philosophy :: psychology :: theology :: technology
AROUND 1970, psychologist Walter Mischel launched a classic experiment. He left a succession of 4-year-olds in a room with a bell and a marshmallow. If they rang the bell, he would come back and they could eat the marshmallow. If, however, they didn’t ring the bell and waited for him to come back on his own, they could then have two marshmallows.
In videos of the experiment, you can see the children squirming, kicking, hiding their eyes — desperately trying to exercise self-control so they can wait and get two marshmallows. Their performance varied widely. Some broke down and rang the bell within a minute. Others lasted 15 minutes.
The children who waited longer went on to get higher SAT scores. They got into better colleges and had, on average, better adult outcomes.
The old adage “good things come to those who wait” isn’t untrue. Check out this study.
Technorati Tags: Mischel, marshmallow, self-control, success
And by the way, if you get this, you’re a geek. If someone doesn’t do it first, I’m making a teeshirt.
Technorati Tags: psychology, cognition, language, linguistics, avatar, personality, Internet, geek
WikiMapia [recently] announced the creation of the 1,000,000th place. This place is Upper Room Apostolic Faith Church situated in Kansas, USA. WikiMapia is a free, multilingual, online wiki map, it allows people to mark physical locations on a map and add description in wiki style.
Check this out. WikiMapia is a collaborative map site where you can add tags to Google maps like to Flickr photos; I’ve added a few links to the Greenville and Columbia SC areas, and you can too. You just have to prove you’re human by typing in a four-digit number to confirm a Captcha verification, and you can add sites to your heart’s content.
Protect your privacy from Google.
This simple HOWTO will keep Google from logging your search history by routing all Google searches through a proxy.
Why is this necessary or desirable? Because Google has recently agreed to keep records of all searches by its users. Google is an awesome, powerful search engine; but should they decide to “turn evil,” and sell your data, they’d have all your searches saved by IP or Gmail username or both. The kinds of statistical data that could be analyzed here stagger the mind, but all that aside, you can keep them from tracking you by following the above HOWTO (I would echo it here, but the author deserves the credit).
Qana, a village in southern Lebanon, was bombed on 30 July 2006; and rescue workers were depicted as grieving over dead bodies of children. The issue at hand: are they posed? For the most thorough treatment of this issue, see the “EU Referendum” post, “The Corruption of the Media.” If true, and this is a compelling case, this is a new low in reporting. How low can we go? Is this artistic license or hideous deception?
Technorati Tags: Qana, bombing, Lebanon, photographs, misrepresentation
You need to see this.
It’s funny how true it is that perception is reality … some comments on the Digg post linked to this article have joked about how they thought the world itself was black and white till the 1960s, but behind the joke lies the truth that black and white photography, often formal and stilted or grainy and blurred, only serves as a wedge between the present and the past generations. These pictures help the WWII era come alive in stark color photography—the people depicted here are no more than human for having lived back then, but are also certainly no less.
In addition to the original link, see also a more vast archive (that is unfortunately somewhat more cumbersome to use).
It’s an old myth that you have to get fat and bulky in order to gain mass when weightlifting, even if you’re a hardgainer (if you “can eat six burritos a week and still lose a pound lol” like a guy in a recent Digg comment, you’re probably a hardgainer). I’ve found several resources for working out all based on BodyBuilding.com to help gain mass, and I thought I’d share them here, even though it seems to be somewhat offtopic for ThinkBlog (it’s not!—thinkers have to take care of their bodies in order to, well, think!).
First off, “Gain 10 Pounds in 30 Days.” Now, realistically, that’s going to be a lot of water and probably fat as well, but much lean muscle mass too—but you have to follow the instructions to the letter every day, and this strikes me as something that one would do if s/he had absolutely nothing else to do: no job to work around, no school, nothing.
“A Simplified Anabolic* Burst Mass Gaining Program” is the one I’m following presently. It’ll help you gain about two pounds of lean mass in a month without any creatine** loading, which is more significant than it sounds (especially in light of the previous article). You have to be prepared to work out five or six days a week, though, and to feel utterly destroyed physically. You really feel like you’ve earned the rest, I’ll certainly give it that. No more complaining about the simple stuff! Comes with printable training logs per day. From the article (emphasis mine):
Typically, many male bodybuilders adhere to the old school “bulk up and train down” philosophy when trying to add mass. Unfortunately, this results in a gain of a significant amount of unwanted fat which only makes it harder to maintain the lean mass when dieting down because there is so much fat to lose.
