Crazy On Tap - Weight Training for confidence building

Crazy On Tap - Weight Training for confidence building: "Social niche selection begins in adolescence. Is she going to be the smart one? The pretty one? The polite one? The wild one? The jockette? The nurturing one? The arty one? The socialite? etc. Each of these has its advantages and drawbacks. Yet deciding as early as possible has its advantage too - it reduces analysis paralysis and the cost of keeping your options open.

That's the plan for most people. Polymaths can delay a few extra years. Geniuses into their middle age. But most folks look around (not-consciously, of course) and see where their resources are best spent and focus and specialize (thanks, Adam Smith). Focus is everything, motivaional speakers tell us. Imagine if our brains do it without asking us for permission.

Basically just restating sharkfish's 'Body confidence and nerd confidence are very different things.'

If she get all her confidence from her body at age 12, she will depend on her body for her confidence when she's grown up, too. That can be tricky."

Crazy On Tap - I hate this

Crazy On Tap - I hate this: "I think there's a special brand of sofabed called the Adult Children's Special. It has a bar especially engineered to become uncomfortable after a few days so that they don't stay /too/ long."

Crazy On Tap - Another noble sport ruined by panty-twisters

Crazy On Tap - Another noble sport ruined by panty-twisters: "If there was nothing for people to get morally indignant about, they'd have to invent something."

Crazy On Tap - The Economy Trends Explained

Crazy On Tap - The Economy Trends Explained: "I think inflation is psychologically necessary. Employers can reduce their employees' real wages (which is an economic necessity) without the psychological pain of actually reducing their nominal wages (or firing them)."

Why some men are more aggressive than others - Men's Health - MSNBC.com

Why some men are more aggressive than others - Men's Health - MSNBC.com: "This form of the MAOA gene, referred to as “low activity,” was associated with aggressive behavior only in men who were cynical and hostile toward others and among those with poorly educated fathers. In contrast, men with the low activity MAOA gene who were not cynical or hostile or whose fathers had at least graduated from high school were no more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior than those with the high-activity form of the gene, study findings indicate.

In other findings, differences in the serotonin 2A receptor, another serotonin gene, were also associated with a higher level of aggressiveness in men. Again, increased aggression was only apparent among men whose fathers had not completed high school. The subjects’ educational level did not appear to be related to their behavior."

How to write a hit article. By Jack Shafer

How to write a hit article. By Jack Shafer: "The Shamu story establishes once and for all that men are the new women. You can now use the New York Times to write the most dehumanizing and insulting shit about them and everybody will laugh in recognition."

Paris Hilton, Anti-Hero - She finds a niche in a crowded field of divas. By Jody Rosen

Paris Hilton, Anti-Hero - She finds a niche in a crowded field of divas. By Jody Rosen: "These days, the emotional range of a male performer is radically circumscribed: Rappers are slick trash-talkers and brutes, emo rockers are sensitive and aggrieved, R&B singers are lotharios. But pop's female superstars recognize no limits, playing all these roles and a dozen others, often in the course of a single torrid love song, all the while executing tricky dance steps with bared midriffs glistening beneath whirling strobe lights."

Crazy On Tap - If the housing bubble bursts...

Crazy On Tap - If the housing bubble bursts...: "Look around the 'hood. The less diverse the work base (be it energy in Dubai, IT in Bangalore, manufacture in Tiangin, finance in London), the larger the volatility (and the larger the risk of significant decline).

Just like any other capital portfolio.
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July 18th, 2006 1:04pm
I guess a libertarian would snicker that government is the only exception to the above rule - DC's market keeps rising because the government industry is artificially insulated from boom/bust cycles."

Crazy On Tap - If the housing bubble bursts...

Crazy On Tap - If the housing bubble bursts...: "Yes, most housing stock flatlines (sometimes for many, many years) rather than falls. There's a psychological barrier to sell something below the nominal price one bought it at. This is even more pronounced for investments which are perceived as 'real' rather than 'investment' vehicles (as single family homes are).

The exceptions pretty much prove the rule - they occur in towns which are over-reliant on one or two industries and their boom/bust cycles - finance in NYC and San Fran (late 80's), energy in Houston, New Orleans and Denver (60's and 80's again), and vacation homes in beach communites everywhere."

Language Log: Compounding the insults

Language Log: Compounding the insults: "The great rhetorical achievement of the right, as I argue in the book, is to have reformulated distinctions of class as bogus differences in consumer culture. So it makes sense that conservatives should seize on the object+participle construction, whose function to turn activities into attributes -- politically speaking, that is, you are what you do (or more accurately, what you drive, drink, or otherwise consume). Whereas when people on the left are of a mind to make sweeping generalizations, they tend to draw the distinction characterologically rather than culturally, which is why they favor extended bahuvrihi compounds like narrow-minded, hard-hearted, and mean-spirited."

Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist

Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist: "'Is it essential to women's progress that women be indistinguishable from men?' Pinker asked. 'It confuses the issue of fairness with sameness. Let's say the data shows sex differences. Does it become okay to discriminate against women? The moral issue of treating individuals fairly should be kept separate from the empirical issues.'"

Crazy On Tap - Is it okay to retaliate nowadays?

