more porno

A study done measured effects of short-term exposure to pornographic material on the interpersonal relationships between men and women. Both men and women were exposed to films for 11 minutes, then paired into male-female groups and asked to do a problem-solving activity together. During the activity, the behavior was videotaped and analyzed. The results of analysis were

The experimenters found that men who viewed the sexually explicit films (both erotica and pornography) showed more dominant behaviors, touched their female partners for longer periods of time, and ignored their partner’s contributions more often that males who viewed the news clips. Furthermore, men in the pornography condition interrupted their partners more and showed more anxious behaviors than those in the other two groups.

The result that was a bit more worrisome was

Female participants were blind to the first portion of the experiment. Results showed that women’s behaviors correlated highly with their male partner’s behaviors. Women whose partners had viewed sexually explicit materials showed similar levels of anxiety, physical proximity, partner touch, and gazing as their partners. This behavioral matching, argue the researchers, is particularly notable. It suggests that women are affected by a partner’s use of sexually explicit material, even when they are unaware of such use.

It seems interesting here, as well, how people can have more influence than they'd imagine normally. If this is true, they would probably feel extra responsibilities in response to knowing what they could do. A simple example could be how the behavior of parents change knowing that their lives are intimately tied to their children's lives. This goes against a common myth nowadays that pornography and similar things "are ok since they doesn't hurt anyone". However, from the opinion of this one paper, it does seem like this behavior bears noticable effects the principal actor and, more importantly, the people he interacts with. It's hard to know if those effects could hurt or not.

From a Christian point of view, it offers a new dimension into what it means for a man to be the "lead" or the "head" in a relationship as well. I haven't done enough thinking and reflecting on what this might mean, but I have a few cursory thoughts on it. I've heard sermons describing this lead as a sense of responsibility for the woman's spiritual life as well as your own - this would extend and tie that responsibility not only to her's but your spiritual life as well. Pornographic effects would then also extend to interactions between platonic friends (or "brothers" and "sisters" in Christian lingo) - how would "guarding your heart" or not "being a stumbling block" change with this in perspective? Furthermore, in this study, the partners were simply college students randomly paired - for a married couple, I could imagine significant differences. I don't think I know enough about "two becoming one" to comment on this yet though.

The source for these quotations is an interesting set of articles (available here), from a conference at Princeton. I've only read two so far (Neuroplasticity and Acquiring Tastes/Loves, and Pornography's Effects on Interpersonal Relationships), but they're interesting, and they flesh out a lot of points I heard brought up back in my last post on the "Price of Pleasure" pornography documentary.

a peek into my manga

Since I'm pretty bored this winter break (having no immediate work to do and all), I've been reading and re-reading a lot of manga. A list of a few of my favorites that I've read over the last year for anyone that cares, along with a one-line synopsis/spoiler and review.

"best overall"

1. Emma.
   
   synopsis: the manga follows a frowned-upon Victorian romance (set around the time of the industrial revolution) between a noble and a maid.
   
   this is one of the few series for which I'd recommend the anime as much as (or more than) the manga. The reason for this is that the anime forces the viewer to progress at its pace; calmly, slowly, but deliberately. It's a much quieter, refined romance novel than the chick-flick-esque shojo romances that litter most manga bookshelves today. not only that, the drawings of London's cities are fantastic, and a fair amount of attention is paid to the actual historical details of the culture and traditions of the time. Last but not least, the romance between the characters fits in as the last piece of the whole puzzle. an excellent read.
   
   
2. koukou debut.
   
   synposis: super-enthusiastic girl tries to find a boyfriend and discover what its like to have a relationship.
   
   this goes under the "i am embarrassed to read" category too. however, I liked it enough to put it as one of my favorites. it's a romance manga, and yes, its target audience is probably something like the teenage girl crowd. HOWEVER, the group of people that would enjoy this series goes far beyond adolescent females. it manages to pull off both laughs (and i kid you not, this has some very witty and perfectly-timed comedic scenes) and tears (and there's a fair share of touching moments here too) in a way that moves me even as I re-read it.
   
   this also makes this "best overall" list because one scene was good enough to inspire me to write and record a song off of it. read away =P it's not too many chapters in.
   
   
3. yokohama kaidashi kikou
   
   synopsis: this manga follows the day-to-day lives of Alpha, a female robot who runs a coffee shop in a futuristic world, and the friends that she makes as the story progresses.
   
   this is one of the few slice of life mangas that I really got into and didn't just read to pass time. in case you don't know, slice of life mangas present the ordinary lives of ordinary people. this one is interesting - the setting is post-apocalyptic, but the manga is incredibly uplifting in a quiet type of way. the atmosphere about the characters and setting is a quiet, serene optimism, like a futuristic countryside. unlike a lot of poorly-written mangas that make you feel sick after going through a few chapters, this one is a great, calming, and charming series that leaves the reader feeling like they haven't wasted the last few hours staring at a computer screen.
   
