blackgirlgenius

much older

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 09:07:13 GMT

Going through a stack of my old magazines, I came across this gem of a political cartoon from the October 1971 issue of Playboy.

transsexuals in iran documentary

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 20:05:57 GMT

I just watched this incredibly heartbreaking documentary about transsexuality in Iran. It was even sadder than I expected it to be, but I feel better knowing what I know. I am hoping that the more that this is exposed, the more likely that something will happen to help so many suffering people. We will see...

Here is the entire film in four parts. Please do find the time to watch.

Documentary: Transsexuals in Iran - part 1/4
by mut_dua

Documentary: Transsexuals in Iran - part 2/4
by mut_dua

Documentary: Transsexuals in Iran - part 3/4
by mut_dua

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 13:35:55 GMT

Reckless was on TV again yesterday. The dance scene is incredible. Thank God someone put it on youtube.

Life should be more like this dance scene (fast forward to 2:00)

growing extra thumbs to stick them down down down

Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:23:25 GMT

I
AM
LEGEND

WORST
MOVIE
EVER.

Slow, pointless, plot-less, overstuffed, most gratuitous use of Bob Marley music, most anticlimactic garbage I have ever laid my eyes on. Congratulations on bumping Altman's Pret A Porter out of the worst movie seat.

My mother and I want our time and money back.

hoping against hope

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 09:34:29 GMT

I don't think I am being a scrooge when I say I am totally inclined to agree with this recent post by Penelope Trunk. I would be much ~~obliged~~happier if non-Christians were no longer being pressured into (EDIT:17.35) celebrating Christmas. Frankly, as a Christian, I'm coming to the realization that it's being pushed down other peoples' throats and it is absolutely abhorrent to me. Frankly I think non-Christians would enjoy having that heavy burden lifted off their shoulders; Jews would be able to push Chanukah back down as the less-significant holiday that it actually is, Kwanzaa could finally die the death its deserved, and more people (including Christians!) could keep money in their pockets at the end of the year.

I think returning Christmas to its rightful place would be the Jesus-y thing to do and if people want some sort of non-denominational winter festival to spend time with family they could go on ahead and lobby for it (though in America, isnt Thanksgiving e-frikkin-nough?). While I don't think any of this will happen any time soon, I think it's good to get the idea circulating.

None of this has anything to do with Christmas...

positively preposterous

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 09:14:33 GMT

I am finding this whole story SO AMAZING. I don't know if they are reporting it in the states but it's all over the place on the BBC and other British news outlets (which is what I mostly follow).

Long story short:a man went canoeing 5 years ago and disappeared. His family reported him missing and after some time passed he was pronounced dead and his wife claimed the insurance money. About a week ago the man walked into the police station and said he was "a missing person". The police go to alert his wife and it turns out she has recently sold off her house and moved to Panama, but tells the police and media that she's thrilled to hear the news...then their vacation pictures FROM LAST YEAR surface. Uh, WTF?! Read about it here. I hate that I love sensational stuff.

Ayaan Declares War

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 13:15:22 GMT

Interesting interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (former Dutch MP and now a resident scholar at the neocon American Enterprise Institute) from The Spectator. I'm really conflicted aabout her, but nonetheless it is definitely enlightening to hear her insight considering she is coming from a very informed point of view.

‘Yes, I am at war with Islam,’ she says, as she gets up to leave, ‘but I am not at war with Muslims.’ It’s a crucial difference.

file under: is y'all forreals?

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 08:39:17 GMT

Sudan police throw teacher in jail for teddy bear named Muhammad

Oh my God. I don't think the Qu'ran is tripping off teddy bears and if it is, too bad. There are people dying in Sudan and we are wasting our time on teddy bears called Muhammad? Ugh, when will the world just tell these nitpicky people to fuck off?

I'll be the first.....

Fuck off with this crap.

Don't get it twisted. I don't give a crap about this fat English lady teacher. She can go to hell. I just don't want us to keep bowing to the illogic of all this crap. The worldwide response to this kinda stuff should be a big fat NO and a laugh in the face. Believe what you want but do not expect us to happily go along with it because we are trying to have a functioning sensible world, OK?

Happy Thanks ___ing!

Thu, 22 Nov 2007 07:47:27 GMT

Happy Turkey to all my American friends!!!

R.I.P. Dr. Donda West

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:25:59 GMT

Kanye West's mother dies

In the most epic year of Kanye's life he loses a woman who was not only his mother, but his manager, protector, and closest confidante. It's incredibly sad.

the final episode

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 06:23:59 GMT

With all this writer's strike business I can only hope that the writer's of Weeds are out for a very very long time, or--better yet--that they try to break the picket line and are all beaten to within an inch of their lives by the strikers.

That is how much I hate that show now. Season 3 is like waking up one morning to find your partner cheating on you in your own bed, while you're still lying there. It hurts...real bad.

*

on the other hand, I wish the writers of LOST and Dexter a speedy resolution.

