Stabbing and Bleeding

Friday, October 31, 2008

I suppose I am currently in the zone. I am done with the first of my two term papers, and I am currently working on the second one. The second term paper is for my neurolinguistics class, and I am designing a hypothetical experiment for it.

I know, the frustrating thing about it is that I will not be able to run it, due to monetary issues. Neurolinguistics is such an expensive discipline, so all the people can do in the class is to write a paper involving an experimental design, but not actually implement it.

So anyway, I am investigating the way speakers process linguistic events, and so I am using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to do this. Yes, this is the electrophysiological activity that happens inside the human brain. Oh, didn't you know that the brain emits electricity? Yes, it does. It usually reflects the amount of processing load that the brain undergoes.

Anyway, so I am designing an experiment in order to test how people process certain types of discourses, and in order to do that, I have a 3-way ANOVA designed. I just got back from the office of a professor, which clarified to me how I should design the stimuli. So there, I am back at my computer and writing away.

I get so peeved that I cannot run this experiment at the moment, given the fact that I have no access to an ERP lab right now. But I am pretty sure that my design is sweet, so I suppose all I can do is hypothesize what the probable results are and see what that means to human cognition.

Maybe I can get a position in a neuroscience lab in the future, and then I will be able to run this. But as of now, that idea is moot, so I might as well live in the present.

Anyway, one of my stimulus items involves an event of stabbing and an event of bleeding. And due to the fact that I have a 3-way ANOVA, and all factors have two levels each, that gives me 8 cells, so I have 8 types of stimuli that involve stabbing and bleeding.

How grotesque.

(Facing the Front, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Surreal Waste

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

So I finished the book I was reading. It was Julia Darling's Crocodile Soup. Somehow I was disappointed.

It was very fragmented. It was rather delusional and hallucinatory. It concerns a lesbian with a bad relationship with her mother, and somehow, she and her twin brother are able to talk to each other using telepathic signals. She is in love with another woman, Eva, but Eva does not love her back, since Eva is straight. Somehow, the line between imagination and reality is very blurred.

The format is ok, I do not mind the surrealism integrated into the plot. But what I mind is the fact that 300 pages of that is definitely tiring. In any rate, I was never impressed.

Someone asked me why I still finish a book even if I start to hate it. Why is it that I still try to finish the book until the end? Maybe it is because I still have the hope that the book would somehow change its mood near the end, and it would satisfy me. Also, maybe it is because I like it that I can say that I finished reading the book even if I hated it. And since I finished reading it, I have the right to critique it.

So there, I returned that to the library. I then started this new book, entitled How the Dead Live, by English author Will Self. Somehow, I find myself liking books written by British authors. I liked reading books by Jim Crace and Irvine Welsh. And I have a feeling that I will like this one too. Speaking of this book, this is about a terminally-ill woman with breast cancer, and then she dies. But instead of decomposing, she just moves to another part of London, where all the dead people stay.

I suppose this is the second dead-themed novel I have read. The first one was Kevin Brockmeier's The Brief History of the Dead, which was a book I read two years ago. That was interesting too.

I suppose death and dying is a fascinating topic. People obviously wondered what happens to people when they die. Some people took the religious view of being sent to heaven or hell, some people conducted experiments and attempted to die. People definitely are a curious bunch. And this curiosity definitely manifests itself on novels such as these.

(Cats as Guardians, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Let Me Speak

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

In case you did not know, Turkey has banned Blogger. Apparently, it was unbanned recently because of missing evidence, but it is not a remote possibility that the ban be applied again.

Apparently, the issue was due to football broadcasting rights, and some bloggers who use the platform have been violating it. The interesting thing however, is not about violating broadcasting rights, but the freedom, or lack of, with regard to speech.

The Internet is a mixture of sorts. It can be an educator, and it can be an enemy. Thus, one has to wade through all sorts of information, and filter what types of information one wants to partake in.

However, what is disturbing is that some governments take it upon themselves to do the filtering. This takes us to a very important point: how valuable is free speech?

I am not advocating for unrestrained free speech here. Obviously, some types of information can cause distress and offense to a certain group of people (Remember the Danish cartoons?). However, I do think that it is not a good idea for an entity to prevent individuals from expressing themselves. I know that the expressions of some people might hurt others, but it all is a manifestation of the basic concept of push and pull.

If I make a statement, it might offend a certain group of individuals. Now, because it offends this certain group of individuals, does that mean that I need to be restrained? No. However, I would be a daft idiot if I choose to manifest my statement in front of these individuals, thereby provoking them. I can find other outlets of my statement without offending people. Freedom of speech does not entail that one has the right to insult someone else.

Of course, the debate is more to it than what I wrote here. However, as a blogger, I find it disturbing that my ability to write my thoughts down and let it be known to the world has the potential to be hindered, due to the fact that it might be offensive to some people.

