G as in Good H as in Happy

No, the Big Vague Collective Parent Doesn't Do Most Things Better

November 28, 2005

Marginal Revolution and Dr. Sanity provide evidence for the need

• to think for yourself -- be very alert when emotionally and factually solicited via labels.
• not to hope the government will make it too easy to decide; [Update: explained further here, explicating our own belief that the feedback "Oops" is a good thing, and that when one makes a mistake the best outcome is that the mistake become unmistakably clear, right away.

We should be less obsessed with the fact that people do make errors and more obsessed with designing market institutions that generate the best kinds of error-reducing feedback.]

That is, not shielding ourselves from the consequences of acts, but ideally accelerating and magnifying those consequences in the interest of rapid learning and changing of gears.

• and never, never to give up individual control of property and planning for the future.

Why LifeCoaches Are Doing Well

The above post on thinking for yourself does not foreclose help in thinking things through...

Gratitude, cont'd

Ingratitude and pride, under the umbrella of narcissism. Mere Comments has the goods. As well as autopsies of shame including a swipe at self-pity, a real stealth toxin as a commenter notes.

Let us be grateful too for what we don't have, our limitations, our bitter disappointments. As Byron Katie likes to say, "I've been spared.

Brownstones for Bread

November 27, 2005

We here at the cozy meatspace headquarters of Chez Dilys know a little something about real estate obsession. A box-like urban apartment has plunged us into unremitting depression. Staking the family pocketbook on Mexican patio vistas is our idea of earthly paradise.

So we're not "above" this poor woman who reportedly wanted a house in fashionable New York.

But the catalogue of vices here, a modern parable of plenty, barns, and ultimately indigestible stuff and status, at a cost to be determined.

A person's soul-healing consisteth not in the abundance of addresses she nags her husband into buying, nor celebrity via Architectural Digest.

Comments, including our own, abound at Shrinkwrapped, with a more appropriate target than nesting-crazed women, at whom we dare not point fingers. The therapy context is the rendering-speechless aspect. Though none of us have been.

Credibility

November 25, 2005

Dilbert's Scott Adams gets to the nub of a communication issue. He's talking about the evolution-education controversy. But in general, when contempt on one or both sides of any issue runs high, how is someone inquiring from the middle with a reasonably open mind to judge? Playing to the galleries of the already-extreme does not win votes, or shed light.

The average person (me) has no credible source of information on the topic of evolution.

Let me say very clearly here that I’m not denying the EXISTENCE of slam-dunk credible evidence for evolution. What I’m denying is the existence of credible PEOPLE to inform me of this evidence.

The people who purport to have evidence of evolution do a spectacular job of making themselves non-credible.

Disagreeable. Too busy&smart to deign to marshall and explain evidence and answer objections without a pose of weariness and exasperation. Condescending, contemptuous, and throwing a tantrum that the mere earthlings would dare to question Us. Us!

Persuasion score: Needs Improvement.

Always-useful questions:

• What can I learn here?
• How might I improve my position?
• How can I serve my fellow man in this matter?
  

Plenty to Say Grace Over

November 24, 2005

They had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns, to repair unto to seek for succour; and for the season it was winter...

What could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men...which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of... a wild and savage hew.

The mighty ocean which they had passed...was now [a gulf] to separate them from ... the world.

What he said.

Last year. Still true.

Silly Internet Devices

November 22, 2005

Warning label generator.

Via Mangan's Miscellany

une chanson automnale de la poire dorée

November 21, 2005

Dymphna's Neighborhood of God (referencing not piety but chaos) combines the sensory satisfactions of autumn fruits and an Advent hymn. Thanks for the Latin verse with haunting off-site melody.

"Veni, O Sapientia" to us all. In place of the crabbed malign apple of half-cocked ill-informed wilfulness.

ASAP.

Even at the risk of derision (one hopes not from Dymphna), we cannot resist referencing the current Martha Stewart Living gilded pears -- cooking-supply gold dust brushed on shapely pears, a green ribbon at the stem, set on a cloth napkin.

[Ed.: remind everyone that Martha's legal team says, Wash pears before eating, even though it's "cooking" gold...]

The beauty and the bounty... We have a weakness for edible art, particularly when on dim grey near-winter wooded-foothill days it could resemble an abbreviated chiaroscuro still life.

Sometimes it's a little too gorgeous in Central Texas.

Or, maybe not.

Hospitable Talk

November 19, 2005

The key to successful small talk is learning how to connect with others, not just communicate with them.

The dreaded coffee hour, cocktail party, professional association meet-and-greet. Even extraverts get the blues.

Smart, good-hearted brusque physican helps via her own struggles with small talk. This summary is pro forma only. Go say hello to Shari, just eccentric enough...

Weekend Movie

This 5-10 minute "Hello" ["watch film"] is an eloquent exercise in iconography, and presages the kind of mix&match nostalgia we expect to show up in culture memes as time goes on.