thoughts on NYE, and wine instead of whisky

http://halftalk-random.blogspot.com/2011/12/nod-to-past-look-to-future.html

don't regret regret

interesting talk on regret on TED (here)
Especially liked the idea of the 'ctrl-z' generation. Some thoughts on  are here

BBC's tips topped

It's an odd eccentricity of BBC radio 4's Today programme that they still give out racing tips. Especially since it's quite a high brow show, I've often wondered why they do it, and what sort of credentials they have, so was interesting to hear that one listener had been logging and checking their tips for the last year. And their success rate? 20% , or 100 winners out of ~500 tips.
Not exactly amazing, but seems when compared to other sources (eg tips on newspapers) this seems about average. The test seems to be how much of one's stake is retained cumulatively, and their 88% is in the middle of the 86-93% range for such tipsters.
So not a lot of reason to use them it seems! If had bet one euro on each horse, would be down €67 by end of the year. Though again about average so,as they said, their slogan could be ‘bet with us - you won’t lose too much!!!'
Also liked the idea of logging john humphrey’s (known as the beeb's political attack dog) questions for the next year – and more importantly – how many of them  get an answer!

the US leaves Iraq, and many wasted possibilites behind

With the official US withdrawal from Iraq, think worth once again to see just what else the $700bn it cost could have been spent on....

• 46 years of global cancer research (at current levels)..
• 3 entire Space Shuttle programs...
• 28 Apollo programs...

What a waste of money and life. (more on this here)

no news is really good news, or at least better than FOX news

While it goes without saying that there are serious questions about Fox news' journalistic balance, it could be assumed that even biased opinions on reported events would raise awareness about those events themselves. Unfortunately this might not be the case, as a study by Fairleigh Dickerson University suggests.In response to questions about middle east events, people who watched FOX news were less able to judge how things had actually turned out, than people with no news source at all.

my full post on the topic is here

out of the blue or in the pink

The famous Hamley's toy store in London has decided to scrap its traditional separation of boys and girls toys and instead arrange the sections by type of toy. Apparently until now some floors were floral and pink for the 'girls stuff', and 'boys toys' were in their own levels , all noise and action.
Some comments and article links are in this new post in the Society & Psychology section

On writing a notebook....

Came across a nice wrote of Joan Didion's, from her essay On Writing A Notebook : "Remember what it was to be me: that is always the point...our notebooks give us away, for however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implaceable 'I."

Remember what it was to be me - Ilike that! Captures nicely the desire not just to share but also to somehow preserve the things that impress and enthuse us.

links above not working

seems the sub-blog links at the top of this page aren't working... must be a problem with blogger...
in case takes a while to be fixed, the links are :

Society & Psychology http://halftalk-society.blogspot.com/
Current Affairs http://halftalk-current.blogspot.com/
Readings & Listenings  http://halftalk-readings.blogspot.com
Random Thoughts  http://halftalk-random.blogspot.com/
In the News http://halftalk-news.blogspot.com/
TV tips http://halftalk-tv.blogspot.com/

When people are paid by results their attitudes change

In reading about child motivation I have often come across the thesis that motivating children by means of rewards was not only not more effective, but might actually discourage them from the desired behaviour in general. But it is interesting to see that the same conclusion can apply to adults as well, and even more specifically, adults in the domain of economics, where rationality is still, even if bounded, largely assumed.

See full post HERE

The swype is mightier than the sword

Due to a broken shoulder I'm down to one working hand at the moment and as a result have been writing a lot on my phone using swype. Apart from finding it actually easier and more efficient than trying to stab away on a laptop, once again I find myself thinking about the method itself, and whether there might be a qualitative difference in using it.

With typing, the word is pumped out almost as a unit, via an automatic burst of key strokes which are almost in parallel, and there is little thought or feeling of the individual letters that constitute it (which might explain my tendency in emails to mix up similarly sounding words, like "are", "our" and "or"). But when writing with a pen, or swype, one must deliberately spell out the word, letter by letter, and this must involve slightly different thinking? If only because one must wait until each word has fully resolved itself, and made that bit more of an impression, before one can fully turn one's attention to the next. Maybe it is even similar to the difference between the old way in which reading was taught, with the focus on the full word as a whole, and the new phonics method of teaching, which is supposed to be more effective. The fact that the two styles of instruction differ in effectiveness  indicates a difference in mental processing, between gulping the word down  as a block, and slowly sipping it in in chunks.

My full article on the subject is HERE

To err is human, to ignore errors is political

Jenni Russell's article about Theresa May's (UK minister) problems with admitting a mistake highlights something important and paradoxical about modern politics - the combination between wanting a human leader, but also an infallible one. As the power of the label 'flip-flopper' shows in the US, there is little that can do more damage to a politician's reputation than admitting a mistake, or performing a u-turn. But surely a u-turn is better than continuing off a cliff?

the full article is  (here) and some comments of mine are in a separate post in the current affairs section here

Failure of economics? Economists to the rescue!

It is true that a dominant theme in the recent economic crises is how stupendously misguided the economist 'powers that be' have been, suffering at least from terminal group think and at worst from delusions of their own (or their field's) ability, so it is slightly worrying that they are now being handed even more power.

See this latest post in the current affairs section for some thoughts and articles on the subject.

quote to quote...

"The point is not to understand the world, but to change it"  Karl Marx

A nice encapsulation of the idea that at the end of the day it is what we do that matters, and  how everything else could be viewed as ultimately intangible and unreal; and, if consider the notion that we lead our lives in pursuit of something more than mere pleasure, but to have a purpose, maybe it could be extended to "the point is not to understand the world, or even to enjoy it, but to change it" .

Though maybe related is Woody Allen's quote, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my works; I want to achieve immortality through not dying". Indeed!

What also comes to mind are the following lines from Larkin's "Churchgoing" (the full poem, one of my favourites, is here)

"since someone will forever be surprising,

a hunger in himself to be more serious"

Maybe the driven are simply delusional, and it is better to sit back and enjoy things after all. Mill might have thought "it is better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied", but maybe he overestimated humans, and underestimated pigs.

Still, something reassuring in having simply wanting to enjoy life as a plan B, a worst case goal if all else fails :-)

Cutting Edge : anonymous accountability?

This week's Cutting Edge documentary (about the  battle between owners and reviewers on Trip Advisor) raises I think some interesting points about the new culture of online commentary. In particular I think there is potential for a new mechanism (of usernames/websites/customs) to be developed to allow 'anonymous accountability' in online identies.

My thoughts on the matter are posted here.