Last night, around 11:15 (after I had headed to bed), I received an SMS from my good friend Maya. The message was simply, “omfg, rita’s dead?!?!”. When I viewed the message around 7:30 this morning, I replied immediately, “um what?” then checked facebook for updates to Perry’s or Rita’s profile (it was too early to call Perry). Nothing.

Around 8:30, I finally called Perry and asked, “Dude, I received a really weird text message from Maya last night. Wassup?”. He replied curiously, “I dunno, wassup?”, and from the tone of his voice, he had no idea what I was thinking. So I explained the situation and he reassured me everyone is fine. After our call, I called Maya to ask her what she was smoking, only to reach her voicemail. Shortly after, Maya sent another text, “Dexter” – She was referring to Rita’s shocking death in the season finale of Dexter. LOL

That would have been funny enough, but then Maya called me a few minutes later, “Alex, I’m SO glad you called me this morning. There was a power failure at our place, and if you didn’t call and wake us up, we would not have made it to work on time today.”

They asked subjects a series of questions about controversial moral issues, such as the death penalty and abortion, and also asked them about beliefs on those issues of famous people and of God. Not surprisingly, subjects’ own beliefs mirrored the beliefs they attributed to God.

These two lines of evidence both suggest that people tend to project onto God their own moral beliefs. This … does imply that people can change their moral beliefs first, and then attribute those changing beliefs to God after the fact.

Stepping back, the study draws the following conclusion, which I fully agree with:

This is why questioning our own motives, and our own process, is critical to a skeptical and scientific outlook. We must realize that the default mode of human psychology is to grab onto comforting beliefs for purely emotional reasons, and then justify those beliefs to ourselves with post-hoc rationalizations. It takes effort to rise above this tendency, to step back from our beliefs and our emotional connection to conclusions and focus on the process. The process (i.e science, logic, and intellectual rigor) has to be more important than the belief.

The full article is located here.

2. Full Moon
Not many levels, but it’s one of the few puzzle games that does a good job of ramping up the difficulty appropriately.

Admittedly, I thought yoga would easy, perhaps something closer to tai chi, but this art requires plenty of strength, stamina, and balance. Finishing an hour of Gen’s class left me tired and humbled.

I wish Gen much success in her endeavors, knowing she will do very well. Her website is found here.

Edward Louis Bernays was a US pioneer in the field of public relations along with Ivy Lee. Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious.

Basically he realized that in order to control the masses, you need to connect to their irrational being, not their rational or logical side. He also changed Western society from a needs-based society to a want-based one. Being a dabbler of psychology, I thought that’s pretty damn cool.

Checkout this introductory clip:

1. Fragger (Blow-up the opposition with your sweet grenade skills)

2. Robot dinosaurs that shoot beams when they roar (Doesn’t need more of an explanation than that )

At this point, I know how to say it in 12 languages, and enjoy sharing this knowledge whenever drinking with new acquaintances. A quick google search pulls up how to say it another 38 ways, and this link not only explains why we toast, but how to phonetically pronounce “cheers” in 50 languages.

Prost!

Two summers later, while living and working with my brother in Boston, MA, my car lease was coming to an end. Mike already had two cars, so there wasn’t much of a point to of getting another. Stef came down to visit for a long weekend, and it was then he finally convinced me to buy a motorcycle of my own. Not only did he help me pick a suitable first bike (a Suzuki Katana 750), along with all the necessary gear, but he also negotiated a decent price. Of course, once the sale was finalized, Stef pointed at me and laughed, claiming any bike without an “R” in the name isn’t really a bike at all. Thanks dude!

In 2006, I sold the Katana and picked up a 2005 Honda VFR, and continued to ride on numerous occasions. Some of the longer trips include one 5,500km trip in the Maritimes and another 2,500km in Eastern US.

To me, riding provides a sense of freedom, of exploration and a means to impress the ladies. Seriously. On one hand, it’s great to grab the bike for a hour or day long cruise, traveling down a country road with the visor up, deeply breathing the fresh air. Not much beats the thrill of accelerating around a tight curve, or listening to the wind whistling across the helmet. On the other hand, not much makes a women drool more than stepping off the bike in full leather gear, offering them a spare helmet.

Stef told me he once had stopped at a red light, and a woman and her perhaps six year old girl crossed the street in front of him. The little girl beamed as she crossed, and at one point, grinned and said, “Hello, Mr. Motorcycle Man”. Women of all ages love bikes, and I have to admit that having a woman’s arms tightly wrapped around my waist, holding on with a slight fear and excitement, is one of the greatest feelings of all time.