tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-100441602024-03-08T02:28:18.420-08:00Once I Dreamt of A Fish 庄子梦蝶,桑子梦鱼。sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.comBlogger495125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-80659815341933030312013-03-15T15:56:00.001-07:002013-03-15T15:57:34.226-07:00Untitledit's late afternoon. i'm sitting in a cafe sipping on tea while pretending to work but really watching people in the streets. when i think about the alternatives, either on the beach in california, or in one of the two densely populated asian cities i grew up in, i am happy that i decided to spend my mid to late twenties in grad school this small city of cambridge. here i live with roommates, i walk everywhere, i cook, i have coffees at cafes, i go to bars with friends, i work and think at leisure. i don't live with my parents, i don't have to driver everywhere and i'm not married. somehow, i feel very much like an individual. sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-12803479144805456902010-07-13T14:27:00.000-07:002010-07-13T15:41:14.651-07:00Cabaret<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.cinematographers.nl/GreatDoPh/Films/Cabaret2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 384px; height: 214px;" src="http://www.cinematographers.nl/GreatDoPh/Films/Cabaret2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br /><br />regular late night internet crawling behavior led me to the 1972 musical movie <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabaret_%28film%29"><i>cabaret</i></a>, starring the extremely talented liza minnelli and joel grey. the film was nominated for 10 oscars and won 8 of them when competing against <i>godfather</i>. <br /><br /><br><br />i was positively blown away. i have seen and liked minnelli in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arrested_Development_characters#Lucille_Austero"><i>arrested development</i></a>, but had not the faintest idea what was coming at me when i loaded <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moOamKxW844&feature=related"> the title clip</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkRIbUT6u7Q&feature=related">the money clip</a>. the cabaret scenes look like a moving matisse(probably in keeping with the early 1930's berlin setting of the film). they are filled with quick swirls of contrasting bright and intense colors, gold, navy, maroon, royal purple, red, orange...the lighting is as deliciously rich as the costumes. the exaggerated makeup echoes the bold, loose, expressive and almost intentionally ugly dance moves. it's amazing how everything still manages to work precisely in concert with each other and make a lot of sense. <br /><br><br /><br />minnelli is a natural performer, of course. besides her unforgettable, startling large eyes, it is incredible how freely she moves her body parts. most of the time she's just walking about the stage in ostentatiously large strides, her arms flailing about carelessly. and she sort of just becomes a channel for the enormous amount of life squirting out of her, and there seems to be not the least bit of self-awareness. <br /><br><br /><br />i haven't even seen the whole movie, but just the couple stage clips i can watch on youtube entertained me like nothing else i've seen in a long time.sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-57779522092653266612009-12-25T14:42:00.000-08:002009-12-25T14:45:50.552-08:00about google waveon first look, google wave seems to just make things more salient and organic, with its flashy formatting options and integral embedding functions. <br /><br />however, there is one thing you can do on gwave that you can't do on gchat/gmail. (although i think skype pioneered it). that is you can go back and edit your or others' thread. this came up in a gwave conversation i had with G. H.. we found that we can easily make reference to something that has been discussed in the past (in time) in the conversation, by typing comments next to it, with arrows and different formatting to indicate new lines. this has philosophical impact! :) it technically makes all parts of the conversations (in time) accessible (in space), and hence expands the linear irreversible style of conversation into a more network like structure. effectively this also expands our working memory, and captures the structure of information transfer that is more natural (and indeed needed, especially by the ADD generation of ours). this, not only gmail and gchat can't do, but normal person to person talking conversation can't do either. the only thing resembling it is a white board discussion.sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-43685550730025153812009-08-12T15:23:00.000-07:002010-06-29T11:36:01.859-07:00time and again, i listen but never hear. since i bought a more than extravagant pair of earbuds, i'm going back to plow my library. and today i did some surgery to Leonardo. this is the first time i paid attention to the lyrics, and it is absolutely brilliant! what Whitacre had done with the text is indescribable. i probably dismissed it because it sounded baroque-ish, but when i heard the lyrics, it made total sense. i think he's trying to capture a rennaissance flavour (the exquisite counterpoints, the major chord ending to a phrase in minor key, the occasional break into a fugue, the delicious clashes and resolutions, ostinatos here and there.) it's full of human energy. it made me see Whitacre in a completely different light..