Are You Sexist?

This is an interesting test I found at the Social Psychology Network. It's supposed to measure the levels of sexism in one's opinion toward women. I was rather surprised at my result - I was way below the average score for females, as well as the average score for males. I took screenshots of my score so I have something to slap in the face of anyone who accuses me of not being gender-neutral.

A security guard who worked for my company died of a heart attack last Sunday. I used to see him a lot, but we never really interacted.

I wonder how his last moments were. Did he have an inkling? Or did he think that it was just another normal start of the week and he'll be back at his post at this boring old job he's been doing for years? Maybe he was looking forward to seeing again those other employees he was close with.

Nothing really changed much with his absence. They got a replacement on the Monday, it was like he was never there. I did catch a conversation between the day shift guard and one of my co-employees who happened to be on the night shift; the latter was asking if he'd be there soon. Day shift guard said he most likely would be.

I'm sure he had a lot of people in his confidence. He had experiences, grudges, intrigues, failures. All gone now, all worthless. Any of us would probably give up our own experiences, grudges, intrigues, failures - if it meant staying in the world one more day.

I suppose he considered me a weird one. He'd see me as I went to my secret space to train standing meditation; sometimes I'd stay there for thirty to forty minutes (recently a full hour), and by the time I'd come out I'd be sweaty and breathing a bit heavily. Whatever he thought, it doesn't matter anymore.

All that's left is the whip-round, for the funeral. It's the right thing to do. But I feel sad that this was all a lifetime of service amounted to: a donation drive. We don't notice their passing although they contribute greatly to the quality of life we enjoy, but who is it really who suffers when they're gone?

Managed to track down a copy of Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street. I'd written a little about it here and I wanted to read the whole thing. So, here's the site.

Things Meta

Meta-awareness - this blog post I find very relevant to what I strive for everyday. Truth be told, for all that I know and studied I'm still prone to many mistakes and errors of judgement. For example there was the thought process that got recorded in this gem; now that my Magic buzz has worn off I am realizing what a huge mistake I've made. For those who don't play, I entreat you to try out this site that simulates the shuffling of my deck and drawing an opening hand. The idea is to somehow make the deck's card composition of a certain proportion so that this opening hand has a decent mix of creatures, spells, and land. A secondary goal is to make the drawing of cards during subsequent turns actually relevant to a player's current board state. 

Needless to say, my deck's opening hands suck. Compare this deck, which has the same theme but an even better execution. And said deck costs three times less than mine. Yeah.

But my most recent lapse in judgement was when I went on a shopping spree this weekend, buying amongst other things a kilogram of dried red chili peppers. Now, I do love me some good dried chili pepper, but as my mother so helpfully pointed out, with the amount I bought we had enough for a year. That is, if my whole family were eating the stuff. Because I'm the only one who eats spicy food. And at the rate I eat the peppers, most of what I bought would probably go bad given the humid climate we're in.

As I write this I am feeling the burning in my stomach from eating too much of the peppers. "I regret nothing" is something I could say, but it would be a lie.

We need to pay attention to what we're thinking, how we're thinking it, and when we're not thinking. It's a real tall order of business. I'm just thankful my lapses aren't life-threatening. But then again, everything is connected after all. I may soon have occasion for even more regret because of the above.

Re: Sex Sells, Part Four

Do girl groups make more money if they have a sexy concept?

This feature presents an investigation on the effect of sexiness on the popularity of a girl group's releases. I have questions about the methodology - I haven't read the actual report on the investigation, but looking at only three groups can't be considered as validly representing the population. Also, there are other factors that may be affecting the ranking of the release, such as whether the group is debuting or it has an established fandom. For all we know, it may be that the market is reacting to the hype generated by these groups' companies.

So we see how we can't really call this an objective, valid study on the effect of sexiness in "market viability". Yet I'm sure there will be people who will still see this as confirmation of the belief. Maybe because it's been posted where everyone can read it. Maybe because there's these interesting graphs and cool pictures. Maybe because the conclusion one draws is so easy, so intuitive. It confirms what we've "known" all along, doesn't it? 

I call BS (for the non-American readers who likely don't get the reference, BS refers to the excreta of male cows' digestive systems). The world runs on people who never question what is "common sense." 

Take the idea that women are physically weaker than men. I've a kung-fu sister who is female, approximately in her fifties, has agoraphobia and has had no prior intensive physical training. She's an average adult, senior to me by a year in the style we're studying. After more than two years of training she is so strong young males in their twenties and thirties could not move or uproot her; only two of my other seniors can tie with her. She also is very religious in training and has been doing iron palm for some time now. 

Women are weak? Really?

We accept these generalizations as gospel - never questioning how the gospel limits us. My favorite example though is Sandara Park. Ms. Park started out in the Philippines by winning second place in a now-defunct talent show. She was paired off with the winner of said show, both of them billed as a "love team;" they mostly starred in cornball roles for fluff movies. I looked into what record is left of that time online and it seems like Ms. Park was almost always on the bad side of the judges both for lack of talent and lack of mastery of the local language. She did however gain the sympathy of voters (the show's contestants were eliminated through online votes). I suppose to the Filipinos at the time she was something novel, and her constant crying probably brought out some white knight tendencies.

