http://youtube.com/watch?v=3Dp2Zqk8vHw

Randi gives people horoscopes supposedly made by professionals based on their date and place of birth. He has the people rate the accuracy, and scores pretty high. Then he tells them that they all got the same horoscope!

Derren Brown did the same trick.

What can we learn about people from this? One thing is that they have certain sorts of broad similarities. If you talk about those areas, pretty much anyone can relate to what you say. Those areas include having a family, a love life, relatives, feeling misunderstood, and having insecurities. Those are just some obvious ones. I'm not an expert and I haven't even thought about it much. I'm sure there are others. You could learn them just by reading some horoscopes.

Despite everyone having similarities, horoscopes don't work perfectly. Another thing going on is that people focus in on the parts that seem right and ignore the ones that seem wrong. They help it to work.

That's what they do if they are friendly or sympathetic, at least. Other times people can be hostile to something and focus on the parts they disagree with. That often happens in arguments between people who strongly disagree. Sadly, it does an effective job of preventing people from learning from each other.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/21/nedu21.xml

They now teach, in school:

- "emotional literacy"

- meditation

- "channelling" negative emotions

- how to "dump" your boyfriend or girlfriend

Within the article, this is slammed:

"My view is that it is actually harmful. The more we talk about self-esteem in schools, the more kids become obsessed with their emotions and the more they have emotional problems. Children who talk about being 'stressed' play the role of being stressed. It normalises and promotes the behaviour."

The telegraph introduces the dissenting voices in an unfair way: "However, a few dissenters have raised concerns"

Considering that emotional literacy courses are *not* the mainstream, how can the vast majority of people who don't take or want them only be "a few" dissenters?

But really the worst thing, I think, is how normal breakups are. It is expected to have a lot of "broken hearts". The idea of being "crushed" when people break "commitments" isn't notable. Our society does its very best to ignore how much people are hurt by breakups, and to ignore how many breakups our institutions of dating cause.

Hi! As you can see, I've updated my blog. I wrote my own blogging software in Ruby on Rails. I've also imported all my old posts from previous blogs. Here are some statistics on the posts I gathered:

Total: 1178

Hidden: 484

Shown: 694

Rank 1: 227

Rank 2: 325

Rank 3: 148

(Rank 3 is the best. Rank 1 is the worst and is hidden by default.)

I wrote a command line program for posting to my blog, which I prefer to a web interface (but I have that too). Maybe that will mean I'll post more. It opens Textmate for writing the post, which is a much better text editor than Safari or Firefox.

Posted here

I think in the end it is better to live in a free country with a legitimate government that isn't coping well with terrorism, rather than an oppressive regime where even the terrorists are too afraid to step out of line.

I agree. Let's consider what Jack Bauer would do in each situation.

1) a free country, with a legitimate government, but poor security forces

Jack would personally take over security and kill the terrorists, thus creating a free country with no downsides.

2) an oppressive regime with terrorists too scared to step out of line

Jack would personally kill the oppressive regime, *then* personally take over security for the country. He'd kill the oppressor and the terrorists. We'd end up with the same final result: a free country with no downsides.

So, what's the difference? In scenario 2, Jack has to kill more people. Thus, scenario 2 is further away from a good, free country.

Here is an interesting example of a lack of rationality and listening:

There is a satire piece named "Top 10 Reasons Gay Marriage Should Be Illegal". It's actually in favor of gay marriage.

In the comments section, the first few people say things like, "After reading the title, I came here to flame you, but then I noticed your post actually agrees with me. Good post!"

What these "gay rights supporters" mean is that if the post actually had opposed gay marriage then, *no matter what argument it gave*, these people would have flamed it. They are interested in saying something is wrong without considering whether it's true, or makes sense, or anything, only if they like the conclusion.

This is one of the many faces of evil.

lyrics
video

This is something very popular.

There you see her
Sitting there across the way
She don"™t got a lot to say

you have no relationship

But there"™s something about her

but she's really hot (see video)

And you don"™t know why

you do. b/c she's hot.

But you"™re dying to try
You wanna kiss the girl

you might be dying to do that. or you might need to be encouraged to interpret your life that way: by friends, by parents, by this song

Yes, you want her
Look at her, you know you do

see. it's encouraging an interpretation.

It"™s possible she wants you, too
There is one way to ask her

"asking" sounds good

It don"™t take a word
Not a single word
Go on and kiss the girl

What. The. Fuck.

just walk up and kiss her. never mind consent. never mind talking. never mind that she might not want to be kissed, by you, now, in this way.

Sing with me now
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
My, oh, my
Look at the boy too shy

now it says if you care about consent, that is being shy

He ain"™t gonna kiss the girl

and it taunts you, and pressures you

Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Ain"™t that sad
Ain"™t it shame, too bad
You gonna miss the girl

and makes you feel bad, and threatens you with being lonely/alone/missing out

Now"™s your moment
Floating in a blue lagoon
Boy, you better do it soon
No time will be better
She don"™t say a word
And she won"™t say a word
Until you kiss the girl

now it denies there is any other way. nothing you can do will get her to talk to you ... *except* walking up and kissing her

the video shows people at a party, and she and the guy don't talk, just look across the room. that's intermixed with scenes of her dancing, and scenes from The Little Mermaid. that's right, this is aimed at young *girls*. they want to dance sexy and to be treated this way.

Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Don"™t be scared
You got the mood prepared
Go on and kiss the girl
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Don"™t stop now
Don"™t try to hide it how
You wanna kiss the girl

create desires about people you don't know, then be *proud* of them, and act on them.

Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Float along
Listen to the song
The song say kiss the girl
Sha-la-la-la-la-la
Music play
Do what the music say
You wanna kiss the girl

You"™ve got to kiss the girl
Why don"™t you kiss the girl
You gotta kiss the girl
Go on and kiss the girl

more pressure and encouraging

-----

"the girl" is generic

kissing is presented as very important

there is more. if you see it, write a comment.

person: regarding relationships, person2, what do you think a "good" relationship looks like?
curi42: despite appearances, that wasn't a question about looks.
curi42: she means what sort of behaviors

link

entry partly by me