To learn to cry by laughing

Out to sea,Out to sea
And in the weightlessness of the bottom where dreams come true;
two wills come together to make a wish come true;
Your look and my look like an echo repeating, without words;
Deeper, Deeper beyond everything through the blood and the bones;
But I always wake up and I always wish I’d be dead to stay with my mouth entangled in your hair

---- Ramón Sampedro

Ad-verse reaction

Are we being brainwashed or what?

http://www.bodnotbod.org.uk/blog/?p=1

Metacognition for the Blind

Blunkett may be on the dole but Blair is still on the loose. And what difference does it make? Blunkett, Blair, Brown, Davis (erm, sorry I meant Cameron), Howard, the whiskey toting Glaswegian they all have the same if not similar agendas. It makes no bloody difference! I swear that I have not been reading Schopenhauer lately but I think that we should re-evaluate the logic behind our "autonomous" cognitive reasoning.

Photos from NYC - has it been 7 years already?

irish legacy; St. Patrick's cathederal

An overcast day above the city, not so bad though

was afraid to point the camera but i do like this picture

heh! heh! heh! (clears throat)

2 cities in the US will permanently occupy a place in my heart, New York City (Manhattan) and Seattle. Sadly I was not able to visit Seattle on this occasion but maybe next time.

Cosas del corazon

The deft three finger embrace

Hey! stop looking at the blonde one!

A beautiful girl

No caption necessary!!!

They things people say vs the things they mean

So, I am not going for the 2 opportunities, which incidentally could have a major influence on my career. Why? I'll get to that in a moment but first I must discuss the makings of a Prat, one I met last year (and yes, capital "P").

What is a “prat”? OED states that a prat is a buttock and is used colloquially to denote an idiot. The word idiot is derived from the Greek idiotes (individual) and idios (private). In ancient Athens, an idiot was someone who “declined to take part in public life”. In medical or psychological terms, an idiot is someone who has a mental illness or very low IQ as a result, an idiot will have little cognitive ability or his cognitive abilities would be regarded as being poor. Lev Vygotsky maintained that cognitive reasoning was a process derived from culture, social interaction and environment. What makes a Prat or what dost a Pat make? Let’s take a real life example and discuss why he is a Prat. I will demonstrate that Prat is simply a product of his culture, environment, social order and cognitive reasoning.

The Prat I refer to wanted to get into Cambridge University so bad that he got his brother - who works for the government of a certain Arab nation - to "arrange" a small sponsorship (20k per year) for his tuition at Homerton College (famous for not being a Cambridge Uni college and not least for it's acceptance of anyone with a sufficient number of "greenbacks"). To enter a PhD it is recommended that application be made no later than the end of April for the year you wish to commence in. This Prat applied in June or July last year and was accepted for a degree in September. 20k a year for four to five years does not make the paperwork any lighter but it sure does buy one an entrance speedily. Hell, they practically begged him to sign the dotted line. Nothing wrong with this picture?

When I questioned him about his course, he was always evasive and obscure saying only that he was doing a PhD in Education and he needed to hand in essays and a thesis after one year. Ha, ha, Sounded more like an MPhil to me. I did not mind that he was being evasive nor that he lied, he was still an amigo and I would never think less of him. Indeed as I suspected, I later found out that he was doing an MPhil leading to a PhD but why did he find it necessary to lie to me? His feeble excuse was that his supervisor had not properly informed him after his acceptance that he would need to do an MPhil first (oh, he admitted it to me in the end after he left some documents in my car which I had forgotten about until he asked for them and guess what, those documents were his letter of acceptance for entrance to an MPhil leading to a PhD. Now I must mention that I did not snoop until he requested the documents “in the brown envelope”).

Where culture meets social order. I think that perhaps, in “his” country he is higher up in the cast if he studies for a PhD at Cambridge and he presumes that similarly in Cambridge mortals would honor him for his status. Although not necessarily part of his culture, the methodology used by the Prat is indicative of a “primitive” social order loosely based on an ideology. Individual ideology in his case because a cast system is largely used by cultures to impose order on a group of “lesser” mortals and he is not party to any order residing and socialising amongst his peers, his peers being equals not lesser mortals. As an ideology is a derivative of public opinion and Prat is on his own, he is regarded as someone outside an ideological state and therefore he remains an individual, a unique individual and therefore a Prat at that.

My arab mate’s thesis is based on establishing a framework to modernize the teaching methods for children with “learning difficulties”. As Vygotsky’s theory about cognitive reasoning points out, environment plays a part in the cognitive development of an individual and cognitive development may decide the state of the individual's mind based on principles governing cognitive reasoning. "Stare into the abyss and the abyss stares back at you" etc. Let’s just say that trying to come up with solutions for teaching mentally ill kids may not necessarily improve the mental state of the Prat devising the solution. Perhaps too much time in that realm could (and has) lead to a depreciation of cerebral mechanics. Ironic you say?

Well, enough of QA the Prat and more about real issues. Why have I not taken up the appointment at the two companies? 2 reasons: I hate wearing ties and I hate bullshit!

So a TV station documented that one in four men use (for need of a better word) the services of a prostitute. Eighty percent of men engage the services of a prostitute after marriage.

I won’t bother with central government statistics and the governments’ dependency on statistics to deceive us into sanctioning pivotal decisions like going to war. Instead I thought a famous quote would suffice.

Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.
--Aaron Levenstein

Balance

A friend whom I have known for a few years visited me last week and we discussed how each of us respectively, were doing on the planet these days. He told me that he was in the same relationship with Joanna, whom he met here about 3 years ago. He also mentioned that he was commencing the second year of his PhD, had recently bought a flat and is also planning to get engaged.

I, on the other hand, have found it difficult to manage just one thing, my relationship! Well, I am no longer in a relationship any more. It's the letting go that is so painful.

So heard about methlabs? What on earth is going on eh?