Geoff's Miscellany

Thing to remember for this read: Mindset is the collection of attitudes and processes one uses to evaluate oneself or the circumstances of life.

You probably enjoy a good compliment. I do. I love them. I can be like Sherlock Holmes when it comes to compliments or worse, like Mark Twain:

Compliments make me vain: & when I am vain, I am insolent & overbearing. It is a pity, too, because I love compliments. I love them even when they are not so. My child, I can live on a good compliment two weeks with nothing else to eat. - Mark Twain - Letter to Gertrude Natkin, 2 March 1906

Studies of seventh grade math students, as well as college students in calculus and computer science, revealed a gender gap in performance, but only for those females who believed math ability was a gift. These are the girls who drop out of the economics classes -- and who, as women, may avoid working in areas that require a strong growth mindset, like economics, math and computer science.

I’m above calling my son names – even Yiddish ones – but not always able to resist doling out disappointment, even for tiny mistakes like dropping a hot dog. I felt the words stepping up to the batter’s box in my head.

“Come on!”

When I was younger I really like the song Paint it Black. I now almost never listen to the radio, but right after telling my wife that I liked it as a kid, it came on when I turned the radio on on a lark the next day. Then later that day it came on the radio at the gym. I listened to it when I did my heaviest set on dead lift.

One of my favorite poems is Paradise Lost. Naturally, this means that I enjoy The Desert is on Fire by Murder by Death.

The song takes place in a concept album wherein the devil was visiting a bar in Mexico and tried to make a few extra bucks on a drug deal. The other dealer double crosses him and shoots him in the back. When the devil gets out of prison he goes on a rampage against the entire village and when he confronts the villagers, he reminds them, “I fought off angels with my hands back, I set the heavens on fire.” It’s an exciting song with a fairly epic tone. If you want to know how the story ends you’ll need to listen to the whole album.

One of the persistent themes of recent psychological literature on success is the inner voice. Thought it has many names, the inner voice describes sort of things we tell ourselves to psych ourselves up, out, or distract ourselves from ourselves. The Christian tradition, especially the Puritan and Greek Orthodox branches of soul care, did not leave these sorts of questions out. For examples of writing about using the inner monolog to grow in virtue I highly recommend the works of Evagrius of Pontus and, Thomas Brooks, and Richard Baxter.

Introduction

Anyhow, well over a year later, I was working on a writing project (still am) and was looking for a more practical application of Carol Dweck’s mindset ideas that I had found in her book on motivation in education. In the process, I came across Mike Cernovich’s book Gorilla Mindset. It had a title that seemed cheesy, although most people want the things it claims to provide. I found, a preview on Scribd (or was it a pirated version?). After I looked through the exercises at the end of each chapter and saw how similar they were in design to the ones I was writing for something else, I went ahead and bought a kindle edition of the book. I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the book. It didn’t merely provide a model for what I was trying to do myself, but it provided legitimately helpful insight into improving one’s life and happiness.

Tonight a friend asked me if I’d had any ideas for papers I would like to write. I do, I even have ideas for books. I’ll probably not write any of this, but maybe I will. The fact is that I want to write these things and I have no actual resources for getting published (not attached to any academic institutions of notoriety or scholars of note). But the first fact is enough to write them. So, I suppose that if I write any of this and nobody wants to publish it, I’ll just put it on my blog. When it appears, I hope you hate it.

I posted one of these a couple of weeks back. I thought mention some other things I like right now.

