Outrage Culture

I followed with interest the situation involving Josh Olin, former community manager at Turtle Rock Studios. I think it's an interesting instance of a phenomenon on the Internet.

We have to accept that people are irrational. By making comments that have a high likelihood of triggering emotions in other people, Josh Olin courted mass irrationality on himself, his work, his employers, his friends and family. He's right about an outrage culture existing, which demands that something be done.

I've got problems with this Internet trend. First of all, doing something isn't always the most advisable thing; especially when one doesn't have a clear idea if that thing to be done has an impact on the problem. At other times, doing nothing at all would be best - I am reminded of several examples, one of which came from my dentist. She said that one of her patients had a prior dentist who decided to drill holes into all of their teeth and put filling in them because it seemed to the latter that their was a risk for cavities. Said patient now has to pay astronomical bills because those fillings chip often.

My dentist when I was a child refused to drill into a molar of mine that had a black line on top of it, thinking that maybe it wasn't a cavity as would have been the most likely supposition. That tooth has been with me all my life and it has not developed anything at all. 

Or think about democratic countries where there is a chief of the executive branch of government; he has veto power, the ability to refuse to do something.

When people can't take the option to do nothing it's usually one of three things - either they are being kept by a threat of some kind from abstaining, or their emotions are stopping them from making the best choice, or they have some sort of self-centered bias that somehow makes them need to do something where in a more neutral situation they would do otherwise. Josh Olin's former company faced the first situation. The uproar would have been directed at them, and would have affected how their products fared in the future. They had to fire him because otherwise a lot of people would not have bought their wares anymore.

And this is where we see how the action produced from this outrage culture is a lot like bullying. I got this concept from Sgt. Rory Miller; in a protest there's always the implied threat that violence will start if the demands are not met. Others would argue that the threat of consequences keeps people honest - I would counter that it only makes us more cunning with our dishonesty.

For an example, let's look at this unfortunate situation. University student posts pictures of animal cruelty and gets expelled, then made to do community service. In any rational light the story should be done - kid learned a lesson and paid his debt to society. However, look at how thousands of people in the Facebook community still "refused to forgive" him. It's like high school where the cliques band together to ostracize the weird kid except now with the Internet there is no escape for the poor guy. The kid already paid his dues for the crimes he committed, and yet people are still not letting this go - a hallmark of bullying.

Second thing I have a problem with is how everyone keeps tying this to free speech. Josh Olin has said he was trying to inspire dialogue and his right to free speech was violated; his detractors say that the right to free speech only prevents government from persecuting someone for what they say and doesn't save anyone from the consequences (i.e., online threats and harassment) that would arise from his words.

(As an aside, I love how that argument frames the vitriol being rained down on Mr. Olin as somehow a logical occurrence of cause-and-effect; it's classic victim blaming right there. It's only natural that someone lose their livelihood, get death threats, be harassed, etc..) 

To that I want to say, that while it is true that the right to free speech pertains to prohibitions on government actions only, that kind of limitation was built in because monitoring and policing the statements of everyone in a country would have been impossible to implement in a fair and just manner. This does not mean that just because it isn't against the law it's not a bad thing to do. 

Like in my country right now there was a recently passed law prohibiting the production, sharing, distribution, and sale of compromising videos and photos of people who at the time of recording should have had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Before this, there was no such clear regulation that could be applied to these situations, and there was a huge bonanza of sex videos/voyeur videos being trafficked around; some of famous celebrities would even be the topic of news programs and talk shows. Said talk shows would even show these videos, with the naughty parts censored of course - but in a manner that still preserved the prurience of the content. D-list celebrities would even make one of these videos themselves to get some measure of relevance in the public eye. And some unscrupulous lovers would even record their trysts in order to blackmail their partners later on. Law or no law, these things people were doing were already bad. 

Same with the free press issue, just because no one's getting arrested doesn't mean all these people ganging up on him is acceptable. 

Also, speech comes with a hefty piece of responsibility; if you're putting yourself out there essentially you are implying that what you have to say matters, to the point that you are willing to cast attention to yourself and suffer the consequences of whatever opinion you are professing. Now what, if at all, are all of Mr. Josh Olin's detractors risking here? What are their stakes in this discussion? What do they lose - like, if they don't put Mr. Olin down do they have to be slaves at a plantation somewhere? 

Mr. Olin already paid a big price, while the great outrage machine will be moving on to another target, smug in their numbers and anonymity. That right there makes the trolls lose any credibility in my eyes. And I personally do not like being coerced into doing anything - when people try bullying tactics on me I choose to do the opposite of what they want. I would advise any such victim of outrage culture to do the same.

I had a huge fear inside me recently. I came into the IT world solely on a whim; I'm not originally from any institution remotely connected to computers. I am woefully behind on skills and experience with the technologies assigned to me; and prior to getting this job I had to send my resume out hundreds of times. I went to interviews almost everyday for three months before miraculously getting a choice between two jobs - one for a C++ gig, the other making mobile games. 

I screwed up the choice, and had to resign after two months due to burnout. I then had to do three more months of job searching before I got to my current position. 

I didn't go into this with a naive mindset; I took time off to study computer science concepts, several languages, and web development. I really wanted to thrive and make a good accounting of myself. It galls me that all my effort could come to naught arbitrarily. 

As of now I get assigned to projects only occasionally; to pass the time I try to practice coding or do training sessions. I volunteer for whatever and don't complain about what task is given to me, even if said task isn't really about web development. I want to do more exciting stuff, but I'm not getting assigned to the right projects for that; and my fear is that if this continues I won't be able to advance my expertise far enough to get into a better company, let alone become a key part of my current one. 

There's also the fear that the path I am on might not pay off; even though I am trying my hardest it's like I'm still getting left behind. I've been in a funk about it for the past two weeks. What finally snapped me out of it was realizing something about the martial arts I practice. I remembered that my school's grandmaster was very powerful - I've seen videos of him in action. My current teacher may not have been on the same level, but he's still very good. And I may never get to be the same level as them, but I'll still gain something from practicing. The fact that the teaching works is proven by the grandmaster and master's prowess. And my practice for the past two years has not only made me stronger, it's cured some recurring maladies that I've had since I was ten. 

I may not know if the path I am on will lead to success and contentment, but I know the path of martial arts I am on right now is real, and it has given back to me more than I expected. And so even if I look like an idiot practicing the drills in public, even if it comes to pass that I won't be able to pass on what was taught to me, I will still continue to practice. Even if I have to keep doing standing stake in a smelly restroom cubicle, I'll do it; my life belongs to the martial arts. It will help me survive even when everything else turns to shit.