Here is a simplified, general program designed to help increase lean mass and strength, while minimizing any gains of fat. I have tested it on myself and others, and it works remarkably well and actually fits in quite well with a social life as an added bonus.
Advanced: “Hardcore 6-Day Training for Mass.” You’re considered a beginner in weightlifting till you’ve been doing it at least a year; I’m going to give the prior program at least six months before attempting this, but if you want to shatter yourself to rebuild even stronger, this would be the ticket. It’s a three-day split that targets specific muscle groups twice a week (the optimal rate so as not to overtrain). If you go this route, though, be sure to take extra supplementation to support growth—otherwise when your body is fatigued it will eat its own muscle for nutrients! (See “catabolism” below.)
Finally, how to stretch and flex for optimal growth. The human body is designed to be able to be exceedingly flexible and mobile even with enormous mass; but most weight lifters dismiss stretching as some Yoga-esque nonsense for women (or just as enormously inconvenient or whatever). This is a definitive, quick guide to stretching everything from your neck to your abs and then some. I’ve seen guys with twenty-four inch guns more flexible in the arms than I am just because I’m bad about neglecting this very thing.
* “Anabolic” comes from “anabolism,” the state of the body when it is in rebuilding-mode. When your body is efficiently converting amino acids—the building blocks of protein—into lean muscle mass, your body has entered an “anabolic” stage; if you aren’t getting enough food or are nutrient-deficient or just haven’t used your muscles lately, your body is entering “catabolism,” which is simply the opposite—your muscles are being broken down for essential energy components so basic body functions can still take place. You can be in a catabolic state even if you’re eating a lot: for instance, so much of a large French fry order is unusable by the body except as fat storage, it does nothing to replenish your vitamins and minerals.
** Creatine has taken the bodybuilding and muscle-training world by storm since 1992. It is naturally produced by the body, but your body can benefit enormously from creatine. Traditionally sold in monohydrate form, this kind of creatine needs insulin to “turn” the molecule in a sense so it can enter cells; lately “ester” forms have been researched and refined that do not require insulin. This is vastly advantageous, since creatine monohydrate is often mixed in powdered supplements with a very great deal of sugar so as to spike the body’s insulin production—but with an average of around 75g of sugars per dose, monohydrate mixes of creatine are a diabetic cocktail to all but the extremely disciplined lifter. I personally recommend BSN Cellmass and N.O.-Xplode for creatine ester supplementation (0g sugar, but beware the aspartame if you’re phenylketoneuric or react with agitation from this chemical sweetener!).
This post dedicated to CAC: training partner, friend.
I was intrigued by a recent Slashdot article asking why we don’t see any high brow video games. There’s pop music, and then there’s the classics— not just classical music per se, but even music that just sticks with a generation or several generations. Are video games able to be judged by the same criteria? Can we say that X game is really artistic and truly speaks to our generation, or can we only say that games are for entertainment, QED?
Probably the most insightful comment was by Opportunist, who said the following:
Let’s face it, though, that the computer culture is, so far, a short one. It’s a very new medium, unprecedented by anything it developed from that could be viewed as the “heritage” of it. Music developed during the ages. Even movies had their roots in theatres and plays. Computer games have nothing to draw from.
Thus they are not taken serious as a cultural element. One could argue that the junk that’s currently sold as music is at best what fast food is to cooking, but there is “good” music, maybe it’s a bit dated, but there are pieces of music that can be considered true art. And it needn’t be something along the lines of Mozart or Beethoven. A lot of “pop music” is very capable of moving people, inspiring them, it had some serious impact on our life and it even had influence on politics and the way people see the world. I’m especially thinking about music from the peace movement in the 60s, for example. Most of it can be considered pop music, but it had a “message”, it contained elements that are thought provoking, it’s not just easy listening and entertaining.
Such precedents are missing in the computer games history. And now is maybe one of the worst moments to try something like that. Making games is costy. It’s not like you can sit down in the basement with your friends and you strum your guitars ’til something with a message comes out. You need good people, with a lot of math and physics in their brains, and I do take a serious background in computer languages as granted, who spend a lot of time working out the game.