Here are some sites that one might use to override blocks:

• Unblocked.org


• Atunnel.com

There are six billion people in the world alive today. One simply cannot satisfy them all.



(The Dutch Carillon, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Why Men are Never Depressed

Monday, October 27, 2008

I got this from my mom. It is funny and I find it worth sharing. Leave seriousness at the door.

Men Are Just Happier People - What do you expect from such simple creatures? Your last name stays put. The garage is all yours. Wedding plans take care of themselves. Chocolate is just another snack. You can be President. You can never be pregnant. You can wear a white T-shirt to a water park. You can wear NO shirt to a water park. Car mechanics tell you the truth. The world is your urinal. You never have to drive to another gas station restroom because this one is just too icky. You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt. Same work, more pay. Wrinkles add character. Wedding dress: $5000. Tux rental: $100. People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them. New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet. One mood all the time.

Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat. You know stuff about tanks. A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase. You can open all your own jars. You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness. If someone forgets to invite you, he or she can still be your friend.

Your underwear is $8.95 for a three-pack. Three pairs of shoes are more than enough. You almost never have strap problems in public. You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes. Everything on your face stays its original color. The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades. You only have to shave your face and neck.

You can play with toys all your life. One wallet and one pair of shoes - one color for all seasons. You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look. You can 'do' your nails with a pocket knife. You have freedom of choice concerning growing a mustache.

No wonder men are happier.

(Close-Up, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Trackers

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Warning: Mundane blog post!

Fine, you decided to read on.

Anyway, the other day I was looking at the tracker stats that I have for this website. It is interesting what that tells you.

For one thing, I know that my folks are still reading my blog even when they are on vacation in Istanbul. They are in the Turkish city for a week, starting this past Monday. I am pretty sure that they are enjoying the sights, but somehow they find a way to read my blog. Maybe there is an Internet access available in their computer. I see the time of their visit as always around 9:00 AM Turkish Time. That corresponds to around 2:00 AM Eastern Daylight Savings Time.

I also noticed the different ways in which people visit my blog. Most of the people visit by pictures; it is always the case that it is via Google's image search. I wonder how they search it though, like what keywords they use. Because somehow I cannot find that out.

Some people enter because they search for "big breasts and wide hips" which is somehow found in a blog entry of mine from perhaps two years ago. I remember that as a title of a Chinese novel I read, two winters ago. But still people come and visit my blog looking for big breasts and wide hips.

Who wants big breasts and wide hips? I don't personally like voluptuous women, but somehow other people in this weird and eccentric planet do.

I notice that an average of 20 visitors visit my blog daily. Most of them are unintentional, like people looking for big breasts, only to be disappointed, since after all, this blog is not a porn blog.

But what if I experiment? What if I put in commonly searched words like "porn", or "sex" or "nude" in this entry? Would this increase my hits? I wonder if it does, how much? What if I have phrases like "sexy lady" or "nude woman"? And maybe I will add in some "nude hunk" or "naked muscle" so that people do not accuse me of being sexist or a chauvinist pig?

Let's see if my hits increase, and if they do, I will let you know.

Anyway, this afternoon, I spent most of it in a friend's house. We had a musical afternoon. A bunch of musically-inclined people gathered at my friend's house, and we played music together. It made me realize that I am bad at sight-reading. Really bad. I mean, I have to practice the measure a few times before I can move forward. I suppose I am a bad accompanist. The funny thing is, all four of us have strengths and weaknesses. If we were combined into one body, we would have been a superb musician. See, I am a piano player who is bad at sight-reading but good at counting the rhythm, my friend Cristin is a harpist who is good at sight-reading but bad at the violin, my friend Ashlee is good at the flute but bad at rhythm, and my friend Andy is good at the violin but bad at counting as well. If all of us were combined in one body, we could be one good violinist-pianist-harpist-flutist.

Anyway, obviously, that is impossible. But the afternoon was still fun. We played a bunch of pieces orchestrated for a bunch of combinations between the four of us.

And after that, we had a home-cooked dinner and then we watched the movie Bleu starring Juliette Binoche. It was a rather interesting movie. Pretty good soundtrack as well.

(Raising the Flag, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Portal

Friday, October 24, 2008

I just finished reading the novel I was reading (yeah, redundant) just recently. And again, it was an enjoyable experience. Nice, two great books in a row.

I had been reading The Spanish Bow by Andromeda Romano-Lax. This is a historical novel, based on the life of Spanish cellist Pablo Casals. I liked it a lot, since it blurred the boundary between fact and fiction, and there were plenty of characters that really existed in history, such as Francisco Franco, Adolf Hitler, Varian Fry, Manuel de Falla, and others. It was such an enjoyable read that actually made me curious about the cello.

