A Shi’i laments

I grew up in a Shia town, my wife is from a Shia town and I studied near another Shia town. So have some connections there. And now I am reading Persian. The Shia Sunni split is a deep deep one and instead of improving like the Protestant / Catholic one, its getting deeper and more dangerous. And yes, its primarily due to the Sunni intelligentsia on TV, the various madrassahs and more crucially, the common Sunni who generally seems to have this visceral hatred towards his brothers. You keep on hearing about Shia shrines and Sufi shrines being blown up and being vituperated against. (dont get me wrong, the Shia are no less in their discrimination, think about how they treat the Bahai, plus they do have a strong streak of victimisation and moaning but that’s not an excuse). I know, i know broad generalisation but what the heck.

One of my interests is Islamic Law (mainly in the Islamic Finance area) so I follow this chap. He is a very smart fellow, very erudite and writes powerfully but when I read this, I was taken aback. This was some powerful stuff. I quote:

It could be that I’m just too tired and jet lagged.  Or it could be the sheer exhaustion of having to deal, yet again, with the same exclusionary and alienating anti-Shiism that seems to flow almost naturally from the lips of all too many of my Arab brethren. Or it could be that I have to listen to all of it during our holiest times, when you’d think there would be an extra effort made at mutual respect and tolerance, rather than the reverse. But whatever it is, I’ve had it.  As an “other” in the Arab world (a Shi’i Arab) married to a different other (a Kurdish Iraqi) in that same world, I feel alienated and abandoned, and I have decided to give my frustrations voice.  There remains to us no place for the “others”, with or without an Arab spring. ….

You just have to assume for these purposes that Israel is horrible because it is a Jewish state that discriminates against Arabs, which is different than an Arab state that regards vast numbers of its own citizens as Persians and Persians as unfit for equal citizenship in their societies.  Make sense?  Of course not, so let’s move on.) …..

I suppose it is too much to expect much help from religious leaders when the general trends among educated and poorly educated, native and abroad alike, are so depressingly similarly bigoted.  But in any case it isn’t there.  Yusuf Qaradawi is more than happy to fan the flames of sectarian hatred for more television time, perfectly happy to abandon Bahrain’s Shi’a and talk seriously of democracy in Syria or Egypt.  He lies unchallenged, Yusuf says what the masses want to hear, and it’s pretty clear they want to hear this.  I used to regard his pronouncements with some detached bemusement, one day it’s okay to kill American soldiers in Iraq, the next it’s okay to be a Muslim American soldier in Afghanistan.  What day of the week is it?  I can tell you if it’s okay to kill Jewish children according to the Great Shaykh. It was a mistake to be so accommodating to Yusuf the shameless demagogue, his complete lack of scruples even as to human life deserved more criticism than I delivered.  A prostitute exercises more discrimination than Yusuf Qaradawi, with due apologies to the prostitutes for comparing them to such a detestable man…..

and then the closure was just straight.

But today is the day of Ashura, our sacred holy day, the day of the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson, and after all that has occurred, and in great physical and psychic exhaustion, I wish to give license to my heart and not my head, for just this day, just this once, so you know how we,the others in the Arab midst, feel.  Here’s what I think today, or feel rather, straight from the heart.

Tyranny or democracy, it’s always the same in the Arab world.  You won’t accept us, you won’t even make an effort to see the world through our eyes.  You demand loyalty and offer no tolerance. You ask for support, and abandon us or are silent when our children our killed.  When you come to accept the others, and all the others, Jew and Christian, Shi’i and Druze, black and Berber, when you hear an insult as against a Shi’i on his holy day you take it as an insult to you, when you see a church bombed, you take it as a mosque bombed, when some modicum of mutual respect, honor and tolerance reaches or even just perceptibly registers somehow in civil discourse, penetrates even one tenth of a millimeter, give us all a call, we’d love to join in. Until then, go fuck yourselves.

Your faithful Persian,

I guess he wont be sending Christmas Cards to the Sunni Arabs then . Happy Ashura…

Role of parents in your children’s education

Interesting op-ed here. I quote: #

“Fifteen-year-old students whose parents often read books with them during their first year of primary school show markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents read with them infrequently or not at all. The performance advantage among students whose parents read to them in their early school years is evident regardless of the family’s socioeconomic background. Parents’ engagement with their 15-year-olds is strongly associated with better performance in PISA.”

Schleicher explained to me that “just asking your child how was their school day and showing genuine interest in the learning that they are doing can have the same impact as hours of private tutoring. It is something every parent can do, no matter what their education level or social background.”