Eventually, the Filipinos tired of Ms. Park. She was reduced to posing for a local men's magazine in order to drum up interest in herself. In the end, she accepted a contract to be an idol in South Korea. So what was that again about sexiness selling? It didn't help her out then.

Now though, Ms. Park is known as a widely-successful international star; she is arguably the most successful and well-known out of all the big names that talent show was supposed to have spawned. And yet she herself admits that she doesn't have that much talent; she says she just tries to work hard.



So in this case hard work and good attitude sold.

Re: Sex Sells, Part Three

Betrayed by the Angel

The above needs neither introduction nor commentary. I believe this author's perspective eclipses whatever sophistries I might come up with on my own.

This is what light looks like frozen.

I guess it's easy for us to forget how much wonder there is in the world. I've lived through events that won't happen again for hundreds, and for a few of them thousands, of years. I've seen new states born and old states die. Taboos are being broken, the established order is being overturned.

What else do we take for granted that the future will not have? What mysteries are even now developing in the present to perplex our descendants?

I'm in a real Magic buzz right now. Might as well get everything out.

I'm not sure if it's the same anywhere else, but in my country the guys who play Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic the Gathering, and other tabletop games never refer to the merchandise they buy as "cards" or "figures." They're always called "pieces." I suppose it's to make it sound cooler; saying that you're buying cards when you've gone past a certain age kind of doesn't have the same cachet as saying you're buying pieces. The word conjures images of antiques or works of art or parts for a high-performance machine. Pieces of cardboard and hand-painted plastic benefit a lot from the connotation.

To succeed in the secondary Magic card market, at least in my experience, one is required  to be a bit more cutthroat than usual. It can mean charming some mook into giving up his precious cards, and then ruthlessly short-changing him when it's apparent he doesn't have as good a grasp of the real value of the card. One would rationalize it as divesting someone who doesn't really "play the game properly." People steal outright when that rationalization wears thin. And it does wear thin, sooner than one thinks.

Click to see the full price history for Tarmogoyf, one of the most expensive cards now

Playing the secondary market game is like being in a sort of stock market. You're trying to predict which cards will gain value and which will tank, which you can give up without regretting it later. Throughout my time collecting and searching for the perfect combination of cards for my Madness deck I've lost quite a lot of valuable cards. I've lost opportunities of getting now-chase cards on the cheap. I've sunk money (probably a little more than half a grand in total). I don't really have anything to show for it except the satisfaction of finally building a deck that satisfies my aesthetics. Though my aesthetics resulted in a deck that's horribly low-tier.

But you want to hear something horrible? There's a tiny part of me that wants to feel like it was all worth it. And even more horrible, when I was trawling the shops for the Chandra's Phoenix cards I saw this in stock. And something stirred that felt familiar.

A story that goes back to zero, indeed.

Red-Green Madness Aggro

I think I mentioned before how addicted I used to be to Magic the Gathering. I was really devoted to making Red-Green Madness Aggro work, and with the current Core Set I managed to acquire the last set of cards I needed. Switched out the Phantom Centaurs, and the result is:

8 Mountain
5 Forest
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Taiga

4 Kird Ape
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Chandra's Phoenix
4 Arrogant Wurm

4 Lightning Bolt
4 Faithless Looting
4 Violent Eruption
4 Fireblast

3 Cursed Scroll
1 Umezawa's Jitte

I find that the Phoenixes fit in more with the discard mechanic in the deck. I can use the card draw of Faithless Looting to search for burn and/or multiple copies of the Phoenix, and they work well with the Wild Mongrels too.

... I know this is meaningless to someone who's never played the game, and I recognize that I had sworn that there would be no further entertainment of delusions of Magic grandeur. There won't be anymore, I'm sure - because it turns out I don't really want to play big effects or build innovative decks or win games. I just want to create something that's mine, and where all the pieces fit together elegantly. I am what this new era of Magic gaming calls a Melvin. And I feel that this tendency defines everything that I endeavor to do, from programming to martial arts to writing to Go.

I want to build something that is my own, that is minimal and efficient and cool. I want to play video games where I can evolve my own style (here's looking at you, Yomi and King of Fighters and Guilty Gear and Thief and Hitman). I idolize Tom Waits and Charles Bukowski and other self-made men out there who have done what I haven't. I love the concept of improvisation and the blues. 

Now what? Dunno. But it's nice to have that moment of self-awareness.

There's really a lot  of things to ponder when reading Big Think. This particular piece about the costs of productivity really got to me.

What Melville says to us, reminds us of, is that our systems produce persons so damaged that although we may put them out of our minds, evict them from our offices, they are still there.  And in some way we are accountable to them.  And the sign that Melville has no terrific solution is that he ends the story, “Ah, Bartleby; ah, humanity.”  Right? 