And then, nobody will buy it. It doesn’t carter the fast food generation gamers, who want a quick, fun game to rush through and then go on to the next. And, as stated before, people who are looking for entertainment with depth, meaning and message are not looking for it in computer games.
Your thoughts?
It has struck me as incredible that I’ve caught onto sales at my new job—a vitamin, supplement, and sport nutrition store—lately. Like, I believe that it’s important to be very healthy, and I truly believe from my own personal studies that X supplements can help support Y and Z conditions.
And it’s struck me how stagnant I’ve been in my walk with Christ lately. Sharing one’s faith is a natural outworking of belief; but this isn’t just some mystical concept. There’s proof in any person who is genuinely selling you something because they believe in it, because it’s worked for them. I can tell you that 4 000+ GDUs daily of bromelain, an enzyme from pineapple, combined with a few drops of sublingual oregano oil and some echinacea/goldenseal combo have helped my sinus inflammation immensely; can I not also tell you the wonders Christ has accomplished in my life? I should be able to; and now begin once again.
It’s been a long time. Here’s to new beginnings and fresh starts that aren’t mere words.
Lately, especially since the move, my circadian rhythm has been completely jacked. I mean normally it’s sort of jacked; but especially lately.
Theeeeeeere is my roommate;
He sleeps all daaaaaaay—
And blogs all niiiiiiiight!
Thanks, Andy. 
Getting some good sleep now, nevermind this time stamp, so I’m glad of that. Expect many more good things as I get more boxes unpacked and rediscover all the stuff I meant to blog about before I left the old place.
Beautiful. This is probably my new favorite webcomic, with apologies to MegaTokyo and 8-Bit Theater. Come to think of it, maybe it just ties them for first.
“This gun’s bullets will only pierce the flesh of your true love!” Genius; so is this.
Some are funnier than dark.
Some are both, admittedly.
Thanks, PJ.
A couple of months ago, I mentioned that I’d been thinking about some things that involved (i.e., were sparked by) the live performance of the Sonata Arctica song Replica. Here’s a little bit of an explanation about that; I’d like to see whether you can relate. [This is taken from hastily-typed notes from 20 June; please ask if anything’s unclear.]
The thing that struck me about this song in particular is that it’s sung in a minor key, an almost archetypically tribal sort of song that I imagine being sung for a fallen Saxon hero, especially as it is on the live album (in a way that is, of course, not caught on the studio recording; but you still can get a feel for the mournful tone, especially in the last chorus).
For me, innocence has been something of a long-lost memory; but I have gotten only what I wanted in my foolishness several years ago; I forsook the singular pursuit of the Gospel for the knowledge that can only come by pain, that peculiar fall from grace that one chooses consciously so as to Know (experientially) rather than to Believe (even if it’s the truth). What struck me about this song in particular was the sense of one’s crying over oneself, a new and less pure self still able to mourn the loss of an old “self.” “Empty shell inside of me: I’m not myself, I’m a replica of me—” This is the essence of emotional self-awareness, being able to recognize one’s own fall and to mourn it, so as to move past it. I have not been able to do that; I have not been able to believe I have been or am worth crying for, either by myself or by another. Much like Aristotle’s definition of a happy (eudaimon) life, it is only once all the deeds and circumstances of my whole life have been tallied up can I be called a “happy” person, or allow myself a blessed existence. I don’t even like Aristotle; why would I agree with him here? Yet only after I am dead may I be mourned.
A friend of mine had recently blogged about her experience that she had had, a “word of knowledge” if you will regarding her own beauty in Christ, that she had worth and was beautiful. Everyone needs and, I believe, has this experience at some point in his or her life; but needs this consistently, and to believe it is not revoked. It has been said that women need to feel beautiful; and I believe it. Women who do not believe in their own beauty and who are not consistently supported in that are driven to eating disorders and anger issues; but men need it too. Men need to know that they are good leaders, that they are beautiful and efficient, effective and truly excellent at whatever it is they are best at, whatever it is that they are trying to be. Men and women both, though, need to know that they are beautiful for who they are, not just because of what they can or do produce to be used. They need to know that there is substance to their purposes in life and that they are not “done” on Earth. Everyone who understands this dilemma and still doesn’t take his or her own life understands intuitively, if not explicitly, that there is a purpose to his or her life in just this very sense.
