Monday 13 May 2013
tremolo heroism or darlings of oblivion
catagories: ๐, graphic design, psychology
Saturday 23 February 2013
future-perfect or jam to-morrow
BBC Magazine profiles an interesting study from Yale University’s department of Sociology on the potential connection between the confines of grammar and financial readiness, with likely bonds among the cultural gradients in the spectrum of mores, like hierarchy, collectivism versus individualism, gender equality, etc.
The lead researcher groups all the world’s languages into two classes, one group, which includes English, is marked by a strong shifting of tenses to express action, intentions and wishes that are to take place in the future, covering both the mundane and the inspired, and the other group of languages whose rules of grammar do not make a big distinction between present and future. The difference does not fall strictly among family lines—for example, while in English one must say, “It will snow tomorrow,” auf Deutsch, a close relative, one can say, “Morgen scheint es” with no ambiguity. European on balance languages seem to have the most formal ways of differentiating time. After large-scale studies on the future-oriented habits of speakers of these different lingual classes, mostly involving savings and retirement but also habits, like exercise and preventative health, that defer rewards for present action, the researcher found a strong correlation between shoring up for one’s future, whether one’s Golden Years or something more immediate though not instantly gratified, among those speakers whose tongue did not really have a separate future tense.
catagories: language, psychology
Wednesday 2 January 2013
commutative property or sixth happiness
Perhaps I was a bit prematurely to dismiss the new year as numerically unremarkable. I heard an India fortuneteller on the radio this morning, prefacing her words and prognostications with the pronouncement that all numbers are indeed lucky, that this year, broken down as 2+0+1+3 yields six, the number of harmony in some circles and duty or domestic relations in others.
catagories: ♏, lifestyle, psychology
Sunday 16 December 2012
muttation
Though I feel woefully inadequate to offer relief to the unthinkable tragedies of the headlines and do not want to be another haunting voice to those who suffered loss, especially for those without intermediacy and far-reaching empathy, it is the hard things that sometimes one must do: that the author of the Hunger Games franchise hails from the same small community strikes me as something curious and unexpected. It is surely nothing to detract from the gravity of the situation nor the serious discussions that need to take place in the aftermath, neither is it any condolence or help for healing.
Far from glorifying violence, which I believe the American media unfortunately does with its cause-celeb, striding on the necks of facts to try to be first to get the story without regard for the consequences of inaccurate reporting or of making matinee idol monsters to be understood rather than allow us to contemplate those enduring monsters that we create and tolerate, the stories were an allegory inspired by seeing the same kind of terrible juxtapositions of war and violence and the anodyne chasers of misfit reportage filed under culture and lifestyle and usually for the benefit of sponsorship, the stories were allegories questioning the same kind of spectacle and of the horrors that go unseen by institutions and estate. Redressing injustice is not a matter entertained due to customs imbued. Shield laws are in place for other crimes, meant to stave off premature incrimination and allow the law to pass judgment before the media and public has already decided, and though there is no innocence to protect or peace to be recaptured in such cases, maybe allegory for the outside world is a better format in order to avoid the vicious trap of fame. These terrors need to be seen and should be consigned to history, but the unfiltered unfolding of events and hastily assembled biographies and backstories do not help law enforcement and responders once broadcast, and I fear only serve to propagate that awful virus of twisted, angry logic when all involved become instant and intimate characters on the world’s stage that the audience is keen to analyze and interpret.
catagories: ๐, psychology
Friday 17 August 2012
wordmark
catagories: graphic design, psychology
Thursday 9 August 2012
countermand
Lest we forget, our friendly anti-terrorism office sent out a message recently that August is Anti-Terrorism Awareness month and we are admonished to be ever-vigilant and that it was also a perfect occasion to review and renew annual mandatory training requirements.
catagories: ๐ฅธ, America, psychology
Wednesday 8 August 2012
nickled and dimed or be gone dull care

catagories: economic policy, health and medicine, labour, psychology
Friday 6 July 2012
instructions to applicant
catagories: America, labour, language, psychology
Thursday 7 June 2012
overseas telegram
Here’s a bit of typically nannying that strikes me like those Friday afternoon conscientious bureaucrat emergencies that necessarily wait until just before quitting-time and the weekend because to be unburdened and shared freely because it took the problem-holder all week to perfect it:
catagories: ๐ฏ, America, psychology
Monday 28 May 2012
papercraft
catagories: psychology
Monday 21 May 2012
sock puppet or propagaะda
catagories: America, foreign policy, language, psychology
Wednesday 11 April 2012
aberglaube or friggatriskaidekaphobia
catagories: holidays and observances, language, psychology
Thursday 15 March 2012
rico sUAVe
catagories: ๐ฅธ, America, psychology
Tuesday 6 March 2012
antidote
catagories: language, networking and blogging, psychology
Monday 27 February 2012
meet and seat or strangers on a train
A European airline has a new pilot program for its passengers, which invites solitary fliers to pick their seatmates based on their social- and business-networking profiles for long-haul flights.
catagories: networking and blogging, psychology, transportation, travel
Sunday 26 February 2012
long winter’s nap
BBC's news magazine is drawing on a body of evidence, anecdotal, historic and scientific, which strongly suggests that convention wisdom regarding sleep may be a very modern contrivance and something unnatural and possibly something that we are not ideally suited for. Rather than sequestering oneself for a solid, uninterrupted and sacrosanct period of eight hours, which does seem like an awfully lofty and impractical demand, mankind through most of its history had distinct periods of sleeping and waking during the night, a segmented sleep.
catagories: health and medicine, lifestyle, psychology
Saturday 28 January 2012
plagerize, bowdlerize
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฅธ, America, networking and blogging, psychology, revolution
Thursday 26 January 2012
lethe
catagories: ๐ช๐บ, ๐ฅธ, networking and blogging, psychology
Wednesday 25 January 2012
dash, pinch, grain
catagories: lifestyle, networking and blogging, psychology
Wednesday 18 January 2012
byzantine
catagories: America, economic policy, foreign policy, networking and blogging, psychology