open-mindedness inaction

[From Rethinking thinking By Mark Clayton, Christian Science Monitor]

...The bad news is that even by the time they graduate, most college students don't reach the higher levels of critical thinking involving true reflective judgment.

"They're making what we call quasi- reflective judgments," she says. "Even four years of college only brings traditional-age college students to a very low level of critical thinking and judgment," she says.

Seniors do have the ability to understand that a controversial problem can and should be approached from several perspectives, she says. But they are often unable to come to a reasoned conclusion even when all the facts to solve a problem are present.

"They're left on the fence," she says. "They say, 'Look how open-minded I am.' But when pressed to say, 'What do you think about this? What suggestions would you make and what are they based on?' - that's when the process falls apart. They are unable to reach or defend a conclusion that's most reasonable and consistent with the facts." [Oct. 15 2003]

Inviting the good

into my life. Doing the suggested "visual display of things I like in my life" to keep my focus. Actually, finding pictures that mirror good vibes is fun. Do it.
Disclaimer: Not an exhaustive study. :P I was in a country mood at the time of finding these images. Damn J R fm radio. Uh.. not that I ever.. listen. to it. ;p

All is vanity and vector linux.

Vector Linux 5.1 released

Now I shall try this out on an old computer and let you know how it goes. So excited! I like this OS more for what it aspires to be than for what it is, and what it is, is a ticket to Linux Hell for those unsuspecting newbies eager to flee the grasp of windoze et al. See, I bought the first slackware install cd for version 3.x in 2002 or 2003, loaded Vector on my 1997 PII, 233Mhz, 64 MB RAM, 4 GB harddrive packard bell desktop piece of poop (affectionate term) and set it to dual boot with WIN98SE. The computer worked fine, and, although I couldn't surf the net, print, play music, hear sound at all, or set my screen to the correct display size to see what I was typing, -- Boy, was my box a memory-efficient master.

Random stuffs and Marketing 101

Hmm... I've read this article, and I am convinced that I know tons of people proficiently versed in the effective use of the Chewbacca Defense. Yeah, myself included. That reminds me of the classic marketing technique -- to make something stick in the human memory, confusion is key. Follow logical methods for the majority of your writing but then throw in a puzzling non sequitur or something perhaps slightly offensive and non-committal to end your message for that much-coveted WTF? response. Confusing people requires the artist's casually focused attention: too many left-field references and people are lost and afraid of you, too few and people are bored.

["Early signs your kid may have a problem"]

Open wide (your eyes)

Orwellian Doublethink In London

I bought this tonight for $10. Yeah mon. I didn't even have to sacrifice my virginal purity for this earthly good. Deacon kindly offered to escort me to the place of exchange in Yaletown. But don't get me wrong -- Deacon was not my escort; he was my bitch.

The weirdest era of my life thus far, 2004.

A piece of yourself in everything you do

Soul Fix for the cyclist's soul.

What does not kill me...

"True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness" - Nietzsche.

Oh, Nietzsche is my balm. Many a night have I spent cradled in his intellect.

Yes

"...one must look very carefully to see by whom, or by what, one's language, and therefore one's thoughts and sensibilities, are being shaped."

There's no other way

"There's no other way. All that you can do is watch them play."

Join in on the fun; maybe you'll poke someone's eye out, maybe you'll discover a part of yourself in someone else, maybe you'll come away burnt to a crisp by the sun's rays. But, that's fun too. It's all fun when you know it's just a game.

but not really.

last week, on a warm and sweaty afternoon in the hippie part of vancouver, i embarked on a bike ride to english bay avec mon ami, geoff. we sat on the beach and gave each other grass stains and tried to spit in each other's nose. well, he tried, and i screamed like a girl who was afraid that someone was trying to spit in her nose. i brought my new camera with me, hoping to capture the essence of people as they interacted with the world. inner and outer. that got boring after 26 minutes. geoff, with eyes aflame, began making stupidly effective alien noises to attract attention. he'd go, "blalalaalepppp" but in a higher, my-balls-were-just-nailed kinda voice, at each passerby who'd look or not look. if someone looked sideways at us, i'd shoot 'em with my camera. it was really fun and i imagine it'd be even more fun if we were ten years younger and not wearing our formal business attire. grass stains are a bitch, and so is the one i love.