Of course, I am no cello player, but I started listening to cello music this past two weeks, and in fact, I am now practicing Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites, transcribed for piano of course. I am working my way on his Prelude in G. It is one of the best pieces of music I have ever heard.

Speaking of transcriptions, it used to be the case that I never played music that was rewritten from one instrument to the other. Due to the fact that the instrument that I learned to play was the piano, the repertoire is huge. I have so many things to choose from. Unlike players of other instruments, the piano does not suffer from lack of things to be played.

However, since I now have people I know who play other instruments, sometimes, one wants to play things together, and there usually is not a lot of things that are written for say, piano and harp, or piano and flute, or piano and violin. Of course, there are pieces written for these, but sometimes, one has some tune in mind, and that isn't always possible to be played with the right combination of instruments.

Anyway, I was planning on going out to a hike of the Chimney Bluffs along the shores of Lake Ontario tomorrow, but it seems that the weather is not permitting. So I might have to postpone that until the weather becomes more friendly, that means, until next year.

Anyway, I returned the book that I was reading, and began on another one. If the previous book was a portal to turn-of-the-century Spain, this book takes me to contemporary England. It is about a woman, who has a weird relationship with her mother, and it turns out that she has a crush with another woman in the museum where she works at.

Hmmm....

(Against the Sky, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Étude in A Minor, Op. 25, No. 11

Thursday, October 23, 2008

If you are familiar with this piece, then I suppose you will understand why I have this as my title.

One has two bars of pianissimo, outlining what will occur in the next coming minutes. Then a forte of notes come flurrying by, together with the heavy left hand carrying the melody.

It started to snow the evening of the day before yesterday. And yesterday morning, it was snowing as well. I suppose the winter wind has started to blow. Friends of mine who originally came from warmer parts of the country are now hurrying to buy window scrapers, so that when the snow falls and accumulates on their windshields, they would be able to scrape it off.

Anyway, yes, I started wearing my winter coat again for the season, starting yesterday. I turned on the heat in my house the other night. Winter is back, for the fourth time around.

In other areas of my being, I am in a reading spree for the whole day today. I was reading some papers, and I have a paper to read before tomorrow, because my meeting with a colleague needs to occur after me reading that paper. So I suppose that would be my agenda for tonight, after I pass by the market, since I need bread and some ingredients for food for the next few days. While running experiments in the Psycholinguistics lab this afternoon, I was reading. And it still isn't finished.

Anyway, I suppose I will leave you now for the moment here, try to listen to Chopin if you can. This etude will definitely feel cold on your skin.

(Facing the Soldiers, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Reverie

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Ha!

Yesterday, I spent an hour in the Baird Hall (the building that houses the Music Department) and practiced. I was happy. My friend who plays the harp gave me some duet music, and this one was Debussy's Rêverie.

This piece was originally written for solo piano, if I am not mistaken. However, it has been transcribed for numerous instruments and configurations. I actually heard it the first time as a piece played on oboe and harp. And now, I am playing the version for piano and harp.

So yesterday evening, I was at one of the practice rooms, and I successfully walked myself through the piano part. The score was fairly easy and straight-forward, no acrobatic segments involved. After all, the piece is about daydreaming, it shouldn't be a Liszt. I then went back and played from the beginning, and I was finally able to play the first page from memory.

I suppose seven years of stagnation in the keyboard made my fingers rather weak, so I decided that I would do a run or two of the Hanon exercises whenever I would be in the practice room again.

Perhaps I never lost my love for music. It was just that I was at the wrong place at the wrong time a few years back. I was late starting to learn, and I suppose I would forever be in the other side of the stage. Not that I loved to perform; I remember the first school recital I had to do, back in high school, I made a wrong turn I had to do the piece over again.

Yeah, I remember I was in 10th grade, and I was playing a piece from Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words. I was playing No. 19, I believe. One-thirds into the piece, I blanked out, and so I started the whole piece again. It was such an embarrassment. Anyway, one year later, I did another school recital again. I was in 11th grade, and this time, I did Andaluza, from Enrique Granados' Danzas Espanolas. This time it went well.

So I suppose the function of music for me at the moment is distraction. It gives me a break from the academic thinking that I do every day. I suppose one hour of forgetting about experiments and linguistic theories goes a long way.

So there, I am practicing Debussy at the moment, and I have Mussorgsky's Promenade from his Pictures at an Exhibition lined up as well.

(Iwo Jima Memorial, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Indian-Style Cognitive Dissonance

Monday, October 20, 2008

So I was in the Indian food place on campus this evening. My friend and I had dinner, due to the fact that Monday is the late evening day; my friend teaches, and we go home together, so chances are we have dinner on campus.

Anyway, we were in the Indian place, and we decided to eat inside instead of taking it to our office. The food was great, as always, but the entertainment was not.