For instance, the PISA study revealed that “students whose parents reported that they had read a book with their child ‘every day or almost every day’ or ‘once or twice a week’ during the first year of primary school have markedly higher scores in PISA 2009 than students whose parents reported that they had read a book with their child ‘never or almost never’ or only ‘once or twice a month.’ On average, the score difference is 25 points, the equivalent of well over half a school year.”

Yes, students from more well-to-do households are more likely to have more involved parents. “However,” the PISA team found, “even when comparing students of similar socioeconomic backgrounds, those students whose parents regularly read books to them when they were in the first year of primary school score 14 points higher, on average, than students whose parents did not.”

The kind of parental involvement matters, as well. “For example,” the PISA study noted, “on average, the score point difference in reading that is associated with parental involvement is largest when parents read a book with their child, when they talk about things they have done during the day, and when they tell stories to their children.” The score point difference is smallest when parental involvement takes the form of simply playing with their children.

So when you complain about me worrying about you, see what I mean?

You still need the 1% inspiration Son

Son

here is an interesting article. Couple of things for you to note. Yes, innate intellectual ability helps in creating a patent, write a book, do a doctorate, etc. etc. But that isnt something that you can actually pick son. So dont worry about it that much. That said, there is much to be said about reading very widely. In this day and age, and going forward son, the ability to mix and match ideas from a variety of fields will be quite important, so read up on what others said and did. Remember what Bismarck, a very smart German fellow said, I have to be stupid to only learn from my own mistakes, I want to learn from other people’s mistakes. Reading helps you to understand other people’s inspiration and ideas.

Finally. practise practise and practise son. Remember the 7P theory. Proper Planning and Practice Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Just because you have the native smarts doesnt mean you dont need to practise, you need both. See this article? 10,000 hours average practise by the time they are 20 means they are best players. Decide what you want to be the best at, have the native smarts and then devote hours of practise every day on that. If you want to be great at business or mathematics or economics, then put in the hours son, put in the hours.

Love

Baba

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/opinion/sunday/sorry-strivers-talent-matters.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Sorry, Strivers: Talent Matters

By DAVID Z. HAMBRICK and ELIZABETH J. MEINZ

 

HOW do people acquire high levels of skill in science, business, music, the arts and sports? This has long been a topic of intense debate in psychology.

Research in recent decades has shown that a big part of the answer is simply practice — and a lot of it. In a pioneering study, the Florida State University psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues asked violin students at a music academy to estimate the amount of time they had devoted to practice since they started playing. By age 20, the students whom the faculty nominated as the “best” players had accumulated an average of over 10,000 hours, compared with just under 8,000 hours for the “good” players and not even 5,000 hours for the least skilled.

Those findings have been enthusiastically championed, perhaps because of their meritocratic appeal: what seems to separate the great from the merely good is hard work, not intellectual ability. Summing up Mr. Ericsson’s research in his book “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell observes that practice isn’t “the thing you do once you’re good” but “the thing you do that makes you good.” He adds that intellectual ability — the trait that an I.Q. score reflects — turns out not to be that important. “Once someone has reached an I.Q. of somewhere around 120,” he writes, “having additional I.Q. points doesn’t seem to translate into any measureable real-world advantage.”

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, restates this idea in his book “The Social Animal,” while Geoff Colvin, in his book “Talent Is Overrated,” adds that “I.Q. is a decent predictor of performance on an unfamiliar task, but once a person has been at a job for a few years, I.Q. predicts little or nothing about performance.”

But this isn’t quite the story that science tells. Research has shown that intellectual ability matters for success in many fields — and not just up to a point.

Exhibit A is a landmark study of intellectually precocious youths directed by the Vanderbilt University researchers David Lubinski and Camilla Benbow. They and their colleagues tracked the educational and occupational accomplishments of more than 2,000 people who as part of a youth talent search scored in the top 1 percent on the SAT by the age of 13. (Scores on the SAT correlate so highly with I.Q. that the psychologist Howard Gardner described it as a “thinly disguised” intelligence test.) The remarkable finding of their study is that, compared with the participants who were “only” in the 99.1 percentile for intellectual ability at age 12, those who were in the 99.9 percentile — the profoundly gifted — were between three and five times more likely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure a patent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work. A high level of intellectual ability gives you an enormous real-world advantage.

In our own recent research, we have discovered that “working memory capacity,” a core component of intellectual ability, predicts success in a wide variety of complex activities. In one study, we assessed the practice habits of pianists and then gauged their working memory capacity, which is measured by having a person try to remember information (like a list of random digits) while performing another task. We then had the pianists sight read pieces of music without preparation.

