Friday Five: Revenge of Mish-Mosh!

1. Remember the scene with Molly Ringwald putting lipstick on by holding it in her cleavage? Name one really bizarre thing you know how to do. No matter how small.
Is there anything really bizarre left in the universe to do? Okay, fine, I gotta think for a moment.
Slow my heart beat and lower my blood pressure through breathing exercises? True, but not that bizarre.
I don't know; nothing is popping out. Anybody have a candidate for my bizareness to put forward?

2. What's your favourite way to pass the time?
With others: play a game, of course. Solo: Read. Or find people to play a game. :)
Or, actually, by teaching math. Teaching is like saying, "Isn't the universe cool?!?!?!?!," but in a useful way. Learn something? See, I told you I have too many interests.

3. What's your favourite restaurant and why?
Jerusalem Garden. Mostly because my older daughter and I have been there a few times now, she enjoys it (yay! new cuisines!), it's cheap and yummy, and their outdoor seating people-watching potential is huge.

4. Which TV/Radio show did you like that's not aired any more?
Firefly (following the likely herd here...)
Bill Radkey's old public radio show, whose name I am forgetting
Le Show, put on by Harry Shearer on public radio as well (though maybe it's just that the local station stopped carrying it?)
Almost Live (comedy show from a troupe including Bill Nye before he was a public science geek, out of Seattle)

5. if you had a choice of learning another new language, what would you choose? what do you think that reflects about you?
Sanskrit.
Seriously. Then I could read ancient and sacred texts in their original, with connotations intact instead of shredded by the translation process, and understand more about the culture that gave birth to yoga and to Buddhism.

Unless maybe you could download written Japanese into my brain?...logographic languages give me problems. Then I might want Japanese, which I currently have at 0.02 out of 10. That is, I can say hello, thank you, ask where the bathroom is, ask "What?" and not much more. Heck, I think I could communicate more effectively in American Sign Language than Japanese, even after a year of college study.


Haven't done this for a while. I guess some of these F5 questions piqued my fancy.

About Praise

http://www.exceptionalmarriages.com/weblog/BlogDetail.asp?ID=37029

PRAISE CAN EITHER HURT OR HELP KIDS: IT DEPENDS HOW YOU DO IT. [Gregory Popcak] 6/4/2007
When we praise a child, our wording can either be specific (e.g. “You did a good job drawing”) or generic (e.g. “You are a good drawer”). According to Andrei Cimpian and colleagues this subtle distinction can make a big difference to children's motivation when things go wrong.

The researchers played a kind of drawing game with 24 four-year-old children using hand-held puppets. The researchers controlled a 'teacher puppet' that asked the children's puppets to draw different objects. No drawing was actually performed, instead the children had to mime their puppet doing the drawing.

For the first four drawings the researchers responded as if the drawings had been a success. Crucially, half the children were praised generically whereas the other children were praised non-generically.

Then for the next two drawings, the researchers responded as though the children's puppets had failed to draw correctly (e.g. saying they had omitted wheels on a bus or ears on a cat). This was to see how the children responded to criticism.

The children who had earlier been told they were good drawers responded badly to the criticism. They lost interest in the drawing and failed to come up with strategies to correct the drawing mistakes. By contrast, the children previously praised in a non-generic fashion, responded better to the criticism, and came up with ways to rectify the failed drawings.

The idea is that if children are given generic praise – in this case being told they are a good drawer – this leads them to believe they have a stable, trait-like drawing ability. This belief turns to loss of morale when confronted with failure or criticism. By contrast, the non-generic praise, specific to a given episode, is rewarding without leading to false confidence.
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Cimpian, A., Arce, H-M. C., Markman, E.M. & Dweck, C.S. (2007). Subtle linguistic cues affect children's motivation. Psychological Science, 18, 314-316.

Ask and receive

I asked for some hugs and got them.

Thanks!

TrustFlow results for cherydactyl

Well now this works. It didn't before. Must have been the DDoS LJ supposedly was under.

I tried out TrustFlow II for LiveJournal. The following people not on the friends list for cherydactyl are close by:

• jollyrogergames, flinx, blue_yin (150 - 200)
• phawkwood, randomnomad, elsbon, figent_figary, nubianamy, deire (200 - 250)
• anglhomme, customadventure, nuadha_prime, lintra, netmouse, rsmit212, moocards (250 - 300)

( More results below the cut... )

Created by ciphergoth; hosted by LShift.

TrustFlow II: Who is closest to your friends list?