http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/18/lessons-on-cyberbullying-is-rebecca-black-a-victim-experts-weigh-in/
It may be Friday, but it's doubtful that 13-year-old Internet sensation Rebecca Black is excitedly singing about wanting to party in her car right now.
Ever since the music video for her song "Friday" hit YouTube, Black as well as her questionable vocal abilities and songwriting chops (even though she didn't write the song) has been the subject of much online vitriol.
Unfortunately, Black inadvertently added fuel to the media flame on Thursday when she linked her recent experiences to those of victims of cyberbullying.
And Black, 13, certainly never anticipated the social media uproar, mainstream media hellfire, parodies and remixes that greeted "Friday" as the video became nearly ubiquitous across Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. Time.com called the song which provides a primer on the days of the week, innocently celebrates partying, and ponders the merits of "kickin' it" in a car's front versus the back seat from a wholesome teen girl P.O.V. "a whole new level of bad" and "a train wreck" . Slate proclaimed "Friday" "disastrous" while yahoo asked straight up, "Is YouTube sensation Rebecca Black's Friday'the worst song ever?
2011年3月24日木曜日
Why some people will pay $2000 For a date
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2059625,00.html
There is no upside to setting people up. At best, you're struck writing a speech for a wedding; at worst, you find out your friends cry during sex. When I found out you could get paid to set people up, however, I got a lot more interested. I asked Barbie Adler, CEO of selective search, to let me spend a day setting up men who pay her a minimum of $20000 a year to set them up on dates with women who want to be set up with men who pay $20000 a year to be set up on dates. This was the kind of love I could deliver.
I got to Barbie's office in Chicago, where I was the only man employed. All the women who interview her clients were attractive and had posters and sculptures about love in their office. This was not the tone I was going to set with my clients. I was just going to ask them if they were boob men or butt men and get to work.
There is no upside to setting people up. At best, you're struck writing a speech for a wedding; at worst, you find out your friends cry during sex. When I found out you could get paid to set people up, however, I got a lot more interested. I asked Barbie Adler, CEO of selective search, to let me spend a day setting up men who pay her a minimum of $20000 a year to set them up on dates with women who want to be set up with men who pay $20000 a year to be set up on dates. This was the kind of love I could deliver.
I got to Barbie's office in Chicago, where I was the only man employed. All the women who interview her clients were attractive and had posters and sculptures about love in their office. This was not the tone I was going to set with my clients. I was just going to ask them if they were boob men or butt men and get to work.
2011年3月23日水曜日
Do people really make life dicisions based on their names_
http://healthland.time.com/2011/03/21/do-people-really-make-life-decisions-based-on-their-names/
What's in name? Letters that offer clues to one's future decisions, apparently. Previous studies have suggested that a person's monogram may influence his life choices -- where he works, whom he marries or where he lives -- because of "implicit egoism" or the allure of positive self-associations. For instance, a person named Fred might be attracted to the notion of living in Frenso, working for Forever 21 or driving a Ford F-150.
Now a new study by Wharton professor Uri simonsohn takes another look at the so-called name-letter effect and offers other explanations for the phenomenons. Simonsohn analyzed records of political donations in the U.S. during the 2004 campaign -- which included donor's names and employers -- and found that the name of a person's workplace more closely correlated with the first three letters of a person's name than with just the first letter. But Simonsohn suggests that the reason for the association isn't implicit egotism, but perhaps something exactly the opposite:
One alternative explanation to implicit egoism for these findings is reverse casuality: Rather than employees seeking out companies with similar names, people starting new companies may name them after themselves. Walt Disney worked for a compnay starting with D not because of an unconscious attraction to that letter, but because he so christend it.
A second alternative explanation is an ethic/languege confound: VanBoven works for VanDyke Associates while Le Boeuf for LeBlanc Associates because the former lives in Dutch speaking Flanders and the latter in French speaking Wallonia.
He analyzed the name-letter effect in a sample of people who donated money to political campaigns. This is, of course, a very specific subset of people that is likely to contain an overrepresentation of high achievers, richer people(lawyers, rich business owners, etc) that are more likely to indeed have a company named after their own. This explains why he sees a 160 percent name-letter effect in his sample while we only got an overrepresentation of 13 percent. This shows that he is just measuring something else.
Still, he notes that his theories are plausible, and that even while some people may found eponymous companies, employees may be gravitating toward those companies because they start with the same letter as their names.
In the end, whatever the explanation for the name-letter effect, no one really disputes that egotism is involved on some level. But the true importance of the effect is up for debate. "I can't imagine people don't like their own letters more than other letters," but the differences it makes in really big dicisions are probably slim.
What's in name? Letters that offer clues to one's future decisions, apparently. Previous studies have suggested that a person's monogram may influence his life choices -- where he works, whom he marries or where he lives -- because of "implicit egoism" or the allure of positive self-associations. For instance, a person named Fred might be attracted to the notion of living in Frenso, working for Forever 21 or driving a Ford F-150.
Now a new study by Wharton professor Uri simonsohn takes another look at the so-called name-letter effect and offers other explanations for the phenomenons. Simonsohn analyzed records of political donations in the U.S. during the 2004 campaign -- which included donor's names and employers -- and found that the name of a person's workplace more closely correlated with the first three letters of a person's name than with just the first letter. But Simonsohn suggests that the reason for the association isn't implicit egotism, but perhaps something exactly the opposite:
One alternative explanation to implicit egoism for these findings is reverse casuality: Rather than employees seeking out companies with similar names, people starting new companies may name them after themselves. Walt Disney worked for a compnay starting with D not because of an unconscious attraction to that letter, but because he so christend it.