RIP Lady Jaye

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 07:22:03 GMT

(genesis and lady jaye in happier times)

(from Brooklvn Vegan....)

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and her reactivated Psychic TV aka PTV3 are terribly sad to announce the cancellation of their November North American tour dates. This decision is entirely due to the unexpected passing of band member Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge.

Lady Jaye died suddenly on Tuesday 9th October 2007 at home in Brooklyn, New York from a previously undiagnosed heart condition which is thought to have been connected with her long-term battle with stomach cancer. Lady Jaye collapsed and died in the arms of her heartbroken "other half" Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

Being overwhelmed by the enormity of their loss, Lady Jaye's significant other, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, and the other surviving band members of Psychic TV/PTV3 are not able to properly meet the demands of touring and performance. Obviously, her absence onstage , the conspicuous loss of her unique charisma, music and humor would be an unbearable emotional reality to confront night after night.

The group, who have been touring to promote their first studio album in 12 years, will announce future plans after an appropriate period of mourning. [Genesis Breyer P-Orridge]

going with your gut

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:34:01 GMT

Through Analysis, Gut Reaction Gains Credibility
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS (from NY Times)

Two years ago, when Malcolm Gladwell published his best-selling “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking,” readers throughout the world were introduced to the ideas of Gerd Gigerenzer, a German social psychologist.

Dr. Gigerenzer, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, is known in social science circles for his breakthrough studies on the nature of intuitive thinking. Before his research, this was a topic often dismissed as crazed superstition. Dr. Gigerenzer, 59, was able to show how aspects of intuition work and how ordinary people successfully use it in modern life.

And now he has written his own book, “Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious,” which he hopes will sell as well as “Blink.” “I liked Gladwell’s book,” Dr. Gigerenzer said during a visit to New York City last month. “He’s popularized the issue, including my research.”

Q: O.K., let’s start with basics: what is a gut feeling?

A: It’s a judgment that is fast. It comes quickly into a person’s consciousness. The person doesn’t know why they have this feeling. Yet, this is strong enough to make an individual act on it. What a gut instinct is not is a calculation. You do not fully know where it comes from.

My research indicates that gut feelings are based on simple rules of thumb, what we psychologists term “heuristics.” These take advantage of certain capacities of the brain that have come down to us through time, experience and evolution. Gut instincts often rely on simple cues in the environment. In most situations, when people use their instincts, they are heeding these cues and ignoring other unnecessary information.

Q: In modern society, gut thinking has a bad reputation. Why is that?

A: It is not thought to be rational. One of the founders of your country, Benjamin Franklin, suggested to his nephew that when he made important life decisions, he should do it like a bookkeeper — list all the pros and cons and then make the decision, after weighing everything. That is the classical rational approach.

Q: I make my decisions that way. What’s wrong with it?

A: In some situations, that demands too much information. Plus, it’s slow. When a person relies on their gut feelings and uses the instinctual rule of thumb “go with your first best feeling and ignore everything else,” it can permit them to outperform the most complex calculations.

In the 1990s, I was living in Chicago, where there are high dropout rates from the high schools. People often asked, “Is there a way to know which school has the lowest dropout rate?” There existed data measuring different cues of school performance: the pay of teachers, the number of English-speaking students in a class, things like that.

I wondered: could one feed these into a computer, analyze them and obtain a prediction on which high school produced the fewest dropouts? We did that. And we were astonished to find that computer-based versions of Franklin’s bookkeeping method — a program that weighed 18 different cues — proved less accurate than going with the rule of thumb of “get one good reason and ignore the rest of the information.”

Q: What was the “one good reason” that got you the right answer?

A: Knowing which school had high daily attendance rates. If two schools had the same attendance levels, you needed one more cue — good writing scores — and then you could ignore the rest.

Q: You are the author of a famous study on how people use instinct in investing. Why this topic?

A: Because intuition often underlies stock picking. Ordinary investors will frequently pick a company they’ve heard of before. We call this the “recognition heuristic,” and it basically means “go with what you know.” I was curious: is this effective? In the 1990s, we interviewed 360 pedestrians in Chicago and Munich. We asked if they were familiar with the names of German and American corporations traded on the stock exchange. Using the names of the most frequently recognized companies, we then made up investment portfolios.

After six months, the high-recognition portfolios, on average, gained more value than the Dow and DAX markets and some big-name mutual funds. The high-recognition portfolios did better than a portfolio we created from randomly picked stocks and another made up of low-recognition stocks. Over the years, we’ve repeated this experiment twice, in different ways. Each time, the intuitive wisdom of the semi-ignorant outperformed the calculations of the experts.

Q: Have you considered going to your pedestrians for investment advice?

A: Yes! I did that once. I invested $50,000 in high-recognition stocks picked by the least stock-savvy group we studied, those German pedestrians. Their portfolio went up 47 percent in six months, as opposed to the 34 percent gains made by the German stock market as a whole. This was during a bull market.