Repressive Neurotic [Janov, The Primal Scream: 20 Years Later]

"A neurotic can be transformed by the illusion of reward, because that was what happened in childhood. Dangling security, love, or understanding and protection will corrupt because it anchors into unfulfilled need, the same need that allowed for the corruption in the first place. A normal person cannot be so easily swayed and corrupted because there are no free-floating unfulfilled needs to hook into. He is not overly tempted because temptation doesn't trigger a mountain of needs that he imagines are going to be fulfilled.

"The neurotic leads an exaggerated life. Need forces too much smoking, drinking, gambling, or risk taking. He either overreacts or underreacts, because straight reactions cannot be felt and measured. When one is out of touch with one's self, one's reactions are not in harmony, so one tries to act interested, excited, and loving. But it is an act.

When one's feelings are blocked away, one doesn't get much out of life. The gifts are meaningless, the trips disappointing, because "you" are always there when you travel. Nothing is as it should be. If the neurotic could take stock, he would know that he is uncomfortable, ill at ease, and dissatisfied. But so long as his neurosis works, he doesn't take stock. He just keeps on going, working, moving around, keeping busy. That releases some of the tension and makes him feel comfortable. When he breaks a leg and cannot move around, he begins to hurt. It may be the first inkling that he is not so normal after all."

Everything will come around, in time.

Today watched the Star Wars 3 movie. Liked the Jedi wisdom: Let go. Let go. Fear is a part of greed; we fear losing something. You cannot lose something. [edited to add image]

postsecret

We only judge you if you're weird.

S: "I think that the most essential thing that makes a great relationship, is the feeling that you are with your best friend in the entire world, and that you can be yourself and feel accepted, comfortable, with that person... so comfortable that you could -- though of course wouldn't -- have a poo in front of that person."

*Everyone nods in serious agreement.*

K: ...."And smear it on each other?"

S: "You know, I thought you were a really cool person before you made that comment."


The laughs never cease in this house.

These days.

"He provoked the very hostile response he so feared."

Oh, the beauty of perfection melts my eyes. It looks as though I cry, but the tears are not from me. Like the poet who sings of tragedy in love and life, I cannot take my sorrows seriously -- the poet is come undone, yes; but he still sings.

Commuter biking, not communal biking

Damn it. I don't want to be biking to work in my sweaty sexy pants with tons of other sweaty bikers. Gotta get in kickass biking condition so I don't hold up the pack on the bike path. Groupie I ain't, unless sex is involved. Hmmmm... sweaty pile of bikers with healthy bodies. There's potential there. ANyway. Wonder what time I shall leave in the morning to make it to my showerless place of employment and still have time to clean up my increasingly strong (--hopefully not in odour--) body. It's a 10-mile stretch, uphill... oh I can hardly wait. What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger... After making me weaker... But strength is perfected in weakness... Yeeuh huh. Some guy said so.

So I'm looking for a flashy jersey to wear so I don't get shmucked by a big truck whilst crossing the Burrard Street Bridge at Pacific. While that'd be pretty artwork, it's not part of my cool image... excuse me while I dance to some Pet Shop Boys... It's a Sin... Okay done. Gotta find some good biking clothes...

current mood: chipper
current music: PET SHOP BOYS - ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS

Rudolf Steiner on the Essentials of Education

... "A fundamental issue in teaching and education is the question of who the teacher is. What must really live in the children, what must vibrate and well up into their very hearts, wills, and eventually into their intellect, lives initially in the teachers. It arises simply through who they are, through their unique nature, character, and soul attitude, and through what they bring the children out of their own self-development. So we can see how a true knowledge of the human being, cultivated and embracing everything, can be the single foundation for a true art of teaching and fulfill the living needs of education."


