G as in Good H as in Happy

Area Man Can't Stop Laughing

July 31, 2005

What interests us about this Local Boy Makes Good long shot (Area Man lands 'Dukes of Hazzard' dream job, story in today's Austin American Statesman -- oh, go ahead, register. It's a short form), is, what made the difference between his story and hundreds of thousands of other idiosyncratic monomaniacs of one kind or another? We speak with a genuine personal interest here.

Sublime Indifference to the Banal Pieties and Prejudices of Modernity

July 30, 2005

David B. Hart, the author of one of the books (The Beauty of the Infinite) that inspired this blog about Virtue and Happiness, on John Paul II's Theology of the Body. He looks hard at the transhumanist disdain for the meaning and destiny of "the earthly body in all its frailty and indigence and limitation..."

Via Mere Comments

Energetic Outcomes

July 29, 2005

Partly because Kyoto-nagging-discourse may take a sharp dive, it's legitimate to celebrate the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate

Powerline parses the policy -- having previously poignantly picked a peck of pickled peppers with parachuting Peter.  :)   

The pact includes the U.S., Japan, Australia, China, India and South Korea; these six countries account for most of the world's carbon emissions. The treaty is, in essence, a technology transfer agreement. The U.S., Japan and Australia will share advanced pollution control technology, and the pact's members will contribute to a fund that will help implement the technologies. The details are still sketchy and more countries may be admitted to the group later on. The pact's stated goal is to cut production of "greenhouse gases" in half by the end of the century.

Knowledge Contemplating Knowledge

The Social Affairs Unit is on a roll lately. Theodore Dalrymple (may his tribe increase!) on an enlightened caste system and cultivating opportunity for all; a review of We by Yegeny Zamyatin, the earlier dystopian novel (1924); and Myles Harris on evolutionism's rigid terror of the emergent creativity in which we seem to live.

Dwarf-tossing Caffeine-starved Rules Meet the Financial Times Economist

July 28, 2005

In the Freakonomics genre, more intuitive and counter-intuitive economic thinking applied to daily life. We especially appreciate the interpretation of The Rules,

You think that the rule is designed to signal unavailability.... The true role of the rule is not signalling but screening.  The “no last-minute dates” rule automatically disqualifies any man who is inconsiderate, short-sighted or just not particularly into you. Screening theory, which won enfant terrible Joe Stiglitz a share of the Nobel prize in 2001, recognises the fact that without some foolproof system, women are incapable of telling a Mark Darcy from a Daniel Cleaver...

and the matrix of balancing present value against the utility of additional information.

Disney Castles and Paper Plate Origami

Papercraft site, [update] including downloads for rare animals. Why wasn't this available when we were about 8?

Via Boingboing. And what kind of temperamental profile wants a Hello Kitty chess set?

Meeting wa

Maeda tackles the subject of meetings. There is plenty of simple and abstruse helpful advice on this, but we like his wide-eyed formulations, which can enhance more than business meetings.

1. Deliverable. Have a decision or task that you can reach or accomplish in that meeting. [The purpose of our time together is...]
2. Openness & spontaneity. Have an open section where everyone can bring up relevant topics of interest. [What's new?]
3. Generate happiness. Have something motivational, hopeful, or optimistic to discuss that, as he says, gets adrenaline going. [It's good news that...]
4. Crisp finish. End on time. [We've done it! Next time? Bye!] Maeda makes a reference to keeping the group wa intact. And building trust.  

The definition of wa embraces ring, hoop, circle, sum, harmony, peace, counted number of birds, rabbits, bundles, even a whole nation's identity. 

Sidewalk Art Trompe l'oeil

Drawn by Julian Beever.


Via bright Mystery

The Sparkling Dome

July 27, 2005

A guide to the night sky, by zipcode.

Via Rasmussen

Austin:

Word and Image

he marriage of word and pictures in ceremonial or sacred-content manuscripts is one of the great beauties bought forth by human civilization. The generous website of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University offers a virtual preview of the upcoming illuminated manuscripts exhibition 26. July - 11. December this year. There's even an interactive "making manuscripts" feature.