“anecdotes”
37 posts under this tag.
Final part of Stunde Null, following Part 1 and Part 2
As I would better learn the next morning, the detention center was a nice, non-descript government building in the middle of, get this, upper-middle-class Phoenix suburbia. They take, though, such care in camouflaging that I doubt many neighbors know right next door illegal aliens are being held captive.
They searched me again, and again for weapons. They took away my book. Cops where white, some Hispanic, one of them had some arm-covering tattoos, San Francisco style. A bus was being loaded with a throng of short, tiny, Latin Americans of obvious illegality and indigenous roots, people whom you can tell just by looking that they have never eaten meat on a regular basis, faces and bodies eaten away by poverty and disease. They weren’t treated badly, what I saw was the same detached professionalism afforded to me.
The sequel to Stunde Null, Part 1
Moreover, it made no game-theory sense for me to tell the truth. The only good outcome for me was getting scott free and however increasingly remotely, that was only possible if I kept lying. Everything else was pretty much the same bad outcome. So I just played the game as long as I could. Just as they also played intimidating and antagonistic as long as they had to.
So I was happy to discover that the same ability of abstraction that allows me to read or think or program for hours on end allowed me to detach from the whole thing and treat it as a game that I had probably already lost, so why not play it for fun now? And it was, indeed, in a bizarre sense, fun—flow.
Until they got into my computer (and my iPhone). That was the part that still angers and shames me the most. Anger, because my computer is not just a tool, as it is for my father say; it is as intimate and integral a part of me as my neocortex and I felt just as violated as if they could read my thoughts and stare at my naked psyche. Shame, because I should have known better, I should have been more careful. Because I know how to protect and hide a computer (they were barely computer literate themselves, I was almost helping them troubleshoot their crappy system afterwards). I had read Little Brother for crying out loud. I should have known better.
Yesterday:
The window on the plane to Phoenix, the first stop of the trip to SF, showed the most stunning (and varied) cloud vistas I’ve ever seen: puffy, chunky, grape-y over the ocean, specks and daubs, strips and archs… We were very late yet just in time to the most spectacular, glaring sunset I can recall. The terrain was flatter than paved and the rare mountain or wrinkle were surreal, engulfed in a 3d-program plane of flatness or marred by veins that were rivers and lakes. I saw city-piercing highways from above for the first time and they were majestic and car choked. The street grid was perfect and every house had a pool. I didn’t know it would be the last time I’d look at the States in years.
It is said that Alfred Hitchcock, the great cinematic specialist in the art of frightening people, was once driving through Switzerland when he suddenly pointed out of the car window and said, ‘That is the most frightening sight I have ever seen.’ It was a priest in conversation with a little boy, his hand on the boy’s shoulder. Hitchcock leaned out of the car window and shouted, ‘Run, little boy! Run for your life!’
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p357
These days I barely even think on religion but yesterday I was skimming Dawkins’s wonderfully readable book, The God Delusion, when I found this quote and laughed out loud. It has nothing to do with physical abuse and all to do with psychological abuse. And the saddest thing about it is that it is true in its parody—the main shackles that bound us, the main horrors that prey on us, are the ones within.
There is in every village a torch—the teacher:
and an extinguisher—the clergyman.
Victor Hugo
La cultura del terror/4
Fue en un colegio de curas, en Sevilla. Un ninho de nueve anhos, o diez, estaba confesando sus pecados por vez primera. El ninho confeso que habia robado caramelos, o que habia mentido a la mama, o que habia copiado al vecino de pupitre, o quiza confeso que se habia masturbado pensando en la prima. Entonces, desde la oscuridad del confesionario emergio la mano del cura, que blandia una cruz de bronce. El cura obligo al ninho a besar a Jesus crucificado, y mientras le golpeaba la boca con la cruz, le decia:
—Tu lo mataste, tu lo mataste…
Julio Velez era aquel ninho andaluz arrodillado. Han pasado muchos anhos. El nunca pudo arrancarse eso de la memoria.
