Safe in monotony, day after day
My youth is slipping, my youth is slipping away
Cold wind blows off the lake and i know for sure that it's too late"
The four lines above are an excerpt from Alexisonfire's song called 'Boiled Frogs'. It kinda signifies my life currently. 3 projects, 5 exams, French Oral Test tomorrow, alot of pressure on my shoulders from both internal and external sources. Dosen't anyone out there feel like this?
Something ironic happened on Tuesday. Statistics lecture had just finished. We just finished up the topic on Regression Analysis. On the way back home, while on the bus, the wierdest thing happened. I was starting on a new chapter of Freakonomics and guess what it was all about? Regression analysis. They were using it to figure out why some kids just do better than some kids in school. They took data from a study on all first grade students in the Chicago state district. The data contained specific details such as family income, whether the kids were spanked, how much TV they watched, the honesty of their parents and so on so forth. Using regression analysis, they were able to align every kid by every single possible data possessed by them and analyzed the grid to see what really caused a kid to do poorly in school. The kids were tracked until 8th grade*.
The results show that all the factors that parents attribute to a child doing well in school does not affect how he/she actually does in school.
From the study, it was found that the following factors affect how a child does in school :
- whether the child's parents were highly educated
- the child's parents have high socioeconomic status
- the child's mother was thirty or older at time of birth
- the child's parents speak English at home
These are just a few factors taken from the study in the book. Understand that this is based on the data collected from the study of the students in the Chicago state district. It may not extend to other regions but the large base could indicate so. If you really want to know why I suggest you pick up the book. Its not that expensive. It's actually quite cheap. I got it for around RM36(I bought it in Malaysia, duh!). It's an interesting read. You should really check it out.
I've been somewhat rather into art the past 2006. Thanks alot to my brother who's studying to be an art teacher. But the art I'm into is not your regular art. More of rogue art. Here's a little something from a guy named Derek Hess.
Valentine by Derek Hess
(Fine art print)
Implosion by Derek Hess
(Fine art print)
My bro bought this from him the other time when he came down to Singapore for BayBeats.
Burned Out by Derek Hess
(Fine art print)
This is my personal favourite.
Check out the rest of his work at DerekHess.com
The other form of rogue art I'm particularly in to is stenciling. Not home decorating stenciling. The stuff of political revolutions type of stenciling. Check this out.
All these were done on the streets. If you want to see more, check out stencilrevolution.com
Well, that's all I have to say for now. I need to get ready for my French Oral Test tomorrow. Au Revoir everyone.
*The ECLS data was collected before the Freakonomics guys started their study. So by the time they actually got around to doing the study they were sitting on the pile of data that they were looking for.
