Victoria has suggested that I bust a Truman show and hijack a human being so that I could somehow teach them the concepts of economics without any societal influence(if horribly confused and frightened, read the previous blog). But, how would I have this person gear towards econ? I don't think this idea (as illegal as it would be) would work anyhow. The only way to lean the person to learn econ is to teach econ (which as I think is based on Western thought.) So, I think this idea is busted...
Her other gem was moving into a primitive society and engross myself in their culture, then figure out econ from that perspective. I like this, but I don't want to have to do the field work (unless there are hottie native chicks and surfable waves). Otherwise, good way to research.
My own idea, not as inventive, is that I study JUST history/anthropology of different parts of the world WRITTEN BY THOSE CULTURES in those languages and then try to figure out econ from scratch in their language, with no math and no graphs. For now, just intuition, as the math and visuals might translate too much. I would try not to learn economic history of those places and derive ideas from scratch in their native tongue.
I need to learn spanish/Portuguese and whatever variants, i think. I need to read up on Latin America. It's the place where economists struggle to find western paradigms that fit the reality. I'd do chinese or japanese, but that's too hard a language to learn to read. At least the first are Roman alphabet based. My german is useless for this research.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Sunday, April 29, 2007
on what I want to do with my life...
I just got back from a school-based vegas trip, and besides alcohol poisoning, what i got from it was a sense of what I want to do for the rest of my life. Yes, I know I already spoke of being an econ major. Yes, I went through that whole spiel, and nothing is changing!
I was with 3 other social science majors, all of whom are involved in interdisiplinary fields of study, be it, psych and anthro, cog sci and psych, etc. Econ does have some ties to the social sciences, (behavioral economics (econ/soc/psych), but I think that anthropological economics (if i could name it, i think i would go for universal economics or something of that sort) is a necessary field that is, as far as i know, non-existent or not very developed.
I present to you the thesis question I hope to attempt to answer throughout my career in academia:
"Is economic, as a whole, ethnocentric? Would economic principles be starkly different if not developed from the western standpoint? What would economics be if not developed (and overwhelmingly taught and researched) in the west? Is economics, as we know it, a derivative of a biased western academia? Further, what are these differences and how can we rectify them?"
I have no idea how to go about doing this, so if you all have any ideas, I'll be taking any advice from now til when I retire from that field.
I was with 3 other social science majors, all of whom are involved in interdisiplinary fields of study, be it, psych and anthro, cog sci and psych, etc. Econ does have some ties to the social sciences, (behavioral economics (econ/soc/psych), but I think that anthropological economics (if i could name it, i think i would go for universal economics or something of that sort) is a necessary field that is, as far as i know, non-existent or not very developed.
I present to you the thesis question I hope to attempt to answer throughout my career in academia:
"Is economic, as a whole, ethnocentric? Would economic principles be starkly different if not developed from the western standpoint? What would economics be if not developed (and overwhelmingly taught and researched) in the west? Is economics, as we know it, a derivative of a biased western academia? Further, what are these differences and how can we rectify them?"
I have no idea how to go about doing this, so if you all have any ideas, I'll be taking any advice from now til when I retire from that field.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
cho on VT tragedy
thanks to Vonessa for posting this. Cho succinctly puts into eloquent words why Political Correctness, and the subsequent focus on race, with all it's great intentions is faulty. I found myself guiltily in the same racial train of thought. As Cho writes, we should focus not on the race of the shooter, but on the tragedy itself. This focus takes away from the inherent sorrow we should feel for such an event.
Friday, April 20, 2007
on this day
Happy 420 to all you fcuking stoners out there. I, myself, don't like the bud. The allergies and heart palpitations that come along with it suck, so I ain't touchin that shit. But, whatever makes you happy i guess. Thoughts on weed real quick.
People think that weed creates losers. At an early age, I tend to agree. Among kids, its effects in fucking up their futures are unbelievable. At that impressionable stage of life, it would be crucial to not be around it.