The thing is, the diner had a big TV which showed Indian music videos. I have nothing against the music, but the videos were weird. I suppose I have this notion that the music and the video does not match.

Well, if one closes one's eyes and just listen to the music, then it would be great. It would sound like very traditional Oriental music. It reminds me of harem music, you know, the type of music that I would expect belly dancers to dance to. However if one watches the music videos, then I get this N400 in my head, a huge cognitive dissonance, since the music videos doesn't seem to match the music. One sees heavy-duty motorcycles, skyscrapers, hip-hop wearing street dancers, and so on. Somehow, the scenery does not match the music.

Maybe it is just me with my stereotypes. But I don't know, the music videos are weird and funny, and somehow the music is too traditional to match it.

Or maybe I am just too reactionary and stereotypical.

(Non-Euclidean Geometry, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Gedankenexperiment

Sunday, October 19, 2008

I have been living in Buffalo for more than three years now. And as evidenced by my coursework, my graduate career is more than halfway done.

I have 6 credits remaining in the necessary coursework that I would need to take. And I have a meeting with the Director of Graduate Studies tomorrow, in order to discuss what would be the classes I will be taking to fulfill the remaining 6 credit hours. And I already have an idea what they will be.

Yesterday, I finished another thing that I had to do for this semester. I am presenting a paper for a seminar I am taking on neurolinguistics. So yesterday, I read the article again, since the last time I read it was about a month ago. I then made a handout so the people will have something to follow on while I will be discussing it. The presentation isn't until November, but I would rather do it right now since I had the time. I am thinking of contacting the authors as well, since I have a few questions that were left unanswered in the paper.

I like this feeling of accomplishment.

Anyway, sometimes this feeling of accomplishment makes me daydream, say, where I will be 5 years from now. 5 years from now would be 2013. Maybe that would be the year in which I would be looking for a tenure-track job. I am aiming to graduate within 2 years, which brings me to May 2010. I am giving myself 3 years of post-doctoral fellowship training, so I can beef up my skills in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Even though my training until now has been in linguistics, I would want to bridge the gap by being a researcher in a lab that deals with psycholinguistic or neurolinguistic research. Maybe an ERP lab. That would be fun. The end result would be an appointment either in psychology, linguistics, or better yet, cognitive science.

Which brings me to the current Gedankenexperiment: Where would be an ideal city to live given the above considerations? I know that due to the nature of this career type, one really cannot choose where to live. It usually is the case in which one applies to different institutions and that becomes the choice of location. One doesn't choose a place to live because the weather is nice, or because the city is big.

But, what if that is not a problem? I don't like a big city. New York City is too big for me. Chicago has too much traffic. But I don't like small cities and rural areas either. Ideally, I would want to live across the Atlantic, in Europe's old towns. I love my cheese. I love my music. I don't like Big Brother.

But I suppose I don't have a choice, if I get a position in Amherst, Massachusetts, or in Urbana, Indiana. The thing that amazes me is that people would erect massive institutions of higher learning in rural areas, like UMass or UIUC.

Anyway, enough of daydreaming. I have another paper to write.

(Lone Wreath, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

The Masochism Tango

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Yesterday was a great conclusion to a hectic week. Week 8 marked the middle of the semester, and spending Friday night with a bunch of friends was a rather interesting idea.

So I invited a bunch of my friends to see Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. As I said in my previous post, this will be the first Shakespeare play that I will be seeing completely, as a play. The other plays I have seen in different forms, say, as a movie, like Romeo and Juliet (and yes, I saw the old version, not the one by DiCaprio), or Much Ado About Nothing. So I was quite unsure what to expect.

Anyway, we went to Friday's to have dinner before going to the theatre. The fact that we had eight people in our party made it a little difficult to get a table, and since we were time-constrained, we decided to split the group into two tables of four. That was an interesting set-up. I almost fooled someone in our group that the country Khrakozia actually exists.

Anyway, we went back to campus after dinner, and then entered the theatre. They did a rather anachronistic interpretation of the play. The actors were not dressed in period costumes, but they mixed different elements from different periods in time. Which was ok, it was after all a comedy. I suppose having the Duke Orsino dress up in a speedo with the word DUKE written on his butt was rather hilarious. And when the second act opened, and Feste was on the balcony, and said I could see Russia from here!, the audience laughed out loud.

So there, the play was hilarious, and a comic end to a hectic week.

(Watching the Dead, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Post No. 771

Friday, October 17, 2008

So, when I logged into Blogger to write this blog, I realized that I already have 770 posts that I have published. Wow. I suppose I have been doing this for quite a while now. So this post will then be my 771st post!

I suppose this will be an update of sorts. With this week coming to an end, I suppose I am on schedule, and the end of the week that marks the middle of the semester makes me happy. I suppose the fact that I was able to submit a term paper in mid-semester is indeed a happy event. My other classmates told me that I am making them look bad.