   
4. eyeshield 21
   
   synopsis: a high school boy whose sole outstanding skill is running away joins an american football team of misfits that goes from underdog to champion status.
   
   to me, this is the best sports manga out there. it falls into some sports manga cliches, but overall, the manga is not just about the lead character. it really builds and draws you into the whole team, and even the different teams of the whole country as the story unfolds. plus, it's about american football. how cool is that?
   
   
5. angel densetsu
   
   synopsis: a boy with a heart of gold has the scariest face ever, and ends up inadvertently (and unknowingly) becoming the head thug of his school.
   
   hilar. absolutely hilarious at times. do not let the crappy art in this manga scare you off. sure, it looks weird, but the scenery is actually incredible (and the guy who drew this later draws "Claymore"). this is one of the most amusing mangas I've ever read. sure, the entire series is based off of one gag, but in the early chapters, the novel of that gag is hilarious, while later, there is actually good character development and progression in the story.
   
   
   
   
6. yankee-kun to megane chan
   
   synopsis: ex-delinquent girl wants to become a model class representative, enlisting the help of a less-academically inclined boy delinquent. he is dragged along as she helps various people in the school.
   
   this one's interesting. I can't really categorize this into a genre comfortably, and its lead character is really unique in a lot of ways. It actually took me a while to get used to the fact that the main character girl, though she looks smart, is quite the idiot =P. a very funny series that's not too light, not too heavy.
   
   
   
7. hajime no ippo
   
   synopsis: kid learns to box and fights in lots of matches. pretty simple.
   
   if you think Naruto or Bleach or One Piece have gone on too long, look at this one and reconsider. at over 800 chapters, this is longest running manga ever, and for good reason. it's great! with Naruto/Bleach/One Piece, while characters may get stronger and learn new things, the fights and stories typically remain about the same (hero fights, gets beaten up, soul searches, finds new strength and wins). however, hajime no ippo's storyline - while it may seem the fights follow the same sort of progression - is much more developed and well-written than most sports or fighting mangas. a long but good series with very human yet very admirable characters.
   
   
   
   
   

"mangas I really like but am kind of embarrassed to have read"

1. midori days
   
   the guys girlfriend is literally his right hand. more specifically, on his right hand like a hand puppet, with her soul transplanted there from a comatose body by some cause that's never explained. though he's aggravated at first, she grows on him (haha pun intended). it's weird, but a fun and (at times) a fairly touching manga.
   
   
2. umi no misaki
   
   apart from some (very blatant) pages of fanservice in each chapter, there is actually a fairly nice story to this manga in the first few chapters (though it's beginning to seem too much like a harem manga now =\). a cute story involving an isolated island's tradition, religion, and the people that grew up in it.
   
   
3. one piece, fairy tail
   
   these have got to be the two most amusing and entertaining action mangas I've seen. I really like the art this guy does, and the stories are really moving to read, though I feel like a little kid after I'm done reading them.
   
   
4. bleach, naruto
   
   I feel like the equivalent of an indie snob with manga - if it's really popular with a lot of people, I start to lose interest. Or maybe it's just that I've followed these two mangas for so long without seeing much real development that I'm getting tired of them. I still can't give them up without finishing their story though. I'm sure you all know the stories behind these two already.
   
   

reflections on home

First of all, I changed the format. this is still the same blog, but my entries became too long lengthwise, so I made the margins wider.

to go along with Henry and Peter, I've been giving home and parents a lot of thought. it's really nice to be home - living basically alone in a new city without a real solid social group has made me appreciate the company of family a lot. but even more importantly, like Henry, I feel I've grown to appreciate everything my parents have done a whole lot more. Unlike most of my friends, I don't have college loans - because of them. I've had opportunities to develop my interests in a whole bunch of different areas - because they paid for lessons, drove me places, bought me equipment when I needed.

Interestingly enough, even though they don't go to church, I feel they've taught me a lot about life, which in turn has made me reflect on my own theological thinking and worldview. They were always more realists and pragmatists than I, and they always seemed to have an appreciation for how complex the world was. As I move away somewhat from the simplified, idealistic view of my childhood (and half of my college years), I'm beginning to appreciate how they adapt to changes and are flexible.