My New Idol

The show above focused on Mr. Narayana Murthy, co-founder of India's third-largest IT services company. I came across him because of an assignment I needed to do for a Coursera course I am currently taking. The course is about utilizing emotional and social competencies in order to become a more effective leader; the assignment was for us to determine which competencies Mr. Murthy displays on the life experiences he recounts during this interview. 

I've never really bothered myself with the Indian scene before; I am really impressed at the kind of leadership Mr. Murthy shows during their talk. Being in the IT services field myself, I can appreciate the hardship he must have endured to get his venture off the ground. His example makes me agree that the technical skills only matter inasmuch as getting one's foot through the door is concerned; these emotional and social skills make the difference.

However, I can't quite shake the idea that this thesis mostly works for people in management positions, and probably in fields that require collaboration. For knowledge workers or people concerned with individual output the technical skill might matter more; in which case it is mastery of the field which is the decider.

Ultimately, in my opinion you need the "soft skills" to rise up and secure a good future for yourself; it is unfortunate but programming can be a dead end for generalists and specialists whose technology the world has passed by. But the kind of work you get into is still going to be determined by your skill; the better you are, the more opportunities are open to you. You have more options, and this means you are more robust - i.e., better able to thrive under less-than-ideal conditions.

Learning the Eternal Spring

A fellow student learned Weng Chun years ago. My teacher was impressed with the art's handwork and wanted to incorporate the sensitivity drills from Weng Chun into our art. But I decided to get deeper into it to improve my technique; happily, my kungfu brother agreed to make me his junior in this art. I've learned the Seven Stars of Weng Chun and the first two parts of the Siu Nim Tao form. 

It's important to state here that Wing Chun and Weng Chun are completely different - the latter is a soft martial art. It's less about aggressively intercepting and more about receiving the force in order to deflect it. I've found the art likes to have one hand do everything. Remember that there will be times where you might not be able to use both hands, and Weng Chun's ability to find the holes in another's defense is top-notch.

Below are some videos my kungfu brother-turned-senior have shown me. They're very cool stuff.

This.

The React videos by the Fine brothers is one of my new addictions. They have a pool of elders, youth, and YouTube celebrities react to all sorts of trends in pop culture. I in particular like this video about a first-time YouTube uploader; I think deep down everybody who runs a blog, vlog, channel, page, what have you started like this kid. When I started out on this blog I in particular was excited for the statistics, how many people viewed my post or where they came from. I was particularly elated when I got my first comment - which most likely a bot :'(.

Another interesting thing was how the whole discussion went on a tangent about the history of YouTube. I actually had an account back when it was starting out; I still have it, and I've steadfastly refused to let Google change the username for it. It's a nostalgia thing - however I can definitely say that YouTube right now is so much more diverse. Back then the videos were super-short, but once the clip was loaded you could rerun it however long you wished. And the videos didn't have the production values we have today.

Just... yes

HAL, definitely.

Night

I finished reading Eli Wesel's first book, "Night." I am thankful I don't have anything in my life that could help me understand even a tiny bit of what he went through. I hope no one ever does - though there are people out there right now who can probably relate (Malala Yousafzai, for example).

If I could take a turn of phrase from Sir Terry Pratchett, the book is horrible. It inspires horror.

It's not the jump-scare type of horror, nor is it the gory or spooky stuff you see in the movies. It's real-life horror. It's when people start out with good intentions but it gets twisted. It's when the victims become participants in the torment. It's the horror of making numerous life-and-death decisions and missing out on the correct choice; and then living on solely by dint of luck, forever kept up at night by the regret. The horror of people giving up whatever they are because of hunger and pain.

I find myself rooting for them, these Jews trapped in concentration camps. I find myself chiding them when they save their rations instead of eating immediately - not eating when given the opportunity only starves them and causes their bodies to weaken. Once they are weak they won't be able to perform hard activities or make lucid decisions, and when that happens eating whatever they saved would not cure them.

The first few chapters have parallels with Mr. Taleb's own childhood, it's the Black Swan in action. They thought everything was going to be the same as always, ignoring the danger nearing their doorstep. I couldn't blame them for this; I think I myself might have been even more in denial. 

It's heartbreaking though, when instead of seeking a place in Palestine the father chooses to keep his family where it is because he feels he is too old to be starting over in a new land. They didn't know, and couldn't have known. And yet by one such decision the family is doomed.

But what truly haunts me was when they were being required to wear the Star of David, there were those who said that doing so wouldn't kill them. That's right, but it was a start; it makes me wonder for the world we live in. The discrimination we endure in this world - it might not kill us outright, but it may lead to it.; how can we know? Indifference is an atrocity that paves the way for other atrocities.

Seeing things from another point of view.

I've been a Reddit lurker for a long time now. It's an amazing forum where you can get opinions and viewpoints on anything, posted by people from every conceivable background all over the world. It functions like a hive mind at times and it can get things catastrophically wrong. But I think it's worth it when you have the opportunity to get gems like this thread.

The site makes me feel more connected to the human race. I learn that there are almost a thousand others at least who have experienced Insta-Shits, countless others who have had it worse than me and yet are still keeping at it, and the same number have horrible secrets that would bring mine to shame. It's like this big bar where everybody has some weird, stupid, horrible, funny story to tell.

I love the r/AskReddit page. It gets me out of my headspace, from thinking that I'm the only one experiencing this or no one else knows what I'm going through. Yes, other people are going through the exact same things, sometimes even worse, and they also don't know what to do. 

We don't win a lot. But we're also not alone in the world. 

The Reykjavik Confessions

Everyone knows I am fascinated by stuff like this - the page from Mind Hacks has other links to its articles that explore how we can be so wrong about stuff we need to be getting right, i.e. the criminal justice system.

How the F*ck...

That's what goes through my head when I come across algorithmic gems like these:

Movement Mechanics in Legend of Zelda

Realistic Terrain in 130 Lines of Javascript

Spelunky Level Generator


I mean, how do people even come up with this? It's the ultimate transformation of programming into an art form.

Your Body Language [UPDATED]

UPDATE: It seems like current attempts to reproduce the results of the initial experiments aren't being successful.

Making Failing at Stealth Fun

I think this has been a long time coming, but the games industry still has a long way to go. The current crop still err toward making things too easy; I would like the opportunity to salvage a bad situation, but I don't want it handed to me.

Xingyiquan

The first internal martial art I really got down to studying was Xingyiquan. I got up to my teacher's lineage's linking form for the Twelve Animals, but unfortunately after six months I had to stop. I was in the wind and needed to find a job; when I did find a job I had to undergo training, and eventually months turned to years. 