<br />Tony Silvestri is heck of a poet. the imagery is amazing...i'm following him on twitter now :) @TonySilvestri<br /><br />Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine<br /><b>Music</b> by <a href="http://www.ericwhitacre.com/">Eric Whitacre</a><br /><b>Text</b> by <a href="http://web.mac.com/anthonysilvestri/Charles_Anthony_Silvestri/Welcome.html">Charles Anthony Silvestri</a><br /><i><br />leonardo dreams of his flying machine<br />tormented by visions of flight and falling,<br />more wondrous and terrible each than the last,<br />master leonardo imagines an engine<br />to carry a man up into the sun...<br /><br />as he's dreaming the heavens call to him,<br />softly whispering their siren-song:<br />"leonardo, leonardo, vieni a volare."<br /><br />l'uomo colle sua congiegniate e grandi ale,<br />facciendo forza contro alla resistente aria.<br /><br />as the candles burn low he paces and writes,<br />releasing purchased pigeons one by one<br />into the golden Tuscan sunrise...<br /><br />and as he dreams, again the calling,<br />the very air itself gives voice:<br />"leonardo, leonardo, vieni a volare."<br /><br />vicina all' elemento del fuoco...<br />scratching quill on crumpled paper<br />(rete, canna, filo, carta)<br />images of wing and frame and fabric fastened tightly.<br />...sulla suprema sottile aria.<br /><br />as the midnight watchtower tolls,<br />over rooftop, street and dome,<br />the triumph of a human being ascending<br />in the dreaming of a mortal man.<br /><br />leonardo steals himself,<br />takes one last breath, and leaps.....<br />"leonardo vieni a volare! leonardo, sognare!"<br /><br /></i>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-43072462616751551412009-08-03T19:51:00.000-07:002009-08-03T20:35:47.218-07:00untitledi decided at some point that i see no merit in nationalism. what is nationalism? why should i care about something that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago just because it happened in the (arbitrarily defined) geographic region i was born in by chance and do not even live in any longer? china is so big that kin selection doesn't even begin to explain it. but what's consciously conceived doesn't change what in fact happens. stuff to do with china's past and present frequently gets me very emotional. it's not rational.and why is it such a visceral response?<br /><br />i used to justify the conflict between my disappointment in the country and its people and my love for the bits and pieces of chinese culture by distinguishing the loyalty to one's government from the affinity to one's culture. however, i have always known that what makes the government the way it is, and the people the way they are is an integral part of the cultural genome. the good and the bad stemmed from the same source and had coexisted alongside each other all this time. going further on the same thought, what am i but a collection of memes that i gathered over the years? what i am but what i've seen and heard. i AM a continuation of the system of ideas that has been put into the plastic mind of mine. i have been wired to respond to emotionally taxing issues related to my grandparents, and even my ancestors. this nationalism is, in fact, biological. if i decided to rebel against the bits of the culture i don't like, i'd lose a lot of me. and then for consistency's sake, i have to lose the bits i like, whatever that's left, too. my options are to lose a large part of what makes me me, or to live in contradiction. <br /><br />maybe this is why people from cultural entities with longer history carry more baggage with them, because the longer a culture persists and the more vast and complex it becomes, more unlikable things accumulate in the culture itself. this makes it hard for the offsprings to decide on an appropriate reaction to their own culture, and eventually results in the love-hate relationships, and frequently conflicting intellectual agony which some, like me, experience.sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-4957347441918322562009-08-03T18:47:00.000-07:002009-08-03T18:53:37.439-07:00i've always wanted to copy this down"It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it <i>was</i> happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book. The dinner is by now forgotten; Lessing has been long shadowed by other writers; and even the sex, once she and Richard reached that point, was ardent but awkward, unsatisfying, more kindly than passionate. What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other."