Gamer Girls

This one is for my fellow VG geeks (and courtesy of a link sent to me by my friend Misha). Gamer girls from the Next Wars forum. Of course it is hard to determine if these girls are actual gamers. Nevertheless, they are fit, as you can check out on the sample picture I reproduced in the beginning of this post. In my geeky mind, these are very sexy art pictures, quite classy if you ask me. Enjoy this pic, and read the original forum.

Is sexual disinhibition a problem?

The BBC reports that a bloke has won 3 million pounds from his former employee because a work-related injury to his head caused him to lose his sexual inhibition. According to BBC, the man has had multiple extra-marital relationships and was putting his marriage at risk, and thus the care he receives for free from his wife. Aside from the fact that he considers his wife simply as a free-caretaker, I do not think that Michael Douglas Syndrome is a recognized medical condition.

Is it only me, or is somebody out there that sees something wrong with this settlement? Seriously, most people would pay to lose sexual inhibition, especially in this overly sanitized world in which a lot of people spend most of their lives insulated from real human contact to the point where they must be taught intellectually the subtleties of human relations.

I for one, think that this man should be studied by neurosurgeons and other medicine researchers, this might be the cure for many of the neuro-psycological conditions that affect many in our society.

Internacional World Champion

Despite a week of stress and depression, my glorious Internacional today managed to lighten up my day by winning the Club World Championship, against Barcelona.

The BBC reports in a funny pun (I don't know if it was intentional) that Internacional sink Barca, (which, in some latin languages would translate to Internacional sink the "Boat") though I'm afraid they misspelled Barça since english speakers have an aversion for different letters.

In any case, I'm happy for that, and happy that thousands of supporters of Grêmio who spent years arguing that their constant losses to Internacional were little things, since Inter has never won the World Cup. Now I wonder what they are going to say (big smile here).

To finalize my post, here is a video recorded on 1979 (the year I was born), in which a comedian parodying a known local sports commentator (and Grêmio fanatic) accidentally foresaw Inter winning the world championship in 2006.

Stress & Depression

Graduate Game Plan: Stress & Depression

From the title of the post, it's easy to spot my state of mind these days. An excerpt from an e-mail I sent today to my supervisor follows:

I don't know if this is normal for a PhD, but I am constantly in doubt of whether everything I am trying to do is valid at all, or indeed if I am even fit to finish a PhD because of my constant uncertainty about my research. All the time it just feels like I am making up stuff that are just a puny recast of work already done by others. At the end of the day, my inability to do anything other than "replay" my fears in my head over and over are depressing me a lot. It seems that everyday I spend hours just trying to convince myself that my whole PhD is worth something.

I did not want to sound too dramatic, but that was exactly how I felt earlier today, and my supervisor (he's not in London today) called me some minutes afterwards to see what was happening (gotta respect him for his attentiveness to his students).

After a very constructive discussion, I now feel somewhat reasured about the direction of my research. Emotionally, I feel like a mixture of shame and hope, because looking back it seems like I've been a bit of a crybaby. In my defense, I understand that I am as human as anybody else, and I do not live in a vacuum, so having people around me is important to feel energized to do work, especially of the lonely type usually done in post-grad research.

It seems that the second year is the most emotionally challenging of any PhD (or so Mike tells me), and the link above appears to confirm this. If you look on the web for "graduate depression", you will find loads of sites that describe the way I feel. At least I am not alone...

If this had happened a few years ago, I would probably be contemplating suicide, but life had a special way of humbling me, and taught me to get rid of my illusions of overachievement. It seems to me now, that whenever I do things without too much pretension, I get the most significant results.