Inconsistency

This latest research in neuroscience shows that our brain is wired to be inconsistent when it comes to physical movement.

If you've ever wondered why your golf swings, fastballs or free throws don't quite turn out the same way each time, even after years of practice, there is now an answer: It's mostly in your head...

It's as if each time the brain tries to solve the problem of planning how to move, it does it anew... Practice and training can help the brain solve the problem more capably, but people and other primates simply aren't wired for consistency like computers or machines. Instead, people seem to be improvisers by default.

"The nervous system was not designed to do the same thing over and over again...The nervous system was designed to be flexible. You typically find yourself doing things you've never done before."

The value of practice and training is that they can reduce the variation in the mind's abilities, but they don't change the variable way the mind plans motion. An analogy might be to doing math problems. Someone who has studied will find it easier to solve a new problem than someone who has not prepared.

If inconsistency is the norm when it come to physical movement, it will be even more so for our consciousness: our mind is a squadron of simpletons, we have many good and bad minds, right and wrong minds, we shift in and out of different minds all the time. It's all too common that nice people could do something nasty and wicked ones show real compassion.

Yet just like practice can greatly reduce the variation of our movement, we count on 'mental practice' to help us be more consistent. By mental practice I mean that we need to habituate ourselves to something we desire: once you've made doing something a habit, you are consistent. So it's the habit, not will power, that makes us consistent, although you do need some will power to develop a habit.

Next time when you joke about that you are consistently inconsistent, you can squarely blame on this SOB(Same Old Brain).

Ed Bradley

When the news came out last Thursday that Ed Bradley passed away, I instantly recognized him even though I am not a regular viewer of 60 Minutes of CBS. His style, voice and manner left quite an impression on me.

I knew CBS would run a tribute program for him last night, so I recorded the 60 Minutes show and watched it. It's no doubt that he will be remembered as a first-class journalist, but what strikes me is that he's lived such a meaningful life, rich and compelling. He loved Jazz and Gospel, travelled all around the world, interviewed all kinds of poeple, reported from war zone in Vietnam, lived in Paris for a few years where he picked up his style. And above all he has lived his nomadic life in the mordern time. What a lucky man.

What it means to be a liberal?

From Chicago Tribute a law professor tries to clear the name for liberals. Of his 10 propositions of what liberals stand for, the top one rings very much true to me:

1. Liberals believe individuals should doubt their own truths and consider fairly and open-mindedly the truths of others. This is at the very heart of liberalism. Liberals understand, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once observed, that "time has upset any fighting faiths." Liberals are skeptical of censorship and celebrate free and open debate.

There have been many times I reflected and took a turn in a my life when I discovered my own ignorance. I used to think Bill O'Reilly was honest and independent.

When I look at the people that have shaped my way of thinking in some way or other, Bill Maher, Karl Weick, Carl Jung, and Tyler Cowen recently, they tend to have one thing in common that they admit that they are not sure about their own truths, and they question how others can be so sure. In a world of vast uncertainties, having concrete rules is one way of wading through the jungles, but you run the risks of dogmatizing your thinking and missing the richness and nuances of life. Trial-and-error, on the other hand, could be untidy and sometime painful, but it's likely to more fruitful in the end.

Sex ID

I have long suspected that I have a slightly female-slanted brain given my natural grasp with languages. This test from BBC proves that my hunch was not without grounds: I indeed have a somewhat female brain. It's official now :-)

This reminds me of Jung's work on anima and animus:

We are all really bisexual in nature.....The anima is the female aspect present in the collective unconscious of men, and the animus is the male aspect present in the collective unconscious of women. Together, they are refered to as syzygy. The anima may be personified as a young girl, very spontaneous and intuitive, or as a witch, or as the earth mother. It is likely to be associated with deep emotionality and the force of life itself. The animus may be personified as a wise old man, a sorcerer, or often a number of males, and tends to be logical, often rationalistic, even argumentative.

The anima or animus is the archetype through which you communicate with the collective unconscious generally, and it is important to get into touch with it. It is also the archetype that is responsible for much of our love life: We are, as an ancient Greek myth suggests, always looking for our other half, the half that the Gods took from us, in members of the opposite sex. When we fall in love at first sight, then we have found someone that "fills" our anima or animus archetype particularly well!

So if I piece together my test results and Jung's theory, the strong anima inside me would mean I have more incentive to look for my personified other half than an average man. But unfortunately Jung's theory stops short of providing much practical guidance: will she be a young and spontaneous girl, a witch, or a mother figure? They are quite different, ain't they? :-)

Best sentence I read yesterday

This was a popular link on del.icio.us (In case you are not hooked up to it yet)yesterday, titled Five Tips to Increase Your Likeability:

People that always have to be correct are insecure.

Out of the 5 points, I think I am faring pretty well on Positive Attitude, Provide Value, and Eliminate Judgements, sub par on Control Insecurities, and really bad at Conviction.

I would have taken these tips more seriously before, say six months or a year ago. Now I'd come up with a list tips that will increase your respectability rather than likeability. It's far more harder to make other people to respect you than like you. Here goes my short list(I don't pretend I do well on these points at all, from that sense it's better called a wish list):

Five Tips to Increase Your Respectability:

1. Respect other people's preferences, in turn they will respect yours.

2. Be generous. You don't have to get even on every particular thing, and things will even out in the long term. If you can't be generous, at least be fair.

3. Don't be jealous, never. Most of the time it's not a zero-sum game, so wish other people the best, sincerely. And in case it is a zero-sum game, see #2.

4. Keep your promise or don't promise in the first place.

5. Listen first, then talk. Understand first, then seek to be understood.

Coolidge Effect

Bill Maher has a pretty witty line in his one of his standup specials: "For men there are only two types of women: old and new.(I am paraphrasing him)" I did not know there is a biology term for this -- Coolidge Effect, after a joke about President Coolidge, I came to learn about this while listening to an audible book on my way to work this morning. Here goes the joke:

President Calvin Coolidge and his wife allegedly visited a government farm one day and were taken around on separate tours. Mrs. Coolidge, passing the chicken pens, inquired of a supervisor whether the lone rooster was sufficient, given the many hens in the chicken flock.

"Yes", the man said, "the rooster works very hard."

Mrs. Coolidge then asked, "Really? The rooster works very hard? Every day?"

"Oh, yes," the man said. "Dozens of times a day."

"Interesting!" Mrs. Coolidge replied, "Be sure to tell that to the President!"

Some time later the President, passing the same pens, was told about the roosters - and about his wife's remark. "Same hen every time?", he asked.

"Oh, no, a different one each time," the supervisor replied.

"Tell that," Coolidge said with a sly nod, "to Mrs. Coolidge."

A joke goes a long way to help you drive home a point, I don't think I will ever forget about this term. The uncomfortable truth is that a modern man is stuck between his ancient biological scripting and modern social and cultural norms.

Evolutionary Everything

First there is evolutionary biology, which is a natural sub-field of biology. Then comes along evolutionary psychology, which to some degree is built on top of evolutionary biology. But the evolutionary approach does not stop there, evolutionary fitness makes a lot sense to me, and here comes a new book on the evolutionary perspective on woman's sexuality.

Just when you think that the evolutionism is a settled matter(at least among scientists), the evangelicals pretend(and market) as if there were an alternative approach to Darwinism: intelligent design which I think is really a neo-creationism. There is NOT, it just makes my blood boiling when I hear this phony argument.