thoughts on things

mrseb's raw stream
 

I just preened at being told I look younger than I actually am... this is a first...

Today, with 26 glorious and fun-packed years behind me, I was told that I look younger than a friend who is actually a year younger than me.

My response really, really surprised me. I actually beamed! I preened! I flicked my frickin' hair!

It wasn't like I was being paid a compliment either -- they were just making a fleeting comparison. 'Who's older, you or him?'-  'Me' - Oh, you look younger than him...'

I can't believe I responded so strongly... perhaps I am more vain than I thought... or maybe I really am worried about growing old...

Filed under  //   age   growing up   male   old age   sebastian   vanity  
Posted August 10, 2010
 

Montenegrin exports

Zoom in on a little, diesel Volkswagen, buzzing and sputtering across the sparse, orange Croatian scrub. It's a taxi, though there are no signs or licenses or anything like that. Thinking back, I probably shouldn't have entrusted my life to a man with only a fistful of teeth, a vibrating dashboard and no taxi-driving license. But still, when you have to catch a flight, what are your options?

So, there we are, bouncing quickly across a rough Croatian road. It's safe to say that the Croatians don't look after their roads as well as their Montenegrin brethren. The road was hazardous -- you know, the kind where your car can jump left or right into the ditch if you don't keep a firm grip of the wheel -- which wouldn't normally have been a problem, but unfortunately the taxi driver was a SHOUTER and GESTICULATOR. Seriously, what were the odds? Not only was my taxi falling apart, but every time the taxi driver spoke he turned his head, leaned close so that his lips were only a few inches from my ear, lifted one hand off the steering wheel and BELLOWED into my EAR.

He didn't even speak English! I thought speaking slowly... and... loudly... was a British... tourist... thing... but no! So he's shouting Montenegrin into my ear. I'm keeping my eyes on the road, my hand within striking distance of the wheel or handbrake. From my limited grasp of the language, I can tell he's talking about Montenegro (Crna Gora), about how he's proud of his nation. "CRNA GORA!" he shouts and I can feel spittle landing on my earlobe. He makes a kind of wobbling gesture with his hand, accompanied by whooshing noises. "Airplane?" -- "Da! AIRPLANE!" -- "Crna Gora...exports?" -- "DA! DA! EXPORTS!"

At this point, he takes both hands off the steering wheel. I don't know if the car stuck to the road by magic, or whether it just happened all too quickly for anything bad to happen. He starts counting on one hand, while gesticulating Montenegro's main exports with the other.

"VINO!", a finger up on one hand, and a swigging motion with the other. 

"MASLINOVO ULJE!", another finger up, and a sprinkling motion with the other. 

"PIČKA!", whereupon he balls both hands into fists and makes a monumental thrusting motion with his hips. The car veers quickly to the left and I, with protean dexterity, grab the steering wheel. He doesn't even say thank you, just nods and smiles.

So there you have it, the three main exports of Montenegro, according to a crazy taxi driver are wine, olive oil and pussy.

Filed under  //   crna gora   croatia   exports   maslinovo ulje   montenegro   olive oil   pička   pussy   story   taxi   travel   vino   wine  
Posted August 8, 2010
 

Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction

via ted.com

Who knew that a woman could be so well spoken?!

I kid, I kid...

But no, seriously, who knew that life, culture and political geography, could be so accurately described using circle-shaped metaphors?!

Filed under  //   fiction   insightful   muslim   politics   stereotypes   ted   turkey   writing  
Posted July 16, 2010
 

Paul Romer's radical idea: Charter cities

via ted.com

I'm filing this one under 'cool things I should try out when I'm emperor'.

I really lack the economic background to comment properly on this, but it sounds really cool.

Filed under  //   charter   cities   economics   money   poverty   talk   ted   world  
Posted July 8, 2010
 

Is left-handed masturbation juicier?

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I've been told before that my brain and its thought processes work in weird yet wonderful ways.

The truth is, I only share a tiny fraction of what actually goes on in this wacky head of mine. Most of it gets contemplated, researched and then filed away, only to be brought up in relevant conversation. But not this time! This time you get the raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness.

