Archive for February, 2008
cherish your health
Thursday, 28 February, 2008It’s easy to take your good health for granted, but when you’re sick with a cold or a fever, you wonder what happened to that good health and when it will return. I’ve got some kind of fever going on and believe me endless headaches and agonizing pain with swallowing is not fun. So if you’re one of those lucky ones not to be sick right now, be thankful for it, and take good care of your health.
I won’t be podcasting until this sore throat goes away 
the Catholic version of seeing Dr. Phil
Saturday, 23 February, 2008As someone with a psychology background, I love listening to how Dr. Phil doles out no-nonsense advice to people, often in a very short “quick fix” approach. For example, someone will have a problem, and then Dr. Phil gives that person advice that only takes five minutes to dispense, but still makes a whole lot of sense! Of course, more serious and pressing problems might require much more than five minutes to sort out, but any advice is better than none! Wouldn’t it be nice if we could also experience that kind of counsel from a knowledgeable person without having to go see Dr. Phil? Wouldn’t it be great if we could have free access to such help? Well, this kind of free counselling already exists for Catholics. It’s called confession.
When we go to confession, yes we confess our sins, but once that’s done, the priest considers what was just confessed and will offer his advice on how to best deal with the problems in one’s life. On numerous occasions, I have gone to confession seeking counsel on various concerns in my own life. Frustrations, temptations, bad habits… the priest is definitely one of the best resources, freely accessible, to go to for help. That is certainly why Christ instituted this sacrament – he wants us to come back to him, in good times and in bad.
Stations of the Cross
Friday, 22 February, 2008irony
Thursday, 21 February, 2008I found some Valentine’s candy and a love note in my mailbox at school today. Alas, they were put in my mailbox by mistake. Haha, I love irony.
psyche tip of the day
Thursday, 21 February, 2008People do dumb things. I do, you do, everyone does. When stuff like that happens, we often wonder, well, why did that just happen? Why did that person have to lash out at me like that? Why he ignore me? Why was she so nice to me? Why did he not show up on time? Why is she always behaving like that?
Social psychology’s fundamental attribution error theory to the rescue!
It is far too easy to explain another’s behaviour by attributing it to their personality. In other words, it’s too easy to say that the reason why “he did that” is because “he’s just a cold person”. Naturally, as humans we want to do the easiest thing before the hardest thing, and so we gravitate towards easy thoughts that just come naturally. Unbeknownst to most, a great deal of human behaviour can actually be attributed to external factors. In other words, maybe that guy “did that” because of the fact that he just lost his job, for example, and that has been troubling him all day and he’s under tremendous pressure from his family to find another job. As another example, perhaps the waitress was rude not because that’s the way her personality usually is, but because her boss made her work overtime and hasn’t given her a break yet.The point is that whenever you try to explain another’s “mysterious” behaviour by blaming his or her “odd” personality, don’t forget that there may be a lot of other things, unknown to you, that are going on in that person’s life. And now you know all about the fundamental attribution error! Now go and impress your friends.
(So you might be wondering, why the psychology talk? Well, hey, I need to use my degree somehow!)
Facebook “friends”
Wednesday, 20 February, 2008If you’re like the typical computer user, you’ve got a Facebook account. (If you don’t, kudos to you!) It often intrigues me how a lot of Facebook users can have hundreds and hundreds of “friends”, yet a lot of those people don’t even keep in touch. And how does one become a friend? If I shared one lecture with someone and barely said a word to them, and all of a sudden they request me to be their friend, what good is it now that I can find out all I want about someone I barely know, or even want to know? If you’re a Facebook user, go through your own friends list and see how many of those people you actually regularly stay in touch with. Why bother keeping them on your list? Surely it’s not to make your number of friends appear larger so that others will somehow come to the misguided conclusion that you’re Mr. or Mrs. Popular?
the Bender Ball
Tuesday, 19 February, 2008I was flipping through the channels and came across this ridiculous infomercial for the “Bender Ball”, which is supposed to give you spectacular abs. All it is is a tiny inflatable ball you put under your lower back while doing crunches! Do people really buy into their claims that this ball is the magic answer for a six pack? I mean, come on, you don’t have to be in physio school to know that this magic ball is a piece of junk! You don’t even need a ball for ab work! This is definitely going to be the topic to my next podcast’s physiology section! It irritates me that some people would be so callous as to take advantage of other people’s money. There’s no loving of one’s neighbour going on here, that’s for sure.
The man in the following video went through quite the ordeal to order the Bender Ball. If anyone out there is actually considering getting this thing, we need to talk.
