Life, politics and... application development by Frank Quist.
I'm a third-year social work student in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Here I occasionally "blog" on random topics, as a means of distracting myself from the place of intense chaos that some call Hogeschool Utrecht. Also, I have to channel my nerdier tendencies somewhere... social work does not tend to work for that.
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Contrary to the traditional views of the music industry, removal of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions can actually decrease piracy, according to new research from Rice University and Duke University.
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The secret life of pronouns →
I’m a social psychologist whose interest in these words came about almost accidentally. In the early 1980s, I stumbled on a finding that fascinated me. People who reported having a traumatic experience and who kept the experience a secret had far more health problems than people who talked openly. Why would keeping a secret be so unhealthy? If you asked people to write about their secrets, would their health improve? The answer, I soon discovered, was yes. As part of this work, we developed a computer program to analyse the language people used when they wrote about traumas. We made numerous discoveries using this tool, such as the value of using words associated with positive emotions. However, our most striking discovery was not about the content of people’s writing but the style. In particular, we found that the use of pronouns – I, me, we, she, they – mattered enormously. The more people changed from using first-person singular pronouns (I, me, my) to using other pronouns (we, you, she, they) from one piece of writing to the next, the better their health became. Their word use reflected their psychological state.
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If your life is a stream of water, that carries you along if you don’t swim against the current, then what, in that metaphor, is clutter? Is that water that you put into bottles (because you dare not leave it behind), slowly creating a dam that distorts the river’s path and holds you back?
What would a working metaphor be?
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Kleine gedachten →
I have started posting longer regular postings about politics, society and psychology on a new dutch blog. Hope someone will enjoy it!
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Radical Muslims have set cities afire because their feelings were hurt. When a Muslim murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam, it was because his feelings were hurt. Ditto the Muslims who rioted about cartoons depicting the image of Muhammad and sent frightened doodlers into hiding.
The idea that one should never have one’s feelings hurt — and the violent means to which some will resort in the protection of their own self-regard — has done harm rivaling evil. It isn’t a stretch to say that the greatest threat to free speech is, in fact, “sensitivity.”
This is why plans for the mosque near Ground Zero should be allowed to proceed, if that’s what these Muslims want. We teach tolerance by being tolerant. We can’t insist that our freedom of speech allows us to draw cartoons or produce plays that Muslims find offensive and then demand that they be more sensitive to our feelings.
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Een rechts kabinet? Dan een progressief schaduwkabinet →
Of de PVV nu in de regering komt of alleen gedoogsteun geeft, een rechts kabinet is niet mijn kabinet. Begin jaren zeventig vormden oppositieleiders Joop den Uyl en Hans van Mierlo een schaduwkabinet dat klaar stond om te regeren. Als er daadwerkelijk een rechts kabinet aantreedt dan moeten Job Cohen, Alexander Pechtold en Femke Halsema de handen ineen slaan en een nieuw schaduwkabinet vormen, dat het roer van het schip van staat overneemt als Mark Rutte de macht over dit stuur verliest. Zo’n schaduwkabinet - dat helemaal in de geest van Van Thijn is en het publicitair weer ongelooflijk goed gaat doen - wordt dan bovendien een vast baken en een signaal van hoop in een verwilderde en stormachtige tijd, waar donkere wolken zich samenpakken.
Wat mij betreft gebeurd dit!
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Power is constantly sought through the use of means which render its effective use, once acquired, impossible,
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Here’s a nifty trick a psychology professor once told me: Always ask, “What are your questions?” instead of, “Are there any questions.” It’s supposed to increase responses by quite a a bit.
Quote reblogged from Told or Known
You will never be prepared for the things you are capable of doing. You will achieve your greatest accomplishments not by building up a grand framework of skill and then deftly creating something glorious, but by starting small and persevering in making it better and better. It is never an easy road and you will gain a grand framework of skills, but you have to push your boundaries to grow.
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