Q: Where can gut instincts fail?

A: Here’s an example: after 9/11, many Americans stopped traveling in airplanes and drove on highways instead. I looked at the data, and it turned out that in the year after the attacks, highway fatalities increased by an estimated 1,500 people. They had listened to their fear, and so more died on the road. These kinds of fatalities are easily avoided. But psychology is not taken very seriously by governments. Most of the research about how to combat terrorism is about technology and bureaucracy — homeland security. In this case, educating the public about their own gut reactions could have saved lives.

Q: Some of your critics say that gut instincts just aren’t scientific. What’s your answer?

A: We study these things, where intuition is good and where it’s not. One should also not overlook that in science itself, you need intuitions. All successful research scientists function, to a degree, on gut instincts. They must make leaps, whether they have all the data or not. And at a certain moment, having the data doesn’t help them, but they still must know what to do. That’s when instinct comes in.

Q: Do you think of yourself as intuitive or rational?

A: Both. In my scientific work, I have hunches. I can’t explain always why I think a certain path is the right way, but I need to trust it and go ahead. I also have the ability to check these hunches and find out what they are about. That’s the science part. Now, in private life, I rely on instinct. For instance, when I first met my wife, I didn’t do computations. Nor did she.

Q: Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” is about a young man who doesn’t respond to his first best instinct, which is to avenge his father’s murder by killing his uncle. If Hamlet had listened to his gut, how would the play be different?

A: This is not a scientific kind of question. But the play would have been shorter and probably fewer people would have been killed.

something you can't touch, something you can't see

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 01:51:47 GMT

~~Must find this book.~~
I got it! (and you can have it too)

Tonight I'm watching,old KLF doc footage.

Season Six of Sex and The City lost me at "hello".

Just whoa!

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:44:01 GMT

Hotel Fox is so bitchin! Just click to see more.

woman as....

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:48:30 GMT

Something about this multipurpose dress doesn't sit well with me...(click pic for more info)

NOLEGO

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:42:59 GMT

New Orleans in Legos!

(via my sweetie NOLA homegirl, Andrea)

sorry but no

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 21:53:20 GMT

(watch an old master of the soft shoe at work)

I just saw the commercial for the new Samuel L. Jackson flick. How many times is he gonna do the ol' magical negro soft shoe? I've had e-f*&%in'-nuff.

And Josh Hartnett? You're starting alongside him? the poor man's Keanu? Come aaaawwwwwnnnnn!

Afrikan Boy - One Day I went toLidl

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 20:29:29 GMT

Song of the day, genius on SO many levels. Video is pointless so don't watch it, just listen.

soooooo cool!

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 17:19:21 GMT

This is my fave image of the day.

Electrelane - 'To The East'

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 14:27:25 GMT

Needless to say, this is my song of the day.

Good Morning!

Sun, 12 Aug 2007 10:45:08 GMT

Hope you slept well....

If you give average Iraqis electricity right now it will be enough. This is the most important thing. Give them power for seven days in a row and there will be no fights.

After the US came and Saddam fell they earned 3 dollars a month. Now they earn between 100 and 700 dollars a month.

Giving them electricity would reduce violence. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself what would happen to this Army base if the power was cut off forever and the soldiers had to spend the rest of their lives in Iraq. Do think think these soldiers would still behave normally?

Iraqis are paid to set up IEDs. They do it so they can buy gas for their generator and cool off their house or leave the country. Their hands do this, not their minds.

From a very gnarly insider account of things, found here.

I'd like to do something, but I'm also afraid and paralyzed by it. What to do?

planning stages

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 16:45:50 GMT

Next spring/summer, I think I need to start a double-dutch club.

Strictly for old heads, no rookies allowed.

and i saw you, waiting

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:38:57 GMT

(Seriously download this Tough Alliance track.)

Today I am hyper about artist, Xiaoqing Ding.

All the goodness of someone like Masami Teraoka (who combined trad motifs with contemporary context), but with a megadose of saccharine sweetness....which makes it all the more humorous and dark.

be good or be gone

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:19:30 GMT

I saw M.I.A. with Spank Rock last year and really liked her a lot. I saw M.I.A. a few weeks ago at Coney Island and was thoroughly unimpressed. However I just read this really great interview with her on the Fader blog and I believe in her once again.

Initially, I didn’t get formally rejected for a visa. They let me into the US for a bit—a couple of months. I was there to work with Timbaland, but then the visa ran out and I had to come back to the UK. I haven’t been able to get in [since]. So it wasn’t my own choice or actions that led me to become more worldly—I mean I live in the US. My apartment’s there. I don’t have any of my artwork, any of the songs that I’ve been working on. I don’t have my clothes. So everything [on Kala] is built out of wherever I’ve gone. I’ve had no choice but to make the record and become the thing that people always had me down for.

I love her process and her honesty. I will buy her album when it comes out.

Oh, and click the picture and read the cute story about how M.I.A. suggested those baby names.