Archive for May, 2009
Much Ado About Nothing
May 30th, 2009 theatre
The only few who seem to know what they are up to are Adrian Pang (surprise, surprise), Andy Hockley (in a tiny role as Dogberry), and the set (designer Francis O’Connor). I particularly enjoyed Andy Hockley – who is he? He must do more things here! Adrian Pang did liven up the heaviness but I thought he relied excessively on physical comedy, as if worried that the audience wouldn’t get the joke. Too much, too cute. The set is great and should take a bow at the end of each night. On the whole, the effort shows and makes the show a tad unenjoyable.
Almost Project 365
May 30th, 2009 PicturesTags: Project 365
20090528 Homework
20090528 School
20090528 A Quiet Duan Wu Festival
20090528 Secret Ingredients
20090529 Much Ado About Nothing
Celebrating Towel Day
May 25th, 2009 PicturesTags: Project 365
20090525 Getting ready...
20090525 Happy Towel Day!
Here are some great TowelDay pictures on Flickr and my favourite:
Happy Towel Day by code.monk
Children’s Songs
May 24th, 2009 Uncategorized
Linkie from keyist : 24 Terrifying, Thoughtful and Absurd Nursery Rhymes for Children, I like this:
Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row
The interpretation of the rhyme as given:
This rhyme is a reference to Bloody Mary. The garden refers to growing cemeteries, as she filled them with Protestants. Silver bells and cockle shells were instruments of torture and the maiden was a device used to behead people
I’m quite disappointed to find on the great interweb, there are other versions of this rhyme. I would like to think the macabre interpretation is the only definitive backstory.
Almost Project 365
May 24th, 2009 PicturesTags: Project 365
20090523 Rhythmic Painting (Yukinko Akira, Japan)
An Indulgent weekend
May 24th, 2009 books, screen, theatre
Dancing On Your Grave by The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs was a tad depressing. It has its funny moments but some rhymes/ ideas were predictable therefore, not as funny as I would like it (eg, working fingers to the bone + skeleton). I did find one part funny, when someone sang that when he was alive, every seven seconds, he thought about [pause] current affairs. Their idea of afterlife was at first Christian (Pearly Gates), then, Buddhist (reincarnation) finally completely atheist (Worm food). It wasn’t hilarious but not horrible.
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink feels like an essay masquerading as fiction.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Nick Mitchell AKA Norman Gentle
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Poverty of Attention
May 23rd, 2009 elsewhere
From In Defense of Distraction
Gallagher stresses that because attention is a limited resource—one psychologist has calculated that we can attend to only 110 bits of information per second, or 173 billion bits in an average lifetime—our moment-by-moment choice of attentional targets determines, in a very real sense, the shape of our lives. Rapt’s epigraph comes from the psychologist and philosopher William James: “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” For Gallagher, everything comes down to that one big choice: investing your attention wisely or not.
[...]
The truly wise mind will harness, rather than abandon, the power of distraction. Unwavering focus—the inability to be distracted—can actually be just as problematic as ADHD. Trouble with “attentional shift” is a feature common to a handful of mental illnesses, including schizophrenia and OCD. It’s been hypothesized that ADHD might even be an advantage in certain change-rich environments. Researchers have discovered, for instance, that a brain receptor associated with ADHD is unusually common among certain nomads in Kenya, and that members who have the receptor are the best nourished in the group.
I’ve always had problems with attention but never had the twin problem of hyperactivity to induce doctors to give me Adderall/Ritalin. I have always wanted to try ADHD meds ever since learning about it, listening to ABC RN while doing school work. I do agree that multi-tasking – that is, doing a few tasks within minutes – is not possible because it takes time for the mind to switch gears. Not having a few tasks at hand, however, gives me problems: I can only work on 1 task for 20mins before needing a break. Any longer, I would only be doing nothing more than staring at it. So, Twitter, tabbed browsing (firefox) saves me from being unproductive because I get an outlet for my need to distract myself before returning to productive work. Perhaps, because of my need for distraction, I always do well in assignments/research – which requires a lot of different tasks to be handled – than coursework (I could love the subject and still get disappointingly average grades).
I use sound to brain hack myself into focusing. It does help a lot. With it, I work on a task for an hour (actually, that’s the length of my mp3 program) and when listening to I do look up after a while and wonder where did time go. Reading Joshua Foer’s experience with ADHD meds and his story of the mathematician Paul Erdös and his Benzedrine habit made me want to try Adderall even if it means ”thinking with blinders on”. A lot of day to day work requires concentration – not mental leaps – to get things done. I would like to compare the meds (cost $) with brain entrainment (free). While I don’t think both option takes away boredom but I’m guessing it does take away some curiosity.
