| (no subject) |
[Feb. 21st, 2009|12:06 pm] |
I read something on happiness recently that made me feel better about some anxieties I’ve been having. The main thrust of the article was that people who are happy tend to remain so, and likewise for sour people; that, barring extreme privation or sorrow, humans are inclined to, within a year, bounce back to their previous level of happiness or unhappiness.
The romantic in me feels cheated that our physiologies work to trivialize experiences we think are life-changing, but I don’t think I mind over all. It’s a pleasant thing that we have such a constitution. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 18th, 2008|05:30 pm] |
December 27:
- Depart Ashgabat at 11:55am and arrive in London at 2:55pm on Turkmen Airlines.
- Depart London at 3:25pm and arrive in Houston at 11:00pm on United Airlines with a stopover in Chicago.
January 12:
- Depart Houston at 5:25pm and arrive in London at 11:05am (January 13) with a stopover in Chicago.
- Depart London at 9:05pm (January 13) and arrive in Ashgabat at 8:30am (January 14).
Looking forward to seeing you all and gaining at least 10lb while in America. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 22nd, 2008|11:10 am] |
Question #206: Would you be willing to eat a bowl a live crickets for $40,000?
I'd be willing to eat them for a lot less than that. Even if I get ill afterwards or have to vomit again and again it would still be totally worth it. $40,000 is a whole lot of money, and this book of questions was written in the seventies, so assuming that this figure hasn't been adjusted for inflation then that's like a gajillion dollars. What would make it better is if I had an audience to goad me into taking that first bite and first swallow. If they were able to come up with a clever chant and maybe if the event were catered with insect-themed hors d'oeuvres then that would be perfect. Beyond the actual disgust factor, I'd be worried about potential diseases, so if there were any way to sterilize the crickets then that'd be preferable.
Question #207: Do you enjoy sleeping in physical contact with your lover?
If "being in physical contact" means full on spooning, then no, because the body heat is unpleasant after a while when it turns into sweat. But if it's just tangential touching or brushing of arms and legs then I wouldn't say I enjoy it in the sense that I demand it from a "lover" (can you tell this book was written in the seventies?), but it certainly is a sensation far away from undesirable. The psychological reassurance of having someone next to you while you sleep is, I'm assuming, the motivation for wanting to be in physical contact. And for me, that's enough.
Question #208: If you came upon the scene of a terrible highway accident just after the ambulances arrived, would you stop to watch? Assume that your presence would neither help nor hinder the rescuers.
Out of curiosity, if I had the time, yes. It's possible, after all, that I might know and care about the people involved. If the terrible accident turns out to be remarkable in one way or another, then this would serve me well. I could relate the story to others and share in the "I was there" satisfaction if it came on the news. I would probably say something like, "Hey I was just there! There are more ambulances than there were when I passed by." I could also warn people about the accident if they were planning on going that way. I would myself subconsciously always associate that particular area with danger, so should I pass it again on a rainy day with low visibility my brain would alert me to the potential danger of that stretch of road. I could also look onto the accident and empathize with the people injured, I guess.
Question #209: If you could script the basic plot for the dream you will be having tonight, what would the story be?You are given the chance to return to any previous point in your life and change a decision you made, but you will lose everything that has happened to you since then. Is there a time you would want to return to? If so, would you like to retain the memory of the life you are giving up even though you could never recapture it?</b>
This is a very easy question. Yes I would return to a previous point in my life and that point would be my birth. This question offers me retention of the memory of the life I gave up, meaning I could realize the wish made by The Faces in "Ooh La La": I wish that I knew what I know now / When I was younger. Birth might be overshooting it, since I only really wish to re-do my undergraduate career. Knowing now what I'd like to pursue, I'd take more advanced linguistics classes, pay more attention, take more advantage of my professors, sign up for linguistics honors, and try to attend some conferences and things like that. I'd also drink more and do more drugs.
Question #211: Would $50,000 be enough money to induce you to take a loyal, healthy pet to the vet to be put to sleep?
And I'd eat a bowl of live crickets too.
Question #212: Ignoring all financial considerations, would you rather spend the next five years confined to the city of New York or to the environs of Morro bay, a beautiful, isolated town on the California coast?