I still like the art though, even that I am training in something else. I was told later that my current teacher's teacher once said that it's really just the Five Fists that you need - the Twelve Animals just being to bilk more money out of students. I haven't verified whether he did really say this or whether the Five Fists is all you need, but what I can say for sure is that in the art I am currently learning they teach us to make just the one move work for you in all manner of situations. So perhaps taken in that context, just a couple fist forms is all you need. After all, Wing Chun has the Seven Stars and boxing has (I'm sorry if I don't remember correctly) ten punches. Yiquan meanwhile has no form at all; so perhaps we shouldn't obsess too much over the things we can do.

The following are some video clips I found on Youtube that made me think about the principles that we try to implement through the form. I hope you find them interesting too.

Fun with Javascript

I was doing a programming assignment for Coursera and this entailed reading large amounts of information from a text file to be downloaded from the site. One could have used any other language to read the file and convert the data into an array. Since I've been doing web development for quite a while I used HTML and Javascript.

The logic was easy enough to encode but the hard part was converting the data. I settled for pasting the data into a div with an id so that I could reference the element using the DOM. I got the text using textContent, and then split the text - since the file had an item of data per row in the file, I used the newline as a separator parameter in the function invocation.

The first item of the data had to be inline with the opening div tag, and the last item of the data with the closing div tag. This resulted in an array of strings, which caused problems for me during debugging until I realized that the values needed to be parsed into the appropriate data type.

I checked out my implementation against the code that others have made online, and it's interesting how mine differed; some were shorter or made use of language-specific conventions. Others were more elegant. But all worked, just not equally in efficiency. 

It made me think of the martial arts I practice, and how the same moves can be found in other arts. Each variation hopefully having a purpose.

RIP, Gentleman Peeler

Courtesy of BoingBoing.

My company just finished a training on English communication; most of the participants held too much of a high opinion of themselves to learn anything. As for myself, having gone three years calming down irate customers sort of gives you a man-from-the-trenches sort of perspective. I think we'd have all benefited if we'd instead taken pointers from this man.

I find him interesting for another reason. Let's admit it, selling potato peelers isn't much of anything. It's not like curing cancer or figuring out the theory of relativity or the Google algorithm. No lives were saved, no lives were improved on the scale beyond that of the kitchen. Yet this man has mastered his craft; martial arts were like that before, the more indigent masters travelling around and performing exhibitions of skill. They sold something, but they also sold themselves. Notice how it's really his crafty usage of the peeler that makes us see it as something indispensable to our lives.

It's actually him, with his experience and lightness and humanity, that we can't live without. 

Condolences to the South Korean People over the MV Sewol Tragedy.

Death by drowning is a horrible thing, and even more so when it snuffs the lives of such bright prospects. I hope that things will become better for those whose lives have been forever changed by the tragedy.

As is the case with these disasters the crisis can take lives well after the fact; please rest in peace, Mr. Kang Min-kyu. It's the captain going down with the ship, though in this case it's the wrong captain.

Truth be told, I've a problem with the whole concept. Those who are noble enough to go down for those in their charge, are the very people we need to be keeping alive. But, how else do we establish their heroism?

Pensive thoughts today.

 

Yes indeed.

Working on pushing hands

By Jakub Hlavaty from Plzen, Czech Republic (Pushing hands (tui shou)) [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The martial school I am part of practices push hands fairly regularly. We are familiar with the pushing hands conventions for taiji, bagua, liuhebafa, and weng chun. But the most advanced form is freestyle, where we help each other come out with the techniques we learned in the form. It's not fighting, but it's a useful drill to develop sensitivity and good sense when it comes to body placement.

I personally try to get ideas about how to move in push hands from a lot of sources. As far as I'm concerned it's all the same so long as I keep to the basic foundations of my school. I've got books and articles on taiji, and I use my previous experience with xingyi to add some surprises to my repertoire. I've found that with this kind of work getting a different point of view on the thing can open me up to big insights. 

Right now I'm learning a lot from boxing. I'd earlier posted about stuff I found regarding Mayweather's defensive tricks; recently I also found Jack Slack's Fightland articles and one really stood out to me: the one about Manny Pacquiao's offensive mind games. I am really seeing parallels with xingyi and I am most certainly going to use the material on my next session with my teacher.

The "I'm Offended" Attacker

I just found the gem below. It really put things into perspective for me. I think anyone who has gone through office politics should give this article a look.

Post by Marc MacYoung.

I wanted to learn the sax when I was younger. Now I remember why after watching :)

Gentle Whispers

I found this YouTube channel that tries to trigger an ASMR - a pleasurable tingling sensation in the head. It's not happening for me, but I find the audio relaxing. The world gets to be too noisy sometimes and so these things are a treat.

Stuff to get busy on

I'm going over the Bento website to improve my programming skills.

I also discovered Udemy and Edx; I'm still deciding which courses to take. Truth be told I'm a bit bored with the whole online learning experience.

Have been doing jump rope for two months now, stamina's pretty good. Haven't lost weight yet though :(

Got interested in some other Kpop acts as well, have a gander:

Wisdom I learned from Somewhere

Imagine a point. It lives in only one dimension. Because of that it can't see at all. It wouldn't know a line from a fellow point.

Now a line itself lives in two dimensions, but would only be able to see one. It would only be able to recognize things that were on the same plane. Like a drawing on a leaf of a book, it wouldn't be able to see the drawings in the other leaves.

But we can see the leaves. We can see all the planes because we see in three dimensions. We can perceive depth - that there is something behind or in front of this two-dimensional space.

We see in three dimensions, because we live in four dimensions. The fourth dimension is time. It's the thing we can't see, but we can infer when something that was there before is no more.

Time is change. That is how we measure it. But if there were things that lived in the fifth dimension, they'd be able to see all four dimensions. And they would be able to see the past and the future as one present. On some level, our good and bad moments, even all those moments that slipped from us without us noticing, are forever.

So those who are not "with" us anymore, never really left. The experiences we've shared will always be.

Doing something

Read up on this pair of articles recently. It's horrible what people have to go through sometimes; I can't even conceive about how it would be to be in the shoes of these victims. I agree that more should be done regarding this issue.

The thing is, when I read stuff like this it's always about how something should be done or we should pay attention to those who do something. It's pretty general advice. I learned to pay attention to what isn't said in an argument, and so the absence of a practical course of action is glaring to me. Who do you go to if you are harassed and the higher-ups might not be inclined to listen? Who do you talk to if standing up means you are irrevocably marked amongst your peers? What would be appropriate protocol for these situations?

