Such Language

Wanna hear Obama swearing like a South-Side drug dealer? Don't lie to me with your hand on the mouse, I can feel your anxious heartbeat. Of course you do, no matter how you feel about him. Actual adults don't care what adult words he uses, and if you've arrived at this blog you're probably an adult or at the very least, someone not completely frightened by words.

I stumbled across this blog post, wherein the story of Obama swearing is explained. And at the same location are five downloadable soundbytes of straight-up Chicago cussing like only a great orator can deliver.

What should you take away from this?

"You ain't my bitch, nigga, buy your own damn fries."
Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States

I'm going to find some way of mixing this stuff into some music. They're just too good to not play with.

Last Nicaragua Post

Post Correction: There are to kids at Hogar Belen with the name Jose, Jose Manuel and Jose Miguel. The previous post was refering to Jose Miguel, not Jose Manuel.

Today was the tourist day. Volcano, shopping, food, zip-line, food; A good day by most standards.

I leave Nicaragua tomorrow morning at 8:30 am. I will miss this place until I can come back. I´m definitely relearning spanish. Hablo bien, pero mis vocabulário esta muy piqueño ahora.

Nate

La Chureca

Well, La Chureca was today. It was about what I expected. I had mentally prepared myself for what I was going to see, but it makes no difference until you´re actually there. No photograph, video, or description really does a place like that justice. It always seems distant, and strange. It´s easy to see the people who live there as something else, not quite people almost, just distant ideas of people. Once you´re there, however, they become people. Real people with real hopes and real dreams. The people in the dump were just like any other person I´ve ever met. There was a real sense of community, these were not isolated people in a dump, but a group of people who came together and were happy. Astonishingly happy. After it was all said and done, I felt bad about the conditions, but that feeling was attenuated by their happiness. How people with so little, surrounded by trash, near starvation, are happy, while Americans with big TV´s, cars, floors made of something other than dirt, are miserable, is beyond my ability to comprehend.

That being said, something hit me like a truck today. I spend a good portion of the afternoon in a daze, lost in my own head trying to find an answer to a question I´d never considered before. Jose Manuel is a child here at Hogar Belen who is profoundly disabled both mentally and physically. His legs are permanently crossed due to malformation of his hip and knees, almost like a pretzel, but his knees touch and he appears as an unpsite down ¨T¨ with his feet at the ends, he is incapable of speech or any other communication other than moans and grunts. He sits in his crib all day every day. It hit me, that if I bust my butt for the next 10 years and become an excellent surgeon, what can I do for a child like this? Maybe I could let his legs move more, he´d be easier to clean the workers tell me, maybe I could free the arms that are stuck immobile at his sides, but then what? He´ll still just sit all day, we can do nothing more. Modern medicine with all it´s might, cannot cure Jose Manuel. What´s the point? Then, while reading my book, Clear and Present Danger, by Tom Clancy, I came across a passage. Jack Ryan is thinking about his dying friend and says:

¨Where do they get the courage? It was one thing to fight against people. Ryan had done that. But to fight against death itself, knowing that you must ultimately lose, but still fighting. Such was the nature of the medical profession.¨

Then it was clear. It didn´t matter. So what if I can´t cure Jose Manuel. If I can, after my ten years of hard work, change his life just a little, then it will be worth it. In the end, death wins, in the mean-time, we will fight as hard as we can not only to delay his inevitable arrival, but to make the time as good as it can be. Even if that just means Jose Manuel can be more easily cleaned and maybe lay on his side for a change. That´s medicine.

Nate

Wednesday in Nicaragua

Here´s today´s update:

We started today at Diriamba, the new orphanage location, a little of this a little of that. We only worked until lunch, then went south to the Pacific. It was pretty cool. The was was nice and salty, and really nice to cool off in after the 90 degree heat. After the swim, we ate a a restaurant on the beach. Really good food, very affordable. My full meal was $8 American. Nicaragua seems like a good place for an inexpensive tropical vacation spot. Just pay for a guide like Fernando. He´s the only one I´d trust to drive on these roads, let alone find where to go. Anyway, while at the restaurant, Fernando ordered Red Snapper, as it turns out it´s customary to eat the eyes and brain. The rest of the table was a little grossed out, naturally, but Fernando offered me an eye, so I tried it. It was interesting, the lens was rock hard, but the vitrious fluid was like a warm gross flavored jelly. Not as appealing as it sounds. They half a brain I was offered was actually quite good though. Very soft, almost like butter, but with a pleasant salty flavor. I´d recommend eating the brain, not so much the eyes.