How does one lose this sense of being worthy of mourning by oneself or by another? For me it came by a series of decisions that I can remember beginning to add up at a Fall Retreat at my church in the late 1990s. I was still considered a “youth,” if a bit old, and I sat listening to the speaker talk about some “youth issues” and whatnot one night. There, as the sun set into a dark, cold hillside, I listened to the speaker’s illustration about romantic love. In this particular situation, he held up a stereotypically-shaped red construction-paper heart for all to see, and he showed us that giving ourselves wholly to other people when Christ should be (or have been) the focus is like tearing up bits and pieces of that heart: he ripped a corner off. “You know that girl you dated and gave too much to?”—Another piece came off. “And that friend who convinced you to smoke?”—another piece. “How about that guy you never told anyone about?”—He looked the girls over and solemnly tore another large chunk off. Eventually, he was done, and the red, full paper heart, now a foreign amoeba lying dead on the floor, was the despised bit of nonsense that dwells in the believer when he or she sins—the way I had, I thought.
I then turned, gradually, to outward confirmation. I had entered the realm of women already; but they became my sole crutch, the crux of my value. But how easily does “Thou, my beloved” turn into “Thou hateful wretch!” Much after this long-past fall retreat, a girlfriend told me she loved me unconditionally. I knew it wasn’t true, but it gave me a cold chill to think that we could all make promises like that, which would ultimately fail. I don’t believe in unconditional love from any human; to do so, in my opinion, is an invitation to destruction and chaos. Believing so, we will test, wittingly or un-; and, testing, will find that the human heart is “exceedingly wicked” and fickle, and in fact places many conditions on its love.
So the eternal love of God becomes corrupted and localized into a human being, a singular woman, whom I ultimately have disappointed; and between us both pass the tacit words, “YOU have failed ME, to whom you’ve given your heart. You were but are not; the period in which you have done me good was brief and now over.” What then of the tender moments? Burned away, leaving by the flame of tearing two souls from one another a proud and tender bitterness like char, bleeding sap on the scorched side of a tree, where blessing and forgiveness used to flow.”
How can we deny this statement power, this position of finding love in a “lover” instead of God, the Lover of Alll and Over All? We start from a position of “you were crafted in the imago Dei, you are human, you therefore have worth.”
But that becomes quickly, “You [the lover] have worth to me.” This secondary worth flows from anything that we find desirable externally in that person as it relates to us. Exempli gratia, “You are beautiful, and I appreciate your body; you are strong, and you can protect me; you are poetic, and my soul cries for someone to touch it tenderly and not with the cold blade of logic; you are literary and I, too, am well read; you are an available mistress, and my wife is too busy and frigid to have me; you are good at taking dictation, and I need a secretary.” Whatever.
Then, gradually as we recover from lust and greed, selfish pride and utter deceit, we rediscover in those things their worth for that person, purely as they uniquely manifest the Imago Dei— the way that such-and-such a person is beautiful insofar as they are made in the image of God, and insofar as they uniquely show what they are, “from” God. This happens at various rates in various areas of a person’s life as it relates to the other’s. For instance, if you are going through a period of learning about the grace and beauty of Christ in acts of service, it may strike you as particularly beautiful for me to make you dinner, whereas it would normally not.
But what of the ultimate result of the vast majority of relationships? “I love you” is answered with, “Aye, so you say now, but know you not the words with which you’ll curse me in the soon-coming day when we part company?” And so the constant knowledge that you have to prove yourself has altogether replaced the “unconditional” love of before, and the genuine, non-quote-qualitified unconditional love of Christ which has long been forsaken.
So the love of the Other is revoked. And with it, the promises, the love, the forgiveness, the grace, all human-conveyed and human-retracted. And, left alone with these pieces of a paper heart, what is one to do? Only to seek first the Kingdom, and, failing that, seek ultimately the Kingdom once one has had his or her fill of pain. Only then can we understand that we are worth something, not conditionally, but eternally. If God is love, and Love never fails, then emotion and temporal girl-boy love can’t be the benchmark by which other Loves are examined.
Here’s to regaining that sense of worth that will allow us to mourn over our pasts and forge ahead to genuinely joyful and productive futures.