When things are left undefined like this people have a tendency to perceive the ambiguity as freedom and run with it. In an ideal world, what people need to do is report the matter to a higher authority that is objective and impartial; said authority would ideally undertake a thorough investigation, and if found guilty the offending party should be punished within the extent of the rules. And, I believe this is most important, after being punished the offending party should be allowed back into society; having paid his debt he should be able to go back to living his life however he sees, except he won't be breaking the law anytime soon.

However the world isn't ideal. It's an open system. Accusations stick to a person, perpetuated by rumor. We are subject to biases, and too often there are some quite murky areas with the judgement of our equals. Like how one man lost decades and is still in prison for a lie, or how one person had his life upended for thought crime.

Make no mistake, I think that something really should be done. It's just that we have to realize that in the hands of a motivated enough individual, anything that was meant to be enabling can be abused. Any course of action should have a clause for determining when things have gone wrong and how to quickly make reparations.

Brief Love Affairs

I clearly remember Robert Fulghum writing in one of his books once about brief loves. They come and go when you least expect them and then are all the sweeter for their briefness. His example was a truck driver he'd see semi-regularly; there was something about her to him and he looked forward to those days when he might see her. It never progressed past that and after some chance sightings he never saw her again. 

I can sympathize now, I've had the experience of giving up on a love and having reality intrude a lot. I've seen loves reciprocated and loves rejected, loves that changed and loves that never came off the ground. In fact, as I am writing this I am coming to terms with an ended love myself. I think I understand Mr. Fulghum a bit more; though there is no guarantee the objects of our affection would have the same feelings, we are all free to hold each other in special regard. One should look forward to the rare moments when one sees another in a different light; they are proof of life in an existence where it can be hard to justify why we go on.

Life is quite painful and the end of these love affairs can be as well. So mourn for them in however way you see fit. And perhaps, look forward to the next one?

Unintended Consequences

The Condor Heroes series I've been following dealt with this theme. The actions of the characters may without their knowledge help or hinder their allies and enemies. The world, as they say, is wide and full of strange things. Intent and outcome are rarely coincident, as someone told the King of Dreams. I think it's something to remember when we try to help those less fortunate. Good intentions don't cut it in this world we live in. If one is truly committed to being of use one needs to do the hard work in finding the real mechanism for assistance.

Goodbye, Condor Heroes

I finished the series yesterday. I'm impressed with the sophistication of the themes explored, like how honor/goodness needs to take into account the circumstances - and therefore there are different kinds of honor. I also liked how they showed both good and bad characters reaping the consequences of their actions - good deeds don't always result in good and bad deeds don't always end up with bad. Both types of characters aren't completely blameless in that they all do morally questionable stuff for reasons that wouldn't hold up to the mores of today, but even the most evil of them have a chance at redemption.

Is it wrong of me to like a villain more than the main characters? I vastly preferred Ouyang Feng to any of the leads. In the novels he gets redemption in the second book, but it's okay with me how they chose to handle things with this adaptation. Hell, they changed Yang Kang into a more morally ambiguous character after all. This adaptation's Ouyang Feng does go insane, but the end implies he's becoming more in touch with himself as he finds stability. 

This makes me want to read the novels. One of these days I'll learn Chinese...

Quiet Spots

There's a spot I like in the restaurant I eat in. The weather is almost always hot, but the view is worth it - trees and green grass, a creek (man-made, regrettably) running beside with lots of koi and the occasional duck; birds on the wing only to turn back and land again, a cycle I don't tire watching. Sometimes I see people pass by, people-watching is interesting too.

I eat some keema or falafel or beryani, then I finish off with yoghurt. I don't like having people around when I do this, it seems like a shame to spoil the silence. Pretty soon I have to go back to my monitor and my work area that's awash in artificial light. But for a while I can enjoy this. 

I like trees and open spaces. I could never live in any of the more cramped cities in my country. Even where I live and work there's not much space - there's always someone happening by on your business. Being with people tires me, more often than not. That's why I also like the dead of night - there's no one to bother you while you train or read or meditate. At night, I used to have a midnight snack of instant noodles, fried egg, bread, coffee, and sometimes french fries; I was young back then, okay? But nowadays I just have the coffee.

Age of Wushu

Wallpaper image from Age of Wushu Media page

All this wuxia stuff is making me want to try out this MMO. I'm reading good things about the game over at Massively so I was thinking, why not?

I'm really liking the idea behind their Player versus Player system, in that it resembles fighting games a lot. What I don't like is that the MMO still maintains a significant resemblance to other MMORPG's that exploit the grinding mechanic. If it takes a while to build my character up to a level that satisfies me then I'll just stick with Yomi - the characters there were balanced by a professional game designer and by some dedicated players, and they focus totally on the fighting aspect.

The movement abilities though are superb - I would really enjoy spending time just moving around in the air and over water:

Condor Heroes

So I'm still watching the series. I am now on Episode 16. It's an irritating tendency for me to be so absorbed into something as to forget other stuff I need to do, so this will probably be the last episode for the day; I need to go and train and study some stuff.

It's definitely a different way of thinking. I mean, one character has an internal energy armor around her; it does not hinder her movement, can be worn with anything, is tough enough to repel some pretty advanced techniques, and routinely protects her from daily annoyances like snake bites. Oh, and it's a passive ability - it seems like it's always on and does not need her concentration to maintain. If I were living in this world where martial artists can have the ability to control poisonous vermin I think I would find a way to learn this skill. You would think that would be obvious, but no - because the skill was developed by a rival this martial arts hero won't even deign to think about learning it. He instead developed a skill that enables him to kill the vermin with needles. Yep, a skill that's dependent on having the right ammo, time to set up, and extreme abilities of perception, coordination, and precision. A skill whose effectiveness lowers drastically the more inebriated you are - which the inventor of said skill often is, given that he drinks wine from a seemingly-bottomless gourd. 

The concept of using snakes was pretty cool, I think. It's like using fire to attack in parallel, but more subtle. It's also a low-risk kind of attack - if you fail you can try again, and the loss of one snake isn't that disastrous. You also don't need to be anywhere close for it to work. I guess I'd learn this if it were real.

The episode had a lot of discussion about one's roots, about who one is. Ultimately it boils down to where you were born and what family your parents belong to. It's a recipe for division, and woe betide anyone who did not have power in this world. The conflict in this series was between the Song and Jin, and it's interesting that the characters were so focused on this that they neglected to reflect on whether there may be other groups waiting in the wings.

