classical Greek.

Ignore, Renegotiate, or HR?

Perceptions of feminity/masculinity

In the Illusion of Sex, two faces are perceived as male and female. However, both faces are actually versions of the same androgynous face. One face was created by increasing the contrast of the androgynous face, while the other face was created by decreasing the contrast. The face with more contrast is perceived as female, while the face with less contrast is perceived as male. The Illusion of Sex demonstrates that contrast is an important cue for perceiving the sex of a face, with greater contrast appearing feminine, and lesser contrast appearing masculine. Russell, R. (2009) A sex difference in facial pigmentation and its exaggeration by cosmetics. Perception, (38)1211-1219 (from Phillip)

Axe - Chocolate Man

Thank You For...

Residency@Platoon Kunsthalle!

PLATOON KUNSTHALLE is an open space supporting diverse forms of subcultural creative expression based in seoul, south korea. the artist–in–residence program features young creatives/artists with a subcultural background who are ready to push boundaries. this is an international call for entries.

PLATOON KUNSTHALLE offers:
· studio size: 20" container (H x W x L) 240 x 210 x 570
· residency period: 6 months, beginning from january to march 2010
· continuous support and attendance throughout the residency period
· participation in PLATOON KUNSTHALLE events and access to PLATOON network
· solo exhibition at the end of residency period
· catalog on residency program and final exhibition

PLATOON KUNSTHALLE wants:
· young creatives/artists whose works are related to subcultural forms of creative expression
· strong concepts that question the artistic, social, cultural status quo
· young creatives/artists whose work fit into a cultural space different from a typical gallery or museum
· projects that provoke and push boundaries

PLATOON KUNSTHALLE needs:
· images of latest works
· weblink
· short description of artist and working concept
· outline about the project to be developed and realized during the residency program

deadline: 15 november 2009
please send your application to mail@kunsthalle.com

Halloween Hafla: Belinda's Sword Performance

"Bharaat" performed by Belynda Azhaar.

Excerpts from Intercultural Communication

"Living Together vs. Going It Alone" by Richard E. Nisbett

In Korean, the sentence "Could you come to dinner?" requires different words for "you," which is common in many languages, but also for "dinner," depending on whether one is inviting a student or a professor. Such practices reflect not mere politeness or self-effacement but rather the Eastern conviction that one is a different person when interacting with different people.

"Tell me about yourself" seems a straightforward enough question to ask of someone, but the kind of answer you get very much depends on what society you ask it in. North Americans will tell you about their personality traits , role categories, and activities. The Chinese, Japanese, and Korean self, on the other hand, very much depends on context. A study asking Japanese and Americans to describe themselves either in particular contexts or without specifying a particular kind of situation showed that the Japanese found it very difficult to describe themselves without specifying a particular kind of situation - for example, at work, at home, or with friends. Americans, in contrast, tended to be stumped when the investigator specified a context - "I am what I am."

It's revealing that the word for "self-esteem" in Japanese is serufu esutiimu. There is no indigenous term that captures the concept of feeling good about oneself. Westerners are more concerned with enhancing themselves in their own and others' eyes than are Easterners. Americans are much more likely to make spontaneous favorable comments about themselves than are Japanese...

It isn't that Asians feel bad about their own attributes. Rather, there is no strong cultural obligation to feel that they are special or unusually talented. The goal for the self in relation to society is not so much to establish superiority or uniqueness, but to achieve harmony withing a network of supportive social relationships and to play one's part in achieving collective ends. These goals require a certain amount of self-criticism - the opposite of tooting one's own horn. If I am to fit in with the group, I must root out those aspects of myself that annoy others or make their tasks more difficult...

Japanese schoolchildren are taught how to practice self-criticism, both to improve their relations with others and to become more skilled in solving problems. This stance of perfectionism through criticism continues throughout life...

An experiment by Steven Heine and his colleagues captures the difference between the Western push to feel good about the self and the Asian drive fro self-improvement. The experimenters asked Canadian and Japanese students to take a bogus "creativity" test and then gave the students "feedback" indicating that they had done very well or very badly. The experimenters then secretly observed how long the participants worked on a similar task. The Canadians worked longer on the tasks if they had succeeded; the Japanese worked longer if they failed. The Japanese weren't being masochistic. They simply say an opportunity for eself-improvement and took it.