The city life is far more glamorous, so much more enchanting. And it's just five years. I'm spending two years in the wilderness right now and if I were to have any kind of Walden Pond experience, I'd like it to occur at this point in my life rather than later. Family would have to come visit me for Christmas, but if I’m “ignoring all financial considerations,” then presumably I have the means to fly them up to me. Actually, “ignoring all financial considerations,” wouldn’t I be fabulously rich? Wouldn’t I be able to buy land in Manhattan? This question is flawed. |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 25th, 2008|12:26 pm] |
so now fbook and LJ are no longer blocked from within the independent and neutral CIS country of turkmenistan
hello world |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 19th, 2007|11:17 am] |
So I had this huge post planned full of pictures of where I'm living and everything, but the internet here is slow. Maybe in a little while I will be able to access the intarwebs for a prolonged period of time so that I can UL all of my photos. I just wanted to UL like 50 photos and text and it said it would take like 7 hours to finish.
To tide you over, here is a picture of the mountains that my house faces. On the other side of these mountains is Iran.
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 25th, 2007|06:02 pm] |
Comment with your email address if you want me to email you instructions on how to mail me things or send me letters when I'm in Turkmenistan. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 8th, 2007|10:58 am] |
On the facebook homepage today, where it shows your news feed and everything, there's a little poll to the side that asks, "Pirates vs Ninjas?" Initially, my first thought was, "This shit is so tired and played out," but I thought about it a little longer and it actually got more interesting.
What interested me was how a native English speaker understands the "Pirates vs. Ninjas" proposition. It could be a few things:
1. Which would be triumphant in a fight [against one another]?
2. Which would be triumphant in a fight [in general, not necessarily against one another]?
3. Which is better [in a non-fight scenario]?
4. Which do you personally like better?
Clicking the link doesn't give any more information as to how the reader was supposed to understand the question, though it does provide incredibly fascinating breakdown of the results (women and people over 35y/o overwhelmingly choose pirates, while males overwhelmingly choose ninjas).
Personally, I thought that it meant reading #1, asking which would triumph in a battle of physical prowess. What's noteworthy, though, is that all the possibilities I came up with (as a native English speaker) were positive in nature. None of them were "Which would lose?" or "Which is worse in general?" The semantics of the "vs" operator implicates a binary choice, and whichever is chosen has a positive connotation.
Now when I say that it has a positive connotation, that doesn't mean that it must be something good. For example, if the poll were "Pedophiles vs Nazis?" then the group with more votes would be the group that people positively correlate with their shared attribute (here, despicableness). The question understood by the "vs" operator isn't, "Which is better?", but "Which has more [shared attribute]?"
[/linguisticsfilter] |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 21st, 2007|09:51 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | that Babyface and Stevie Wonder duet | ] |
Question #203: Relative to the population at large, how do you rate your physical attractiveness? your intelligence? your personality?
Above average on all counts. I'm sure you all would agree.
Question #204: Running too quickly on an icy sidewalk in front of a neighbor's house, you slip and break your leg. Would you be likely to sue the owner of the house if you were confident you could win the suit because of his negligence in shoveling the snow?
If they sued me before, probably.
Question #205: If you could prevent either an earthquake in Peru that would kill 40,000 people, a crash at your local airport that would kill 200, or an automobile accident that would kill an acquaintance of yours, which would you choose?
I learned today (from Radiolab) that there's a logical part of your brain that does the math on this moral problem and comes up with the rational solution (to save the 40,000), and then there's an "inner chimp" that gives you the primal morality that tells you to save the acquaintance. It's called your inner chimp because it's this underlying morality that's evolved over tens of thousands of years, and it screams "No no no!" when you stab someone, push someone off a cliff, or steal from a family member. This chimp morality cannot cope with things like tax evasion or internet piracy, because we didn't evolve where those things affected our survival.
That said, I would choose the 40,000. |
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| September 29, 2007 - December 21, 2009 |
[Jul. 23rd, 2007|06:37 pm] |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 19th, 2007|09:59 pm] |
| [ | Current Location |
| | inversion :\ | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | shitty coffee house music | ] |
Question #201: Do you frequently find yourself, -- just to be polite -- saying things you don't mean? For example, when you say good-bye to someone whose company does not interest you, do you say you enjoyed their company?
This question implies that doing something like this is lying. For such a thing to count as lying, it would have to fulfill two criteria: 1) You intentionally plan to mislead the hearer, and 2) You mislead them with malicious intent. Neither of these apply because you don't actually mean what you say when you say, "Goodbye, it was nice seeing you."