For a college person, weed should not have this effect. Truth be told, weed can be a part of a person without getting in the way of the rest of life. Some use weed as a means of motivating themselves. A dude I know got into law school smoking weed, constantly using it as a motivation for deadlines. "I just need to finish writing this paper, then i can smoke a bowl."
But, what weed can do is that it highlights those destined for loserdom. Weed is to liquid paraffin what loserdom is to gunpowder. And the signs that they are losers pop up just as clearly as the dots of a liquid paraffin test. It lets us easily know which fuck heads are losers. Then, it accelerates that descent into failure like mad.
In the long run, we should see it as a Darwinian tool. Sperm counts go down for weed smokers, so these loser genes are less likely to not beintroduced into the future gene pool.
So for this 420, tell all your friends destined for loserdom to go smoke a bowl, lower their sperm count and get their genes out of our pool!!
People think that weed creates losers. At an early age, I tend to agree. Among kids, its effects in fucking up their futures are unbelievable. At that impressionable stage of life, it would be crucial to not be around it.
For a college person, weed should not have this effect. Truth be told, weed can be a part of a person without getting in the way of the rest of life. Some use weed as a means of motivating themselves. A dude I know got into law school smoking weed, constantly using it as a motivation for deadlines. "I just need to finish writing this paper, then i can smoke a bowl."
But, what weed can do is that it highlights those destined for loserdom. Weed is to liquid paraffin what loserdom is to gunpowder. And the signs that they are losers pop up just as clearly as the dots of a liquid paraffin test. It lets us easily know which fuck heads are losers. Then, it accelerates that descent into failure like mad.
In the long run, we should see it as a Darwinian tool. Sperm counts go down for weed smokers, so these loser genes are less likely to not beintroduced into the future gene pool.
So for this 420, tell all your friends destined for loserdom to go smoke a bowl, lower their sperm count and get their genes out of our pool!!
Proof of my revisionist politics...
Just a a few fridays ago, I wrote passionately about how, in the wake of the current war, my political stance had changed to one that sided with our current presence in Iraq. I have often shifted sides, which is evidence of my constant political revision. But, a weekend with my politically minded father changed my views, seemingly for the good.
IN THE SHORT RUN, Iraq will only be stable if we provide stability with our presence. As comedian and political mind Bill Maher said, it's like the husband who stopped beating on his wife while the police are on the porch. Once, they leave, the that woman better run.
IN THE LONG RUN, Iraq will be stable if: (a) they figure out their our political identity, and as such, the means by to run the country, or (b) we're still there providing that stability through military force.
We are trying to fit the Iraqi people and similarly their political structure into our American mold. We wonder, it works with us, why can't they do it? We forget the 231 years of constant change and revision to get to where we are now. Hell, thats like asking those people to, in an instant, create the US constitution with all of the Amendments already in place. In 1789, if they had written all that stuff in the constitution, we would have failed as a country. It's been a process of acculturation and constant miscegenation that has allowed our country to be the relatively liberal place it is today.
Joe Enrique Rodo's essay, Ariel, written in 1900, speaks of how Latin America does not fit the shoes of the American Industrialism, Capitalism and Democracy. In his introduction to Rodo's Ariel, scholar Carlos Fuentes says about Latin American countries, "we must pass from nationalism to interdependence, but interdependence is senseless without a basis in independence. Only independent nations can become independent partners. It not, they become protectorates, neocolonies, subject states."
This speaks of the economic dependence of the Latin American states on the US in their export based economies. This dependence is what had crippled them throughout the late 19th century and well into the 20th.
If this economic dependence crippled and delayed the growth of so many Latin American states, what leads us to believe an all-encompassing dependence on the US by Iraq will yield any better results? They have become a protectorate of the US.
The US' birth was that of denying our being a protectorate of England. Since then, we have developed a culture that is, though varying throughout, distinctly American. And that culture and the politics of this country has grown with other and changed each other simultaneously.
Now, we propose to impose our mode of politics on a completely juxtaposing culture.
We need to get out and let them figure it out on their own.
IN THE SHORT RUN, Iraq will only be stable if we provide stability with our presence. As comedian and political mind Bill Maher said, it's like the husband who stopped beating on his wife while the police are on the porch. Once, they leave, the that woman better run.