Anyway, here is what I still have. I still have one term paper to write, and that is for my neurolinguistics class. I also have three presentations to do: one for neurolinguistics, when I present this paper that uses ERP methods for detecting syntactic and semantic anomalies; I also have a presentation on quantitative methods for typological databases for my other seminar; and I am expected to do a presentation on my own research for that class as well.

I have a bunch of papers to read; this is never-ending, I suppose this is just the methodology when one needs to come up with a topic for an original research program, like the dissertation. I basically need to know what is out there, and what else can be done.

I also need to contact some people from across the continent; I need to read a paper on some topic which is written by a former student here, so I need to contact him and ask him for a copy.

The weather here is rather getting cold. It is not so warm, not so cold. I suppose walking around with my Ecuadorian poncho is the best thing I can do at the moment. But I know that the leaves will soon fall off, in fact, they are already falling at the moment, and then the snow will finally come down. Another year has passed.

I will be watching a play with a bunch of friends this evening. It will be the first production for the season by the Department of Theatre and Dance. I am excited, since they are performing William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. I haven't seen any versions of this play performed before, and like I said in previous entries, I am bad at Shakespeare. I do not understand him. But I suppose this would be easier, since this is a comedy. I suppose I need to skim through the plot synopsis in Wikipedia really quick if I would want to appreciate this.

So I am reading a couple of papers for the lab meeting this Monday. I am so grateful that my being a student here in the university grants me access to numerous databases, including music. I could therefore stream classical music on to my computer and listen to them. Right now I am listening to Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin. Perfect for reading psycholinguistic papers.

(Lincoln and Washington From a Distance, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Challenged by Villa-Lobos

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Thursday. I love this Thursday.

Well, I was rather very busy for today, but I suppose I got something in the end which was nice.

I got to campus a few minutes before 10:00 AM. I then had my office hours. I had a student come in, and I helped her with recording stuff on her computer, because students need to write a project as a requirement for the class, and it involves recording sound clips of language and analyzing it.

Then I attended the class that I am a teaching assistant of.

Then after that, I was supposed to meet with someone since I am her informant, and so she is gathering data from me, but she canceled the meeting because she had something else that she needs time for. That turned out to be a good thing, but my professor came in, and told me that she wanted to record me so she could preserve the data that we used that was coming from me. So I went to the soundproof lab and she recorded my speech there with her high-tech gadgetry.

Oh, I forgot that before that, I headed out for lunch. I didn't have time to cook lunch, and yes, I will do that either tonight or early tomorrow, since I don't want to be totally reliant with eating out. Anyway, I went to the Indian cafe on campus and got a combo of Palak Paneer and Chicken Whatever, it was butter-based curry.

Then I went to the lab in the psychology department to which I am a research assistant. I brought my laptop with me, so I could do work while running experiments with the participants that were coming in. As long as I gather their personal information, and then set the computer in and then they could sit down and run the experiment, then I can do work of my own.

Anyway, so while the experiments were running, I was able to correct some exercises for class and grade papers, and then input the grades to my computer and then send a copy to my professor. Then, when I was done with that, I continued to work on my paper for a seminar I am taking. I was able to wrap it up and finish it. That's why I am happy.

So after the three hours that I spent in the lab, I went back to my office, and then I saw a fellow graduate student who I am working with for a paper. I asked her if I can cancel our meeting for tomorrow, due to various reasons. She agreed, and so that would free my afternoon tomorrow.

I then went to return two shelves worth of books to the library. I borrowed them all for this paper, and since it is now done, I am returning them. I think I did six trips to the library all in all. I asked for a dolly or a crate with wheels but they didn't have any, so I just manually carried them back and forth.

Then I printed my paper in the library, and tomorrow it will be ready to be submitted. I will then ask my professor to read it if he wants to already, and if he thinks it needs improvement, then I am willing to revise it. In the meantime, I will be focusing my attention to the paper for my other class, since I have been neglecting that for some time.

So there, that was my day so far. It is half past six in the evening, and so I think I will stop for now. I think I have accomplished a lot of schoolwork for the day, so I will rest for now. Maybe I would go to the Music department and practice playing some music.

I was challenged by my friend, who is a harpist. She told me to study a harp and piano piece, and so I accepted the challenge. So yesterday, as a distraction, I went to the Music Library and found a harp and piano piece. Actually, it is a harp concerto, by Heitor Villa-Lobos, and the orchestra part is transcribed for piano. So obviously I am doing the piano part. I looked it over yesterday morning, and it wasn't too technically challenging, at least, for my part. After all, it is a harp concerto, it is a showpiece for the harp, not for the orchestra.