Tomorrow (Thursday) is a big day though. We visit La Chureca, the ¨town¨within the Managua garbage dump. I´ve been mentally preparing myself for it, but I´m sure I´ll still be shocked by it. I hear it also smells pretty bad.

Today's note from the factbook: only 3.3% of the Nicaraguan population is 65 or older. The median age there is 21.7 years. In the US, 12.7% of the population is 65 or older, and the median age is 36.7.

Nicaragua Continued

Today we were at the new location again. More hard work, but different. We started by mixing concrete in a hole in the ground shaped like a bowl. It worked pretty well. I´d expected to mix in a wheel barrow, there were a few there, but this idea was pretty good. Then we carried cinder blocks.

After work we went around trying to find a cabinet for the orphanage. Some of the things they make here are really nice, but there finish quality is a little poorer than we´re used to in the states. The prices are lower too. A cabinet that would have likely cost $1000+ in the states was only $275 here.

I got some stuff in my eyes today, this play is rediculously dry and dusty. Not what you think of when you think about a Central American country. I used to think rain and monkeys and jungle. Now I´ll just think of dirt, wind and banana trees. Banana trees are like weeds here; almost as bad a dandilions.

Interesting bit you added about the differences between the states and Nicaragua. The paid workers here make $5 per day, and a medical doctor makes $350 per month. I spend $5 today on a box of cookies and a gatoraid at the gas station. It´d be very hard to live on that much per day.

Nicaragua Update

Here's another update from Nicaragua.

So, today was another day. We went to the new orphanage location about an hour away from where we´ve been staying. It´s a huge area compared to where they are now. They´ll have space for a farm, plants and animals, so they can teach the kids life skills to survive away from Hogar Belen (O-gar bel-EN). We spent the enitre day digging a ditch for the sewer. Something that would be done in 3 hours with a backhoe has taken over a month manually. Labor´s cheap here.

Then we went out and about a little bit after working. We stopped at a couple road-side shops and got some fruit, stopped at a shack and got some fresh coconuts and drank the milk. Not at all what I expected. It didn´t taste like the coconut I´m used to, and it wasn´t even white, it was clear and colorless. The stuff you buy in the store is an imposter.

Interesting note, it´s legal to drink in a car as long as your aren´t driving.

We also stopped to see a volcanic lake; pretty cool, insanely windy at the overlook. After the exploration led by the very helpful Fernando, a local who owns a transportation company he started after moving back from Miami just before he was deported, we drove back. This route was a little different though, and took us through the upper class areas. Some of the houses were amazing, and those were only the ones you could see behind the ever-present walls that line the city. People talk about a class difference in the states. I´ve seen a brand new 2009 Mercedes, and a family living in a corrigated aluminum hut in the same day, in the same city. That´s a class difference.

Nate

P.S. Go ahead and post this too.

It's interesting to note that while the US has a higher level of income inequality by about 2 points on the GINI index, the US also has a much higher baseline for that inequality - the low end starts much higher, and the high end goes way, way higher. Here the per-capita GDP is $45,800. In Nicaragua, it's $2,800.

There's inequality, and then there's inequality as applied to abject poverty.

From Nicaragua

I had this conversation with my brother on Facebook today. He's in Nicaragua for a week for volunteer work, and I thought you might like to see this. He gave his permission at the end, just so there's no confusion. He arrived yesterday.

Nate
dude

8:31pmSteve
Hey man

8:31pmNate
nicaragua is shockingly different from anything i´ve ever seen before

8:31pmSteve
Hows that?

8:32pmNate
you need to see the pictures and videos i´ve taken

this is a city of 3 million people

and it´s the dirtiest place

there are no majors roads or road signs

and the housing is just shacks

you should see the bar we go to

8:33pmSteve
Wow. Have you got pictures up yet?

8:33pmNate
no, i don´t have a cable and the internet here is barely internet

just 1/4 step above dial-up

8:34pmSteve
Right on. I guess that's not much of a surprise, given. It sounds much worse than I thought.

8:35pmNate
it´s bad

makes me damn glad i´m an american

8:35pmSteve
I believe it. Life can suck an awful lot in a lot of places.

8:36pmNate
yea

makes me mad about all the whiners in the states

the middle class here lives in hovels

we´re in a decent neighborhood, and it´s all dirt and dirty people, most don´t have plumbing

8:37pmSteve
Makes you scared to think what the really poor have to deal with.