In linguistics, we call these kind of things phatic expressions, which are a type of speech act where you fulfill a kind of social duty in speech. It's similar to responding, "I'm fine" to inquiries about your status; no one actually cares how you really are, in other words. So, as long as people only expect your words to perform pragmatically and not carry any semantic content, I don't believe such actions are bad. I don't believe this kind of thing is lying
And so yes, I do find myself doing this kind of thing often. But that said, I do think it is a gray area because not everyone is down with this system at all times. For example, I used to get mildly irritated at people who, at the end of an event, would tell me that we would "definitely" get together at some point that weekend or that next week, and then no phone call or IM resulted. I've heard this kind of thing called "party plans", where you plan to hang out but you don't really mean to hang out at all. I didn't like party plans because, well, I really thought that we were going to hang out.
Question #202: Would you be willing to commit perjury for a close friend? For example, might you testify that he was driving carefully when he hit a pedestrian even though he had been joking around and not been paying attention?
Definitely not. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 15th, 2007|07:32 pm] |
Question #199: If you were given one million dollars to give away to charity or to a stranger, how would you dispose of it?
Charity, something that benefits HIV/AIDS research or the homeless. There'd be a lot of research beforehand to see which would be the best investment, obviously. Why would anyone give a million dollars to a stranger?
Question #200: In conversations, do you tend to listen or talk more?
Haha, probably neither.
I tend to not talk a lot in the first place. From what I can tell I talk just a nominal amount. And judging by the number of times Kristofer and Lauren have chastised me for not listening, I also don't really listen that well. I do this thing where I half-listen and fill in the rest. It works probably 85% of the time and then the remaining 15% is where I don't get the intended message. I picked up this trick from my mom.
Follow-up question: What are you looking for when you converse with people? What kinds of things do you usually discuss? Are there other things that would be more interesting to you?
Just the lulz. Also, interesting facts about the world.
If people talked about birds and language/languages I would be all about that. Also, the internet. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jun. 1st, 2007|11:22 pm] |
Question #197: What has been your biggest disappointment in life? Your biggest failure?
This returns to a theme in a previous post about what I perceive to be my inability to register things as being important. I can neither bring to mind a big disappointment nor a big failure. I can think of several regrets, like "I regret not being nice to my little brother" or "I regret not making more friends in college", but these are really general and take place over a long period of time, which, to me, is distinct from something that counts as a failure or disappointment. For me, a failure or disappointment take place in concrete spans of time; they have definite boundaries.
So my answer is I cannot think of one. I could force myself to make one up, but that might be disingenuous.
Question #198: If you could pass your whole life cared for in every way as you slumbered peacefully, entranced by wonderful dreams, would you do so?
This is too philosophical for someone like me, who has no philosophy training or background, to tackle. My first response would be something like, "Well, for all we know this hypothetical is the truth and our metaphysical bodies or platonic ideal are somewhere else being cared for by our metaphysical families and friends." -- But I didn't want to talk about the matrix. So my second response would be to talk about solipsism, but if I did that, all I would be able to do is post this hilarious Dinosaur Comic about antisolipsism (which exists [?]):
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| (no subject) |
[May. 25th, 2007|05:13 pm] |
Question #195: Of all the people close to you, whose death would you find most disturbing?
It really depends on how they die. If it's by heart disease or car accident, then that's not disturbing -- that's just normal if you're a certain age. It's no less tragic for someone close to die, but to qualify as disturbing the death would have to be either grisly or mysterious. But if your death is both grisly and mysterious, then it no longer counts as disturbing because everyone already saw that episode of CSI.
Question #196: You have arranged an evening with a friend, but on the day preceding our date a special opportunity arises to do something much more exciting. How would you handle the situation?
If the friend was someone I saw regularly and our playdate was something of a routine engagement between friends, then they should understand when I tell them of this exciting new development in my life that supercedes our date. It really just depends on how important the existing engagement is. If the new exciting thing is just a party or something, then that wouldn't hold veto power over the existing date since parties come and go. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 24th, 2007|03:20 pm] |
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This post is specifically for you to anonymously say anything you want at all about me. IP-logging is off. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 12th, 2007|02:34 pm] |
Question #192: When you are with your friends, do your interactions include lots of touching -- for example, hugging, kissing, roughhousing or rubbing backs? Would you like to have more of this?