Legend of Condor Heroes

I found subbed episodes of "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" on Youtube yesterday, and have spent the rest of the time since then watching episodes.

The show is from a wuxia novel trilogy by Louis Cha. This is a very big deal in the Chinese-speaking countries and so piqued my curiosity. I recognized a lot of the terminology since I used to play a text-based MMO called Kung Fu Knights way back when on the Kongregate site. A lot of the places, people, groups, etc referenced the novels; there were some concepts I recognized from my martial arts training as well, like how incorrect internal training could cause afflictions to descend upon one's mind and body.

There have apparently been previous versions of this TV adaptation. I can't say anything about those, but I have already watched the first nine-and-a-half episodes so far. As far as I can see the world is along similar lines as what you'd find in "Le Morte d'Arthur" - it's an idealized place where martial virtue is paramount and there's always derring-do and intrigues. In "Le Morte d'Arthur" it's chivalry in terms of feudal knighthood while in "The Legend of the Condor Heroes" it's chivalry in terms of Eastern Asian martial arts and Confucian values.

I remember reading "Le Morte..." back in high school. For a book about the Arthurian legend it was a remarkably dry read. The really big events can be listed in a page or two; in between each event you get mind-numbing tales of knights fighting mysterious warriors who seem to have been gifted with powers, knights fighting other knights, knights getting it on with supposedly chaste women, ad infinitum. I really cannot imagine the kind of mind that would be able to gain entertainment from such a work. 

Louis Cha's novel probably benefits from being a more recent work; plus the above series has been calibrated to appeal to modern audiences. Just please don't come in expecting anything amazing with the fight scenes beyond coordinated posing.

The world-building is really top-notch. So much so that I feel like it's not a place I would ever want to be in. Why? Perhaps it's how the scriptwriters decided to tackle the project, since there seems to be a lot of deconstruction of the concept of jianghu. From what I have seen so far, disciples' lives are completely at the whim of their master; people avenge the slightest insult with duelling; honoring whatever virtue requires someone dying or maiming themselves; antagonists die earlier than the protagonists - but if the mains become Heroes of Another Story expect that they will die a violent death.

I'm debating with myself whether I want to continue watching past the first half of episode 10. A character who started out bad was humbled and seems to have turned a new leaf and even got himself a fiancee, but because of the massive difference between his past and current circumstances he gets tempted to reverse his change. I mean, if it were me I'd have seen from a mile away the difficulties that character will experience adjusting to his new station. And why is it no one in this setting seems to bother trying to find a way to provide for their family? It's always martial virtue this or martial skills that; every hot-blooded male seems to think that this is enough to put food on the table - until they get separated from their non-warrior wives and the latter have to fend for themselves. And even the one who got the coveted title "Best in the World" - as one character puts it - was still mortal; he died. 

I guess the me right now, sees the fantasy for what it is.

Something to think about.

My snowflake courtesy of http://weavesilk.com/

 

Traffic

Took an hour to get home today because of severe congestion. Traffic has been a historical problem in my country. Even with all the recent road widening initiatives and laws similar to #3 on this list, traffic still uses up a big fraction of the gas drivers purchase and is a major cause of air pollution. 

Everybody has a solution, but I'm a fan of small actionable tweaks to our daily activities. So this is where Mr. Bill Beaty comes in, in an article I first read about from BoingBoing. 

My Diet

By Alex Proimos from Sydney, Australia (In Speedos  Uploaded by russavia) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

First off, have a read on this Wikipedia entry about abdominal obesity. I'm a bit concerned about my own love handles so I decided to do something - but intention doesn't always lead action, even with my training.

A large part of what I'm trying to learn for myself is the fact that what you look like doesn't dictate what you can do. My endeavor musn't be about looking attractive or showing up people who make my girth all that I am. It should be about health and quality of life, and what I'll be passing on. I read about genetic accommodation and epigenetics, and I don't want to pass on activated genes that increase my descendants' chances for cancer or other diseases.

I took the Coursera course for The New Nordic Diet; I like the ideas that they introduced, about emphasizing sustainability, aesthetics, flavor, and nutrition in crafting unique cuisine that reflects their culture. I can't claim to be able to do the same, but I've since incorporated elements of the diet to my routine.

I eat walnuts now everyday, and I'm incorporating more vegetables, especially chickpeas and peanuts, in my diet. I've stopped my frequent snacking, only eating three square meals a day. I don't drink carbonated beverages; I've gone months without doing so. My breakfast now has oats and black coffee - and come to think of it, I don't drink anything with my coffee now. A consequence of taking the CAMBRA course, I guess. I drink about two liters of water everyday, that's it.

It's rather unfortunate that my country has neglected food products coming from wild sources, so it's hard to find meat form wild game or wild herbs. I'm supplementing that lack with borrowing from other cultures' cuisine. After all, my country is something of a melting pot. A Korean grocery close to us is my source for seaweed (both laver and dried), kimchi, and gochujang; I'm still trying to source herbs like cilantro as well as mushrooms, but I've happily found soba and pumpkin seeds and watermelon seeds. I eat yoghurt too, and am still looking for kefir. I've also successfully gotten my family to adopt curries and Indian spices.

I'll try to post more about the effects of this in the coming months.

Oh Happy Day! :D

Realities I've learned because of what I got myself into

What's the difference between college-level and corporate programming?

How to take action in the face of limited knowledge

Life has been interesting these past months. The tester job I landed myself into got extended two more weeks, but at least there are now more of us so the work is less toxic. I have now officially worked support/maintenance, testing, and app development. Pretty soon I'll be taking some lessons on ISMS, hopefully to become an internal auditor. 

I'm still not happy about my coding skills though. I can really feel how out of my depth I sometimes am. Part of the problem is that this field is so big. Breadth and depth are out of this world. Never been good with something so loose and wild and unstructured. The above are just touching the tip of what I'm realizing so far.

We need more stuff like this on the Internet.

Hypnotic

Image from http://imgur.com/lzaMeXm

On the sense of self

Work has been pretty hectic the past couple of weeks and so has played hell with my online courses. I had to jettison the goal of completing the courses I enrolled in exchange for prioritizing doing a passable level of work in the office and not losing focus in training martial arts.

Couple of things I've been thinking about during this awful time: who we are in the dark, and anchors. Arguably this was brought on by reading Worm during the few moments of free time I got. (I recommend this web serial to everyone, the story is very engaging). Worm had parts where the the concept of knowing one's identity came up. The characters were in a position where this was very important. And a lot of people suffered personal tragedies because they didn't give this much thought.