Not surprisingly, there was a strong positive correlation between practice habits and sight-reading performance. In fact, the total amount of practice the pianists had accumulated in their piano careers accounted for nearly half of the performance differences across participants. But working memory capacity made a statistically significant contribution as well (about 7 percent, a medium-size effect). In other words, if you took two pianists with the same amount of practice, but different levels of working memory capacity, it’s likely that the one higher in working memory capacity would have performed considerably better on the sight-reading task.

It would be nice if intellectual ability and the capacities that underlie it were important for success only up to a point. In fact, it would be nice if they weren’t important at all, because research shows that those factors are highly stable across an individual’s life span. But wishing doesn’t make it so.

None of this is to deny the power of practice. Nor is it to say that it’s impossible for a person with an average I.Q. to, say, earn a Ph.D. in physics. It’s just unlikely, relatively speaking. Sometimes the story that science tells us isn’t the story we want to hear.

David Z. Hambrick and Elizabeth J. Meinz are associate professors of psychology at Michigan State University and Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, respectively.

You call this a budget, you muppets?

So lets see, you have agreed to an increase of 2.02% in the budget of the European Union where pretty much most of the countries will be seeing growth of less than 2% in 2012. So basically that’s government spending more than what they will generate. Nice one.

Then you cannot prove that your spending is good and proper with your auditors unable to sign off on your accounts for 14 years.

Then you have a shortfall of $200 which you cannot account for and need more money. What the hell is this?

STOP SPENDING MY MONEY! See this.

And then to add insult to injury, the bureaucrats want to strike. Why?

Some 40,000 officials are embroiled in a dispute over plans to increase their working week from 37.5 hours to 40 hours, raise their retirement age from 58, and award a pay rise of 1.8 cent.

I would be lucky if I have a bloody 40 hour week, get to retire at 58 and have a frikking pay rise of 1.8%. Useless gits. Fire them all, appoint the hordes of unemployed. Ok ok, I know this isnt going to work, but stiff. Sheesh. And the threat is that if they go on strike, the machinery of the EU is going to grind to a halt. Oh! really? how will we know? They spend their time worrying about if water can stop dehydration or not. Or actually, perhaps they should stop their work looking at the sheer mess they have made of the Euro.

/facepalm

Bishops show their usual perspicacity

So the bishops are upset, eh?

Eighteen Church of England bishops have signed an open letter, criticising the government's proposed welfare reforms. In the letter, in The Observer, the bishops express concerns about plans to limit the amount any household can claim in benefits to £500 a week. The bishops say the cap could be "profoundly unjust" to children in the poorest families and that they have a "moral obligation to speak up for those who have no voice".

It is estimated the cap, which would apply to the combined income from benefits such as jobseekers' allowance, housing benefit and council tax benefit, could result in about 50,000 families being about £93 a week worse off. London is expected to be one of the worst affected areas, because of the high cost of renting in the capital. Earlier this week a study, on behalf of London Councils, said about 133,000 households in London would be unable to afford their rent if the proposed changes go ahead.

So let me see what’s the problem? Why is the government doing this? The government is saying (not that the BBC will report it) that its unfair that a household should get in benefits more than what an average family gets in wages. Now, that sounds fair to me, doesn't it? Nobody said that my taxes have to support you having to live in the middle of Chelsea or in London. Its not like you are working anyway, are you? So what’s the point? Or are you expecting me to pay my taxes so that you have a nice social life with your neighbours? Nice one.

Also notice that these blessed bishops didn't say anything about the millions of below average households who are going to have to pay more to keep these people at an income level higher than they themselves are in. Good for you, rob peter to pay Paul and then these bishops will be supporting Paul. Truly they are irrelevant in today’s life, no wonder nobody is going to church, specially with muppets like this. Bah. What happened to the Protestant work ethic? The fact that they have to go out and work? God Helps those who help themselves? And the proud tradition of working that made western Christendom proud? Unbelievable.

What can we learn from the happiest people?