I like having an idealistic, grand goal - college graduation, a PhD - but my mom and dad remind me that the job market requires more than just pure credentials, that there's a lot more to living than simply focusing on one thing. Missionaries speak of a similar thing; God's purpose may be one thing, but letting their mission work dominate their lives seems to be a common struggle. There's family, your hobbies, interests, etc - things to do and places to see that might not have anything to do with achieving a goal, ends, or purpose. It's hard to describe, but I get the feeling that life isn't just the straightforward quest I thought it was, where I discover God's purpose and am driven by it for the rest of my life like some adventure story or manga. Things are more integrated than that - there's the excitement of a goal, but also times of aimlessness. Clarity, but more often clouded messages. In every heart, sin, but also good.

It's been good to be home, but I constantly worry about when i'll go back. I like it here; it's comfortable, we're happy, and I feel much more stable than I was in Austin. Yet, there's always an unsettling fear - I leave in 2 weeks, but what about after that? Before I go to bed, I worry how I'll deal with my parents aging, with the idea that someday, they'll leave me too? I've never had a fraternity, and though I have close friends, they're not family - nobody can replace family. It was so difficult to have just a 1-month relationship removed suddenly; if any of the family I've known for years and years leave, how will I ever deal with that then?

I hope that someday I'll start my own family, build my own house and memories and close relationships like this. But until then, I'm scared that someday, I won't have a place to come home to.

America's Christians in Newsweek reactions

I think something is very strange in America. Granted, I think a lot of things about America are very strange, but recent reactions over the Newsweek article on gay marriage have made me concerned about a few things. To say there has been a torrential wave of angry letters and defensive responses to Lisa Miller's article on gay marriage would be somewhat of an overstatement. However, I've yet to see a single response to any of Lisa Miller or Sharon Begley's articles concerning skepticism, and naturalistic materialism.

I found an article in Newsweek called "Why We Believe", where belief in the paranormal is explained in a naturalistic fashion through evolutionary processes. While it doesn't directly claim God's existence as false, the article (and other similar ones by the same authors) imply religious beliefs are motivated by similar evolutionary processes. Arguments like these are used by Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, Harris and others to argue that, since belief in God is explained away by evolution, the denial of the existence of God is bolstered and believers are idiots.

Yes, Christians take time to respond to Dawkins and Co., but in their case, they were, in a lot of ways, asking/baiting/challenging for a response. Or, at least, they were making direct attacks on all of Christianity and its representatives. If Christian belief can be defined broadly to be a belief in Jesus as son of God (which still leaves room for some liberal Christian theology), then neither naturalistic materialism nor gay marriage directly attacks Christians in the same sense that the New Atheism does.

However, it seems that it's possible to reconcile belief both in Jesus as resurrected and in the gay marriage. It seems a little more of a stretch for most people to believe both that God exists and that nothing exists apart from matter (which a stronger form of materialism, now popular cultural thought, advocates). From a different angle, many pro-gay rights activists do not object to Jesus and the idea of God but to the way churchgoers interpret the life of Jesus and its supporting documents of Scripture, while more secularists, naturalistic materialists, and skeptics object to the idea of God itself, let alone Jesus as resurrected God.

Does it seem kind of strange here? It's almost as if American Christians are more interested in defending their interpretation of a specific doctrine than they are of defending the existence of God. Perhaps they believe the intellectual denial of the existence of God isn't a serious issue (though the past two popes have deemed it a matter of high importance), or that Dawkins and Co. can simply be dismissed as lunatics who won't make a difference (though they have garnered a large number of active supporters). Either way, it seems as if American Christians are missing a huge point here.

I hope nobody takes this as anti-scientific or pro-paranormal, or even anti-naturalistic. If naturalistic causes don't determine the way the material cards fall, mathematical modelers have built their careers (and my current education) on shaky theory. In addition to this, there is a lot of iffy thought built on the Greek notion of mind-body dualism (such as an immaterial heaven and a ghostly immaterial soul), while a more materialistic view of the world may actually give a reason for a Biblically-endorsed physical resurrection (see Malcolm Jeeves). Neither am I saying gay marriage is not a worthwhile point to respond to (especially considering the iffy way Lisa Miller quotes the Bible).

The point is that, even though gay marriage may not be biblical, that's more of a debatable point, and not central to Christian theology, whereas "God does not exist" might be a little more directly contradictory to any confessing Christian's views. Yet, responses from Christians in America to the first point drown out responses to the second.

I'm beginning to understand Mark Noll's beef with the development of evangelical thought in America now (see post on "Scandal of the Evangelical Mind"). Returning to the Newsweek articles, I get the feeling that American Christians would argue about gay marriage to the expensive of thinking heavily about an article that claims belief in God is explainable away by evolution. I get the impression that the lack of Christian reflection on the second point is a grave mistake, seeing that it is rapidly characterizing popular thought in America. It's not a stretch to imagine this fomenting a more atheistic trend of thinking in generations to come.