8:37pmNate
yea

we see that on thursday

it´s a place called La Chureca

it´s a little "town" literally in a garbage dump

the people there survive on the trash in the dump

90%+ can´t read

i need to get going though, there´s a line for the comp.

i´ll get back to you another time

8:40pmSteve
Cool. mind if I put this on my blog so the parents can see?


8:40pmNate
not at all

good idea

8:40pmSteve
Fair enough. Be safe, dude. Good luck.

8:41pmNate
thanks, i´ll catch up with you more later

adios

I'll continue to post anything that he gives me permission for here.

Cracked Photoshop Contest Entry

I made this for the new photoshop contest. Not because I expect to win but I've found that I have far too much free time on my hands, and I've been paying far too much attention to my studies as well.

Mental Accuracy, Part 1

The more one looks at psychology, the easier it is to see just how shockingly inaccurate the human mind is. It doesn't do a good job of anything all by itself; unless you're actively using it, it botches things so readily it makes you question the whole "sentient life" idea to begin with. Without your intentional intervention and effort, your brain is only slightly north of plant life that manages to follow the sun across the sky. But knowing that gives you power over it, and helps you control it as you need to. Which is why I think the best thing to know about your brain - and everyone's brain - is something cognitivists call "snap judgment".

You've probably heard of research done by neuroscientists that explains how before you make a conscious decision, your brain has already prepared an electrochemical response to the stimulus. Determinists, depressing bastards that they are, are quick to latch onto this to explain that humans don't really have free will, because all of our decisions are really just those electrochemical signals going off. You may think that's interesting, but I'd prefer to go with the term "unhelpful in the extreme". It tells us nothing useful about ourselves, nothing that we can turn to our advantage. It's more useful to say that those chemical signals only make the decision final if the conscious processes say so, which brings us to how a snap judgment works, and what it is.

It starts with your brain being primed for a judgment somehow; perhaps you're intentionally doing it by forcing ideas upon yourself. The above chemical reaction happens, and then you consciously make a judgment about whatever it is, in an instant - literally a fraction of a second. You don't really need a lot of impetus to make judgments; we make them constantly, about almost everything, usually without giving it a second thought. To your brain, it's like switching on a light. And once we make those judgments, the easiest thing to do is defend them. When we make them, they seem self-evident. That's a snap judgment, in the psychological world.

There's nothing wrong with these judgments by nature; we all do it constantly. They're a phenomena of a brain that is in many respects as primitive as a horseshoe crab. They're a good thing to have; they help us make decisions in a pinch, they are fantastic at helping defend against a threat. Sometimes shooting from the hip really is the best course of action (the modern term "firing from retention" is preferred now, despite how badly it confuses HR personnel).

The downside to them is that when we make a snap judgment without questioning, biology wins, and biology isn't that comfortable with the world of informed thought. It'd much rather be put back where it could save you from a charging mammoth or particularly threatening insect than deal with all of this "reason" and "wisdom" nonsense. It makes it uneasy, like Yosemite Sam at a petting zoo.

So what happens when this biology wins in modernity? People make immediate and shallow judgments on very complicated issues, don't stop to question them, and end up defending them because the truth, they think, is self-evident. It appeared immediately to them, how could it not be right?

"Of course all drugs are bad, they just are."
"Religion is bad, just look at it."

There's a reason that the Founding Fathers only called three things "self-evident". It's because they were wise men, and knew damn well that everything else was going to take some noodle time. Despite what our brain likes to tell us, most things are not simple, and most things won't benefit from "puttin' a beatdown on it".

So here's how you beat the snap judgment, and rise above the rest of the animal kingdom with the exception of our jellyfish overlords. When you're in the realm of ideas, if you suddenly feel offended, or angry, or psyched up, or soothed, look carefully at what did that to you. Look at the context, the substance, the entire assembly. Think about why those had the effect on you that they did, and then intentionally ponder the alternatives. Think deep, think slow, and let those neurons volley to each other for a while. If you come to the realization that you don't know enough then you're already ahead of the game, and there's plenty more to learn no matter what you're thinking about. Go find it.

Repeat that process until you're comfortable with the idea of telling the civilized people that you respect (not just agree with) what you've thought about. If you can't say it in respectable company, around people who can make you feel honest shame, odds are good that you need to play with the ideas some more. If you don't, the reptile portion of your brain will turn your reasoning into a velociraptor's war cry - probably something embarrassing about tax hikes or genetically modified food.

I should note here that this process is vastly easier with a velvety armchair and a pipe. You should procure both before attempting any of this. They do not need to be brand new, I checked with Alistair Cooke's estate.

This is part one. Part two will be about observation error, which nobody should remain unaware of.