First the abstract:

Flourishing—a state of optimal mental health—has been linked to a host of benefits for the individual and society, including fewer workdays lost and the lowest incidence of chronic physical conditions. The aim of this paper was to investigate whether and how routine activities promote flourishing. The authors proposed that flourishers thrive because they capitalize on the processes featured in the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions, specifically by experiencing greater positive emotional reactivity to pleasant events and building more resources over time. To test these hypotheses, the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) was administered to a prescreened community sample of adults (n = 208), and they were recontacted two to three months later. Results showed that relative to those who did not flourish or were depressed, people who flourish generally responded with bigger “boosts” in positive emotions in response to everyday, pleasant events (helping, interacting, playing, learning, spiritual activity), and this greater positive emotional reactivity, over time, predicted higher levels of two facets of the cognitive resource of mindfulness. In turn, these higher levels of mindfulness were positively associated with higher levels of flourishing at the end of study, controlling for initial levels of flourishing. These results suggest that the promotion of well-being may be fueled by small, yet consequential differences in individuals' emotional experience of pleasant everyday events. Additionally, these results underscore the utility of the broaden-and-build theory in understanding the processes by which flourishing is promoted and provide support for a positive potentiation perspective.

Source: "A Tuesday in the Life of a Flourisher: The Role of Positive Emotional Reactivity in Optimal Mental Health" from Emotion, Volume 11, Issue 4, August 2011, Pages 938-950

Makes sense, eh? stay positive and keep on having small amounts of fun all the time, biting, hugging, having a biscuit, sniffing a flower, call somebody to say hello and smile at a child.

Beware of priests, sheikhs, gurus and other assorted people

Religious chaps who promise heaven on the payment of monies are dangerous. Anybody who has to pay to learn to be with God or be with God is a muppet anyway. But interestingly enough, here’s an interesting poem

The Golden Key

 

from Futility Closet by Greg Ross

A monk was standing at a convent gate,
With sanctimonious phiz, and shaven pate,
Promising, with solemn cant,
To all that listen’d to his rant,
A full and perfect absolution,
With half-a-dozen hallowed benedictions,
If they would give some contribution,
Some large donation supererogatory,
To ransom fifty murder’d christians,
And free their precious souls from purgatory:
When (he asserted) they would gain
A passport from the realms of pain,
And find a speedy passage to the skies.
A knight was riding by, and heard these lies;
He stopp’d his horse, “Salve,” the parson cried;
And “Benedicite” the youth replied.
“Most reverend father,” quoth the knight,
Who, it appears, was sharp and witty,
“These martyr’d christians’ wretched plight
Believe me, I sincerely pity:
Nay, more–their sufferings to relieve,
I will these fifty ducats give.”
This was no sooner said than done;
The priest pronounc’d his benison.
“Now, I presume,” the soldier said,
“The spirits of these christians dead
Have reach’d their final place of rest?”
“Most true,” replied the rev’rend friar,
“(Unless Saint Francis is a liar;)
And, to reward the pious action
Of this most christian benefaction,
You will, no doubt, eternally be blest.”
“Well, then,” exclaim’d the soldier-youth,
“If what you say indeed be truth,
And these same pieces that I’ve given,
Have snatch’d their souls from purgatory’s pains,
And bought them a snug place in heaven,
No further use for them remains.”
He said thus much to prove, at least,
He was as cunning as the priest:
Then put the ducats in his poke
And rode off, laughing at the joke.

– “C.J.D.,” in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, 1824

10 fascinating facts about beauty:

Dear Son
I hope the math exam went well.
here's something on the side to think about. People keep on saying that beauty is only skin deep but frankly we are all victims of our own upbringing and senses. Given a choice, a good looking person will always win over somebody who isn't that good looking, other things being equal. That's a D'oh statement but its important to recognise this. From both your incoming and outgoing perspectives. How you react to beautiful people will be important for you. Try to delve underneath that beauty, son. Not saying that its a factor, but beautiful people can make you forget to judge properly. So you might agree on a deal with a good looking person whereas the deal might not really be good enough. Why do you think most of the sales are done by beautiful women and men? they are the attractors, they attract people who then forget to judge other elements such as price or quality or delivery times or what have you.
The second element is how you appear to others, your business people, your friends, etc. etc. I am not saying that you have to become a metrosexual and primp and preen to be beautiful, but a certain element of smartness and well put togetherness is required. Smartly shined shoes, sharp haircut, no straggly beard, good body posture, etc. etc. will help. Your skin colour is obviously a handicap to a certain extent but that cant be helped. So always be on the lookout to ensure that your business and social dealings are handled on the basis that somebody better looking than you can have an advantage over you. You are quite handsome and smart, I have to admit and I am not saying that because you are my son. Well, perhaps I am, but still, have this in the back of your mind, your reactions to beauty and others reactions to your beauty are going to be a factor in your life, son.

And remember the old quote, “people say beauty is only skin deep, its deep enough, what do you want? An adorable pancreas?”