<br /><br />Michael Cunningham <br /><i>The Hours</i>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-17185018266961113972009-07-31T21:21:00.000-07:002009-07-31T21:26:20.285-07:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KWxpgEjenHA/SnPD5YT6yOI/AAAAAAAAAWo/R3GQu4UB8ZI/s1600-h/Image143.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_KWxpgEjenHA/SnPD5YT6yOI/AAAAAAAAAWo/R3GQu4UB8ZI/s320/Image143.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364846971674347746" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KWxpgEjenHA/SnPDL4p_CII/AAAAAAAAAWg/vmYU90Y5cbc/s1600-h/Image144.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 233px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KWxpgEjenHA/SnPDL4p_CII/AAAAAAAAAWg/vmYU90Y5cbc/s320/Image144.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5364846190082852994" /></a>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-73427019050983930672009-03-01T16:55:00.000-08:002009-03-01T17:40:02.682-08:00funny story<a href="http://web.mit.edu/bcs/sinha/home.html">pawan sinha</a>, a professor at mit strapped a camera to his baby's head to collect data on what the baby was looking at while his wife was out of town. one thing led to another and one day his wife saw that the kiddie's picture popped out in this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/science/18kids.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=%22Test%20Subjects%20Who%20Call%20the%20Scientist%20Mom%20or%20Dad%22&st=cse">NYT article</a>...<br /><br />so pawan was happily telling this story to a class of cognitive science students.. and my friend manning in the audience raised his hand and said you should meet this other first year. her name is sangyu and she wants to raise her baby in an incubator with rubber hands and computer screen that simulate maternal stimuli. (something i have been tireless pushing for. there are more layers of subtleties to it than just rubber hands and a screen, also involving response actions, but you get the idea. with a little bit of AI should be feasible, eh? ) <br /><br />and i heard pawan's response was "good thing we are not married."<br /><br />meh, i don't know. the prospect of a baby with a camera on her head in an incubator? could be greatness...sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-20765163414802793402009-02-20T13:12:00.000-08:002009-02-20T13:19:06.781-08:00poulenc, diariesi went to borrow volkov's testimony, and ended up grabbing various diaries and correspondences in the vicinity. one of them is diaries poulenc kept about his songs. here's a cute quote (i'm typing in english cos i don't want to deal with accents):<br /><br /><i> "i am resuming this diary in a bad mood. i began it moreover, in similar circumstances. yesterday a recital by Mme X who sings with intelligence but a minimum of voice. the accompanist was impeccable but she was terribly mean when it came to using enough pedal. <br /> it was a success, it seems. i left the salle gaveau in a fury<br /> i detest intelligent singers. i like to hear some singing with a good sauce of pedal (the butter!), without which my music is destroyed."</i>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-37200965813763838392009-02-01T12:14:00.000-08:002009-02-01T12:17:40.563-08:00one of the ironies with the net generation is the following: no one is nearer a clock for a greater amount of time than we do, because the computer has time displayed, and applications such as chat tell us what time it is literally all the time. but nobody loses track of time more than we do. times just slips away through the chat windows and between the browser tabs. :(sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-65459834155947065402009-01-26T17:52:00.001-08:002009-01-26T17:54:22.661-08:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/converting_to_metric.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 370px; height: 277px;" src="http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/converting_to_metric.png" border="0" alt="" /></a>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-40806361373703575472009-01-25T15:16:00.001-08:002009-01-25T15:27:28.777-08:00was reminded TED existed again<object width="334" height="326"><param name="movie" value="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="bgColor" value="#ffffff"></param> <param name="flashvars" value="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/embed/DavidPogue_2006-embed_high.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DavidPogue-2006.