Feel-good quote

"Why do we consider intelligence to be so important in modern life?

General intelligence is very important in modern life because our environment is almost entirely evolutionarily novel. Most of the problems that we have to solve today—how to excel in school, how to find jobs, how to do virtually everything on a computer—are evolutionarily novel. So intelligent people do well in almost every sphere of modern life, except for the most important things, like how to find a mate, how to raise a child, how to make friends. Intelligence does not confer any advantage for solving all the evolutionarily familiar problems that our ancestors encountered. More intelligent people do not have any advantage in finding mates and often have disadvantages."


From an interview by the Economist, although most of the guy's theory is crock. Reminds me of Shizen to Kagaku class at Waseda... 

Theorizing

 “Poor Mexico,” its former president Porfirio Díaz is said to have remarked. “So far from God and so close to the United States.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/magazine/how-a-mexican-drug-cartel-makes-its-billions.html?pagewanted=all

Food and retail desert in my home town, contributing to its suckiness and the greater wealth/education disparity in St. Louis. A vicious cycle, one I will analyze. Maybe I'll run for political office.  嗚呼 ,面倒臭い.

All in the context of diminishing generational socio-economic mobility. I hate this world, hate human nature.

Was angry but not surprised. Very sad seeing your estimate of someone fall over the years. Even more so, what is with the attempts to barely hide racism behind a few asian characters? In this age of google translate and increased amounts of foreign language study, is it merely the racial makeup of that person's online (and real-life) social network? Also raises questions about my own experiences of marginalization and otherance in being called "asian", in the minimization of any effects that perceptions of my race could have on expanding another person's worldview. It's possible that being too fluent in a language or cultural values, could have little or even a damaging effect on spreading tolerance, by being seen as an exception to the rule. Have I been outwardly, expressly complicit with this racism?

(Some day I'm going to find a response to the, you look like *insert random black guy with an afro and a beard* here, other than mildly passive-agressive putdowns to distance myself from the offender's interests; hope find the presence of mind to throw in a big FU before that, though.)

Also, interesting to note that Vietnamese speakers can write romanized without the accent marks and still be understood, completely foiling the modern-day translation tools available to non-speakers (especially and including automated language identification). Wondering about the extent Chinese/Japanese/Korean can be disguised this way, although it would seem that the hoops to jump through are much lower. Maybe that's just because I don't know anything about Vietnamese orthography though.

• Indeed, the above method was used by another in the conversation thread of the above-written offense (what really irked me was that there was a continued, shared conversation going on with these terms and nuances by a number of (ahem) asian(-american)s who are supposed to be among the most educated in the nation; one of whom is apparently gainfully employed at a governmental social assistance organization in one of the lowest income areas in the city [reminding myself here to save the offending comments in a separate location]), referring to heiren (romanized mandarin chinese meaning "black people" for those of you not in the know), something I probably would have passed over since the main offenders are of korean heritage and I'm just so baller at reading kanji.

Sigh. Enough armchair ranting for today.

"His small-talk alters foreign policy. He once ran a marathon because it was on his way... the most interesting man in the world." Don't know about that last part but interesting ad.

Also the Mike and Ike are gay campaign... interesting only because it brings up "gay divorce", what people don't mention when they are prominent for gay marriage. When I first saw the candy box I was so utterly confused and thought a stupid kid had scribbled all over the package.

New obsession

Central Asia... I know it's so romanticized here, but... *O*
aratamete the girls are so pretty...

Review of the advert

From NYT

 “By nature we are that kind of school that precludes you from clinging onto the past,” says Amy Uecke, associate dean of students for campus life at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis. “A wise college president said: If you come to campus and you do four or five years here and find yourself leaving with only the same friends that you had in high school, we as an institution have failed you.”


(from a greater article on skype and continuing high school relationships in college)

Morning of regrets / "多年后我才醒悟，自己当时是错误的"

Today was a morning of regrets, continued from last night.

Regrets that I never listened to anyone questioning the practical side of my degree, easily gave up my ambition to become a chemist and world class translator and interpreter, never truly explored my interests in dance and graphic design and gained practical skills, wasted inordinate amounts of time on clubs and people who don't care for me and almost never took the initiative to actively seek out and communicate with those who did.

Regrets that I depended on a JET placement for two years in a row, applied for CIR twice, haven't sent in a copy of my passport or my FBI background check because I still feel slighted by the program.

Regrets that I didn't follow through and apply to Fudan before graduating, didn't stay in Shanghai after that hard wonderful three months, have let my Chinese fall back into suck and feel conflicted when I study or interact with the language in any way.

Regrets that I didn't listen to the yearnings for emotional stability that securing my place in HNC would have given, felt conflicted fear over the role Chinese would play in my life, for thinking it would not have been such a burden after all every time I see mom has sent money.

Regrets that I find and desperately try to stop myself from thinking I've added nothing to my resume in the past few months; that "all of this" was for naught, that nothing will work out.

Regrets that, I'm stuck where I am now as who I am, with no clear path in sight except to wait and apply to schools again.

War on Marriage

Forget the questions of gay marriage and women... I want to see a war on marriage itself!
I was thinking about an argument （討論）I had with Wen about a month ago and realized that the difference in tax rate and breaks for the single and married categories might be enough to push me to the dark side :\
So mad that 1) the tax model (at least in my head/the popular imagination) is based on a traditional single-income family model in a time when so-called non-traditional families are becoming the norm, and 2) there's all these incentives in place in the US for people to marry and have children in that traditional family style, when singles  -- those without the obligations and expenditures of the married who have more time and subsequently, more ability to contribute to society -- are punished monetarily for choosing a lifestyle outside of that. (No I don't mean debauchery; I mean to maximize the ability to spend my money on books, food, games, movies, learning and travel for myself.) Gonna have to find myself an egalitarian society and learn their language and customs.

Reflections of a CIR Alternate

A few days ago I realized that I severely overestimated the number of positions that open for CIR (by a factor of 3!), thus severely overestimating my chances of getting into the program. Part of me said "Damn! I should have just swallowed my pride and applied for an ALT position,"

But the possibly stronger part of me has resigned myself to applying for some really exciting jobs instead. Got two applications sent off tonight, feel accomplished. For retrospect I've applied to a total of 6 programs/opportunities, these 2 included (haha). I heard someone complaining (or maybe it was on the internet?) about how they applied to 10 places and didn't get a job; Just thinking about shuukatsu, and the number of companies that the average person applies to... it's mindboggling, and any dedication like that in the US would be met with success. Just gotta keep my head up and keep going, things will work out.

New postings specifically related to Japan aren't popping up that frequently anymore (in particular the once-burgeoning career option of legal translation seems to have all but dried up), but I have too realized that I need to expand my search terms on that end. A lot of the same jobs seem to pop up over and over again -__-;; and some days I really am tempted to apply to one of those random hotel jobs in Hawai'i just to go to the islands...

Tomorrow's a new day, with new deadlines. Next few are on the 11th!; we'll see if I ギリギリセーフ them next time as well...