I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. - David Lynch

Teaching Rational Thinking & Cognitive Misers

We are all “cognitive misers” who try to avoid thinking too much. This makes sense from an evolutionary point of view. Thinking is time-consuming, resource intensive and sometimes counterproductive. If the problem at hand is avoiding the charging sabre-toothed tiger, you don’t want to spend more than a split second deciding whether to jump into the river or climb a tree.

So we’ve developed a whole set of heuristics and biases to limit the amount of brainpower we bear on a problem. These techniques provide rough and ready answers that are right a lot of the time – but not always.

.....

The list goes on. We look for evidence that confirms our beliefs and discount evidence that discredits it (confirm-ation bias). We evaluate situations from our own perspective without considering the other side (“myside” bias). We’re influenced more by a vivid anecdote than by statistics. We are overconfident about how much we know. We think we’re above average. We’re certain that we’re not affected by biases the way others are.

.....

To understand where the rationality differences between people come from, Stanovich suggests thinking of the mind as having three parts. First is the “autonomous mind” that engages in problematic cognitive shortcuts. Stanovich calls this “Type 1 processing.” It happens quickly, automatically and without conscious control.

The second part is the algorithmic mind. It engages in Type 2 processing, the slow, laborious, logical thinking that intelligence tests measure.

The third part is the reflective mind. It decides when to make do with the judgments of the autonomous mind, and when to call in the heavy machinery of the algorithmic mind. The reflective mind seems to determine how rational you are. Your algorithmic mind can be ready to fire on all cylinders, but it can’t help you if you never engage it.

When and how your reflective mind springs into action is related to a number of personality traits, including whether you are dogmatic, flexible, open-minded, able to tolerate ambiguity or conscientious.

“The inflexible person, for instance, has trouble assimilating new knowledge,” Stanovich says. “People with a high need for closure shut down at the first adequate solution. Coming to a better solution would require more cognitive effort.”

Fortunately, rational thinking can be taught, and Stanovich thinks the school system should expend more effort on it. Teaching basic statistical and scientific thinking helps. And so does teaching more general thinking strategies. Studies show that a good way to improve critical thinking is to think of the opposite. Once this habit becomes ingrained, it helps you to not only consider alternative hypotheses, but to avoid traps such as anchoring, confirmation and myside bias. - "Why Smart People Do Stupid Things" by Kurt Kleiner (from Genc)

"Rejection Reduces IQ"

"Baumeister's team used two separate procedures to investigate the effects of rejection. In the first, a group of strangers met, got to know each other, and then separated. Each individual was asked to list which two other people they would like to work with on a task. They were then told they had been chosen by none or all of the others.

In the second, people taking a personality test were given false feedback, telling them they would end up alone in life or surrounded by friends and family.

Aggression scores increased in the rejected groups. But the IQ scores also immediately dropped by about 25 per cent, and their analytical reasoning scores dropped by 30 per cent.

Baumeister thinks rejection interferes with a person's self-control. "To live in society, people have to have an inner mechanism that regulates their behaviour. Rejection defeats the purpose of this, and people become impulsive and self-destructive. You have to use self-control to analyse a problem in an IQ test, for example - and instead, you behave impulsively." - New Scientist (15 March 2002) by Emma Young (from Genc)

The Jesus Venn Diagram

Monsters are so misunderstood!

Thanks for the link Phillip!

Performance @ Halloween Goth Party

From Finland, With Love

Tonight, tonight...

Early to bed, early to rise. 10 hours later I'm wide awake. Clown white, Transparent red.

More Human Than

A few weeks ago while walking home, I was digging deep in my memory banks, trying to remember something, anything, about Chip. But there was nothing. It had only been 2-3 months since? I immediately felt guilt-ridden - it was almost as if he had never existed. I thought harder, trying to imagine and recollect the feeling of Chip hopping into bed right after me and settling down behind the crook of my legs. I started to feel consternation. Belinda tells me matter-of-factly that I haven't really had the time to think about it and that memories tend to fade over time... I agreed dispassionately, with a little regret.