Eduardo Galeano, El libro de los abrazos
The culture of terror/4
It happened on a school run by priests, in Sevilla. A boy of nine years, or ten, was confessing his sins for the first time. The boy confessed he had stolen caramels, or that he had lied to mother, or that he had copied from the neighboring desk, or maybe he confessed he had masturbated thinking on his girl cousin. Then, from the darkness of the confessional emerged the hand of the priest, brandishing a bronze cross. The priest forced the boy to kiss the crucified Jesus, and while he punched his mouth with the cross, he said:
— You killed him, you killed him…
Julio Velez was that knelt Andalusian boy. Many years have passed. He could never tear that from his memory.
Put in the effort. ”An overemphasis on intellect or talent—and the implication that such traits are innate and fixed—leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn.” That, in a sentence, is Scientific American’s excellent The Secret to Raising Smart Kids. It’s really some of the best life advice you can get (intelligence is just a nice case example).
The result plays out in children like Jonathan, who coast through the early grades under the dangerous notion that no-effort academic achievement defines them as smart or gifted. Such children hold an implicit belief that intelligence is innate and fixed, making striving to learn seem far less important than being (or looking) smart. This belief also makes them see challenges, mistakes and even the need to exert effort as threats to their ego rather than as opportunities to improve. And it causes them to lose confidence and motivation when the work is no longer easy for them.
Praising children’s innate abilities, as Jonathan’s parents did, reinforces this mind-set, which can also prevent young athletes or people in the workforce and even marriages from living up to their potential. On the other hand, our studies show that teaching people to have a “growth mind-set,” which encourages a focus on effort rather than on intelligence or talent, helps make them into high achievers in school and in life.
[The other test group], meanwhile, focused on fixing errors and honing their skills. One [schoolchildren] advised himself: “I should slow down and try to figure this out.” Two schoolchildren were particularly inspiring. One, in the wake of difficulty, pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips and said, “I love a challenge!” The other, also confronting the hard problems, looked up at the experimenter and approvingly declared, “I was hoping this would be informative!” Predictably, the students with this attitude outperformed their cohorts in these studies.
In the growth mind-set classes, students read and discussed an article entitled “You Can Grow Your Brain.” They were taught that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger with use and that learning prompts neurons in the brain to grow new connections. From such instruction, many students began to see themselves as agents of their own brain development. Students who had been disruptive or bored sat still and took note. One particularly unruly boy looked up during the discussion and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?”
It’s a tough call, distinguishing talent from effort. Intimidation and discourage further muddle the waters. But the question is rather whether or not you want to get better. Talented or not, you will not get magically better without effort. Talented or not, you will get better with effort.
So rub your hands together, smack those lips, and join that wonderfully ridiculous schoolboy: “I love me a challenge!”
I love the anecdote because it makes the point so well and it rings so true. The statistic surpassed even my dire expectations. And yes, major labels should have acted years ago. May we learn something from their example.
IN 2006 EMI, the world’s fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.
In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before—faster than anyone had expected.
Tim Renner, a former boss of Universal Music in Germany, says the majors should have acted years ago. “Then they had the money and could have built the competence by buying concert agencies and merchandise companies,” he says. Now it may be too late.
For those armchair observers of the breathtaking world of quants and structured finance, as myself, Technology Review’s current issue carries a wonderfully didactic and gripping introduction, The Blow-Up: (pesky but FREE registration required).
“How many think spreads will widen?” she asked.
The hands of about half the smartest people on Wall Street shot up.
“And how many think they’ll narrow?”
The other half—equally smart—raised their hands.
“Well,” she said. “That’s what makes a market.”
If they didn’t know, nobody could.
Focused only in securitization, When it goes wrong, from The Economist (YubNub’s “eco“), is also a good overview and glimpse:
..it is hard to overstate the effect that securitisation has had on financial markets. Until the early 1980s, finance hewed to an “originate and hold” model. Banks generally held loans on their balance sheets to maturity; some debts were sold on loan-by-loan, but this market was small and lumpy. This began to give way to an “originate and distribute” model after America’s government-sponsored mortgage giants issued the first bonds with payments tied to the cash flows from large pools of loans.
