Some brainfart musings

1. Is intelligence testing a useful method of measuring a person's potential for academic achievement?  I say that intelligence testing is still a useful method of measuring a person's potential for academic achievement. When it comes to the reliability of intelligence testing however, the concerns of Eric B, a Caucasian bilingual teacher at the  Escondido Unified School District who I carpooled with going to a hike at Three Sisters Waterfalls in Descanso  last February, echoes in my mind. Most of Mr. B's students are children of new immigrants from Mexico who have settled in eastern area of Escondido. Mr. B talked about his teaching strategies which to him worked but lamented the fact that his students did not do well in the in the  state standardized tests especially in language proficiencies. As a teacher, he had seen the progress of his students, progress that no standardized testing could measure.
2. If you were an employer would you prefer a highly motivated worker of average intelligence or a worker with average motivation and high intelligence?  Had my employer preferred applicants with high intelligence and average motivation five years ago, I would be out of work today. If I were an employer myself, I would take the cue from employer and would give a chance to highly motivated applicants even with borderline intelligence.
3. Which would you prefer for a romantic partner?  Duh
4. Which would you prefer to be--highly motivated or highly intelligent? I would prefer to be highly motivated but I wish I was highly intelligent.
5. Should colleges and universities base admissions more on SAT and ACT scores or high school grades and activities?  Ivy league schools should still base their admissions on SAT and ACT scores to maintain their status quo.  State universities could use some SAT scores but as they seem to be doing now requiring a higher GPA. Community colleges, on the other hand, should keep their doors open to the community for everyone wanting to learn, like what they are doing now.
6. Discuss the relative effects of motivation and intelligence on achievement. My goal is to finish the course with a grade that would help me  qualify  on a program I am waitlisted on. Given my previous scores on the chapter quizzes however, I am beginning to wonder if my brain is apt for the SQ3R technique that are supposed to improve my scores. I still have my motivation though.

Just another night shit with Die Vahkkendjaab

"Are you a nursing student?" Joyce Fulton asked.
"Nope."
"What are you studying?"
"Nothing."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to be nosy."
"I am fine."
I was working with Joyce, a registered nurse from the resource float pool for the first time. Joy probably got her RN degree through the Plus 50 Initiative. I could sense her interest. I just finished my activity record on Centricity and was browsing at the flash cards I have accessed through the Blackboard. Joyce was going back to her computer and probably got curious with what I was doing online other than working on my electronic documentations.
I have made friends with a few other resource float pool RNs. There's Beth Miller, who sang blues with an ETOH patient a few months ago, Eun Kim, Julie Cheng, and Florence Ebiya who I am always glad to see on the floor. The getting to know you working relationship phase with Joyce seemed to have gotten off on the wrong foot.

Son of a Grasshopper

Should I leave the effing son a grasshopper alone?
The mother fire trucker son of gun has nothing to do with the effing  result of my chapter quiz on sensation and perception.
What part of his ear did Van Gogh cut?
So this is American college education is all about. But I am having the most fun on the Blackboard Learn
https://gcccd.blackboard.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_1_1

I would be most devastated with losing my vision too Eqbal. Now I know how it feels. I am so devastated with the results of the chapter quiz because I almost lost it. I am trying not to go insane though. But if I ever lose my vision, I would have to tell myself that it's not the end of the world. I probably would not  be a Helen Keller but  I would get by. There's my sense of touch, sense of smell  and I would definitely add in a sense of humor.

Of cross-eyed kittens and Anais Nin

Discussion board question number 2 is the more intriguing to me so let me go around the bush of my choice. I never heard about Anais Nin saying "We don't see the world as it is but as we are" before. About.com says that Anais Nin was a writer known for her published diaries. Like Anne Frank? Not really, she was born to Spanish-Cuban parents in France. Her name reminds me of Anais Anais which I pronounce as a neigh, a neigh, that characteristic high pitch sound uttered by a horse. The perfume, course! Was Anais Nin trying to tell her readers that they don't get it?
"Look guys, it's not what you think it is!"
I don't get it, either!
I could actually relate more with the Johari Window. Those windows tell a lot: tell what you see is what it is, what you didn't see, what nobody saw and who knows what nobody would ever see.

Thanks to cross-eyed kittens with lazy eyes, David Hubel and and Torsten Wiesel were able to study the effects of visual deprivation during the critical period for development of vision. Like half of the class who would be devastated to lose their vision, my sense of vision is the most important and would do everything to save it.

As for illusions, I understand illusions to be false perceptions. Like I have illusions of being so smart, then I talk smart when in reality, I really don't know what I am talking about.

A View to my Exotic Origins

I just finished a required reading in SOC 120, the article "Body Ritual Among the Nacirema" by Horace Miner. The Nacirema people were a little-known tribe in the Antiles archipelago by the Caribbean Sea to the south and the Gulf of Mexico to the Northwest. I am glad the author did not call the Nacirema tribe Indians but instead  North American tribe. Nacirema is actually American read backwards.

I felt like I was reading an American anthropologist' perspective on a culture that could have been mine. I found the fascination of an outsider to a foreign culture more interesting that the bizarre practice of the Nacirema women he was describing where they bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour.

"What are your general thoughts on the article?" Ursula asks.
"The article seems to be about Americans. Nacirema backwards is American." Jessica Doyle points out.
I reply to Jessica Doyle's comment.
I seem to be getting your point, Jessica. The article is the simply the dyslexic way of looking at how Americans deal with their bodies.  In the article, I feel like I am simply reading an American anthropologist' perspective on a foreign culture. I find the fascination of an outsider such that of the author more interesting than the practices of Nacirema (read backwards as American) people. While the practices described seem primitive and exotic to the author, to me, these practices have their own modern counterparts. The holy mouth men are now called dentists and hygienists; the latipso is the medical examination room; and  the listener would be the modern day clinical  psychologists. Long before the invention of dental floss, there were hog hairs.

I stopped reading the article when the author pointed out "the gleam in the eye of a holy mouth man as he jabs around into the exposed nerve". Finding the Nacirema tribal practices having sadistic and masochistic tendencies seem to me an easy and unfair judgment made by an outsider to a foreign culture. In the US people would have tattoos, piercings and would go under the knife for anything: self-expression, to enhance their image or just to belong or be cool. Limiting intercourse to the phase of the moon is also nothing new to devout Catholics who would not go for artificial birth control because of the dictates of the holy men in the Catholic church. Catholics practice the natural family planning method, nothing lunar but close.

The article even if it could have just been a joke reminds me a book I recently read.  It is a book by a Japanese author, Koji Suzuki.  Paradise!

The author has no relations to the makers of Vitaras and Forenzas. In the only book of his that I have read so far, he weaved his story from the prehistoric distant lands where modern day Asians in America come from. I am quite familiar about legends when there were land bridges between islands  across the Pacific. I have read about Native  Americans coming all the way from Asia by the Bering Strait along the northern part of the  Pacific coast in a series of migrations. Suzuki is definitely referring to people from Mongolia, now a landlocked country in east and central Asia bordering Russia to the north and China to the south. Scholars dispute how long these people from Mongolia have been in North America . Some say 25, 000 years based on evidence while others counted less years and made it 12, 500 basing on their own evidences.

I take interest on migration patterns of Asians to North America