Love
Baba

10 fascinating facts about beauty:
via Barking up the wrong tree on 9/22/11

HNR has a well researched piece about attractiveness. Ten points worth noting:

• On measures of affect and mood, physically attractive people score higher than less physically attractive people.
• People perceive physically attractive people as smarter, more successful, more sociable, more dominant, sexually warmer, mentally healthier and higher in self-esteem than their physically unattractive counterparts. While this 'beauty is good' effect is moderately strong, studies show that attractive people are neither more nor less intelligent than less attractive people.
• Physically attractive people are more relaxed and socially adept and less socially anxious and lonely than less physically attractive people.
• We are more likely to divulge personal information about ourselves to physically attractive people than we are to divulge less physically attractive people.
• We are more likely to help a physically attractive person than we are a physically unattractive person.
• If we are presented with a group of people and asked to use non-physical cues to identify who has psychopathology, we are more likely identify physically unattractive people as we are to identify more physically attractive people.
• Physically attractive people with psychological disturbance are judged to be more maladjusted and to have a poorer prognosis than less physically attractive people with the same psychological disturbance.
• A physically attractive person charged with the same crime as a less attractive person is more likely to be found not guilty of that crime. Physically attractive individuals found guilty of a particular crime are more likely to receive more lenient sentences than less attractive defendants. In court cases in which the crime is sex-related, physically unattractive defendants are considered to be more dangerous than better-looking offenders. This effect is often independent of the actual grooming or attire of the defendant.
• Good-looking faces trigger the same kinds of brain networks that are activated when people become addicted to cocaine and gambling.
• There appears to be a universal, cross-cultural undesirability for people with facial disfigurements and other flaws. Even babies seem to prefer physically attractive faces to physically unattractive ones.

Swedes are actually inviting Russians

I nearly fell out of the chair when I read about this story. I quote:

Sorsele municipality, in northern Sweden, are overjoyed in the continued interest in the area, after receiving over 900 applications from enthusiastic Russian families keen to move there.
As The Local reported in 2010, within the next five or six years, over 350 locally employed public sector employees will retire from Sorsele municipality, in the county of Västerbotten.
That's 30 percent of their workforce and it was feared that Sorsele wouldn't be able to find anyone to fill the positions.
The local authorities therefore decided to market themselves to their Russian neighbours, with the aim of boosting dwindling population figures and to ensure an influx of foreign labour.
However, there is no guarantee that the job openings will be filled by the Russians. According to Wikström, they will be competing about the jobs with everyone else.
As part of the project, which will cost about six million kronor ($891,000), the idea is that the Russians would learn Swedish before their arrival to Sweden.
The council is hoping for funding from the EU. According to them, there's plenty of housing but fewer jobs.
So far, the council reports a massive interest.
And according to the local authorities, among the 900 applicants are doctors, teachers, veterinary surgeons and engineers.
Despite one aim of the project being boosting population figures, Wikström told SVT that it isn't necessarily women of child bearing age that they especially welcome.
”Absolutely not. We want whole families with children as every community need young people,” said Wikström to SVT.
However, local authorities stressed that money from the EU is essential to make the project work.
The first Russians could then be arriving in the county of Västerbotten in a year's time.

Sweden and Russian have been fighting for a fair few centuries now although there hasn't been one for about 200 years now. Still, for Sweden to actually invite Russians into the cold frigid north is interesting. Second one was obviously the fact that the Swedish local authorities need to borrow money from my taxes to pay for this. Welcome to the wonderland of EU.

Can staring into someone's eyes make them fall in love with you?

Here’s an interesting survey.

In two studies, subjects induced to exchange mutual unbroken gaze for 2 min with a stranger of the opposite sex reported increased feelings of passionate love for each other. In Study I, 96 subjects were run in the four combinations of gazing at the other's hands or eyes, or in a fifth condition in which the subject was asked to count the other's eye blinks. Subjects who were gazing at their partner's eyes, and whose partner was gazing back reported significantly higher feelings of affection than subjects in any other condition. They also reported greater liking than all subjects except those in the eye blink counting condition. In Study II, with 72 subjects, those who engaged in mutual gaze increased significantly their feelings of passionate love, dispositional love, and liking for their partner. This effect occurred only for subjects who were identified on a separate task as more likely to rely on cues from their own behaviour in defining their attributes.

Source: "Looking and loving: The effects of mutual gaze on feelings of romantic love" from Journal of research in personality, Vol. 23, No. 2. (June 1989), pp. 145-161.

So keep staring into a person’s eyes and if you can get them to look back at you, then you can have a greater chance of getting the person to like you if not more. Nice…