A second alternative explanation is an ethic/languege confound: VanBoven works for VanDyke Associates while Le Boeuf for LeBlanc Associates because the former lives in Dutch speaking Flanders and the latter in French speaking Wallonia.
He analyzed the name-letter effect in a sample of people who donated money to political campaigns. This is, of course, a very specific subset of people that is likely to contain an overrepresentation of high achievers, richer people(lawyers, rich business owners, etc) that are more likely to indeed have a company named after their own. This explains why he sees a 160 percent name-letter effect in his sample while we only got an overrepresentation of 13 percent. This shows that he is just measuring something else.
Still, he notes that his theories are plausible, and that even while some people may found eponymous companies, employees may be gravitating toward those companies because they start with the same letter as their names.
In the end, whatever the explanation for the name-letter effect, no one really disputes that egotism is involved on some level. But the true importance of the effect is up for debate. "I can't imagine people don't like their own letters more than other letters," but the differences it makes in really big dicisions are probably slim.
2011年3月22日火曜日
Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior
WSJ
A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters were never allowed to do.
I'm using Chinese mother loosely. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.
All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.
Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and qualifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mother said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun" By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting", and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents"were not doing their job" Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.
What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something- whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet- he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.
Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young- maybe more than once - when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.
As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend the host tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.
The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable- even legally actionable-to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "hey fatty--lose some weight" By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, taking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f---word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image.( I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage)
Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you" By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.
I've though long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.
First, I've noticed that Western parents are extreamely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
For example, if a child comes home with an A- minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid", "worthless" or " a disgrace." Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principle to chellenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.
If a Chinese child gets a B-- which would never happen--there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.
Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)
A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters were never allowed to do.
I'm using Chinese mother loosely. Conversely, I know some mothers of Chinese heritage, almost always born in the West, who are not Chinese mothers, by choice or otherwise. I'm also using the term "Western parents" loosely. Western parents come in all varieties.
All the same, even when Western parents think they're being strict, they usually don't come close to being Chinese mothers. For example, my Western friends who consider themselves strict make their children practice their instruments 30 minutes every day. An hour at most. For Chinese mother, the first hour is the easy part. It's hours two and three that get tough.
Despite our squeamishness about cultural stereotypes, there are tons of studies out there showing marked and qualifiable differences between Chinese and Westerners when it comes to parenting. In one study of 50 Western American mothers and 48 Chinese immigrant mothers, almost 70% of the Western mother said either that "stressing academic success is not good for children" or that "parents need to foster the idea that learning is fun" By contrast, roughly 0% of the Chinese mothers felt the same way. Instead, the vast majority of the Chinese mothers said that they believe their children can be "the best" students, that "academic achievement reflects successful parenting", and that if children did not excel at school then there was "a problem" and parents"were not doing their job" Other studies indicate that compared to Western parents, Chinese parents spend approximately 10 times as long every day drilling academic activities with their children. By contrast, Western kids are more likely to participate in sports teams.
What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you're good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something- whether it's math, piano, pitching or ballet- he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.
Chinese parents can get away with things that Western parents can't. Once when I was young- maybe more than once - when I was extremely disrespectful to my mother, my father angrily called me "garbage" in our native Hokkien dialect. It worked really well. I felt terrible and deeply ashamed of what I had done. But it didn't damage my self-esteem or anything like that. I knew exactly how highly he thought of me. I didn't actually think I was worthless or feel like a piece of garbage.
As an adult, I once did the same thing to Sophia, calling her garbage in English when she acted extremely disrespectfully toward me. When I mentioned that I had done this at a dinner party, I was immediately ostracized. One guest got so upset she broke down in tears and had to leave early. My friend the host tried to rehabilitate me with the remaining guests.
The fact is that Chinese parents can do things that would seem unimaginable- even legally actionable-to Westerners. Chinese mothers can say to their daughters, "hey fatty--lose some weight" By contrast, Western parents have to tiptoe around the issue, taking in terms of "health" and never ever mentioning the f---word, and their kids still end up in therapy for eating disorders and negative self-image.( I also once heard a Western father toast his adult daughter by calling her "beautiful and incredibly competent." She later told me that made her feel like garbage)
Chinese parents can order their kids to get straight As Western parents can only ask their kids to try their best. Chinese parents can say "You're lazy. All your classmates are getting ahead of you" By contrast, Western parents have to struggle with their own conflicted feelings about achievement, and try to persuade themselves that they're not disappointed about how their kids turned out.
I've though long and hard about how Chinese parents can get away with what they do. I think there are three big differences between Chinese and Western parental mind-sets.
First, I've noticed that Western parents are extreamely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.
For example, if a child comes home with an A- minus on a test, a Western parent will most likely praise the child. The Chinese mother will gasp in horror and ask what went wrong. If the child comes home with a B on the test, some Western parents will still praise the child. Other Western parents will sit their child down and express disapproval, but they will be careful not to make their child feel inadequate or insecure, and they will not call their child "stupid", "worthless" or " a disgrace." Privately, the Western parents may worry that their child does not test well or have aptitude in the subject or that there is something wrong with the curriculum and possibly the whole school. If the child's grades do not improve, they may eventually schedule a meeting with the school principle to chellenge the way the subject is being taught or to call into question the teacher's credentials.
If a Chinese child gets a B-- which would never happen--there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.
Chinese parents demand perfect grades because they believe that their child can get them. If their child doesn't get them, the Chinese parent assumes it's because the child didn't work hard enough. That's why the solution to substandard performance is always to excoriate, punish and shame the child. The Chinese parent believes that their child will be strong enough to take the shaming and to improve from it. (And when Chinese kids do excel, there is plenty of ego-inflating parental praise lavished in the privacy of the home.)
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