I happen to have a key to a practice room in the Music Department. But since I wasn't using it, I lent it to a friend in the department, and since I am supposed to study this concerto, I asked for it back. So yesterday evening, I spent an hour in front of the piano, and I walked myself through the first movement of the piece. My goodness, I suck.

Well, what can I expect? I haven't been practicing my pianistic skills for about seven years now. I wanted to major in music in undergrad, hoping to get a degree in composition. But somehow that didn't happen. I don't regret that fact, I am glad with where I am. However, I still love making music, so I suppose I am using it as a distractor. And spending one hour in the practice room yesterday made me realize how much lack of practice I am. I told my friend that I would begin by practicing the second movement, which is the slower one.

So there. Yesterday was the day in which I discovered Heitor Villa-Lobos. I already knew the existence of this Brazilian composer, but I never really heard his pieces. I knew of him as a composer of chamber music, not of solo piano music, since that was my instrument. However, it turned out that he composed quite a lot of solo piano music as well, and they are very technically challenging nonetheless. I looked at them, and using an online listening station that I have access to, I found them to be quite hypnotic. I tried playing one of them, and I immediately realized that I need more practice to actually play it. So I am starting with something simpler. Something slower, perhaps.

(Front Gate, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Reward and Punishment

Monday, October 13, 2008

The concept of reward and punishment is such a wonderful thing, I find that the people who finally formulated that in the field of psychology should be rewarded with some sort of prize.

Or maybe they were already rewarded, I just didn't know about it.

Anyway, with Week 8 of the semester beginning today, I find myself in an assembly line of stuff that I need to do. I have a couple of papers that I am working on, I am also working on research with other people. I also have my qualifying paper revision to work on, since my two readers are almost ready to give me their comments. The good thing with this one is that most of the reader revisions that I need to make are all wording and presentational issues; I do not have to run things again. Well, that is one thing one's adviser should be wary of, and I suppose I just happened to have a kick-ass adviser.

Speaking of my adviser, who happens to be on sabbatical, I talked to him over the phone today. He left me a message on my office voice mail, and so I called him back. Even though he is on sabbatical, he found a few minutes of his time to advise me on stuff, like things to read for my dissertation topic, what classes to take for next semester, and things like that which technically he is not obligated to do during this semester because he is on sabbatical. Some faculty here are just admirable for the amount of interest they have for their students; I attended a lab meeting of another professor in another department, and she was telling another student to go on and write a certain paper, because more publications would increase the student's job success. If there are rewards at the end, then one would push ahead.

I suppose the same reward and punishment schema is at work with regard to the drama that goes on in the department. Some people are just so hard to spell, that I cannot predict how they would act. Sometimes they are warm, and at other times, they are cold. At present they are cold. So I suppose I just give them back what they give to me, if they are cold, I will be cold. If they are warm, I will be warm. An eye for an eye. Because if I try to predict their behavior, I would be at a loss. I simply cannot predict some people's behavior.

Anyway, I gave myself a reward by going with a friend to Canandaigua Lake this past Saturday. The weather was nice; visiting a large mansion and strolling alongside one of New York's Finger Lakes while eating a cup of cookie dough ice cream is a great break to have while working my ass off with school work.

(Entrance View, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Statistically Significant

Friday, October 10, 2008

I finally got my statistical program to work. Ha! Power...

Anyway, I suppose the previous paragraph did not make sense. I am doing a multidimensional scaling analysis on a bunch of data about a couple hundred of languages for a seminar paper. Until this week, I couldn't make the statistical program to run, but somehow, I found the solution to my problem.

Apparently, I have too many samples. I am sampling languages that have a specific characteristic, and seeing how the topology of those languages are; whether some languages are more similar to one language than another. For that, I am using ALSCAL techniques to measure the similarity difference between my samples. Since my data are binary-coded, I am using a binary classical MDS test to measure the Euclidian distance between all of my samples, and therefore create a two-dimensional topological space of the similarity of my data.

And from that, interesting results are coming out. Therefore today, I started to sit down and write this seminar paper. Good thing, so that I could take that out of my plate. And now I could say that I know another statistical trick under my belt.

I suppose that is a good thing. I now know the regular vanilla descriptive statistics, the regular parametric inferential methods, such as chi-squares, t-tests, F-tests, and so on. I also know how to construct the different flavors of ANOVAs, and I also have experience running binary logistic regressions. Now I know how to do multidimensional scaling on binary-coded data.

Perhaps the most important thing when one does these statistical tests is that one fully understands what the numbers mean. The thing is, with a given program, one can just feed the program some data, and then click on a few buttons with a mouse, and voila! The program spews out a bunch of numbers and there you go!

Anyway, I am looking forward to tomorrow. A friend and I are going to visit this mansion somewhere on the outskirts of Rochester. There is this mansion called the Sonnenberg Mansion, and it features a greenhouse and plenty of gardens. It apparently was featured in a documentary called America's Castles. So I am bringing my camera and enjoying this brief respite from the academic work I am currently dirtying my hands in.

