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)