So now I ask: who are we, then? Is it our actions that define us, unmindful of the situations we find ourselves in? Or is it our intentions regardless of our acts? Is it our memories?

I think we are patterns as we continue to exist in the world. Our cells die in a fixed cycle, replaced by near-identical cells made of different molecules. In a fixed number of years we lose all the cells and materials we had at birth; it's like we're different people. Our minds are also even more fluid. We forget, then reconstruct in an effort to remember. Our memories of our experiences, our viewpoint, our unique set of priorities, something in our minds draws these things together and discards some. From these things we construct the sense of who we are. And if some event is intense enough we may even forget these bindings and so need to recreate ourselves once again. Or some errant thought might make itself known, and we change yet again as we try to reduce the cognitive dissonance.

There are some concepts that have a greater pull. The need to survive, or the need to belong, for instance. The urge to uphold the mores of a group, or to have a high status. These are like hunger or thirst to the mind - motifs that one can't help but return to again and again.

Such fluidity is like being lost at sea, where the only way for you to find dry land is if you make it yourself. Hence the anchors; things to keep you grounded in reality and to keep your self stable. Some you may safely lose, others you cling to as a drowning man would a lifeline. Things you can go back to again and again, that give you sure footing and a direction to build your decisions around. Order in the midst of chaos, a piece of dirt in a cloud. 

What is it then, that is me? I am obsessed with making a Red-Green Madness deck. I like to read about novel things. I am a spendthrift. I like the martial arts. I like solving puzzles like code or games. I am not a people person. I used to have a thing for cards of all kinds. I used to be fascinated with magic. I currently like Kpop - started out with Sistar, then T-ara, and now I'm seeing the attraction of Girls' Generation. But I kind of still think of myself as a T-ara fan.

I like to find things. I believe that wanting is better than having. I read Terry Pratchett's "Night Watch" at least twice a year, the Thief and Hitman series of video games once a year. I don't really care for group circlejerking. I like to study psychology. I love food and self-improvement. 

And I do not like being beholden to cognitive heuristics. I absolutely hate it. I am insecure, and I can be petty. I've done a lot of things I regret in the past; still do some things I regret now - although it's either I don't regret them as much when the time comes, or I've learned to forgive myself for them. There's lots of other things, I can't really make the list exhaustive.

There's a lot of stuff. But when time comes to take stock, the earth of my island will be rich enough that I'm sure the answer that will sprout will be a robust one. 

Disaster Preparedness

This was part of the readings we had for Coursera's Disaster Preparedness course. Stuff like this kind of make me grateful I haven't faced yet a full-on marooned situation. However, thanks to the courses I've taken before on Irrationality and Social Psychology, I understand. God help me, I understand.

The patients were an outgroup. The ingroup, which were the medical professionals stuck in that hospital at the time, were completely untrained for the situation; but being the ingroup they must have favored each other more than those in the outgroup. Maybe things have been simmering for a long time and the situation forced the ugliness out. 

They were going by heuristics. There's some representativeness bias and spontaneous trait inference in them assuming that someone who has signed a Do Not Resuscitate order doesn't want to survive the crisis. Maybe there was some self-serving bias in there, thinking that their actions constituted the best care they could give under the circumstances. There certainly was self-serving bias in them declaring that evacuating certain patients would be impossible; you can't trust that statement when the people making it are dead-tired and would find it easier if a couple conveniently died on them. There was conformity - either some went along or they didn't protest effectively enough.

Then there's the rationalizations. I'm sure they made those up to assuage any cognitive dissonance. Like the consensus argument - that what they did wasn't any different to what they normally do. That what they were doing was sanctioned by the laws of God. That they were giving comfort. That since they were doing everything "respectfully," it was alright. Because they were doctors and nurses and medical professionals, so obviously they know more and should be allowed to get away with more.

I shouldn't make attributions to their disposition. They were in a terrible situation and this is why every country should have well-designed disaster management plans down to the level of the individual citizen. 

It's just that you're Americans. From the USA. Guardians of freedom, liberty, justice, and democracy. You should be better. If something like this could happen well within your own territory, then... this world... it's pretty horrible, huh?

I'm seeing Western boxing in a new light. The jab is a reliable tool for when someone wants to keep away from touching hands with us who are practicing Chinese martial arts. I'm also seeing a lot of parallels between the basic punches and stuff like the five fists of xingyi. Then there's also this article about Mayweather's infighting tactics, which is seriously giving me some ideas about where to take my techniques.

Priorities and Regrets

Priorities and Regrets

Read this just now and then went off to give the maternal a hug. Do the same.

Hell, No

Creative People Say No

Haven't been able to post stuff here for a while; am currently attempting to juggle twelve courses on Coursera. And I'll be starting on a new project at the office to boot. This will not end well, I know.

I miss them T_T

Fundamental Attribution Error

Dr. Phil should really do a segment about this. His recent controversy is a textbook example, I think. 

Of course it's not okay if a person is drunk to the point where consent prior to sex is suspect. So why is Dr. Phil talking about it on Twitter? Faced with the choice of his motivations, people overestimate the dispositional factors (he's a pervert seeking confirmation) over the situational factors (he's taking a survey for his show, or he's trying to figure out where people's boundaries are - take note the original tweet did not specify the level of drunkenness or the ability to give consent).

The fun thing is the reason that the FAE is an error is because even if it were explained to us we would still do the same thing. Something to think about, there.

Randmo Sfutf

The Science of Mental Fitness

How We Got "Please" and "Thank You"

What the Psychology of Suicide Prevention Tells Us About Controlling Our Everyday Worries

Beware of Beauty Overload: The Adaptive Eye of the Beholder

Stuff to Remember

I was browsing over some of my previous posts and found one where I realized I had forgotten the context behind it completely. In just a few months I was already a different person who probably would never have written that. Good thing I was able to save it; this blog is becoming a secondary storage space for stuff in my head.

Here's another thing: if you think about it, I am in a way similar to an organism that consumes information. I read and experience things everyday, I process it and then think about the processing that is happening. I shit out ideas and concepts and associations, as well as the information where these things come from. Ideally I add more than I take away, but we can settle for spreading it, like a bird would the seeds it swallows. 

I am a bird that ranges across continents. 

In the sea without lees
Standeth the bird of Hermes
Eating his wings variable
And maketh himself yet full stable
When all his feathers be from him gone
He standeth still here as a stone
Here is now both white and red
And all so the stone to quicken the dead
All and some without fable
Both hard and soft and malleable
Understand now well and right
And thank you God of this sight

The bird of Hermes is my name eating my wings to make me tame.

