Yea, people should be accepting. Yes, the church should be a place where you can be transparent and put all your crap on the table. Yes, yes and yes, but they're not.

Oh btw, early happy new years! I won't have the internets for awhile. I'm still working on my next big blog post about social networking and I hope to have it finished by next Monday.

Teehee

The Manatee by =Wernette on deviantART

Random thought

"There is no single best place to be raised...But one of the really good places to be raised is any place where you learn that there is no single best place to be raised." -Richard Sweder

I was born and raised in San Jose. I used to think and take pride that NorCal is full of down-to-earth people and SoCal is full of materialistic skanks, but from my experience down here, I learned it really depends on your attitude and who you run into. Humans compare things by default...it's not so much of a problem as it is human nature. Apart from bias, we can't always make firm judgments of someone's happiness or well-being.

Texting with my friend who compulsively steals

Partially fiction. These are real texts but I'm only altering the context of the situation and changing the involved book titles for privacy purposes and good laughs.

So I'm in my Irvine apartment while my friend stops by my room at my parent's place...

950 AM

Can I borrow Level 26? I'll bring it back Xmas.

1031 AM

Ok I'm gonna borrow hahaha

1056 AM

(Me) No! Don't! You can borrow Dead or Alive.

1056 AM

Uhoh...I just left...............:(((

1056 AM

I'll be back Wednesday

1056 AM

Sorry!!!

1057 AM

(Me) Yea...that wasn't cool.

1058 AM

I thought you read it already. Sorry!

1059 AM

I'm headed towards Disneyland. I can meet you somewhere.

1059 AM

(Me) Yea, I'm reading it after How to Stop Your Addiction to Stealing which is what I'm reading atm. Are you leaving today?

(I ended up letting my friend borrowing it and decided to read something else. It's life. It takes all kinds of people to make a world.)

Sorry Tom Clancy, but dark psychothrillers get first dibs in my reading list. They're my thing. Don't worry, I don't own a suicide closet and I don't plan to harm myself.

One of many awesome interpretations of Radiohead's "No Surprises"

"It could be applied to aging baby boomers who used to protest the government (You were so tired, happy, bring down the government, they don't, they don't speak for us) who have resignated themselves to high-stress jobs where they are subjected to heart disease or exposed to dangerous chemicals that are killing them (a job that slowly kills you), eating foods that clog their arteries and smoke and drink so that their body is full of poisons (A heart that's full up like a landfill), and they are slowly coming down with cancer, strokes, and heart attacks (some cancers have symptoms of bruises that don't go away and heart attacks and strokes can be brought on by blood clots blocking blood vessels and don't move), so they deal with businesses that poison the air (I'll take the quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide) such as the automobile industry. No longer arguing or protesting (Silent, silent). They may be on their death bed with a terminal disease caused by their lifestyle of the aforementioned or it could be their last time mentioning their dissent before taking in a life of pure acquiescence (This is my final fit, my final bellyache). They trade in the thrill and flavor of their life for the security of assimilation and in exchange for acceptance they get their house in the suburbs complete with a yard and 2.5 children (Such a pretty house, such a pretty garden). And they don't want any stirring up of their past excitement (No alarms and no surprises, please)." -Imani110, commenter on SongMeanings.com

Radiohead is a lyrical genius for gathering a legion of emotions into a song. That said, a song (or a poem or an inspirational quote) could be applied to many situations.

Also, watch this awesome cover by Regina Spektor. To enjoy this is to love her and Radiohead.

Side note: It's good to be back on this blog (and metacognition...nerd alert...yay for dorks). I've made 3 posts this month so far. Last month (and the few months before that) I didn't post any, so I'm ahead of my own pace. :)

Words from someone w/ social anxiety "disorder"

Sometimes fear is the one to be feared, not out of resignation but to focus and resolve. It's not about your pimples, someone's bad breath, your new Mazda, or the enemy. A contrived peace can be a disguised consumption of fear. Uncertain times are difficult to ignore due to its realism. You are the gatekeeper of your own perception. Impossible? Only if you believe so.