Having moved into my new place with a solid roommate just outside of downtown asphalt-wasteland Columbia, I’m back on the grid. It’s been quite a nightmare getting moved in, but I’m thinking this will set the stage for better things.
The few days in which I was moving in were some of the worst, most harrying of my life. Seriously. A friend of mine had an away message on his AIM account not too long ago that read something along the lines of, “There is no worse hell than moving.” I disagreed, till that last night. It was 05:45 and I had passed over the “be-out-by” deadline by a day already: I was sweating that ammoniated, salty sweat of extreme fatigue; and alternately standing unsteadily, loading things into boxes, and becoming infuriated over the Sisyphean task before me. I had turned the A/C off in the apartment to conserve energy, but I shouldn’t have. Wisdom told me to turn it down to 60°F, but I left it as it was. Later, the only thing keeping me awake was raw anger; I wasn’t even upset about anything in particular, I was just enraged, lest unconsciousness take me.
And I agreed with my friend, there really is no worse thing to face in that sense. In the physically-taxing, why-am-I-here’ing futility of moving, one finds in his physicality the prison actualized that I pictured it to be from my first taste of Cartesian dualism in high school: just as in William Gibson’s Neuromancer, Case thought of his body as a carrier for the mind, a stupid piece of meat, so did I think of it thus; a damnable prison to be ruled over and destroyed to continue. Sleep and exhaustion became absurdities in those early morning hours, when I’d had three hours of sleep over the past 50+ and had had to present a final project in my psychology class. Necessity of sleep, like the existence of spiders, became evidence of a fallen Creation; if only I had something to block the adenosine receptors perfectly, to kill all the other physiological needs for sleep in my brain, I would be all right. But I didn’t. The authority of the body was dragging me down, and I got to the point I was slinging fists into walls, objects, freezer doors: I didn’t care, I was a poorly-oiled machine that was moving objects into boxes and carrying those boxes to the vehicle that would take them to the new apartment. What a hateful time. I was grateful that it was as short as it was. I ended up doing well in the class and moving just fine (with the help of my dear mother, who drove down to gather stuff for me as I passed violently into unconsciousness to sweat out the ammoniated sweat of someone hatefully punished by his own body).
That’s only one small piece of what made last week one of the longest of my life. It is a week that shall live in infamy; you know the kind. It’s one that’s a concatenation of several eternal days filled with strife back upon you get to look later in life and laugh, sweat on the brow no matter how hot, and say: “At least it’s not as bad as it was then.”
So thanks for those of you who wondered where I’d gotten to. I’m back, and the regularly scheduled daily-and-then-some-posts should be flowing again as of today. Note: I haven’t decided whether I’m going to backpost; but if you see anything on the main site between now and the 26th of July of this year, that’s a backpost.
Isn’t it something to find old friends online? To remember those old memories you shared, to add them to your social networking mini-site, and have them ignore or just to merely confirm a friendship…. It strikes me that this is something unique to this generation. I sneer at the designation I heard at a friend’s graduation just a couple of days ago, that this is the “MySpace Generation”—no, the last label that meant anything was Gen-X, so give it up and shut your mouth. Nevertheless, it makes me think, isn’t it funny that this wasn’t a consideration just a hundred years ago? You lose touch with people after high school, and that’s it; you might run into each other after that, but it would be considered a minor miracle, and have extreme weight attached to it. Not too long ago, a best friend’s little sister added me to one of these social networking sites, a girl I hadn’t seen in probably twelve years or so.
What is it that makes these social networking sites so popular? What is it that MySpace taps into that we’re all about? Is it the personality that we get to convey? Sure, geeks mock it, but we’re supposed to: of course these sites aren’t proper HTML, of course they’re obnoxious, of course they’re poorly designed, but they are some peoples’ only web presence. What about the good part of these sites? Behind the bling, behind the pseudonyms, behind the glittery GIFs and quasipornographic personal images lurk real people, people you and I used to know, and have forgotten. Isn’t that something?
But what good is it, and what impact does this have on the future, if any? I wonder if it doesn’t help de-romanticize our pasts. High school suddenly seems a lot less “back then” when you know what all your former colleagues are doing now, doesn’t it?
Technorati Tags: friendship, aging, psychology, social networking
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