Then the other morning, I was suddenly bombarded with memories of him, his adorable muzzle, his playful demeanor, his love for food... scampering across the living room, chasing after his tail in the bathtub... and I missed him intensely. Even as I explained to Mark some of my fondest and happiest memories of Chip, I could still feel the back of my throat closing up. I swallowed and changed the subject... So I am human after all.


Chip Chip...

on "Post-Performance Depression"

"Relative Contributions of Self-esteem, Professional Experience, Psychological Distress, and Well-being to the Prediction of Purpose in Life Before and After Performance..."

I(mag)on(na) Break

Agitation. Irritability. Restlessness. Sugar cravings. Obsessive thoughts of chocolate. Inability to focus due to restlessness and agitation and obsessive thoughts of chocolate. Didn't I just say that? I want some chocolate.

Cognitive gains in 7-month-old bilingual infants

"...Despite being faced with two different vocabularies and sets of grammar, babies pick up both languages at the same speeds as those who learn just one. Far from becoming confused, it seems that babies actually develop superior mental skills from being raised in a bilingual environment.

By testing 38 infants, each just seven months old, Agnes Melinda Kovacs and Jacques Mehler have found that those who are raised in bilingual households have better "executive functions". This loose term includes a number of higher mental abilities that allow us to control more basic ones, like attention and motor skills, in order to achieve a goal. They help us to plan for the future, focus our attention, and block out instinctive behaviours that would get in the way. Think of them as a form of mental control"

Society of the Spectacle (La Société du spectacle)

"Drawing from Marx, which argued that under a capitalist society the wealth is degraded to an immense accumulation of commodities, Debord argues that in advanced capitalism, life is reduced to an immense accumulation of spectacles, a triumph of mere appearance were "all that once was directly lived has become mere representation". The spectacle, which according to Debord is the core feature of the advanced capitalist societies, has his "most glaring superficial manifestation" in the advertising-mass media-marketing complex.

Elaborating on Marx's argument that under capitalism our lives and our environment are continually depleted, Debord adds that the Spectacle, is the system by which capitalism tries to hide such depletion. Debord added that, further than the impoverishment in the quality of life,[8] our psychic functions are altered, we get a degradation of mind and also a degradation of knowledge.[9] In the spectacular society, knowledge is not used anymore to question, analyze, resolve contradictions, but to assuage reality. Such argument on the Spectacle as a mask[10] of a degrading reality, has been elaborated by many Situationist artists, producing detournements of advertising were instead of a shiny life the crude reality was represented." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International

"Art & Cash" - Modeselektor

MODESELEKTOR - ART&CASH OFFICIAL VIDEO from Pfadfinderei on Vimeo.

C/Fe Sampler is Out!

A box for me, full of 20 C/Fe cds! From the scrawl on the box I can tell it's from Dennis in Oklahoma - Thank you Dennis! The C/Fe sampler CD is out, with deciBel, The Still Lifes, MusiM and All This is Meaningless!

"C/ Fe Records is an independent record label that is artist owned and operated which means our artists own shares of the company. Since they own shares of the company, they have a greater share in the profits made from their art...

Our latest sampler, C/Fe Menagerie Volume 1, will be out by the end of September 2009. We are very excited about this release as it will feature many otherwise unreleased tracks or alternate versions of albums tracks. Please check back for ordering information. The CDs will be available for $10."

'A Glorious Dawn'

Carl Sagan - 'A Glorious Dawn' featuring Stephen Hawking (Cosmos Remixed). Thank you for sharing Sungwon, I can't express in words how this song makes me feel...

Excerpts on "Reading Kafka Improves Learning..."

"The idea is that when you're exposed to a meaning threat –– something that fundamentally does not make sense –– your brain is going to respond by looking for some other kind of structure within your environment," said Travis Proulx, a postdoctoral researcher at UCSB and co-author of the article...
-
"People feel uncomfortable when their expected associations are violated, and that creates an unconscious desire to make sense of their surroundings. That feeling of discomfort may come from a surreal story, or from contemplating their own contradictory behaviors, but either way, people want to get rid of it. So they're motivated to learn new patterns."
-
"What is critical here is that our participants were not expecting to encounter this bizarre story," he continued. "If you expect that you'll encounter something strange or out of the ordinary, you won't experience the same sense of alienation. You may be disturbed by it, but you won't show the same learning ability. The key to our study is that our participants were surprised by the series of unexpected events, and they had no way to make sense of them. Hence, they strived to make sense of something else."

