5/18/2010

Does Emphasis Compound?

4·25·10
Truth is God's master. Without the concept of truth, god means nothing, yet the reverse is not true: without god, truth remains truth.

I think that might be a quote from the video?

A very interesting result of modernization is the decreased family size, mostly because of it's implications in the far-future. The average birthrate required for a sustainable population is oft quoted at 2.3, the 0.3 probably covers the odds of the offspring not surviving to reproduce (or perhaps simply deciding not to). After contemplating this for a moment, an interesting question comes to mind: how will our distant descendants cope with having an average of 2.3 kids? (Or whatever that number might be by then. Note that it cannot ever truly reach 2, but it could conceivably get very close to 2.)

5·1·10
just passing by.
5·4·10
"They Can't Kill Us All."
5·7·10
"Bon appe- Dammit!"

Trick question, the glass is half full of liquid and half full of gas.
"Thats a trick question, you don't have one."

OH! New argument against a national day of prayer that I thought of: you are more than explicitly excluding dystheists (and probably misotheists too)! There are those of us who believe, if god did in fact exist as described by many (nearly all) religious persons, that we would be in a terrible situation. Praying to such an entity would be akin to praying to Stalin, Hitler, Saddam, 'satan', etc., certainly something that a dystheist or misotheist would abhor! By endorsing the common view that god is good, the government is disenfranchising my people! Help!

5·8·10
George Alan Rekers, Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, David Viter, John Ensen. Hypocrites creating artificial inhibitions on others.

5·9·10
So, retrotransposons! Can any biologists I know give a logical reason why retrotransposons might be more common in plants or animals? Or why it might vary?

How does it feel to me like defeat.

"Know your limits" they say. Then push them. Is that what we do to one another? Know another persons limits, push them further?

5·18·10
I was asking myself, "am I passive aggressive?", and I decided to look up the term and check precisely.

The first paragraph is interesting (from here):
Passive–aggressive behavior, a personality trait, is passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following through with expectations in interpersonal or occupational situations. It is a personality trait marked by a pervasive pattern of negative attitudes and passive, usually disavowed resistance in interpersonal or occupational situations.
I definitely do that in my occupational situations, but I can't tell about interpersonal situations, maybe I could ask friends what they think. I don't like that I do it at work, but I tend to it constantly regardless. I should probably be more assertive when I think a point is worth making. Though that simply gets back to the problem: clearly my interpretation of "worth making" is such that most points are not worth making, so I do not make them. Instead I drag my feet and play along, which both makes me feel less productive (which is true also), and annoys my boss. I suppose this is why such behavior is in such disfavor. The second paragraph is also interesting:
It can manifest itself as learned helplessness, procrastination, stubbornness, resentment, sullenness, or deliberate/repeated failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible.
 Learned helplessness is a concept that has fascinated me for some time; it references an experiment in which dogs were trained to be clinically depressed after being placed in a situation in which they suffered and had no way to release the suffering at will. A control group experiencing the same suffering (only their lever did in fact shut off the suffering) recovered after the experiment. The first groups shocks were also linked to the latter group's levers, so both dogs received electrical shocks at random, and both had access to a lever of sorts, but only the group who's lever ended the shock recovered from the experiment.

I'm not sure I have a lot of that... I suppose I have a general feeling of being trapped, or stuck, or unable to simply do what I want. But at the same time, the restrictions don't seem too terrible. Perhaps I am happy in prison? I am stubborn a lot of the time, but that's cause I'm right ;-) Though I am trying to be less stubborn. Resentment? I don't think so. Maybe of myself a tiny bit? Procrastination is a serious one, but is that really passive-aggressive? I feel like someone put that on their to trick me. Is paranoia one? No? Sullenness, I don't think that's me, at most infrequently. That last line is mostly what I was talking about before with work. Not deliberate so much though.


Do we breed anxiety?