This was sort of a rant and spur of the moment thing, and I apologize if I don't make much sense (I'll clarify if I can). A more well-thought blog post is to come later, hopefully relating this to the larger problem of a lack of evangelical thinking on issues that influence culture in America.

bills

I am fairly worried about my future now. Apart from the obvious worries of "how will I find a job" and "where will I end up living" (I guess "will I ever get married" is a question up there as well), I am now worried about "how will I keep track of things". I'm able to keep organized short term, but in terms of long term records and keeping track of things that don't immediately concern me, I am really bad.

Case in point - after moving around from Houston to Fountain Valley, CA and then to Austin, I have a bunch of mail arriving at all these different places. Since I hadn't been to either other address in ages (and that I didn't forward all my mail to Austin), I found out I've had two outstanding debts that I hadn't paid lingering around since the start of the semester. For both, I have sent checks in - one apparently bounced, the other was apparently ignored by the company. I'm beginning to wonder if companies even use emails to contact people at all.

Time to buy a file cabinet and start trying to stay organized. Geez, I don't even know where my social security card is right now.

Christmas song

Hi guys, here's a song I wrote for the Christmas season inspired by a good read =) hope you enjoy it. I'm still learning how to sing jazz, so it's kinda weird at times, but I hope you all like it

Our Christmas

Staying outside in the cold
Has never felt
So comfortable before
We're trying to keep warm
With arms intertwined
And my hands in yours

Huddled with two in one coat
The warmth of your laughter
On my frozen nose
And I could swear that you glow
The way that your eyes smile
As I hold you close

Snowflakes drift down to the bench where we sit
In the park by your house where we spent our first Christmas with
Cold cheeks and cold fingertips
And only the faint warmth
Of breath from your lips

On mine, your head turns towards mine
Searching for me through the hair
That covers your eyes
It's strange, I'm being drawn in
And I can't resist,
Or I don't want to try

Too late, no time to think twice
Now that your lips have somehow come
So close to mine
So I breathe in and close my eyes
Knowing you've closed them too
On this cold winter night

If you want to hear the rough recording, it's on youtube now under Our Christmas. Quality is terrible for some reason, so I put an mp3 up on my old site. An extra update as well - I re-recorded Things About You. Unfortunately, in both recordings, the room I recorded in was very reverby and didn't give very professional vocal sounds.

updates

I have recently noticed signs that I may be identifying reality with my mathematics coursework a bit too much. A few signs (I'll post more as life goes on)

1. A friend and I talk about Christ's coming (both into our lives and physically into this world) changes and redefines everything, or redeems everything. I make the analogy: just like the way our understanding of R^n is changed completely and fleshed out by general topology.
   
2. I see a picture of 3 Taco Bell hot sauce packages, one hot, one fire, one hot, in that order. HFH if you might. For some odd reason, this strikes me as a finite-dimensional projection of Fire onto the Hot (I guess I assumed the second H was transposed by mistake).
3. There is a joke going around the office (related to me somehow) about "compact support" girl. Support in this case has to do with the idea of a woman's chest support. Compact support is a mathematical concept describing basis functions.
   

And on and on. A lot of these happened tonight, where I attended an Episcopalean friend's church event - Theology on Tap. The topic of the evening - some very excellent Pinot Noir and the Advent. It was neat to see into a whole different world - I'm slowly learning of the differences between American evangelicals and other world churches.

In other words, I have now had an (almost) complete home recording studio set up in my room.
Here's a little glimpse of the whole thing (minus the studio monitors that are on my desk). I never imaged home studios would be such a mess. However, I have gotten some good recording done...so just you wait! The next CD will be coming out soon. And it will (God willing I finish recording this song by December) the most romantic Christmas song you've ever heard in your entire life.

Yes, I also may have a few too many guitars lying around.


I'd also like to welcome the newest members of the Chan guitar family - meet PRS and Danelectro (who have yet to recieve actual names).

On the left here is PRS - recently acquired on my last trip down to Houston. I started recording with it, and it does great both for pop-rock (Things about you) and jazz (that romantic Christmas song I mentioned). It's a semi-hollowbody, but with a smaller cavity than most guitars, so it proves very versatile.