Crazy On Tap - Is it okay to retaliate nowadays?: "Here's the thing. The strategy both Israelis and Palestinians were playing was Tit-for-Tat: do whatever the other guy does. If the other guy kills, then you kill. If the other guy plays nice, you play nice.

This is the game every two countries (and even individuals) play.

Unfortunately the functor or callback for the Israeli-Palestinian game was 'kill the other guy.' Then the Israelis pulled out of S Lebanon and last summer out of Gaza strip.

Some may see this breaking of the Tit-for-Tat cycle, as an unnatural or spiritual or 'God-inspired' act. But I think the Israelis made an exception because they were just too tired. Killing is not good for the killer - it wears you down (something suicide bombers don't have to worry about).

But here's the key ... this was a one time change of strategy. Israel is still playing by the Tit-for-Tat game. But by doing something unilaterally 'nice' it expected Hamas and Hezbollah to CONTINUE playing Tit-for-Tat too, that is, to repeat Israel's last action, that is, to play nice.

Instead Hamas and Hezbollah didn't repeat Israel's last action - they didn't renounce violence, they didn't stop shooting rockets into Israel, they didn't play nice.

Is it because it takes more than one act to re-polarize a game? Is it because human memory isn't so easily erased, but is an exponentially weighted sum of the past (one nice act doesn't outweigh the sins of 50 years)? Is it because Palestinian passion is being stoked by Arab (and Iranian and Pakistani) leaders as an excuse for local problems? Is it that Hamas and Hezbollah are addicted to the pity and the international attention - like some wife-beating victims?

With its current military actions, Israel is showing that it's still playing the Tit-for-Tat strategy. This is a good thing!

Because the other two strategies - be unconditionally aggressive, or be unconditionally passive - are instantiations of one absolutist and highly unstable strategy. Untethered to real world conditions, it doesn't take much to switch from total passivity to total aggression."

'Black Swan Green,' by David Mitchell - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times

'Black Swan Green,' by David Mitchell - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times: "Even Mitchell, who takes greater formal and intellectual risks than most of his contemporaries, has said, 'Ideas are well and good, but without characters to hang them on, fiction falls limp.' It's true that you don't care about a book like 'Cloud Atlas' chiefly because it manages to analyze a century and a half of exploitation in societies from Europe to the South Pacific. But as a reader, I don't want to be without the verbal play and inventiveness of the generation that came before Mitchell's. There has got to be a way to write fiction that pays attention to people at the same time that it represents the breadth and complexity of the kinds of societies we live in now."

Where Have All the Strivers Gone? - New York Times

Where Have All the Strivers Gone? - New York Times: "It's that literary fiction is defined, in part, by its distance from popular fiction. And a crucial aspect of our whole high-low cultural system is that high culture mustn't be created for worldly gain. Which is an especially touchy subject when it comes to the novel."

Where Have All the Strivers Gone? - New York Times

Where Have All the Strivers Gone? - New York Times: "One conjecture I've heard is that modern literary fiction is just following a course set earlier by Romanticism in poetry. Subjectivity moves to the foreground; conflict becomes interior. You're not striving to best your rivals in the big wide world; you're struggling to come to terms with the ghosts of your past or the discord of the authentic self. According to this theory, nobody writes literary novels about worldly advancement any longer for more or less the same reason that nobody writes poetry about charging brigades, light or otherwise."

'Chances Are . . . Adventures in Probability,' by Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan - The New York Times - Book Review - New York Times

'Chances Are . . . Adventures in Probability,' by Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan - The New York Times - Book Review - New York Times: "In the 17th century, governments took advantage of the average citizen's inability to assess probability by selling annuities, a type of insurance policy in which the buyer, in essence, bets that he will live longer than most other people. As with all casino bets, the house held an edge. The government possessed mortality statistics, regarded as state secrets, and used them to rig the odds. It also relied on basic psychology, 'the instinctive belief that everyone dies at an average age — except me.'"

'Earthly Powers,' by Michael Burleigh - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times

'Earthly Powers,' by Michael Burleigh - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times: "While 19th-century Protestant America was searching for God by immersing itself in the Bible, experiencing one Great Awakening after another, Europe entered an age of anxiety over the prospect of living in a disenchanted cosmos. Was modern man progressively recovering the powers he once projected onto gods, building for himself a fully human world?"

'Earthly Powers,' by Michael Burleigh - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times

'Earthly Powers,' by Michael Burleigh - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times: "contemporary Europe is the closest thing to a godless civilization the world has ever known. Does this place it in the vanguard of world history? That is what many Europeans think, which is why they have been caught off guard by the challenge of radical Islam even in their own backyard. They find it hard to believe that people can still take God seriously and want to shape society according to his dictates."

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What if...

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | What if...: "The philosophical puzzle is this: Why is it acceptable to sacrifice the one person in The Runaway Trolley Car but not in The Fat Man case? Can it ever be morally acceptable to kill an innocent person if that is the only way to save many? Should some actions - such as deliberately killing innocent people against their wishes - never be done?"

'High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories 1966-2006,' by Joyce Carol Oates - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times

'High Lonesome: New & Selected Stories 1966-2006,' by Joyce Carol Oates - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times: "For those of us who have stood before bookstore shelves lined with Joyce Carol Oates volumes, paralyzed with awe, wondering which of her more than 100 books we should open first, 'High Lonesome,' a new collection of 36 stories written between 1966 and 2006, is a welcome addition."