No and no. It bothers me when people do it as a joke especially. And this is usually just Lauren and Andy doing it, and I really dislike that. It actually sort of disgusts me and I don't know why. But in normal interactions, or if people really are, like, patting me on the back or something, then that's 100% okay. Can't explain why.
Question #193: Given the ability to project yourself into the future but not return, would you do so? If not, would you change your mind if someone else could come along? How far would you go?
I'm not confident that life in the future would be better than my life is now. Plus, I have a hard time making friends and getting to know people and letting them get to know me. It would be a pain to have to do that again.
But this is assuming I'd project into the distant future. I could just project into two seconds from now. That wouldn't be so bad.
Question #194: Would you rather generally be underdressed or overdressed at a party?
Both situations imply that you misunderstood the intentions behind the party, so it really depends on how far off the mark you are. In general though, it's better to be overdressed because there's a higher chance you can dress down (take off your tie or something). There is no dressing up option when you are underdressed. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 8th, 2007|10:12 am] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Eddie Floyd and Cleotha Staples - "It's Too Late" | ] |
Question #190: Do you feel you have a lot of impact on the lives of people you come in contact with? Can you think of someone who, over a short period of time, significantly influenced your life?
I'd like to think that I'm pretty memorable once you get to know me, but it's the getting to know me in real life that's more difficult. I can't say for certain, though, because I don't have an outsider's opinion on myself. Judging from the amount of people from my past that add me on facebook/myspace, I'm in the middle to lower end of memorability. In terms of impact, it's hard to say. I've been conditioning myself for so long to believe that, when in the Peace Corps, I won't have any lasting impact -- that way I don't go in with any delusions of saving the world, much less one community.
Someone who has influenced my life recently would have to be my phonology professor from last semester and my current research professor, Dr. Megan Crowhurst. I felt that in her phonology class I learned the most linguistics I've learned in any of my courses taken. It might have been the case that, at this point in my undergraduate years, my knowledge has amassed to a point where I start to see connections and applications, but she was an inspiring teacher and I'm glad to be working with her this semester.
Question #191: Would you rather be happy and slow-witted and unimaginative, or unhappy yet bright and creative? For example, would you rather live the life of a brilliant yet tortured artist like Van Gogh, or that of a happy care-free soul who is simple-minded?
Happy and slow-witted, I think. I wouldn't know what I was missing. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 17th, 2007|11:27 pm] |
Question #187: If after eating at a nice restaurant, you got the check and noticed the server left off an item, would you tell the establishment?
Yes, because it's dishonest if you don't do so.
Question #188: Do you establish routines in your life? For example, do you sleep in the same place in your bed? eat at the same places?
Doesn't everyone do this? It's unreasonable to try out a new place to eat every time. You go to the places you know you like or that you heard were good or you think look interesting. You sleep in the same place in your bed because, more than likely, there's a limited amount of configurations available. I'm glad I'm almost done with these questions (there are only 200 total).
Question #189: Can you be counted on to do what you'll say you do? What does it take for you to trust someone?
Jesus Christ. If anything I want to be known for as a friend or family member or employee or student or anything, it's that I'm reliable. It's a characteristic I value very highly, and I cannot stress enough how highly I value it. I hate it when people are late or don't tell you ahead of time about changed plans or just take their time with everything. My time is valuable to me so you should respect that. This really gets to me I'm sorry. I'm very sensitive about this particular aspect of social politeness. That said, it takes a lot for me to trust someone. |
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| (no subject) |
[Feb. 4th, 2007|06:17 pm] |
Question #185: What sorts of things would you do if you were as outgoing and uninhibited as you wished? Do you usually initiate friendships or wait to be approached?
I would probably have few friends because if you say everything that's on your mind you end up reading like a 14-year-old's xanga. It's my opinion that you have to have some discretion and a heavy filter or else some asshole like me is going to be critical of you.
I definitely wait to be approached for friendships, and most things. Fear of rejection, not wanting to seem desperate, don't wanna come off as overfriendly.
Question #186: If you decided to do something and your friends strongly advised you not to, would you still do it anyway?
Probably not. I think I value what other people think too highly. The more personal the issue, though, the more I'm more likely to do what I think is best, other people's opinions be damned. |
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