On the right is a much more interesting case. I actually had a friend in high school give this guitar to me after finding it at a garage sale. He had gotten it for free. I'd like to say it's a priceless relic, but it turns out it's a fairly cheap guitar pricewise (only $300ish). What's odd about it is that it's made out of masonite and cheap particle board. However, it has somewhat of a cult following because it sounds amazing and nobody knew why! Turns out, it's also a semi-hollowbody, and the pickups are unique, but the great sound is still somewhat of a mystery. Ladies and gentlemen, the Danelectro U2 Reissue

More to come later. Last day of classes tomorrow means I hopefully have some more time to reflect and post on more enriching topics.

reading materials

I've been reading a fairly excellent book recently (stolen again from Pat Hastings - sorry, I'll give it back soon). Mark Noll from Wheaton College wrote "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" quite a while back, and it's been an influential work on the history and current state of the minds of American evangelicals. Think of it as a commentary on the development of the mental habits American evangelical Christians often exhibit.

The book is (so far) largely a constructive criticism towards habits common to evangelicals (for example, individualism, populism, preaching for an emotional response, urgency of action over thought and deliberation, etc), but so far the real strength of the book has been documenting how these habits came about, and in fact, how these tendencies saved Christianity in America at different times in this nations history (though many became weaknesses over time). Two particularly interesting notes are how the separation of church and state may have ultimately led to the "consumer church" culture, and how the Conservative Right became identified (and disliked) so closely with evangelical Christians.

Reading the history of how the evangelical movement developed is like seeing the Ecclesiastical quote "there is nothing new under the sun" being fleshed out with old examples that parallel modern-day church/sect movements. I'm only at the start of the second section, page 72, but it's been a very rewarding read so far.

Hope everyone had a good thanksgiving =)

nick trefethen is funny

Interesting note - problem 21.5 in Dr Nick Trefethen's book "Numerical Linear Algebra" is hard. My prof assigned it to us on accident, but realized soon afterwards that it was basically an unsolved problem. He emailed Trefethen, asking him about the problem in his book, and Trefethen's reply was (almost verbatim)

"Dear me, I have no idea what I was thinking when I put that problem in the book!"

Heh.

porno porno PORNO

There. Got your attention, didn't I. Extra points if you can tell me what the title is a quote from.

But no joke, I watched a documentary tonight called "The Price of Pleasure", hosted by a bunch of groups (the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies, the Radio-TV-Film Department, and the Senior Fellows honors program of the College of Communication of the University of Texas; the student group Texas Feminists; and the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault.) The intro (abstract?) for the film

Critics of pornography have observed two trends in pornography in recent years: Commercially produced sexually explicit material is more mainstream and normalized than ever, while at the same time it has become more overtly cruel and degrading to women and more racist. Why is that, and what effect does it have on our ideas about gender and power, sexuality and relationships?

To explore this question, the documentary film “The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships” investigates three aspects of the pornography industry — production, content and consumption — to help gain a deeper understanding not only of the material but the larger culture in which it’s produced and consumed. The film includes interviews with pornographers, pornography performers, and scholars in psychology, media, economics, and popular culture. Men and women candidly discuss how pornography has affected them and their partners. The film examines pornography’s effects on the performers and audience, moving beyond liberal celebrations and conservative denunciations to engage a nuanced discussion of desire and harm, choice and system constraint, liberty and responsibility.

It was definitely a documentary to make you think about things, and it makes a large difference when taking erotic material to remove it from the private sector and put it under scrutiny for a large group of people to examine. In light of the social commentary that Vox (my church in Austin) puts on everything, this was an especially relevant topic when discussing racist and sexist content that emerges in pornographic material and its impact on popular culture in the past and present. Interesting note - the filmmaker is Chyng Sun, a Taiwanese woman who came to the US at 30, and her observation as an outsider to US culture brings out points I probably wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

Here are links to both the website and the trailer. A word of caution; the trailer is fairly graphic even when censored. If anyone would like to borrow the DVD, I also have it and would love to watch/discuss it with you if you're ever interested.

pretty humbling

An excerpt from an interesting old article - a computer scientist attempts to quantify in bits about how much information a human being can remember. After running a long set of experiments, the result he comes up with is that

The remarkable result of this work was that human beings remembered very nearly two bits per second under all the experimental conditions. Visual, verbal, musical, or whatever--two bits per second. Continued over a lifetime, this rate of memorization would produce somewhat over 10⁹ bits, or a few hundred megabytes.

Kind of interesting. If the brain is a computer, it is a completely different type of computer than the ones we're used to.

Full article at http://www.merkle.com/humanMemory.html

I have developed a whole new level of respect for Christian music because of this

breaking news

Breaking news!!

I'm not sure if I should laugh or cry about this. I found this article after reading another one about past discussions on whether or not Texas might split up into two states.

credit where it's due

I had a facebook binge tonight, where I looked at one picture, and ended up scrolling through about 500 pictures where I was tagged. With each picture, I saw a scene, a memory, an event of some sort, and was able to relive it and recall it pretty clearly. As I did so, memories of other people popped up, and I felt an intense longing to connect with a lot of these people that I hadn't talked with in a while. A few I did; the rest, I hope to.