IN THE LONG RUN, Iraq will be stable if: (a) they figure out their our political identity, and as such, the means by to run the country, or (b) we're still there providing that stability through military force.
We are trying to fit the Iraqi people and similarly their political structure into our American mold. We wonder, it works with us, why can't they do it? We forget the 231 years of constant change and revision to get to where we are now. Hell, thats like asking those people to, in an instant, create the US constitution with all of the Amendments already in place. In 1789, if they had written all that stuff in the constitution, we would have failed as a country. It's been a process of acculturation and constant miscegenation that has allowed our country to be the relatively liberal place it is today.
Joe Enrique Rodo's essay, Ariel, written in 1900, speaks of how Latin America does not fit the shoes of the American Industrialism, Capitalism and Democracy. In his introduction to Rodo's Ariel, scholar Carlos Fuentes says about Latin American countries, "we must pass from nationalism to interdependence, but interdependence is senseless without a basis in independence. Only independent nations can become independent partners. It not, they become protectorates, neocolonies, subject states."
This speaks of the economic dependence of the Latin American states on the US in their export based economies. This dependence is what had crippled them throughout the late 19th century and well into the 20th.
If this economic dependence crippled and delayed the growth of so many Latin American states, what leads us to believe an all-encompassing dependence on the US by Iraq will yield any better results? They have become a protectorate of the US.
The US' birth was that of denying our being a protectorate of England. Since then, we have developed a culture that is, though varying throughout, distinctly American. And that culture and the politics of this country has grown with other and changed each other simultaneously.
Now, we propose to impose our mode of politics on a completely juxtaposing culture.
We need to get out and let them figure it out on their own.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
I hate anti-establishmentarianists who do it just because...
There is an idiot in my Humanities class who has earned my loathing of him. He is the type of person who feels the need to undermine everything said by the TA. And while, on occasion, he has made a decent point, he constantly and needlessly interjects discussion with his idiocy. And yes, I know it's called discussion, but when you spout nonsense, I don't think it contributes to that thing called discussion.
This is why I hate lower division class. Mandatory discussions are horsecrap because if I don't want to be there, I shouldn't have to listen to that bullshit.
This is why I hate lower division class. Mandatory discussions are horsecrap because if I don't want to be there, I shouldn't have to listen to that bullshit.
Friday, April 06, 2007
The thing i learned from surfing.
It took an aussie surf magazine to teach me what seems to be such a simple and poignant point of life. The moments of true happiness and satisfaction in our lives, measured in times, pales in comparison to the amount of time that we plan for those things. But, despite this bleak statistic, it makes those droplets of joy in the buckets of preparation, more than worth it. Take surfing for example.
Of all my time i spend on the sport, be it working on my board, prepping my gear, finding a break, paddling out, fighting waves or actually standing up, i spend less than 1% of that tune doing what I actually mean to do, standing up on the board and riding the wave. Those are mere seconds compared to the hours upon hours of work I take upon to do the sport.
eg. A few days beforesurfing , I would spend 3 hours working on my surfboards, fixing dings and delaminations and the like. This includes all the shopping for materials and equipments and the actual work. The day of surf, I take about an hour to prep all my stuff, cleaning my wetsuit, packing my board and everything. I take another 30 mins to drive to south carslbad. 15 mins to get ready to go out. I'm in the water for 4 hours or so. After, 15 , 30, and 60 mins to do all those things in reverse, and I've spent a good 7 hours 30 mins of a saturday on surfing and about 10 hours 30 mins out of my week for that one day of surf. What more, much of my paycheck goes to this sport, so hours on hours a week a drained by surfing just to pay for gas/wax/other supplies.
What gratification do I get out of it? Well, being very generous to myself, at a rate of 1 wave per 5 minutes (which is doable if I surf for an hour only, prior to fatigue setting in), I've ridden 48 waves. Each wave would last between 5 to 10 seconds (being very generous to my skills again, just to make the point). At an equally generous rounded up average of 8 secs per wave, I have spent 384 seconds, 6 minutes and 14 seconds, actually surfing.