(Dead Trees Among the Dead, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Gods, Goddesses, and the Theory of Relativity

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Never had I finished reading a novel and was immensely satisfied as when I finished the last novel that I read. I was reading Fieldwork, which happened to be the first novel of Mischa Berlinski. And I was very satisfied reading this one.

Fieldwork tells the story of a Dutch anthropologist who happened to have murdered a missionary in the hills of northern Thailand, which is narrated through the eyes of an investigative journalist, who happens to be the author himself. Like the book I read before this, the author is also a character in this novel. But unlike the previous one, I found this one more believable. Somehow, being an investigative journalist is a more believable role than a killer and thief of medieval manuscripts.

Anyway, so the story starts by having the author hearing about a Dutch anthropologist who was imprisoned in the Thai prison. He contacts the prisoner, and then later establishes a correspondence, but sometime afterward, the prisoner commits suicide. Thus, there starts the mystery of the Dutch anthropologist turned murderer turned corpse.

The journalist investigates, starting from the university that the woman attended in the United States, interviewing former professors in the anthropology department, former roommates, former boyfriends, and other people. Slowly, the book reconstructs the adventures of Martiya van der Leun, an anthropologist who initally went to Thailand to study an indigenous group, but ended up settling with them for a long time, until the tragic events of her killing a missionary.

I do not want to give away the details, since doing so might impede the efforts of other readers of fully appreciating this novel. However, I suppose I was able to identify with the main character of the story, and therefore I enjoyed this novel.

Martiya van der Leun was a Third-Culture Kid; he was raised by his father, who was also an academician, in a culture apart from his own, thus forming one's own culture. Martiya grew up in an ethnic village in Asia, and therefore could converse fluently in the local tongue.

The novel tackles issues of religion in society, as Martiya grows to appreciate the native culture of the Dyalo, while battling efforts of a family of missionaries, whose life-long goal was to convert the Dyalo from animism to Christianity. When the clash hit climax, she snapped and therefore killed David Walker, one of the missionaries.

It made me think, how cultures are different, how cultures have their own religious belief system. The Dyalo in the novel believed that spirits of nature provide them with food, a good rice harvest, healthy children, among others. If one experiences a flood, then they think that they have angered the spirits. If they have a bad harvest, then they must have angered the rice spirit.

Then comes the Christians in the book, who tells them that they can be set free from slavery, that they do not have to please the nature spirits anymore, because all they need to do is to believe in Jesus, and they would be saved.

But come to think of it, the missionaries only substituted one mystical belief system with another one.

I mentioned earlier that different cultures have different belief systems. But if one steps back and looks at the bigger picture, there are some universal traits. These belief systems, whether one believes in the nature spirits or in the Christian god, these are just Man's attempt in explaining the things around him, that are otherwise unexplainable.

There used to be a time in which people believed that they got sick because of bad luck. They thought that they became sick because they displeased the spirits or some god. However, with the discovery of microbes and viruses, these beliefs were obliterated.

Still, I do acknowledge that there are still things around us that cannot be explained. That's why the belief in a supernatural being tends to be universal. Humans just want an explanation.

Anyway, I never really do this, but for this book, I wrote the author a note of appreciation. Ha! I suppose that's the first time I sent fanmail.

So I returned that book to the library, and now I am starting on another one. This one is called The Spanish Bow, by Andromeda Romano-Lax. It is set in Spain, and it apparently is about a cellist. That's what I know so far.

(Non-Euclidian Geometry, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Baby Powder

Friday, October 03, 2008

This afternoon, there was this event that I attended, hosted by the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Like I mentioned earlier, it was the Reception honoring the different fellows of the college, and that included me.

I suppose it gave me reason to dress up for the day, and today somehow I started wearing long-sleeved shirts to campus. Until now, I usually wear short-sleeved shirts, and a jacket or sweater. It has been my attire for the past three years, and I figured I would start wearing something different.

For today, I just figured I grab my black long-sleeved shirt, and pair it with black pants. You know, the one that would either look like I am heading to a funeral or that I am some gigolo heading to a hotel.

I have this German friend, and he always makes remarks about my outfit. Whenever I wear something, he points it out. The other day, I was wearing an orange shirt, and he noticed it. This time he noticed my black outfit, and he asked me if I was heading to a funeral.

Anyway, the reception was ok. The food was good, and there was wine as well. As usual, my alcohol tolerance wasn't so great, and the single glass of white wine immediately sent its effects to my cerebral cortex. My friends immediately noticed that I turned red, so obviously, I didn't follow it up. I don't want to be an embarrassment to the department, after all, the department chair was there, and she made it a point to introduce to the dean all of the students from our department, so I got to meet the dean and shake his hand.