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=7" /><embed src="http://video.ted.com/assets/player/swf/EmbedPlayer.swf" pluginspace="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" bgColor="#ffffff" width="334" height="326" allowFullScreen="true" flashvars="vu=http://video.ted.com/talks/embed/DavidPogue_2006-embed_high.flv&su=http://images.ted.com/images/ted/tedindex/embed-posters/DavidPogue-2006.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=320&vh=240&ap=0&ti=7"></embed></object>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-53367110553666125172009-01-24T14:08:00.000-08:002009-01-26T17:55:06.040-08:00i was only trying to get my boot fixed. but the cobbler wasn't open on weekends. the english language is getting simpler but longer. cobblers are called shoe repairs now. cobbler is now a drink.i had animal collective on my headphones. i haven't heard much of it yet but it sounded like a soundtrack to random indie movies. so i felt as if i was in a movie as i walked in the bitter january wind. if i was in a movie, it must be about me, says my subjective consciousness.and i wonder if i had written a book about my life or shot a movie, whether anyone would consume it.<br /><br /><br /><br />and, picture of the day:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://web.mit.edu/~sangyu/www/Locker/3.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 240px;" src="http://web.mit.edu/~sangyu/www/Locker/3.JPG" border="0" alt="" /></a>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-84226899496442369562009-01-23T19:50:00.001-08:002009-01-23T19:51:12.419-08:00was reminded paco de lucia existed again<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/jxodluTaz4g&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/jxodluTaz4g&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-29053063062963135112008-12-28T03:42:00.001-08:002009-01-01T20:43:33.683-08:00mating intelligence [cont.]two chapters by keller and shaner et. al. discuss the nature and importance of fitness indicators, the role of the brain as a mental fitness indicator and the implications of their theory in mental disorders such as schizophrenia.<br /><br />consider a male peacock who invests considerable amount of energy in making a big shiny tail to display ostensibly during courtship. the cost of this investement alone can be seen as an indicator of this particular male's overall fitness, such as ability to produce a lot of color pigments, maintaining the size and shine of the tail and mental and physical agility to avoid predators at an increased risk of being spotted. on the other hand, a male peacock who cannot afford to invest in such a tail due to low fitness will have a much drabber tail. the tail of a peacock is thus a typical fitness indicator. the characteristics of such indicators are as follows:<br /><br />1) high variance in measurable parameters, so that presumably it is easy for the chooser sex to pick from - the whole point is for the trait to be an indicator<br />2) variance correlates with underlying fitness<br />3) potential mate prefer th high fitness extreme<br />4) the trait is heritable<br />5) the trait is more conspicuous in the sex being chosen<br /><br />this seemingly plausible argument runs into the "lek paradox", i.e. the contradiction between high sexual selection pressure and high variance. should all female peacocks prefer pretty tails, such genes will prevail and all male peacocks should have pretty tails, hence variance should be low. the resolution to this paradox comes from the speculation that fitness indicators, no matter how single-gene dependent to start with, inevitabily becomes polygenic because other traits have to coevolve to accommodate for the change in the indicator trait. e.g the peacock needs greater agility presumably to compensate for the more cumbersome tail. a polygenic trait inevitably becomes a bigger target for mutation accumulation due to the multiple genes involved, which leads to high variance. so the logic is that intensive sexual selection predicts a development of the trait into a polygenic one, which predicts the increase in its variance.<br /><br />the above might be familiar to all of you who read evolutionary psychology and the likes. the developmet that the MI researchers want to bring home is that the human brain and its elaborate cognitive funcions such as language and creativity is an indicator for fitness. female preference for male brain power leads to the rapid selection of better brain genes. like other fitness indicators, intelligence, especially mating intelligence, is polygenic, prominently variable in males and heritable. <br /><br />what's particularly interesting is that the authors suggest that mental disorders are serious failures of mating intelligence. schizophrenia is used as an example. in the analogy to peakcock tails, schizophrenia is like a drab tail, and it indicates mental unfitness, especially in mating. the onset of schizophrenia coincides with the start of reproductive period in humans, and it remits with the end of reproduction. it highly predicts mating failures and results social stigmatization. it is recently found to be polygenic, with many common develomental genes being the target for mutations discovered but not any schizophrenic switch genes. it is ostensible in male humas, the chosen sex and its development is sensitive to environmental factors that affect fitness.it is therefore merely the low end extreme of mating intelligence.