But, as the title of this post says, I have to give them credit where it's due - walking back through these years makes it clear to me how much I owe these people that appear in my life, in terms of any character development I might have made, in terms of the fun I had, in terms of things I learned. For many, I wish I could write a long letter to them telling them the specific ways in which they impacted me and the reasons for which I remember them.

Eventually, I have to go to sleep (which I plan to do after this blog post), but these pictures and reminiscing kept me up for a good 2 hours. So if you had anything to do with me during my last 4 years and summers, there's a good chance I remembered you in these last two hours, that I wished you were still close enough for me to just walk over and talk to you, and that I thanked you for the ways you changed, taught, and influenced me in my time with you.

depressing comic

As of today, after seeing this comic, I am severely depressed and have lost all faith in people.

an open confession and an open question

I have had my ego crushed once again. I confess two things. One, I hate expectations - it feels like the very existence of an expectation of me adds pressure. Laura Rabalais made a comment once that I tend to be very good at false modesty. In every single one of my "talents" (guitar, math, cooking?, etc), I have found people whose skills surpass mine, by which I measure "talent".

So when someone introduces me as a great bassist (or whatever), there's always a moment where I freeze for a second and hope that the people listening aren't themselves great bassists (or whatever), or they might see right through me and know that I'm just a fake who deceives people less knowledgable on a subject. Yet, I still thrive on compliments - I like to surprise people and show them I'm more than what they'd expect.

Two, I have a very difficult time moving past a failure. I've noticed this in small ways, like when I make mistakes on tests or homeworks. If it ever happens to be that the mistake is a stupid one (which happened recently with a test), I tend to obsess over it, suddenly lose drive over everything. It happened at Rice a lot; however, it probably showed most clearly when my first real dating relationship ended. For the next year (and possibly even longer; I kid you not), I'd obsess over what I could have possibly done differently to change the course of things, so much so that I feel I've changed my views on relationships because of this.

In other words, I have issues with not exceeding other's expectations. I feel like I'm being cheated when other people see me on an off day, and in the chance that my best doesn't stand up to someone else's skill level, it's usually ok because they saw me at my best and usually my best is above what they'd expect of the average person. But failing to live up to what people expect of me makes me feel like I've failed a qualifying exam to be accepted, noticed, or to be part their lives.

Somehow, I can't seem to accept that, for some people, my character and my person are more than just the sum of my actions and abilities.

-----------------------------

Now for the open question. Are the existence of transcendent moral imperatives and the existence of God necessarily mutually exclusive? i.e., can there be a moral law without a moral lawgiver? I read a blog argument where a commenter noted that concluding God from moral law is simply pushing the question back a step. Quoting his comment

Why can’t morality just “be”, in the same way — to your mind — God just “is”? i.e., If God doesn’t require an explanation/origin, then why should morality?

Thoughts?

safe

I find I'm writing songs again. They're much different than the ones I used to write. In retrospect, I think those old songs were meant most of all to elicit a certain type of reaction and response (from girls), and to have them think I was a certain type of guy. Granted, I believed that was who I was, but I think I tried extra hard to show everyone else I was the shy, romantic, slightly nerdy, super enthusiastic type of guy.

These new ones seem different. When I wrote my old songs, I wrote them in a lighter mood that could be described as daydreaming, imagining scenarios that I would base a song off of. These new ones seem a heavier; maybe just a little less light. For example, I wrote about a first kiss - a little less creative than my previous songs about girls, but probably a little more mature in content as well.

I also started writing a song "Safe" - the words just sort of came out on their own, and I never imagined writing a song like this about being safe due to distance in my relationships with others. I never used to be scared of meeting people, of new relationships, and while I don't think I'm opposed to them now, I definitely have found myself more reserved and careful. Part of this is leaving college, I think; part of it is a change in my own personality. I feel more reserved, more cautious, and I don't think it's as easy for me to just be vulnerable and open with just anyone anymore.

Like the comic says, right? Love grants someone else power over you, and we never trust anyone as easily as we do the first time.

ups and downs

Recent ups
- scored best I've ever scored on an analysis test. hooray!
- realized Rice was harder than UT grad school currently
- I finally feel somewhat competently intelligent in a few areas.
- I feel like I'm sorting out questions about God in my head

Recent downs
- despair over current research and whether or not there's even a solution
- existential despair (mid-early-life crisis, what do I want?)
- still don't feel like I have a social circle in Austin
- I think I've gained weight
- sorting out questions about God in my head seems to have no impact on my life, as much as it logically should

why is that? I recently finished Malcolm Gladwell's book, "Blink", and it talks a lot about the subconscious choices that influence our actions and our decisions (it's a great book, btw - it paints the way we think in a very new and sometimes unflattering way). It's discussion of decision-making and prejudice is especially touchy and revealing. The conclusion I'm tempted to draw after reading this book is that our actions are, for the most part, outside of our area of influence.

