[David, Getting Things Done,] Allen has come to appreciate why decide has the same etymological root as homicide: the Latin word caedere, meaning to cut down or to kill. “When we’re trying to decide what to do with our stuff or what movie to see,” Allen says, “we don’t think to ourselves, Look at all these cool choices. There’s a powerful thing inside that says, If I decide to do that movie, I’ll kill all the other movies. You can pretend all the way up to that point that you know the right thing to do, but once you’re faced with a choice, you have to deal with this open loop in your head: You’re wrong, you’re right, you’re wrong, you’re right. Every single time you make a choice, you’re stepping into an existential void.” p. 86

From Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

The tactical romance of Democratic Mayor Frank Jackson and Republican Gov. John Kasich over schools and teachers should have Ohio Democrats worried.

Jackson – for his own purposes – is helping rescue the self-wounded Kasich.

And he’s doing it on the very issue that Kasich dug himself into a big hole – the rights of public employees.

Any Democrat putting in with Kasich is double-crosser. All Labor Continue Reading »

Charles Wheelan could have made this point No. 10 or left the caveat off his list entirely.

3. Don’t make the world worse. I know that I’m supposed to tell you to aspire to great things. But I’m going to lower the bar here: Just don’t use your prodigious talents to mess things up. Too many smart people are doing that already. And if you really want to cause social mayhem, it helps to have an Ivy League degree. You are smart and motivated and creative. Everyone will tell you that you can change the world. They are right, but remember that “changing the world” also can include things like skirting financial regulations and selling unhealthy foods to increasingly obese children. I am not asking you to cure cancer. I am just asking you not to spread it.

Via Andrew Sullivan…

I’ve never read a Google advertisement. I find Google ads only slightly less annoying than pop-ups (does anyone else remember pop-ups?). So, when I read this bit this morning along with my daily does of Doonesbury:

Total advertising revenue of the U.S. newspaper industry in 2011: $23,900,000,000. Of Google: $36,500,000,000.
— from May 2012 Harper’s Index.

My immediate reaction was huh?

Clearly someone is not only reading Google Ads, but they’re also buying products based on Google ads. Are you one of these people? What did you buy and what was the hook that convinced you to hand over cash? I’m serious. Explain this to me.

Please.

0733: How to fool a computer grader

I decided to do this to get out of my comfort zone and force myself to write.

I need to keep my ego reined, so I am giv­ing the poetry away; the only copy. If it’s the best poem I’ll ever write, I’ll be let­ting it go with whomever requested it. I’ll be let­ting go of con­trol for a change. I’m not ask­ing for money, I’m not even pro­mot­ing myself. I’m still going back and forth on putting my name on the poems I produce.

Adam rocks…

Via Tim Russo…

1103: FBI arrests 5 accused of plotting to blow up Ohio 82 bridge in Cuyahoga valley

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Did everyone get the message of the top Page One Plain Dealer headline a week ago. Just to remind you:

Gilbert Tells State Commission
That Casino’s Goal Is to Boost City

It’s accompanied by a smiling photo :) of Dan Gilbert with the highlighted quote, “We wanted to make sure that jobs created, that other businesses are attracted to downtown.” How nice of him. How generous.

Now if you believe Gilbert has anyone but himself and his pocketbook in mind keep reading the Plain Dealer. It will make you very happy. :)

***
Definition…

Sycophant: All Cleveland television stations when reporting about the Browns and NFL draft. Breaking news! Especially WKYC-TV – the station that wants Continue Reading »

David Eagleman writes:

Each organism presumably assumes its umwelt to be the entirety of objective reality. Until a child learns that honeybees enjoy ultraviolet signals and rattlesnakes see infrared, it is not obvious that plenty of information is riding on channels to which we have no natural access. In fact, the part of the electromagnetic spectrum visible to us is less than a ten-trillionth of it. Our sensorium is enough to get by in our ecosystem, but no better.

The head is a paraphrase of a bit that Philip K. Dick used in a 1978 speech titled How To Build A Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later where he said: Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.

One of my students and I had a disucssion last week about whether or not blind people saw darkness. He could not wrap his head around the idea that while he could neither see in the ultraviolet nor the infrared, he did not percieve any blackness in those parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. We can only trust our senses as far as they go, and no fUrther. Just because we don’t perceive a threat — think typhus in the water — does not mean evil spirits are at work.

0753: The Case of the Vanishing Black Male Teachers

0650: 10 Superfoods for Weight Loss

0801: More TSA craziness

Roldo Bartimole writes:

Only days after Mayor Frank Jackson claimed compromise achieved on his (really the corporate community’s) school reform package this headline appeared in the Plain Dealer:

CITY SCHOOLS TO CUT 500 TEACHERS, SHORTEN DAY, ELIMINATE CLASSES.

(Online as Cleveland school board votes to trim teaching staff for next year. JH)

Well, I’m sure glad to see such progress, Mr. Mayor.

And the Page One piece in Tuesday’s PD has Mayor Jackson “in the spirit of transparency,” telling reporters the blame for the firefighter’s robbery of the city in the shift-switching scandal belongs to a chief assistant law director. Jackson for months ignored his safety department hierarchy for the debacle. Jackson wants transparency when apparently he means low altitude fog. He has become laughable but apparently the newspaper and the entire City Council have lost their sense of humor.

It’s apparent this scandal is going to seep into the ground unless the IRS maintains its low level sense of humor about evasion of taxes. One can only hope.

(And then there’s Josh Mandel… JH) Continue Reading »

So, it turns out that the Zeigarnik effect [uncompleted tasks and unmet goals tend to pop into one’s mind, first described by and named after Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik] is not, as we assumed for decades, a reminder that continues unabated until the task is done. The persistence of distracting thoughts is not an indication that the unconscious is working to finish the task. Nor is it the unconscious nagging the conscious mind to finish the task right away. Instead the unconscious is asking the conscious mind to make a plan. [Emphasis in the original. JH] The unconscious mind apparently can’t do this on its own, so it nags the conscious mind to make a plan with specifics like time, place and opportunity. Once the plan is formed, the unconscious can stop nagging the conscious mind with reminders. p. 83-84

From Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney

Previously…

Found in my electronic chapbook.

Roldo Bartimole writes:

There’s a lot of talk in the air these days about the inequality of income in the United States. Who’d a thought?

And a lot of discussion everywhere about who pays the most in taxes. Republicans argue that the rich pay almost all of our taxes.

Not true.

Why does President Barack Obama’s secretary pay at a higher rate than he does? Why do most of us pay a whole lot more of our income than Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney?

This discussion of taxes, however, is much, much too narrow.

If paying federal taxes is where the inequality ended, the 99 percent might not be sitting pretty. But it doesn’t end there.

The truth is that tax unfairness is much more severe than most think. And the lower your income the more unfair.

The disparity between those with wealth and those hanging on is disgraceful.

The average wage earner pays progressively much more Continue Reading »