1. I've been training to failure in the gym again. It's been a nice time saving technique and a change of pace. The decreased weight from the insanely long sets (aiming for 10 reps two seconds up and four seconds down). To time my reps, I use a boxing timer app on my phone. It allows me to gauge whether or not my ten or more reps have been timed well. I may try a metronome app next. Anyhow, I'll train like this for a few more weeks with some jogging every once in a while in order to prepare my body for a camping trip we take for work next month. Training to failure takes advantage of several modes of muscle growth stimulation: heavy weight (eventually), occlusion, and effort. It takes advantage of volume as well, but it a way that few expect. Volume is a major stimulus for muscle growth, but in this form of training you're only doing one set. But if I did 3 sets of 5 and each rep took 2 seconds, that's still only 30 seconds of actual weight lifting. The difference in single set training is that while the volume is often higher, the extended sets can force the weight to be lower. After the camping trip I'll keep this training style up for a while, but switch up some exercises. I'll probably start aiming for heavy triples on dead lift one day a week as well. Here's my routine
   1. Pulldowns
   2. Dips
   3. Dumbbell Pullovers
   4. Dumbbell Bench Press
   5. Dumbbell Shoulder Press
   6. Back Extensions
   7. Leg Curls (I try for a set of 30 on these...it's pretty terrible)
   8. Dead Lift (try for a set of 12)
   9. Bicep Curls
   10. Posture Shrugs
2. I use the Sleep Cycle app on my phone to try to gauge my sleep quality. It's either a very effective tool or a placebo and therefore a very effective tool. I highly recommend you get it, or if you have a Fit Bit of some sort, try using a sleep tracker app.
3. Cal Newport's book How to Win at College is pretty amazing. He's a computer scientist from MIT who writes a great deal of helpful advice for young people. I read it so that I could give my students tips for success. His blog is super useful.
4. Posture exercises. I've been trying several times a day to stretch into a better posture and to walk with better posture throughout the day. There appears to be a reciprocal relationship between our attitude and our posture. Being in a bad mood can lead us to carry ourselves like we're retreating from the world, but conversely, carrying yourself like you're in a good and engaging mood ends up putting you in that mood. Try it out.

I’ll say more about this topic later.

Articles periodically pop up about why it is still important to major in the liberal arts and not bother with STEM fields. And then other articles will pop-up saying that liberal arts degrees are stupid and essentially put the individual student in debt without concern for said student’s future employment prospects.

To these claims I say, “Just shut up.”

Neither side ever means “the liberal arts.” They just mean “STEM or non-STEM degrees.”

A year or so ago, a friend gave me “The Color Spectrum” by The Dear Hunter. The album is very unusual, but it was a delightful surprise. I especially like the song below. I think I mostly like its sound though. While the chorus is great (what better thing to bring us back to reality or our calling than love?), I think the idea is that somebody keeps coming back to a distant and non-reciprocating object of affection because of love. While that story is used in movies all the time (see Ex Machina), it is not actually noble to put others on a pedestal. It could be possible that the person is brought back to a struggling friend or lover because of love, in this case the song is much more positive.

1. Sufjan Stevens' new album Carrie and Lowell.
2. I'm trying to wake up completely before drinking my coffee. To do this I exercise, drink one or two large glasses of chilled water and sit down and do some of my morning reading prior to coffee. I've found that feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed prior to drinking my morning cup-o-sludge helps me to get a boost from my caffeine rather than waking up feeling the need to have it.
3. Lately I buy cheap coffee to save money (though I've been treating myself once a week with a friend's high quality beans). When I make my gross coffee, I've found that putting cinnamon and occassionally cayenne pepper in the bottom of the cup before pouring adds a delightful spice to the experience.
4. I've come to really appreciate ginger water. I just buy a few ounces of ginger root, blend it up, boil it with filtered water and strain out the pieces as I pour the water into a pitcher and repeat with the same pulp one more time. Just a couple of ounces of this ginger concentrate diluted with about 10 ounces of water is amazingly refreshing.
5. Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. I've been reading a lot about the cardinal virtues (courage, justice, prudence, and temperance), and a psychologist friend recommended this book to me. I decided I would read it, thinking I would dislike it. It is actually filled with insight. I wish it included more research, but that's okay. I highly recommend it to anybody who struggles with courage. Her main insight is that vulnerability is not weakness. Instead it is being vulnerable and acting anyway that is courage.