Yet, I think many would argue otherwise. "Ideas Have Consequences", claims Richard Weaver in his famous book by that title - ideas do change the face of culture, and FDR (or was it Churchill?) claimed once that the next war we fight will be with ideas. It does seem true that most people cannot survive a dichotomy between their ideas and their actions for long - either actions or ideas have to cave, and most of the time, the habits that we've built up with our actions win out.

For me, though, it seems as if my doubt and questions about a year ago invited in a new worldview through the backdoor - with everything thrown into question, I had nothing to really believe in or stand on, and nature, abhorring a vacuum, filled it with the simplest and closest hedonistic worldview. After a long time of thinking and questioning, my thought process appears to have come back to the Christian theistic one; however, my actions and life are still firmly entrenched in my old habits.

How much control do we have over our lives and our thoughts after all? I think the answer is a lot, but not through our typical methods of controlling our actions and ideas. Thoughts and ideas are entwined together - you can change your intellectual thinking about different minority groups, but racism is most effectively dealt with by forcing our selves to interact with those minority groups. Likewise, actions without a guiding thought can have no goal, and can end up being done pointlessly. Even worse, actions guided by the wrong train of thought can be easily manipulated and abused, and can form negative habits and entrench wrong thinking in the future.

Time to try to form good habits, guided by good thoughts. Thought #1 - I'm a) 23, b) single and c) out of shape. Resultant action - lets go exercise so I can fix b) and c).

i am an idiot

I misread the date for a symposium meeting as being one month earlier than the actual date. I then scrambled to finish a poster that isn't needed until October 29.

and I could've spent all that extra time...not doing work.

Anberlin!!!

Has a new album coming soon!!! "New Surrender" apparently comes out in 5 days...and the songs aren't bad at all. A few are up on youtube

A small excerpt from the album, a live performance of a new song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMp4D6D0qac&feature=related

Has anyone noticed something different in that video? Like...Stephen Christian's live voice has gotten a LOT more refined and controlled?

considering Wikipedia

In between learning about kernel methods and other maths, I've found the time to talk to a couple other grad students about random topics, and one that came up was Wikipedia. In the past decade of the internet explosion, a couple tools have helped the common man navigate his way around the enormous space of the www. It seems as if out of these tools, google, youtube, facebook and wikipedia have come out on top as being the tools someone cannot navigate the internet without.

So...each has its issues. facebook sells your info to advertisers, google's power is nearly limitless (kind of scary), and youtube...well, it mostly just wastes my time with its addictive distractions. I learned a little more about the structure of wikipedia, however, and it bothers me a little more.

The publicly editable encyclopedia Wikipedia is not entirely free-form - the reason it isn't chaos is due to the administrators of Wikipedia, the people in charge of rules of posting, deletion, etc. Consider now the position of these people - due to the huge popularity of Wikipedia, it's almost a first source for anyone who wants to learn about some subject. Yet, administrating Wikipedia is not an official job, there are no enforceable laws and regulations concerning the information that goes out, and most of it is done anonymously. Add to the fact that the average age of a Wikipedia admin is 17 (with estimates that go as low as 15), and you have a lot of power and influence in the hands of a few people who aren't held responsible for it (and if they were, would you really be able to press serious charges against a 17 year old?).

To put it into perspective, consider that there are roughly 1000 administrators of Wikipedia. There are about 7 million articles and 2 million subscribed viewers, so it's difficult to estimate how many people actually use Wikipedia for anything, but it's got to be approaching a hundred million at least. What they write influences the way people think, and can have serious consequences for corporations and public figures (and these are 17 year old students - implying a certain level of bias and immaturity in opinion).

Not that I'm anti-liberal or anything, but Wikipedia will definitely lean towards a more liberal view of things considering the opinion trend of the age group of Wikipedia's admins. Compound this with the fact that the internet generation's way of thinking and forming opinions (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google), and you have a dangerous combination: power to influence the way people think in the hands of a few people who don't think very deeply themselves. The most attractive meme or idea out there (regardless of how accurate or trustworthy it is) can then be easily sold to the general public. And thus bad (or at least biased) ideas enter the public sphere, and can keep people from objectively evaluating things.

Note: The information in the articles below on Slimvirgin, a Wikipedia admin, may be wrong. The article claims she wrote a forum post encouraging skewed articles in favor of animal rights. She responded to me and notified me that the post as quoted is a fake. I'll remove it from this blog post; the main idea stands without it. If it was a fake, I apologize for spreading false information.