And in each of those short spans of seconds, I feel sheer joy. For a moment, I forget everything except for that wave. There is a still peace about me. It makes the 99% + of my time spent on the sport more than worth it.
Real life, as in surfing, is overwhelming preparation and perspiration for relatively minuscule spans of joy. My sister-in-law planned for a year for a 3 hour wedding reception. My friend is going to med school for for 5+ years to become a doctor. He makes a decision to destroy his social life for his goal. When he graduates he will have a few moments of joy and ecstasy only to start again once he starts working to pay off all that crap. People save money and vacation time for years to take a few weeks off with their families. I and thousands of others spend 4+ years getting a BA or BS, for a brief 10 seconds on the stage to be recognized for it. People spend an hour+ to get on a ride at disneyland or magic mountain.
I have spent the past 3 summers and 1 winter of my life trying to surf. And yesterday, it all came to fruition. For at least a year now, I've been able to, more or less, consistently ride waves (as it breaks). But, yesterday, in an unreal time and space, I rode the face of a wave that had not broken yet. It managed to paddle as fast as this ripple in the ocean and catch it. Angled to the left, I glided across the clear and unbroken wave, not feeling the tumultuous ride I'm so accustomed to. I freeze and don't know what to do. I just ride.
I became a surfer
Of all my time i spend on the sport, be it working on my board, prepping my gear, finding a break, paddling out, fighting waves or actually standing up, i spend less than 1% of that tune doing what I actually mean to do, standing up on the board and riding the wave. Those are mere seconds compared to the hours upon hours of work I take upon to do the sport.
eg. A few days beforesurfing , I would spend 3 hours working on my surfboards, fixing dings and delaminations and the like. This includes all the shopping for materials and equipments and the actual work. The day of surf, I take about an hour to prep all my stuff, cleaning my wetsuit, packing my board and everything. I take another 30 mins to drive to south carslbad. 15 mins to get ready to go out. I'm in the water for 4 hours or so. After, 15 , 30, and 60 mins to do all those things in reverse, and I've spent a good 7 hours 30 mins of a saturday on surfing and about 10 hours 30 mins out of my week for that one day of surf. What more, much of my paycheck goes to this sport, so hours on hours a week a drained by surfing just to pay for gas/wax/other supplies.
What gratification do I get out of it? Well, being very generous to myself, at a rate of 1 wave per 5 minutes (which is doable if I surf for an hour only, prior to fatigue setting in), I've ridden 48 waves. Each wave would last between 5 to 10 seconds (being very generous to my skills again, just to make the point). At an equally generous rounded up average of 8 secs per wave, I have spent 384 seconds, 6 minutes and 14 seconds, actually surfing.
And in each of those short spans of seconds, I feel sheer joy. For a moment, I forget everything except for that wave. There is a still peace about me. It makes the 99% + of my time spent on the sport more than worth it.
Real life, as in surfing, is overwhelming preparation and perspiration for relatively minuscule spans of joy. My sister-in-law planned for a year for a 3 hour wedding reception. My friend is going to med school for for 5+ years to become a doctor. He makes a decision to destroy his social life for his goal. When he graduates he will have a few moments of joy and ecstasy only to start again once he starts working to pay off all that crap. People save money and vacation time for years to take a few weeks off with their families. I and thousands of others spend 4+ years getting a BA or BS, for a brief 10 seconds on the stage to be recognized for it. People spend an hour+ to get on a ride at disneyland or magic mountain.
I have spent the past 3 summers and 1 winter of my life trying to surf. And yesterday, it all came to fruition. For at least a year now, I've been able to, more or less, consistently ride waves (as it breaks). But, yesterday, in an unreal time and space, I rode the face of a wave that had not broken yet. It managed to paddle as fast as this ripple in the ocean and catch it. Angled to the left, I glided across the clear and unbroken wave, not feeling the tumultuous ride I'm so accustomed to. I freeze and don't know what to do. I just ride.
I became a surfer
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