Bankrupted

Bankrupt By Beanies from Chris Robinson on Vimeo.

I cringe inwardly at this. In my college days I entertained the idea of being a Magic: the Gathering pro player. Good plan, except even if I was the best (which I wasn't), my country didn't have tournaments that supported pro players. These days I have the notion of buying chase cards, like the dual lands and fetchlands and shocklands - the prices being relatively stable and most likely to increase in value. History repeats itself doesn't it?

Horror Stories

I thought I was pretty tough and jaded. I'd dissected pretty much everything, short of human beings, in college and high school. I was familiar with anatomy. I have an interest in occultism, serial killers and crime in general. I am also fascinated with psychology. I'm familiar with martial arts and the damage people can do to others.

Then just recently I read this and this. It was like watching Malena - I had to pause every once in a while, take a breather. 

I guess that means I'm still human... with all the potential for visiting horrible things upon myself...

Re: In Defense of Adria Richards and Call-out Culture

Interesting article over at The Daily Dot. It's in reference to the donglegate incident and the fallout that followed. A lot of what's happened, I'm sure anyone would agree, was overblown. Then again that's par for the course I guess when one involves the public at large - you never know how they'll react.

I have to admit that I get where the author is coming from; you see, anything that can be construed as a social putdown by one party does result in negative emotions, in most cases anger. Anger has been shown to follow social rejection, and admonishing someone for their actions does qualify. We don't know where someone's from and how he is in daily life, and so caution is advisable when dealing with strangers.

But here's the thing: Adria Richards did not try to approach two grown men in a public place with a neutral manner to mention how she can overhear a conversation that could reflect badly on the latter. The two men were presumably well-educated, well-adjusted and hard-working individuals; they're not your typical alley rapists. Talking to them in a way that did not generate feelings of rejection or belittlement would not, I think, have caused any problems. Assuming as the author did that women who call out others will get raped and/or murdered is a gross oversimplification and doing so sabotages the friendly, civil interaction that we should expect of each other.

And this is a true thing; in the Social Psychology online course I'm taking the concepts of confirmation bias and self-fulfilling prophecies were discussed. Rory Miller also has a lot to say about the topic in his blog. You're holding this idea in your head about how these interactions are going to go, you're going to be looking for the things that confirm your thinking. And you're going to be acting without realizing it, in a manner that will guarantee that the idea in your head will prove true. 

Aside from the above, I'm going to follow Mr. Miller's lead and shut up; I wasn't there, and these events don't really impact me in any personal way. But here's something to think about: if we grant that women should be allowed the prerogative to upload pictures of men to shame them when they act in a sexist manner, where is the oversight? We have multiple layers of security and monitoring and accountability for almost everything in our lives, where are all those for this?

And how is uploading call-out shots different from uploading creepshots? The latter is about promoting lust, the former about promoting outrage. Aside from that, what's the difference?

Belly Fat

Belly fat serves as emergency fuel, a good way to store excess when times are good. It's shock protection for the gut area. It's also insulation.

Belly fat is there for a reason. Then again we, living in this age, find no use for it. We find it ugly. Funny how we equate beauty with whatever induces the most lust in others, then we complain when that attraction becomes brought to our attention. You can't control who gets attracted to you.

There is beauty in utility. Something simple and elegant is beautiful. And perhaps greatest of all, it is meaning that makes for the purest beauty. An old mother's wrinkled hands spent caring for her children and grandchildren will have gained something no manicurist could ever hope to match.

I'm taking the Social Psychology course in Coursera. Week 1 had readings from a study made by David L. Rosenhan, "On Being Sane in Insane Places." It touches on a lot of things I'd written about earlier, and seems especially relevant now that I've read this.

The Curious Relationship Between Truth and Madness

Lost in Our Own Worlds

Managed to overhear a conversation today. Two friends were gossiping about this rich, smart professional who had to separate from her husband. Friend A said that the divorcee had difficulties supporting her children in spite of the alimony when Friend B suddenly pipes up with "She should demand for her right, her husband should support her." This was just milliseconds after Friend A mentioned the alimony. 

I remembered another conversation, this time about a girl trashing someone who was not part of their group. Said someone had at some point for whatever reason held her hand by the wrist - at this point one of the listeners interjected with "Were you hurt? Are you okay?" I knew at this point a rumor was born about that poor soul.

Neil Gaiman observed this phenomenon before. He said something to the effect that it was a trademark of his, portraying characters in the act of conversation who weren't really paying attention to what each other was saying. You get two or more people, talking at cross-purposes. Lost in their own worlds, going off on a tangent touched off by something they heard. Failing to listen at the most inopportune times.

I think it's an offshoot of us thinking we're so special. That we could figure out someone like Sherlock Holmes does, failing to see how utterly contrived some of the situations were and how the real world isn't as neatly understandable. That we're so good and nice and exempt from the law and our actions have no consequences. Or maybe, that we shit and fart roses.

Monkey talk. Monkey talk, all of it. 

I thought about it, and I've had Magic: the Gathering in my mind for more than seventeen years now. For ten of those years I've been trying to craft this RG Madness deck (for those interested, the final form of the deck is here). It took that long because the sets the constituent cards belonged to were a long time apart. I did not find the cards that were being used by other players to my liking, so I decided to hold out until I could come across the cards that I felt did deserve to make it in. 

I wanted a deck that fully abused the madness mechanic, yet had a complementary strategy in case the key cards enabling the mechanic were dealt with during a game; I also wanted that complementary strategy to stand pretty well on its own. 

I tried out a lot of cards, playtesting and goldfishing and then analyzing in my head. I read up on current strategy and trends on what cards to use. I posted on forums, even emailed the professionals to ask how to improve my deck.

Through most of it I knew that the cards I was using were subpar - I knew that if I really wanted to win games I should be playing the best cards that other people were playing. It was hubris to think that I'd be on to something the pro players weren't.

I went for it anyway. It was an obsession.

I learned recently about Walt Whitman, and about how he worked on Leaves of Grass up until two months before his death. All those years spent revising, adding to, reformatting, all to create the definitive opus. And all those years he must have held two things in his head - the confidence to keep going, even when often he had to self-finance his project. And self-awareness, that what he was doing just may amount to nothing more than grass - a publisher's term at the time for works of minor value.

He did live and write about some of the most historic moments in American history. I think him sending out editions of his book turned out for the better; the work benefited from the critique and it also made the work at the very least noteworthy for having provoked reactions from the era's literary luminaries. Maybe the taboo surrounding some of the topics helped out.