Wall Street built on this innovation, and securitisation took off soon after, then paused before exploding in the 1990s.. It was given a lift by America’s savings-and-loan crisis, which encouraged mortgage lenders to jettison their riskier loans, and by new technologies, such as credit-scoring, that facilitated loan-pooling. Around 56% of America’s outstanding residential mortgages were packaged in this way, including more than two-thirds of the subprime loans issued in 2006. Thanks largely to securitisation, global private-debt securities are now far bigger than stockmarkets.
Answers.com (YubNub’s “a“), btw, is invaluable in navigating jargony fields like finance.
Hoy, en la fila para ordenar de Il Tavolo, que siempre es exquisito, habia un grupo de amigas que siendo su primera vez pidieron una enumeracion de lo que ofrecia el bistro. Ya para terminar la retahila menciona el cajero que tenian “tes de raspberry y naranja”. “Naranja y que?”, pregunta confundida una de las amigas (la mas bella, de cejas oscuras y cabellos claros, a la Kate Winslet). “Naranja y raspberry”, responde inmutable el cajero y sigue impasible durante la larga pausa en que la amiga evidencia seguir en ayunas. “Uno de naranja,” acaba respondiendo atolondrada.
Siguieron el resto de las amigas y ya para cuando toco mi turno habia encontrado en mi Blackberry (!) la traduccion de raspberry, que me evadio en ese momento. “Frambuesa!” Es lo primero que le digo al cajero. “Es raspberry en epanhol”. “Es lo mismo”, me responde enfadado. Pero no, no lo es. Porque con frambuesa te hubieras comunicado, con raspberry confundiste.
Lejos, muy lejos, estoy de ser un purista del espanhol o un paranoico anticolonialista (si acaso soy el colonialista…). Como cualquier amigo puede atestiguar y al igual que muchos de ellos, mi lengua materna es el spanglish y hoy en dia escribo (blogs, correos, messenger) casi siempre en ingles siempre que mi interlocutor lo hable aunque sea como segunda lengua. Pero trato siempre que hablo con alguien que solo habla espanhol de anotar mi spanglish natural con sinonimos o parafraseos en espanhol. No hacerlo, no intentarlo siquiera, es lo que me espanto de este cajero. Si no te preocupa que te entiendan, para que hablar?
Ahora que siguiendo esta logica del entendimiento la verdad es que no hay mas que reconocer que sino fuera por flojera, condicionamiento, y, si, pedanteria tendria todo el sentido del mundo sustituir blog por bitacora, messenger por mensajeria instantanea, marketing por mercadeo (la otra vez vi marquetin!), link por enlace y asi (en vez de etcetera, que es nomas latin para “y el resto…”). Hasta ahi todo va bien para los academicos pero porque parar ahi? Por que no es medico de ninhos el pediatra, medico de la piel el dermatologo, musculo del corazon el miocardio, aprendiz por si mismo el autodidacta, inflamacion del estomago la gastritis y asi?
Y bueno, ya siguiendo esta logica de entendimiento hasta sus ultimas consecuencias, por que no aprender Esperanto, “el buen lenguaje”?
I’ve seen the future. Or rather, I’ve walked on it.
After days of shopping around town (after which I can attest there is no point in shopping around, particularly not around downtown—limit yourself to your local warehouse clubs and you’ll be fine), my family finally bought a much needed treadmill.
Of course the first thing I did when we finally lugged it upstairs was build myself a walkstation. After learning about the concept,
how could someone chained to his books and computer resist?
The best makeshift base ended up being the old ironing board, which is long, surprisingly stable, and cushiony. It’s nothing short of amazing to read and browse on it and realize for yourself that it actually works, that there’s barely any tremor, and that the walking soon becomes unconscious. Slow though the walking may be, it’s strangely invigorating.
This was long coming. We will all be walking the web one day.
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