So, there I was... sitting... as one does. I wasn't actually masturbating, but I was thinking about masturbation. (This often happens when I look at my hands, for some reason.) I was wondering what percentage of right-handed people masturbate with their left hand.

Without being gratuitous, I think everyone can appreciate that some flexibility is necessary when it comes to gratification. But, at the end of the day, everyone has a favourite hand. So I got to wondering: is there a statistically significant number of right-handers that consider their left land the primary go-to tool for tickling the bits?

And if so, why? (I told you I think about weird things...)

Being the scientist that I am, I immediately thought of brain lateralization, where each half of your brain (we think) controls specific functions. The left hemisphere is considered to be the 'routine' half, where repetitive actions (speech, wiping your ass) and 'linear reasoning' (maths, calculation) are performed. The left hemisphere also controls your right hand. The right hemisphere is thought to be in charge of creative thinking and reasoning through novel (unexpected, new) experiences. The right hemisphere processes audio and visual stimuli. The right hemisphere controls your left hand.

You can probably see where this is going, but I'll continue anyway. When we use our left hand, our brain's right hemisphere is more active. It's believed that left-handers are generally more creative and artistic -- well, what if, by masturbating with our left hand, we momently become more creative, more attuned to our audio and visual stimuli?

I could be wrong -- it might simply be that we need our right hand to push the mouse around -- but, well, I think I need to put my theory into practice and get some empirical evidence.

Feel free to help me with this scientific endeavour, and please report your findings.

Filed under  //   brain   hand   lateralization   left   masturbation   mrseb   right   sensuality   sex   thought  
Posted June 30, 2010
 

Psychiatric diagnosis? Pah! Here comes neurological diagnosis!

via ted.com

Watch it, it's only 7 minutes. I think you'll find it unsurprising that most people have tagged it as 'jaw-dropping'.

She makes an incredibly good point, and one that strikes very close to some ideas that have been whizzing around my brain recently. Why do we use physical manifestations to diagnose mental pathology?

We actually diagnose things like depression, ADHD and autism based on observed behaviour. No proof, no science, just... interpretation of physical manifestation. It's crazy. It's barbaric. It's like using leeches to suck out your melancholia. It really makes no sense, when you think about it -- as the speaker says in the video: we don't diagnose a heart condition without first using the technology available! In fact, you'd probably get a medical malpractice suit if you did -- yet psychiatrists continue to diagnose children with reckless abandon.

As you can see from the talk, we now have the technology to scan the brain and deduce any extant mental maladies with excellent accuracy. It's safe, it's quick and it's non-invasive. Look at those happy children in the video! Marvel (or glumly gawp) at how many kids with autism, ADHD or any other learning disability might be suffering from something else -- something that can be remedied with non-psychoactive drugs. 

Filed under  //   adhd   autism   brain   disability   disorder   drugs   mental   psychology   technology   ted  
Posted June 29, 2010
 

Schools kill creativity

via ted.com

Look! Another TED talk that agrees with me exactly!

It's always weird, when you have very strong prevailing ideologies, to find someone that thinks or writes or speaks in exactly the same way.

In this talk, he probably spends too much time being funny (but he is funny), but by the end he builds a fantastic case; a case that I think almost every sensible being will agree with.

My earliest rant on education focused heavily on empowering teachers -- something that I later refined into depoliticizing of education and school specialization. Ken Robinson's anecdote about the ballet dancer at the end of the speech is perfect, to say the least.

I had never considered the 'education is a 19th century construct for the sole consumption by the burgeoning industrial sector' point of view though. Now I can see that it's not so much that education has been politicized -- more that our societal values (or at least those extolled by politicians?) need to be reworked.

For further reading (or watching), check out Charles Leadbeater's recent talk on 'education innovation': http://www.ted.com/talks/charles_leadbeater_on_education.html. Basically, our current model of teaching with teachers doesn't scale to a world with billions of Indians, Chinese, Brazilians, Nigerians -- other methods of teaching are required!

Filed under  //   arts   crafts   education   industrial   ken robinson   student   teaching   ted  
Posted June 24, 2010
 

Chip Conley: Measuring what makes life worthwhile

via ted.com

The first 10 minutes (and that high-pitched accent) are a bit iffy, but it does deliver after that.