Evaluative Research is awsum

I've been neglecting you for awhile. I'll chalk it up to my incessant laziness.

Has Southwest ever cancelled your flight while you’re all hunky-dory and ready to return home? Sh*t indeed happens, but hey, you can get credit for your next ticket while Southwest Airlines dumps you in like say Philadelphia for 3 winter days. Always look on the bright side. You probably already know this, but these credit offers are actually a technique to improve and maintain customer relations. If you didn’t know that, well as I twirl my thick moustache (if I had one, I probably would) like a dork, my ‘speculative intuition’ would say these gift card/credit balance offers prime the customers’ minds to stick with Southwest, thus, spending the credit would be the behavioral reinforcement to the retained loyalty. In other words, if it weren’t for the credit offer, you’d probably ditch Southwest. Along with Southwest, online department stores like Amazon also do credit offers (along with many other “evil” techniques) for refunds and trade-ins. So it goes like this: if you’re unsatisfied with a product and then decide to return it, you’re stuck with unused store credit. You get the idea. Pretty crafty.

If that’s not news for you, well there’s actually a lot of psychological research behind all this, in improving customer relations. This would be called evaluative research which is a type of applied psychology research, especially done by big businesses. I’ll share a bit about what it is: the purpose of evaluative research is to improve, for examples, specific programs or specific product features and etc. The methods would be adequate, not “gold-plated”, but adequate enough to be done quickly and cheaply. It’s not the kind of research that’s seeking some fundamental understanding of like say happiness, adolescence or anything academic. Non-applied psychology research tends to use more elaborate methods. Jo-ann Fabrics has done their homeworks and came up with something really bizarre, but surprisingly effective. Joann Fabrics would have deals like “Buy 2 Sewing Machines and Save 10%.” Who the hell wants 2 sewing machines?! Ok...sweatshops. Maybe share the good will with a friend? Silly enough, that’s what Joann fabrics was shooting for. This taken-for-granted idea actually transforms customers into salespersons. Shockingly, this kind of offer actually boosted revenues by increasing the number of consistent customers due to the chain reaction of referrals.

A few more examples of applied evaluative research:
• Charities and Political Campaigns do research to find which appeals increase giving
• Online Newspapers and Blog sites test how different layouts increase the probability of readers clicking through to articles
• Article on business models behind social gaming:http://www.gamespot.com/news/6284524.html (The article has moral suggestions but looking at things with a moral lens is a way of getting an easy, tangible understanding of a new concept. So you don’t have to buy into all of its morals, but basically, emotion increases memory consolidation. PSA: And now you know.)

Anyways, so what can you take out of this? That’s up to you. If you were my mom taking my emptied tin lunchbox and asking, “So Ryan, what did you learn in school?” I would say, “Well…Today, I learned that my teacher is nice *kekeke*,” but apart from that, I would usually share something interesting such as this. One of the valuable lessons could be: to rationalize the ‘teaser’ shopping offers. You don’t have to know the true psychology behind every coupon or bonus you get, but questioning them may help you refrain from experiencing buyer’s remorse, especially for the compulsive shoppers.

Side Note/Blog Outtake: You know what would be super awesome/dorky? Getting my hands on evaluative research behind Facebook features like the ‘like’ button. Nerd alert: The ‘like’ button and Facebook features alike that are taken at face value and for granted may actually suggest research on how this generation is widely accepting social networking. From a historical perspective, early newspapers have been used to impose nationalism in developing countries but they also instilled imagined communities between people of far distances—with the help of a standardized language and instilling a notion of ‘us’ as a ‘nation.’ There has to be some grounds laid out and social processes that shaped our brains to accept social networking as a pervasive part of our everyday life in order for us to experience real-life consequences from imagined, shared events.

Rather than being called narcissists, can baby boomers be seen as a generation of realists adapting to social pressures of ageism and to attain "eternal youth" in order to live a secure life (ex: getting and keeping a job for looking younger)?