I don't care about that really. I am awed rather by the dedication he had. He acted as if the end was self-evident, when the future is clearly anything but. Obviously, obsessions aren't equal. I clearly won't be winning any games with the deck I thought up - I'm not part of that scene anymore. But I still do have other hobbies I'm working on. They bring me joy but I can't see myself going all the way, in the manner of Walt Whitman. 

Writing in this blog does help me express myself and it has made easier writing the occasional paper or presentation. I'm doing quite well in my martial arts training, I'm up to an hour of zhan zhuang. I plan to study programming some more, Go, and Japanese. I also take the occasional online course. I'm not sure what all this amounts to, or what they will amount to. Really, I get the feeling of being lost at sea sometimes. 

It took me a decade to focus my deck to what it is now; I don't think I have the leisure to do the same for my life. It's not so much the comforts - I want to feel the forward movement, the sensation that things are changing as per my intention.

The fifth day of the eighth month of the thirteenth year of the twenty-first century - today - is a Fibonacci day. I didn't even notice.

The discussion says that this will be the last Fibonacci day, unless in the future our calendars go over twelve months.

Glorious.

One

I cringe thinking about myself years ago. It was all about one more point in the test, one more point to get the bare minimum to pass. Oh no, I failed, got to do better on the one test coming up next.

If I could just get one more card, my deck would be killer. One more book. One more hour staying up late, searching the Internet for the one thing that would make me badass.

My love didn't work out. Nevermind, the next one will be sure to be mine. The one right now is just a whore.

One more read-through, even though I fell asleep reading the course text last time.

These days I recognize that the me one second from now is someone who is not to be trusted.

Now when I train, it's always one more - one more minute, hold on. Stand for one more hour.

You only get one lifetime. Be an adult and swallow your pride. Don't give in to the monkey.

One more day until the weekend; one day closer to all those cool stuff that will be released that you absolutely have to read/play/experience. One more payday. One more thing to add to the budget.

One more wonder to discover. One more thing to learn. One less thing to worry about. One more thing that's not as important as it was before.

Playing to Your Strengths

I like writing. I've been writing since forever. I loved it when we were made to do essays in grade school. The words came easy; even today I don't really do much proofreading for the posts I make here.

Should I have pursued that instead? Maybe go into journalism or literature? I could have transferred out. I could have spent my college life learning about Hemingway and Bukowski and Kafka. I could have learned to write poems as evocative as C.P. Cavafy's or fiction as arresting as Edgar Allan Poe's. I might not have been good enough to win a Pulitzer, but learning to write better would have been a joy.

Instead of writing for computers maybe I could have instead chosen to write for people. To expose the darkness in the world, have adventures in far-off places. I could have befriended witch-doctors in Haiti or investigated hoodoo in Louisiana; I could have trained in Daqingshan or walked Akihabara. All to pursue a story, to submit a deadline.

I might have had the singular experience of contracting epic obscure tropical diseases. I could have died in a hail of gunfire, a martyr to the cause of free press.

Writing is easy for me. It still is. If I had chosen that path, how many days would it be until I realized I wasn't really that good after all? How many days until I figure out that I won't get to write what I really want? How well will I be able to handle deadlines?

Choosing mediocrity has its perks. One can hold on to his illusions and sigh, staring into the distance, thinking of what-ifs.

Ip Man The Final Fight

I really want to watch this; I heard Gillian Chung has a part in it. I'm not much of a follower of the Chinese scene, but I really like her. She had to take a hiatus but during that time she took classes and honed her craft, without even knowing if she would be coming back. That kind of thing demands respect. I'd drink a glass of Sir Walt's to her, if I could afford it. :P

Re: Sex Sells, Part Five

When I was doing Dan Ariely's Coursera course on Behavioral Economics, there were videos of guest lecturers every week. One of the speakers was Nina Mazar, and she spoke about a model called "sexual economics" - if memory serves, one of the things she touched upon (and please note that the talk was short and could not possibly cover all the nuances of her research on the topic) was how sex was used in a manner of a good/commodity. Like, how someone who beds women gets scorned because he's getting the commodity without "paying" - that is, taking care of the female in a caring, secure, loving relationship. I believe there was also a part describing where women who are in an area that has a dearth of viable mates tend to "advertise" their "availability," in some cases by wearing more revealing clothing; whereas those who were in a place where there were a lot of possible mates tended to not do so (by covering up).

Hopefully, I did not misrepresent the information too much. It's been some months and I'm sure I've forgotten a lot. The amount of negative response after that talk's video was posted was really huge. The logical discussion about the concepts presented was completely overshadowed by the emotional response of the majority. It was kind of sad for me because what was presented was a model. That it got mired in controversy effectively scuttled whatever benefit the research might have had on those taking the course.

You can still view the firestorm, by the way, the forum posts should still be up at Coursera; one need just sign up for the course to be able to view them. I have to admit that thinking about sex as a thing subject to economics kind of made sense to me. Survival of the fittest has wrought weirder things, like that of duck genitals. A male's attractiveness is also affected by how able he is to take care of his mate; and furthermore there are a lot of societies in the world who consider that women should be pure, unsullied by worldly things, and dependent. Some of these societies consider women to have some ambiguous connection to the honor of the family that they are attached to; and so perhaps in these ways meeting these societies' definition of womanhood can represent a taking up of value. 

Because the family's honor is paramount, women who do not bring shame to the family are valuable; they can be married off to other families and there is financial benefit in doing so. Perhaps they'll also use her to cement alliances. These women therefore should be taken care of - they are covered up, and no doubt about their pristine natures should crop up. This means they must be confined at home or if they need to leave the house they must be accompanied by a family member. The women's families can afford to be discerning with regard to her future husband, there's probably a little endowment effect in operation here.

When we quantify what would make a good spouse in this way and worse when so many people (male and female) buy into it, horrors are committed without regret. If the society is less conservative, perhaps it's the women themselves who are free to settle on the terms of the economic exchange.

Helpful Information

This stuff is good to remember, so I'm putting them up here. 

A Six Months Exercise Intervention Influences the Genome-wide DNA Methylation Pattern in Human Adipose Tissue - nice to know that the effect of genes can be changed to a certain extent. We should care because DNA methylation has links to cancer.

Here's something to remember while we're gallivanting; the Group Monkey Dance and how to short-circuit it.

Aspirin Helps Keep Stomach Cancer Away

Can You Pay Off Your Sleep Debt?

Why You Should Take Cold Showers

Fruit Can Help Prevent Diet-Induced Obesity

Love this. Your dads and moms and other people in your life, just what were they up to before you "knew" them?