trini ting

there are many trinidadians out in the world being creative. here is one of them, whose opera "is the first composition by a woman to be commissioned by the Royal Opera." cheers to her.

bird egg, yellow flower, brake reflector, red flower

camera pans to token minority to legitimise joke about minority

at a one hour taping of 'comedy central presents' white comedian Tad Artimus referenced the stereotype of african-american obstreperosity when he made the joke "my girlfriend and i were talking so much at the movies the black girl behind us went 'shhhhhhhhhhhh!!!'". at that instant virtuoso cameraman Steve Jones, whose uncanny ability to spot minorities in the studio audience made him a legend in the world of comedy taping, immediately panned and focused in on an "octoroon, perhaps quadroon even" young man. the move was at first questionable as for 1/5 of a second the fractionally african-american youngster Jamaal Whitehead cogitated upon the uproarious laughter of the majority around him thinking "but i've never done that, and none of my partially black family has even done that..." before settling on the idea that it would be safer for him to condone the reaction of the majority. he then let out an unshackled "cyah cyah cyah cyah", while frenetically nodding his head in affirmation, much to the appreciation of Jones, who smiled at the thought of the audience at home who could now laugh without consequence. later on in the show when a joke was made referencing white americans' tendency to get away scott free in the judicial system, Jones zoomed out on the entire crowd, failing to catch the resigned sigh of Jose Rovedas, the studio janitor peering in from the periphery of the back stage, as he remembered the police beating he once got for having a marijuana cigarette on him.

q.o.t.d.

no god whose pièce de résistance is the rest of humanity could have created me.

--- guess who =)

5.5 earthquake gets response of 9 on overreaction scale

an earthquake of magnitude 5.5-6 on the richter scale shook trinidad today for a few moments prompting mass overreaction of the populace. frenzied reports of structural damage circulated through media channels as the shaken masses recounted severe "rattling of kitchen utensils" and "breaking of [flower] pots" and other minor items. the quake's duration, as monitored by one indifferent MIT graduate - expert in earthquake-hysteria-satire - was a "few fucking seconds, you [dumb] bitches", though opinions amongst the emotional masses ranged from "several minutes" to "jesus is coming, jesus is coming!" the quake itself was composed of an initial shock followed by a lull allowing for persons to make the sign of the cross followed by a longer more powerful shock that led to mass condemnation of homosexuals, independent women and doubting thomases in society. several more aftershocks were reported as thousands of semi-evolved mammalian brains failed to quell their trembling with use of higher brain abilities such as decisive rationality. "oh my god! the earthquake knocked out the phone service!" said one human as she and half the country overloaded the network trying to call the 13th person she could think of to ask if he felt it too.

what i read for fun

"Avoidance learning poses a challenge for reinforcement-based theories of instrumental conditioning, because once an aversive outcome is successfully avoided an individual may no longer experience extrinsic reinforcement for their behavior. One possible account for this is to propose that avoiding an aversive outcome is in itself a reward, and thus avoidance behavior is positively reinforced on each trial when the aversive outcome is successfully avoided. In the present study we aimed to test this possibility by determining whether avoidance of an aversive outcome recruits the same neural circuitry as that elicited by a reward itself. We scanned 16 human participants with functional MRI while they performed an instrumental choice task, in which on each trial they chose from one of two actions in order to either win money or else avoid losing money. Neural activity in a region previously implicated in encoding stimulus reward value, the medial orbitofrontal cortex, was found to increase, not only following receipt of reward, but also following successful avoidance of an aversive outcome. This neural signal may itself act as an intrinsic reward, thereby serving to reinforce actions during instrumental avoidance."

from caltech article

evil genius plan #1

it is thought that honeybees are responsible for one third of everything eaten in the US. worth about 20 billion to the agricultural sector annually. an evil genius might concoct a disease that wipes out entire bee colonies near the agricultural centres, severly disrupting the food supply. of course this is more of a subtle terrorist attack, not so much shock and awe trembling as opposed to stomach grumbling.