Futureshorts: ''She Who Measures"

Dir. Veljko Popović / Croatia / 2008

Are we truly free? Are our desires our own or just a construct of the society we were born in or there is a chance to escape after all?

lead animator: Marin Kovačić
lead modeler: Milivoj Popović
music and sound: Hrvoje Štefotić

http://www.shewhomeasures.com/
http://www.lemonade3d.com

When communication styles differ...

She turns to look at me and smiles. "Where is the cat?"

I felt my eyes widen and I looked at her incredulously. "What? What do you mean?" I ask her - and I had heard correctly. "Where is the cat?" She knows very well that Chip is dead and gone. I had the sudden urge to scream, or laugh - very loudly. "HA!HA!HA!!" I say at the top of my voice, sarcastically. "It's not like I stuffed the cat (and decided to put him in the living room for decoration)..." I stopped myself - she wouldn't understand the joke.

"No, I mean, you didn't get another cat did you?"
"No," I sigh exasperatedly. "Of course not!"

5 days is not enough...

CHECKLIST:

1. take care of 6 loads of laundry (including bedsheets)
   
2. vaccumed 3 times, wiped the floors 4 times over
3. polished all of the wood furniture
4. cleaned the 2 bathrooms, toilets, sinks etc.
5. made the two beds and shook out the pillows and duvets
6. washed and cleaned out the 2 balconies
7. dusted and wiped most of the windows
8. watered the plants, picked out dead leaves
9. threw out all the recycling and trash
10. fixed the lighting fixture that had fallen in the kitchen
11. and cleaned out the fridge

I've spent the past 5 mornings/afternoons cleaning the flat. I am not being Obsessive Compulsive, my family are arriving on Saturday! I wonder what I've missed...

Mirrors, Reflections and Projections

The projection is a perfect reflection of yourself, not me. Look at yourself before you criticize. What you think about me reveals to me more the nature of your character and who you are more so than saying anything about myself.

My father once told me...

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third, by experience, which is the most bitter.” - Confucius

And he then proceeded to explain that my sister was of the first type, and that I was of the third type. I wonder if it's the same?

Window shopping

Popular designs currently being imitated: Alexander McQueen “Faithful” Peep-toe Ankle Boots, & Balmain suede zip ankle boots.

Why don't you?

"We grow tired of everything but turning others into ridicule, and congratulating ourselves on their defects." - Hazlitt, William

Cofee is my drug of choice...

(2:58 PM) kittenita:
giggles
aaaaaaaaaaaah
i've had 4 cups of coffee
no wonder im so giggly
MAD MAD MAD
(2:59 PM) Belinda:
lmao
(3:00 PM) Belinda:
better than the poopyqueen grumblebum from the other day



suffering from moodswings...
internet, caffeine and sugar addiction
with a high chance of silliness.

Favorite Fusion Dancers

*ASHARAH


*EBONY


*EUGENIA


*EDENIA


*UNMATA


*UZUMEE

So far so good...

Jan 23 - 28 Fukuoka trip with Belinda Feb 7 Aid Gaza Benefit Night Mar 7 Hafla & Goth Party Mar 27 Diplomatic Happy Hour Mar 28 Asian Metal Fest Mar 29 First Bellydance Class Apr 11 Birthday Hafla May 9 World Bellydance Day May 19, 20 Arab Cultural Festival May 30 Goth Party Jun 13 Dance for MattHune Jul 23 Moderat Aug 5 Last Bellydance class Aug 10 Chip passes away Aug 22 Hafla Aug 26 Start with Berlitz

The Functionality of Emotions

"The underlying philosophy of Goth is that our society is predominantly hypocritical. Goths hold that the "normal", "upstanding" members of our society who pretend to be "good" all the time are in fact quite capable of doing evil... Moreover, in mainstream culture, so much of what makes us human is denied. We are expected to be persistently happy and are discouraged from expressing any discontent or loneliness.

In varying degrees, we are all a mixture of the two (good and evil). In our two-dimensional society however, everyone is expected to be unrealistically good all of the time; still, we all secretly know that hidden deep inside (and in most cases, not so hidden) lurk dark thoughts, murderous urges, and taboo fantasies. Most reasonable people understand that the mere existence of such fleeting notions does not necessarily warrant actualizing them."