<br /><br />this led me to wonder about autism, which is clearly a spectrum of disorders with polygenic causes. however, it is not likely to be related to mating intelligence, because it is a childhood disease. as i wondered, i reached a section in shaner et. al. which actually discusses autism. they think that autism is an indicator of weakness in potential mating fitness not for mates to see, but for parents. very much like young birds who look better might get more parental investments, autism displays genetic unfitness that might prevent parents from investing limited resources in the affected child.sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-54414787317571715532008-12-25T23:37:00.001-08:002008-12-26T02:44:42.070-08:00mating intelligenceso i'm half way through this book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mating-Intelligence-Relationships-Reproductive-System/dp/0805857494">mating intelligent-sex relationships, and the mind's reproductive system</a>, a collection of reviewish articles on the emerging concept of mating intelligence, meant to be used as a psychology text book on human mating behaviour, especially the decision making process involved. i have never read a psychology book before, so this is was particularly interesting for me. (also because of my inherent interest in mating and sexual behaviuor in general, but you already knew that.)<br /><br />the editors <a href="http://www2.newpaltz.edu/~geherg/">glenn geher</a> and <a href="http://www.unm.edu/~psych/faculty/lg_gmiller.html">geoffrey miller</a> want to bring home the point that intelligence in mating, as in optimisation of mating related decisions, should really be studied as an intelligence that stands on its own right alongside general intelligence and emotional intelligence<sup>1</sup>. this book looks at two things. first how intelligence affects the decisions people make in mating. second how sexual selection of intelligence happens. so far i'm still reading about the cognitive ability of handling mating, i.e. the former.<br /><br />whether or not we agree that mating intelligence could be coined as a novel concept, a few things were quite interesting to know (in addition to the obvious, that men prefer young and attractive women, and women prefer rich and powerful men):<br /><br /><br />1) a big portion of several articles talk about the relationship between mate choice and mate tactic for long and or short term matings. <a href="http://www.larspenke.eu/english.html">penke</a> et al especially interestingly discussed the role of self assessment in mating tactics, the so called mate value sociometer<sup>2</sup>. turns out, males are more affected by mate value sociometer, i.e they are more sensitive to their own mating value. the logic goes as follows: females are always choosy, because they are the limiting factor in this whole mating thing. because of the risk of pregnancy, females prefer long term mating to short term mating, and because of the higher risk involved in short term mating, they might have even higher condition preference for short term mating. males when given the opportunity will like to do variety short term matings. but because of the selectivity females have for short term mating partners, trying to engage a female for short term mating becomes a socially risky behaviour due to costly rejections. so only very few males with very high mating values should attempt it and the others will form avoidance behaviour. it is here where the ability to judge his own mating value and behaving adaptively becomes extremely important for males, but not females.<br /><br />2) <a href="http://www.psy.utexas.edu/psy/faculty/Li/li.html">norman p. li</a> brought up a point (a very side point): testosterone impairs the immune system, which if compromised in development results in a lack of bilateral facial symmetry, therefore women look for men who exhibit both masculinity and facial symmetry, indicating the presence of exceptional genes despite the presence of large amounts of testosterone<sup>3</sup>. i searched for primary literature, only to find <a href="http://www.jimmunol.org/cgi/content/abstract/173/10/6098?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=testosterone&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT">roden et al (2004)</a><sup>4</sup> reporting in increase in t cell activity with removal of androgen by castration in male mice. didn't find anything more significant. nevertheless it's an interesting thing to think about.