headlines

1. prime minister continues to fulfill promise of "taking trinidad higher" by adding another 4 inches of paving asphalt to the nation's roads before every election

2. pop songstress follows up summer hit "promiscuous" with club banger "H to the Izzo I got the Vizzee"

3. after hours of deliberation UN security council kicked off of "Viable Diplomacy" reality show

captions

area baby boy just can't help but love it!

area studio owner regrets hiring obsessive compulsive interior decorator

iraqi family gratefully enjoys the fruits of western freedom operations in iraq

the hunt is on for the wetfeet serial killer in dunkirk england

spanish public agrees festival change from "running of the bulls" to
"groping of the woman" amidst a spike in male sexual frustration nationwide

wheels

i bought a car, went clubbing, got a phone number. aaaaaaahhh. it's good to have your own mobility. i hate depending on people for rides or car sharing. plus with my own car i can speed without worrying because if i ever crash it no one can get angry at me! which might be a bad thing because ppl who speed in trinidad crash and die a lot on our highways. the downside is that now if i'm taking family or friends somewhere i can't drink! {begin chappelle voice} psych! i'm takin you with me you free loadin shot gunnin muthafuckas! {end chappelle voice}

painting rooms: blue vs pink

these couple days i'm painting over the rooms of my two little cousins, sisters aged 7 and 4, while they are away. it got me thinking about genetic/physiological programming vs environmental conditioning. proponents of the latter like to say that girls like pink because they're taught to like pink and boys like blue because they're taught to like blue et cetera. i currently hold the view that genetics and physiology are the dominant determinants of behaviour (a view i am betting will be validated by scientific discovery as we fine tune the resolution at which we study the brain) but that there is natural variability about the genetic baseline due to environmental conditioning. (i call it the battle between hard wiring and soft wiring.) what does this have to do with painting rooms? well the thought train was stimulated by the request by the sisters to have their rooms painted pink and blue, with princesses and footballs on the wall, respectively.

presumably these sisters, raised by the same parents and grandparents, should not develop drastically different personalities if environmental conditioning was a very dominant factor. but after watching these two younguns varying responses to the same stimuli i hypothesize that a person's genetic or physiological predispositions strongly affect which information is processed/prioritized (makes sense as a first principle as information assimilation is a physical process regulated by neurochemicals like dopamine and serotonin.) thus it controls what environmental conditioning is possible and comes to be the dominant factor is determining a person's behaviour. (if this is untrue then mightn't christians be right about being able to condition the gay out of homosexuals?)

the older sister loves pink and princesses and flowers and nature and is quiet and passive. the younger sister loves blue and karate and football and is loud and very physically aggressive. the older sister (in my opinion) has a more feminine looking face than the younger one, who has already been classified as a "tomboy" by adults in the family. and to further add to my amazement (though not surprisingly) the younger sister appears to be more of a systemizer than an empathizer, delighting in dismantling and reassembling my pens or interfering with my cellphone while the older sister sits enthralled by barbie/mermaid/fairytopia on tv. if i had to guess i would say the baseline differences between them were set in stone since development in the womb but lots of folks would probably want to chime in otherwise. it will be interesting to see them grow older.

stretching fingers

there is a stirring in me that wants to blog again. or perhaps it's too much lactose. regardless, i haven't had an outlet for any self produced quick wit or dry sarcasm in so long that i fear i am losing it. recently i found myself recycling old jokes. (gasp.) though i must admit the whole "i wish i'd sold my soul earlier because the damn thing depreciated!" bit is still pretty funny.

... .... .... .... ... 4 kbps

so one of the cruelest things to do to an ambitious intelligent person is take away all his/her opportunities for realizing individual potential and having a basic career. but just as cruel is to restrict that person to a 56k modem... god itself probably cannot conceive of something so slow that my whole philosophy on life has changed by the time i upload an opinion piece.

anyway... i do think there are weapons of mass destruction in iraq and we should invade. the people will welcome us and it will spread democracy and freedom.