It's not really anything new -- he cites Maslow's hierarchy of needs and Robert Kennedy's 'What GNP doesn't count' speech. He even throws in a fantastic Albert Einstein quote, which I've paraphrasedly heard before, but never attributed to Einstein:

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.

The point is, I think, is that GDP -- and money -- doesn't really represent how well we're doing as a society. I think the speaker is spot on with the fact that GDP is a machination of the Industrial Revolution, when almost everything produced and consumed was tangible. Today, with 65% of the world's money coming from services -- things that aren't inherently tangible with difficult-to-measure value -- it would be sensible to measure more than just our GDP and GNP.

There must be a reason there's such emphasis on making and measuring money though. Capitalism? If so, it's going to make it very hard to change. No doubt this talk only exists because of the current economic recession -- and in it, he talks about the previous recession of the dot-com boom-bust!

I guess, while we're all making money and everything's tickety-boo, no one really has time to question whether we're actually enjoying ourselves...

Filed under  //   GHP   einstein   gdp   inspirational   kennedy   life   maslow   needs   talk   wants  
Posted June 22, 2010
 

Etymology: -phil- (φίλος)

Suffixes with the common part -phil- (-phile, -philia, -philic) are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something. They are antonymic to suffixes -phob-.

Phil- (Philo-) may also be used as a prefix with a similar meaning.

via en.wikipedia.org

I think I've told you about my love of etymology.

For me, there's nothing as divine as true understanding -- and the first barrier to understanding is not actually understanding the words.

Now, admittedly, you could go through life without ever knowing the roots of words. Most people do. But the added richness of knowing derivations, the additional nuance and flavour... well, to me it's unrivalled!

Call me a nerd, but I just LOVE that little lip-formed 'o' that people make when I tell them the derivation of a word. Sometimes it's a vapid 'o' of not-quite-understanding, but sometimes it's of the omg-my-world-view-has-just-totally-changed variety.

To the case in point: philia, philos, phil -- Greek (φίλος) for 'beloved' or 'dear'. Now, you certainly know the suffix form -- paedophile, cinephilia, Anglophilic. But the prefix form... ahhh!

Philosophy! A love of wisdom.

Philadelphia! Brotherly love.

Philanthropy! Love of fellow humans.

Philanderer! Loving or fond of men (but probably after someone called Philander).

But the word I was actually looking up, which led me to 'phil', is Philharmonic. It's just one of those words that you see around -- but I bet you didn't know what it means. Until now! It literally means 'the beloved sound'. Very simple, yet I bet most orchestras don't even know why they're called 'philharmonic'.

There, done. That wasn't too boring, was it?

Filed under  //   derivation   education   etymology   greek   phil   philanthropy   philharmonic   philosophy   root  
Posted June 21, 2010
 

Hire the geniuses

I've been watching Boston Legal recently. In it there's a character called Alan Shore who uses his passionate, mellifluous voice to devastating effect in courtroom closing arguments. In an episode I just watched he argues that the U.S. government should 'hire the geniuses', rather than public sector contractor cronies. It's not actually his best closing (his 'Free Religion' one is amazing), but later, talking to his buddy Denny Crane, he says it a lot more succinctly:

Hire the geniuses, not the guy who’s got the best lobbyist, or the rich friend who’ll take you to his quail ranch and let you shoot ‘em. Hire the thinkers [...] Instead of every Tom, Dick and Brownie, let’s turn our visionaries loose.

He makes a damn good point. You would be flabbergasted at the amount of money that governments around the world spend on bloated public sector contracts. Imagine giving 'The Steves' (Jobs, Wozniak, Ballmer) just a tiny fraction of the $3.5 trillion that the U.S government spends each year.

Just recently news emerged that cops in Massachusetts will soon be equipped with souped-up iPhones capable of making positive identifications in the field. I mean... what the frak? Why are police only now being equipped with technology that has been in the hands of consumers for years?!

I wonder what the world would be like if our teachers, police and other civil servants had access to the same technology as bleeding-edge tech-savvy consumers. Surely it would be good to put advanced technology in the hands of those that spend their days trying to improve society.

Filed under  //   alan shore   america   boston legal   closing   government   speech   spending   technology   us  
Posted June 19, 2010