What's worse, a CalTech grad student traced a bunch of Wikipedia changes concerning corporations or business to the same or rival corporations/businesses.

"A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations."

A silver lining: most of the science and math articles tend to be politically unbiased (if you find one that's not, tell me =P), so the admins tend to leave those alone for the mathematicians and researchers to maintain. But be careful on everything else you read - it is probably a little biased (usually away from the conservative orthodox side too) and can sometimes be outright misleading and wrong.

A few interesting articles related
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker
http://www.searchengineguide.com/ross-dunn/is-wikipedia-co.php

busy week

Grad school is getting busier, and more and more reminiscent of days when I spent late nights in Duncan at Rice. Saturday from 10AM to 11:30PM was spent at the ICES building working on Functional Analysis hw. And this is apparently how the first year goes...

Wish me luck - the first exam of the semester is coming up Monday!

I am forever damned

"The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell." -- St. Augustine (354-430)

(footnote - mathematicians were often astrologers in the 3rd century, so I suppose I'm half off the hook...)

Houston vs Austin

After living in Austin for a few weeks, I have a few observations to make about this city as compared to Houston.

• "Austin squirrels are idiots." During Rice, I had 2 occurrances of a squirrel running out into the path of my bike. Both times, the squirrel noticed me, even as I was going top speed, and avoided me (for the most part, anyhow - one time I just ran over its tail). The first Austin squirrel I encounter with my bike runs out into my path, and as I brake to slow down, it just kind of stands there stupidly until I run it over (it appeared to be fine, seeing that it was standing up as I was looking back at it afterwards).
  
  
• "Austin pretends to be green." I think Austin wants to be an earth-friendly city, but about half the city is really gung-ho about it. The rest (and a large part of UT administration) just say they are and continue to throw away recyclables and drive huge SUVs.
  
  
• "Autry gym is pitiful". The UT gym has everything, and its bigger. A rock climbing wall, 3 outdoor pools, an indoor track, etc. 24 hour doesn't even compare to this place.
  
  
• "Austin is small". 10 minutes away is considered a long drive here. Wait, scratch that, having to DRIVE is considered a long drive here.
  
  

Ok, a more serious post on my thoughts on post-grad life coming up later (along with more facts about Austin if I can come up with any). This is just to keep things updated =P.

did you know...

There's an art movie called "Zorn's Lemma" (streaming movie available here) and a band called the Axiom of Choice? Unfortunately, there's no media based off of the well-ordering theorem, at least from what I know.

time badly spent

I tend to be terrible at overall summaries of my life, so I'll try to harp on individual subjects that catch my attention and merit posting on. I seem to be having a lot of difficulty using my free time well. Ever since senior year, I seem to have lost interest in things, and found I have a remarkable talent for wasting time. It seems to have carried over to grad school.

Turns out, I have only 3 classes, 1 research group, and no classes Tuesday/Thursday. You'd think that with Austin's beautiful sceneries, UT's huge gym, and the people I know, I'd be doing lots of things, right? Most of the time, I've wasted my time reading manga and lounging around the house. Today, for example - I woke up, cooked breakfast, read manga, read emails, then cooked lunch, then read more manga, finally going to the office at 3PM, leaving at 6PM (to go running in an attempt to make myself feel productive physically too) I am going to fail out if I keep this up.

What's with all these unproductive and pointless choices that I'm making? Ideas have consequences, and my choices have consequences too, not only direct consequences but also consequences on my ideas, on the habits I build for myself. What are these choices going to do to me down the line? I think I was better prepared for graduate school when I was an undergraduate. I feel like I'm doing most of my maturing now, rather than at Rice when most people tend to have their "coming of age" times. I hope that's not true.

In other news, I am somehow hooked on...(don't laugh now...) romance mangas (in addition to my other mangas...). All types, too - shojo, josei, shounen (I told you not to laugh...). A few good ones I've read in the past few months...

- Ai Yori Aoshi: really good, but not scanlated to the end! =(
- Umi No Misaki: I liked this one a lot. A bit on the ecchi side, but nothing too bad in taste thankfully. By the same artist as Ai Yori Aoshi.
- High School Debut: art is only OK, but it's better than average for this genre. plus, the characters are well developed and really funny =). I liked this one a lot
- Bitter Virgin: really heavy story. A bit depressing.
- Ai Kora: haha this one is so immature, but fun.

Moving complete!

Well, that was easy. I just moved off of Xanga, and started a blogspot account (using the exact same formatting as Sam Feng and Timmy Dy...how original). Hope to have time (and more importantly, motivation) for more posts now...so stay tuned =)