He directs our attention to a kind of cruelty that is the human condition.  I’m looking for some cheer to offer in that story.  I think what Melville does though, is he takes us further and further into the dark heart of modernity, where a growing complexity of the world produces more and more dysfunction and victimization.

We study and train to get expertise in the field that we wish to create a career in, but once that expertise has been attained what we're truly trading in is time - that is, our time. The time we have left on this earth is contracted out for money at a rate determined by a host of factors. The more important others consider our time is, the higher the pay. But it's an illusion, isn't it? Because when you give up your time, there's no guarantee you'll have enough left to spend what you're given in return.

There's something arbitrary about this system. It subtly makes us think that one person's life is less than that of another, because a chunk of their life is deemed as not valuable enough to be paid as much for.

I get only one life as myself. My life is priceless to me. Life is cruel, and one must fight because no one else values me as much as I do. I perform my work, but I will not let it define me.

Please, don't be a victim either. It's just a ride.

Invitation to Great Music

Poetry

What Planet is this

Just some light reading :P

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Coppers aren't soldiers.

I can't remember if it was Terry Pratchett who gave me the impression that coppers shouldn't be smart. Now I know why that is - when you're a copper who's smart enough to get away with breaking the rules, or at the very least is smart enough to think of any excuse, the world goes to hell. Good coppers aren't smart; they're thorough.

Why Did You Shoot Me?

It will always hurt

Rory Miller at Chiron Training - That's gotta hurt

This is a true thing. It makes me uncomfortable, because there are some drills and exercises I loathe, but I still have to do them. Even though I don't always; and they will always hurt, as per my teacher. He says doing some of them means pitting your body against itself, so everything will always be uphill. I'm still quite immature, I guess.

Madness isn't what others say you have.

From the wiki:

Adrian Schoolcraft (born 1976) is a suspended New York City Police Department (NYPD) officer who secretly recorded police conversations from 2008 to 2009. He brought these tapes to NYPD investigators in October 2009 as evidence of corruption and wrongdoing within the department. He used the tapes as evidence that arrest quotas were leading to police abuses such as wrongful arrests, while the emphasis of fighting crime sometimes resulted in underreporting of crimes to keep the numbers down.

After voicing his concerns, Schoolcraft was reportedly harassed and reassigned to a desk job. After he left work early one day, an emergency unit entered his apartment, and eventually admitted him to a psychiatric facility, where he was held against his will for six days. In 2010, he released the audio recordings to The Village Voice, leading to the reporting of a multi-part series titled The NYPD Tapes. In 2012 The Village Voice reported that a 2010 unpublished report of an internal NYPD investigation found the 81st precinct had evidence of quotas and underreporting. In 2010 Schoolcraft filed a lawsuit against the NYPD and Jamaica Hospital.

There was also this story previously about a German man committed to a psychiatric facility for "fabricating" allegations of illegal activity at his place of work - allegations that turned out to have some merit. If one wants to increase the adult fear there's what happened to Christine Collins; she was committed to a psychiatric ward despite having definite proof that her returned child was actually an impostor.

From a very young age we're taught to trust authority, and I think it's easy for us to do so because this conceit helps make our lives less uncertain and more comfortable. We don't need to worry about so many things - we can just have someone else do it for us, someone who has the training and resources and permission by the majority. But life is really never so simple and even being a submissive member of society has its price. Being let down by those who should have measured up but didn't, how many have there been who never achieved vindication? How many have there been who have lost things and will never get them back?

It's not just authority figures. Society has the general practice of othering, too.

 We are fed stories everyday and instead of verifying and validating them most of us instead spread them around; that's something we're quite good at, spreading things around. Meanwhile we stick to our small inner ponds, steeped in our own biases,  thinking that the worst will never happen to us because we're good (not just good, amazing) people.

In my experience, we aren't the ones to make that decision. That's why these two quotes have special significance to me:

I don't know which option you should choose. I could never advise you on that... no matter what kind of wisdom dictates you the option you pick, no one will be able to tell if it's right of wrong until you arrive to some sort of outcome from your choice.

 And:

The only thing we're allowed to do is to believe that we won't regret the choice we made.

UPDATE: This seems to  lend more credence to my view on things. 

Even before the Human Genome Project wrapped up in April 2003, scientists have worked overtime to find the gene or genes responsible for autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, ADHD, alcoholism, depression, and other ailments "known" to have major genetic components.

The problem is, many neuropsychiatric ailments that are assumed to have a major genetic component don't seem to have one.

More than a decade after the sequencing of the human genome, there is still no reliable genetic test for autism, Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, or any other major neuropsychiatric disorder (except for Huntingon's disease, for which there was already a test, prior to the Human Genome Project). 

... the fact remains that scientists have failed miserably to find genes for schizophrenia, depression, and other major mental disorders.

Let's all have a long think on that. Maybe the real madness is in giving others permission to "get" us - as in, to "understand" us, and in so doing get us to be something or get us to do something.

SWAG