- "What is Goth?" by Voltaire

"How are you?"

I remember in my awkward initial stages of socialising I would often reply to the question with blunt honesty and matter-of-fact sincerity and watch as most people would cringe and twitch, eyes shifting off to the side because they're not really sure how to respond. Because all they really wanted was some entertaining form of the short reply of "I'm fine." Because nobody is used to being that expressive except with someone close to them. And from these interactions I've found oftentimes it was socially unacceptable for me to express my grief and constant longing, "saudade". And it puzzled me.

It is my understanding that in order to become a "functional human being" the whole spectrum of human emotions from positive to negative must be moderated. Woe to the person who expresses it freely. But what if you never fully experienced emotion while growing up because you played it safe and were repressed? As a child I would float placidly in a sea of indifference and lack of emotions having no sense of self. I was blank and literally emotionally retarded.

Later I predictably balanced out but along the way expressed all of my emotionality, just being grateful for having feelings and being able to express them coherently. But oddly, adults who expressed their unbridled joy and happiness were essentially "mentally challenged" or as I was once told, "insincere". It seemed like a shame that I would have to conform to others' ideals of how I should express my happiness - which is why I chose particular types of people to be my friends and later regretted.

Over the past 5 years educating children and dealing with idealistic zealots, I often felt that we were teaching our children to reject those "negative" emotions or designate them as either "sinful" or "evil". The expression of negative emotions such as sadness, anger, frustration, surprise was socially unacceptable. I was horrified as I watched children not given the time to express themselves, to figure things out, and imagined a whole new generation of children who were going to grow up without being able to identify emotions and have no coping skills, because they were not allowed to experience emotions.

My concern grew out of my own personal experiences, that if you pamper your child and protect them from feeling anything, any kind of loss or sadness, how will they be able to recognise the emotion and deal with it later in life? There is absolutely no shame in the disclosure of emotion. When dealing with others, will I chastise them for expressing themselves or give them to tools to deal with it in order for them to better understand what they're going through? Simple human functionality is always difficult to obtain but it is entertaining to take part in. As usual... There isn't a wrong or right, and I only have more questions.

Zebra Question - Shel Silverstein

"I asked the zebra,
Are you black with white strips?
Or white with black strips?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with sad days?
Or are you sad with happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on
And on and on he went.
I'll never ask a zebra
About stripes
Again."

"I know nothing."

"Socrates liked to tease his interlocutors by saying that the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing. There is a deep insight in this, for the one thing that is more dangerous than true ignorance is the illusion of knowledge and understanding. Such illusion abounds, and one of the first tasks of philosophy – as wonderfully demonstrated by Socrates in Plato's "Meno" – is to explore our claims to know things about ourselves and the world, and to expose them if they are false or muddled. It does so by beginning with the questions we ask, to ensure that we understand what we are asking; and even when answers remain elusive, we at least grasp what it is that we do not know. This in itself is a huge gain. One of the most valuable things philosophy has given me is an appreciation of this fact. Another is the permission to keep alive and fresh the child's curiosity which first prompted me to take Plato's "Charmides" from the library shelf. "Philosophy begins in wonder," Alfred North Whitehead said, "and when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains." Another thing Socrates could have said that he knew, because all students of philosophy know it, is that the wonder arrived at by philosophy is an enriched and insightful wonder, and is one of the most exalted possessions of the human spirit."

-A. C. (Anthony Clifford) Grayling, On Becoming a Philosopher

TED Talks: Golan Levin makes art that looks back at you

Joy Mountford: "The mouse is the narrowest straw you can suck all human experience through."

Hero Machine #2

Here was the first one...

"Fluhks"

flux /flʌks/ [fluhks]
–noun
1. a flowing or flow.
2. the flowing in of the tide.
3. continuous change, passage, or movement: His political views are in a state of flux.

flux
1377, from O.Fr. flux, from L. fluxus, pp. of fluere "to flow" (see fluent). Originally "excessive flow" (of blood or excrement); an early name for "dysentery;" sense of "continuous succession of changes" is first recorded 1625