Jurnal: scraps and pieces of life




 
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Wednesday, May 31, 2006
 
Went for a drive. Just through the streets. Thinking about a lot of things, my life right now, what I need and want out of it. And after beating my head against the wall for the past month, I feel at peace suddenly. I know how to maneuver through the Hollywood machine. I know how to make it work for me. I respect the largeness of it, the fact that it operates on it's own. I'll be okay now. I feel it.

And on a more personal note, I've let C go. I wish him happiness. I only have good feelings towards him. It feels good to be in this place.

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Wednesday, May 24, 2006
 
A good movie on the French resistance against the Nazi's in WWII: Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows

__________

An incredible book: The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

"In 1992, there were 2,154 murders in New York City and 626,182 serious crimes, with the weight of those crimes falling hardest in places like Brownsville and East New York. But then something strange happened. At some mysterious and critical point, the crime rate began to turn. It tipped. Within five years, murders had dropped 64.2 percent to 770 and total crimes had fallen by almost half to 355,893... The New York City police will tell you that what happened in New York was that the city's policing strategies dramatically improved. Criminologists point to the decline of the crack trade and the aging of the population. Economists, meanwhile, say that the gradual improvement in the city's economy over the course of the 1990s had the effect of employing those who might otherwise have become criminals.... The changes in the drug trade, the population, and the economy are all long-term trends, happening all over the country. They don't explain why crime plunged in NYC so much more than in other cities around the country, and they don't explain why it all happened in such an extraordinarily short time... How can a change in a handful of economics and social indices cause murder rates to fall by two-thirds in five years?" - (pg. 7)

"Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the "work" will be done by 20 percent of the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of crimes. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of all accidents. Twenty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of all beer." - (pg. 19)

"One of the most infamous incidents in NYC history... was the 1964 stabbing death of a young Queens woman by the name of Kitty Genovese. Genovese was chased by her assailant and attacked three times on the street, over the course of half an hour, as thirty-eight of her neighbors watched from their windows. During that time, however, none of the thirty-eight witnesses called the police... In the case of Kitty Genovese, social psychologists like Latane and Darley argue, the lesson is not that no one called despite the fact that thirty-eight people heard her scream; it's that no one called because thirty-eight people heard her scream." - (pg. 27)

"In the late 1960s, the psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment to find an answer to what is known as the small-world problem. The problem is this: how are human beings connected?... Milgram's idea was to test this question with a chain letter. He got the names of 160 people who lived in Omaha, Nebraska, and mailed each of them a packet. In the packet was the name and address of a stockbroker who worked in Boston and lived in Sharon, Massachusetts. Each person was instructed to write his or her name on the packet and send it on to a friend or acquaintance who he or she thought would get the packet closer to the stockbroker... Milgram found that most of the letters reached the stockbroker in five or six steps. This experiment is where we get the concept of six degrees of separation." - (pg. 35)

________

Friday, May 19, 2006
 
Was reluctant to read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini but have started it and it's actually very moving.

...

Wednesday, May 10, 2006
 
Just finished Be more chill by Ned Vizzini

From Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond:

"The greatest single epidemic in human history was the one of influenza that killed 21 million people at the end of the First World War. The Black Death (bubonic plague) killed one-quarter of Europe's population between 1346 and 1352, with death tolls ranging up to 70 percent in some cities." --p.202

"In 1942, in the middle of World War II, the U.S government set up the Manhattan Project with the explicit goal of inventing the technology required to build an atomic bomb before Nazi Germany could do so. That project succeeded in three years, at a cost of $2 billion..." --pg. 242

"When Edison built his first phonograph in 1877, he published an article proposing ten uses to which his invention might be put. They included preserving the last words of dying people, recording books for blind people to hear, announcing clock time, and teaching spelling. Reproduction of music was not high on Edison's list of priorities. A few years later Edison told his assistant that his invention had no commercial value. Within another few years he changed his mind and did enter business to sell phonographs--but for use as office dictating machines. When other entrepreneurs created jukeboxes by arranging for a phonograph to play popular music at the drop of a coin, Edison objected to this debasement, which apparently detracted from serious office use of his invention. Only after about 20 years did Edison reluctantly concede that the main use of his phonograph was to record and play music." --pg. 243

"Much more extensive long-term information about band and tribal societies reveals that murder is a leading cause of death." --pg. 277

"New Guinea has by far the highest concentration of languages in the world: 1,000 out of the world's 6000 languages, crammed into an area only slightly larger than that of Texas, and divided into dozens of language families and isolated languages as different from each other as English is from Chinese." --pg. 306

 

 
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