More Nietzsche: "Regarding artists of all kinds, I now avail myself of this main distinction: is it the hatred against life or the excess of life which has here become creative? In Goethe, for example, the excess became creative; in Flaubert, hatred: Flaubert—a new edition of Pascal, but as an artist, with the instinctive judgment deep down: "Flaubert est toujours haïssable, l'homme n'est rien, l'oeuvre est tout." ["Flaubert is always hateful, man is nothing, work is everything."] He tortured himself when he wrote, just as Pascal tortured himself when he thought; they were both unegoistic. "Selflessness"—the principle of decadence, the will to the end, in art as well as in morals.—"

More still.

"Is Wagner's Parsifal his secretly superior laughter at himself, the triumph of his ultimate artistic freedom, his artistic non plus ultra—Wagner able to laugh at himself?"

Probably, sure. It sounds pretty.

so that's it

people love those who appreciate them.

Hey, I'm alive

In Vancouver now, breathing the fresh air when it's not saturated with weed air. Went down to Davie street tonight, to walk around aimlessly, and bought some nice green onions for my tuna veggie wrap I haven't yet concocted. I rarely use that word, 'concocted'. Must be the Davie street excursion influencing my preference for certain sounds.

I read a funny thing by Lynne Truss in her book of proper punctuation (Eats, Shoots & Leaves). I giggled for 34 seconds off and on:

"As with other paired bracketing devices (such as parentheses, dashes and quotation marks), there is actual mental cruelty involved, incidentally, in opening up a pair of commas and then neglecting to deliver the closing one. The reader hears the first shoe drop and then strains in agony to hear the second. In dramatic terms, it's like putting a gun on the mantelpiece in Act I and then having the heroine drown herself quietly offstage in the bath during the interval. It's just not cricket. Take the example, 'The Highland Terrier is the cutest, and perhaps the best of all dog species.' Sensitive people trained to listen for the second comma (after 'best') find themselves quite stranded by that kind of thing. They feel cheated and giddy. In very bad cases, they fall over."

current mood: touched
TV Rewires kids' brains

The Dishwasher ?

Well, I have tons of potential. I can do anything my heart desires. I can entertain thoughts without internalizing them. I know myself and my strengths. I let myself express the divinity; the core of me is free to create as I will, my will is aligned with the Good, blah blah blah. I have fun playing on this canvas. Because I wash dishes, baby!

Okay, not yet. Maybe not ever; at least not as an employee of some swanky hipster joint. But da-amn, boys -- me needs me rent money. Oh wait.. mustn't go fighting for needs that I don't really want, now... Then again: what we resist, we become.. Oh the joys of soaking baked-mango dishes. The joys of which I don't know. Do I want it? Do I want to swallow my massively huge ego and voluntarily apply for a position as dishwasher? It might be good for me, if for nothing else but to remind me that I don't want to wash dishes for a living. I mean, what would my parents think? Would anyone love me? *gasp* They would think I'm a moron; this is more material to confirm their suspicions that my aspirations are shallow and unchallenging... Ooooh the thought of it excites me.

Okay, so far this crisis has made plain that a) I am being a suckie baby OVER NOTHING b) there are things worth doing well so I might as well do them all well so as not to miss what I think is not one of those things c) grammar is for schoolchildren d) I care more about what other people think of me than I care about other people e) maybe I should slow down f) life doesn't wait for us to get things right g) so many things matter; this isn't one of them. This is a symptom of a confusion of values. What is important to me... Let's re-evaluate. All the cool kids are doing it, so why can't we? Mmm I love cranberries with taters. Don't take me seriously unless you enjoy confusion. I tried to tell ya.

I love you.

Wipe that smile off your face before putting it in the dishwasher; thanks.

current mood: Here
current music: Scissor Sisters - Take Your Momma Out Tonight