<br /><br />3) another interesting thing norm li talked about (i think this is more of the main point of the article) is that although physical attractiveness in females and status in males are the primary attractive traits to the opposite sex, they both exhibit typical <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns">diminishing-marginal-return pattern</a> from an economics point of view, i.e. "going from below average to average increases acceptability more than going from average to above average did", and these are the only traits that exhibit such patterns, among many other desirable traits. the thing is that each sex sizes up one of these two traits in the opposite sex first, then they consider other factors. when the mating budget given to one is low (such as low mating value of oneself) then one is likely to put high priority on physical attractiveness in a female or status in a male. but when budge is high, one adaptively puts higher priorities on other traits. in this way physical attractiveness and status are used in mate selection much like gre scores in grad school admissions. high scores don't help as much as low scores hurt.<br /><br />4) the article written by <a href="http://www.usfca.edu/artsci/fac_staff/O/osullivan_maureen.html">maureen o'sullivan</a> on deception describes roles of deception in long term and short term mating. she descries romantic love as not only a cognitive construct but a form of self-deception to keep a long term pair bond going<sup>5</sup>. i quote:<br /><i><b>"for example, murray and her colleagues (murray, holmes, bellavia, griffin & dolderman, 2002) demonstrated that people in enduring relationships saw their partners as more similar to themselves than they actually were. they termed this mismatch "egocentrism'. another name for it might be self-deception, believing that ones partner is a soul mate allows one to feel understood, which leads to satisfaction in the relationship which leads to its continuation."</b></i><br />it's refreshing to hear it from a theoretical point of view, although i have long suspected so about the make-believe nature of the construct of soul mates. o'sullivan also talks about the willingness of the lied to partner to believe in the lies, quoting geoffrey miller (2006, personal communication)<sup>6</sup> "there may be an adaptive binary switchh from total trust to totaly mistrust, with no finess paoff for being in an in-between-state of semi-trust" between partners.<br /><br />5) possibly altruism evolved in the same way other useless things did, such as artistic ability and sense of humor, designed as traits to attract mates, much like the ostensibly invested in but not practical in any sense peacock's tail. ?<br /><br />that's it so far.<br /><br />------------------------------<br />works cited<br /><br />1. geher, miller and murphy. mating intelligence: toward an evolutionarily informed construct. 2008.<br /><br />2. penke, todd, lenton and fasolo. how self-assessment can guide human mating decisions. 2008.<br /><br />3. li. intelligent priorities: adaptive long- and short-term mating preferences. 2008.<br /><br />4. roden et. al. augmentation of t cell levels and responses induced by androgen deprivation. 2004.<br /><br />5. o'sullivan. deception and self-deception as strategies in short and long-term <br />mating. 2008.<br /><br />6. miller. personal communications. 2006.sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-67601937068199959322008-12-25T23:19:00.000-08:002008-12-25T23:36:41.985-08:00same old storyhere i am again, stuck in some airport. being stuck at an airport so frequently happens to my loner trips that it has become a necessity of some sort. somehow orbitz booked the two flights (bos-ord, ord-pvg) 12 hours apart, and didn't make it connecting. so i had to check out my luggage and wait outside at departure. where there's only a starbucks some equally overpriced snack shop. and after i wondered around for about 15 min, i only managed to find one spot where there's a combination of a chair and a power outlet. and unfortunately this spot is on a different level from the one that contains the starbucks. so crippled by my luggage, i had to stick with one coffee for the night.<br /><br />ORD sucks.