Anyway, since we were a big crowd, we were talking and laughing and cracking jokes. One of us comes from South Korea, and she is a little cute and funny. I suppose she cannot distinguish when is reality and when is a joke. Anyway, I suppose some people are having fun making her believe crazy things. It doesn't sound too sneaky, it all has something to do with culture shock. Like telling her things that Americans allegedly do, and she immediately believes it. Of course, afterward we say that we were only joking, and she gets a sigh of relief.

Anyway, I was walking back to my building with her, and then she told me that she likes my smell, and according to her, I smell like baby powder. Uh-oh, I didn't put baby powder. I asked her whether it was a bad or good baby powder, and she said that she likes it. Maybe she was just making a joke on me, but I will give her the benefit of the doubt.

Although, I still do not get why Yves Saint Laurent's M7 smells like baby powder. It is one intense cologne though, that I will say.

(Cobblestones, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

New Page

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Today seems to be marking a new segment in everything around me.

The weather, for example, took a dip. Now, it suddenly became cold. The temperature now hovers around 7-12 degrees Celsius, and it is definitely sweater, and sometimes, coat weather. The leaves are now turning, and I like the scenery that they make when some trees are green, some are yellow, and some are orange.

I also have a new picture series. I am exhibiting the photos I took from Arlington National Cemetery, starting with this photo of the entrance. Wow, I took these photos about a year ago, when I visited Washington DC in December. I remember having a snowstorm here in Buffalo the day before I left, and I was hoping that my flight wouldn't be affected at all. Thankfully, it wasn't, and I was able to catch the flight and meet my Russian friend down there. I loved DC weather; it was just right, no snows, just cool windy days. I never brought my coat down there, actually, just a leather jacket.

I had to reject two people in the experiment room earlier. They were not paying attention to the subject requirements that we wanted. They thought that they were eligible, but then it turned out that they weren't, so they were sent away, hoping that they do some other experiment for their class requirement.

I finished writing my paper proposal topic for my neurolinguistics class. Too bad I am just doing a hypothetical study, since it costs a great amount of money to run neurolinguistic experiments. One should be writing an awesome kick-ass grant in order to run fMRI scans to investigate their research questions.

I need to harvest several articles from the library. I suppose I am now in the reading phase; I am done with my qualifying paper (technically, not yet, I still have one final revision to make once my readers give me their comments), and now I am reading tons of stuff in order to figure out what I would want to do research for my dissertation. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! So what I do now is read a bunch of articles, and then look at their bibliographies what other articles might be of interest and relevance, and then find and read them. Currently, I am reading articles about discourse processing, and how humans process temporal information in narratives.

I have this Reception to attend tomorrow, apparently it is held for my honor. The fact of the matter is, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences is holding it, and he invited all the fellows of the college. I am one of them, and so I get to hear people talk for an hour, and then enjoy some wine and finger food. I wonder how that would turn up.

So there, it is getting late, and I still have some preparation to do for tomorrow. I love the fact that I am busy again, it makes me energized, when I have all these things to do, and I see myself moving forward, crossing them out one by one.

(Entrance, from my Arlington Cemetery Series)

Bandoneon Concerto

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

So, I flipped my calendar, given that it is the beginning of a new month. I have this calendar of ancient Japanese woodblock prints, and this month's picture is one by Katsushika Hokusai, entitled Ono Waterfall, the Kiso Highway. It is very colorful.

I have watched the latest serving of my favorite show, The Amazing Race. I suppose even though it is on its thirteenth season, I am still not sick of it. I know that they go to places that the race has been on previously (like the fact that they are again going to India for this season, even though they have been to the country a gazillion times now), but I suppose there are just so many things one can do in some places, that it doesn't seem tiring.

This episode that I watched was the first episode for this season. It had the teams go to Salvador, Brazil. And I find it annoying that they always show these ignorant Americans who think that Spanish is spoken in Brazil. Maybe that is just the catch of the show, showing Americans who have low travel IQ.

The thing I like however, is the fact that there isn't an alpha-male team on the game this time. So there isn't a team that would look like it is a sure winner. However, what I don't like is the fact that there is so much drama going on, problems in marriage, problems in personality, problems here and there.

I am having fun listening to concertos nowadays. Not live, but still, I like it. I have this online resource that I can go to, and stream music to my computer and listen to them. Right now, I am listening to Astor Piazzolla's Bandoneon Concerto. I suppose listening to the classical music radio station while driving 9 hours to Chicago did the trick; I listened to Carl Reinecke's Harp Concerto somewhere in Indiana.

By the way, this picture is the last of my Letchworth Park series. A new picture series would be launched on my next post. Watch out for it!

(Leafy Stretch, from my Letchworth Park Series)