<br /><br />around me nothing much is happening, cos it's christmas. i had expected more people around here, cos of the nyt articles making big deals out of people stuck at ORD. not very many of them it seems, or the congestion has been eased. after i sat down, i spent half an hour explaining the specs of my computer to a night guard,who was surprised to find out that my laptop was a laptop not a dvd player and henceforth asked about processing speed etc. then i bought myself 24hrs of internet as a xmas present, i started to get used to the surrounding. i'm sitting on a bench that has i guess acrylic painting all over it, painted by chicago teenagers in gallery37, a program of "after school matters". two benches away, a young african american man is sleeping soundly, and next to his bench, a blonde girl is watching some movie. the escalator on my right is moaning very loudly. <br /><br />ok i give up on this stream of consciousness thing.sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-19284812474571863212008-12-24T00:11:00.000-08:002008-12-24T00:12:06.263-08:00<object width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/0zuQQM4P1ZM&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/0zuQQM4P1ZM&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-29173576854780046452008-12-14T17:40:00.000-08:002008-12-14T17:55:11.085-08:00peisnerrecently i went back to listening to the soundtracks that preisner wrote for kieslowski(the three colors and the double life of veronique). my obsession has caused my brain to be saturated with nothing but the same melodies in all sorts of instrumentation.<br /><br />listen to this concerto he wrote for veronique, pretending to be the fictitious 18th century dutch composer Van den Budenmayer. it clearly couldn't have been written in the 18th century, the sound is too modern, don't you think?<br /><br /><br /><object width="300" height="42"><br /><br /><param name="src" value="http://www.mit.edu/%7Esangyu/Locker/concerto.mp3"><br /><br /><embed src="http://www.mit.edu/%7Esangyu/Locker/concerto.mp3" width="300" height="42" autostart=false ></embed><br /><br /></object>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-25734102356456193862008-12-11T19:53:00.000-08:002008-12-11T19:54:38.313-08:00since i found the full length version<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ixgFEMWd8Ps&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ixgFEMWd8Ps&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-28923025828095519492008-12-08T22:23:00.000-08:002008-12-08T22:28:42.979-08:00水木年华 蝴蝶花<br /><br /><object width="300" height="42"><br /><br /><param name="src" value="http://www.mit.edu/%7Esangyu/Locker/___.mp3"><br /><br /><embed src="http://www.mit.edu/%7Esangyu/Locker/___.mp3" width="300" height="42" autostart=false ></embed><br /><br /></object><br /><br />爱是什么<br /><br /><object width="300" height="42"><br /><br /><param name="src" value="http://www.mit.edu/%7Esangyu/Locker/%D6_%D1%A7%CA%B1_%FA.mp3"><br /><br /><embed src="http://www.mit.edu/%7Esangyu/Locker/%D6_%D1%A7%CA%B1_%FA.mp3" width="300" height="42" autostart=false ></embed><br /><br /></object>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-34396711691644236312008-12-03T13:34:00.000-08:002008-12-03T13:38:51.800-08:00DBS/FOTF aftermath<a href="http://magnezium.blogspot.com/2008/12/reflections-on-dbs-fotf-faux-pas.html">here</a> is an excellent analysis of the DBS/FOTF episode by Mohan.sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-12517102075979217432008-12-03T13:01:00.000-08:002008-12-03T13:04:08.961-08:00Patient H.M.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM_(patient)">Patient H.M.</a> died at 82 yesterday after contributing to memory research by being a life long research subject.sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-77999083052314975172008-11-24T15:33:00.003-08:002008-11-24T15:37:38.116-08:00wear this hot thing around your neckcheck out this great idea:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.madewithmolecules.com/capsaicinnecklace.html"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 230px;" src="http://www.madewithmolecules.com/images/capsaicinnecklace.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10044160.post-75944456800274887852008-11-23T17:19:00.000-08:002008-11-23T18:59:54.088-08:00披肩从办公室到实验室的途中在洗手间停了一下,看见镜子里的自己,黑衣服,深红披肩,松散的长卷发。说不清什么眼神。忽然想起三毛来,然后自然地想起了齐豫。<br /><br />小时候读三毛,拼命地想像三毛这个人。叛逆的少年,流浪着的青年,郁郁而终的中年。我对三毛的视觉化印象主要取决于家里一盒卡带《三毛的歌》的封面。吉普塞女郎的装束,长发编成松松的发辫,倚着一头小毛驴。背景是苍茫的撒哈拉。在我的脑海里,三毛成了一种符号。《橄榄树》成了一种符号。有时候我沉浸在齐豫遥远的歌声中,憧憬着流浪的感觉,孤身一人,走着,看着,爱着,感受着,寻觅着,向往着远方。觉得浪漫得不得了。后来我真的离开了家,在陌生的国度辗转。派对之后,工作之余,安静地听着齐豫,觉得自己象是流浪着寻找梦中的橄榄树一样。不然为什么喜欢长长的卷发,买了深红的披肩,流连于孤身旅行,久久不愿回家呢?<br /><br />我一直觉得齐豫有些近似三毛的气质。我常想,她离家以后,有没有也觉得自己象三毛一样在大漠里徘徊呢?不然,为什么她的装束,她的眼神,她的歌声,无一不象三毛,那么感性,执着,罗曼蒂克。她又在找什么呢?我又在找什么呢?<br /><br />也许我和三毛和齐豫本来就是一个类型的人,也许三毛的书齐豫的歌一直潜移默化地影响着我。不管是什么原因,我感到一种跨越时空的共鸣,就好像michael cunningham 的 the hours里的种种必然.<br /><br />橄榄树(歌词集)<br /><br />作者: 三毛<br /> <br />【橄榄树】<br />(三毛词 李泰祥曲)<br /> <br />不要问我从哪里来<br />我的故乡在远方<br />为什么流浪<br />流浪远方 流浪<br />为了天空飞翔的小鸟<br />为了山间轻流的小溪<br />为了宽阔的草原<br />流浪远方 流浪<br />还有还有 为了梦中的橄榄树<br /> <br />不要问我从哪里来<br />我的故乡在远方<br />为什么流浪<br />为什么流浪远方<br />为了我梦中的橄榄树<br /> <br />不要问我从哪里来<br />我的故乡在远方<br />为什么流浪<br />流浪远方 流浪<br /> sangyuhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09987523355461599924noreply@blogger.com0