Category: prudence

It is one of the most deplorable traits of our strange civilization that we are still discovering truths that are commonplace even among peoples much less advanced than we.

This is because we have never moved in concert with the other peoples.

We stand, as it were, outside of time, the universal education of mankind has not touched us.

Look around you. Everyone seems to have one foot in the air. One would think that we are all in transit.

That is but a natural consequence of a culture that consists entirely of imports and imitation.

Stephen Baldwin:

As a committed pacifist, I oppose all of those grim “reenactment groups” that stage the battles of yesteryear in period costume and with authentic weaponry. It is neither entertaining nor educational to glorify war and conflict in this manner, especially when such ersatz musketeers and dragoons might more profitably employ their weekends mowing neglected lawns, and particularly when they live next-door to me.

Consequently, I am forming my own “Treaty of Versailles” reenactment group.

With the addition of a few large mirrors here and there, our reenactments can be performed in the comfort of our own homes.

And furthermore, since reenactment of the treaty merely requires a brief signature on a piece of paper, the entire production can be completed in under five minutes, leaving members plenty of free weekend time to mow that lawn and get a start on many other household chores besides.

I can only be generous, only do things for those I love, only be of use to the world, if I am safe, sheltered, self-sufficient. I cannot afford to be needy, to be fully open, to let my heart be broken.

I am no use to the world broken.

Dave Pollard:

I am as self-sufficient, emotionally, as anyone I know.

But this stability has come at a price. I have built a protective shell around myself that cannot be penetrated until and unless I choose to open myself, and I do that rarely, only when I’m sure I can handle it. This has made me insensitive to much of the world’s pain and suffering, misanthropic, uncourageous, shut off from the grief that lurks beneath the knowledge of that awful suffering, and awareness of the state of this terrible world. I do this to survive, because I know what I can handle, and what I cannot.

I suspect I am far from alone in this.

I sometimes see the whole world as a hospital and a prison, with a trillion trillion creatures struggling to cope, to protect themselves and those they love, to heal themselves, to find support and solace and a trace of security, to steal a few moments of illusory freedom, and simply to survive. We are all civilization’s unwitting and well-intentioned victims, I think, hiding, or screaming out our pain, our innocence. Lurching from moment to moment, living for another day.

There is no cure, no pardon, no end, and no escape from our sentence here. We do what we must. We carry as much of the weight of the world as we can bear, and we turn away from the rest.

Or maybe I’m just projecting. Maybe it’s just me. No matter.

Penelope Trunk:

I think people need to choose between an interesting life or happy life.

People with interesting lives do not get offended that they cannot be happy. Happy people are offended that they cannot have interesting lives.

I’ve always preferred, ‘In all your getting, get understanding’.

Adam Phillips at the Guardian offers a bright essay on various myth of happiness.

We all want to be happy, we want our children to be happy, and there are countless books advising us how to achieve happiness. But is this really what we should be aiming for?

A people who conceive life to be the pursuit of happiness must be chronically unhappy. —Marshall Sahlins

not a quote It is because of the body that we can speak of morality. The material body is what we share most significantly. Of course it is true that our needs and sufferings are cultural. But our material bodies are such that they are. It is on this that fellow-feeling is founded and on this dependency on each other. Angels would not be moral beings like we.

terry eagleton via amardeep singh via zo

I first saw this pic and thought, “What does His Wallpaper Lordship wish to say?” His answer in His own words, “When you have billionaires, what are they expected to do?” I suddenly fictioned a million years into the future seeing all of us rich with no better problems. I quickly clicked to MIT’s interview with Bill Gates. A rare piece worthy of clicks.

I think I’m pleased to report other billionaires should do as well. What will you do with yours?

Foragers don’t distinguish work from play.
Hunter-gatherers do not have a concept of toil.
[link]

User security and privacy — control, really.

1. Service data is the data you give to a social networking site in order to use it. Such data might include your legal name, your age, and your credit-card number.

2. Disclosed data is what you post on your own pages: blog entries, photographs, messages, comments, and so on.

3. Entrusted data is what you post on other people’s pages. It’s basically the same stuff as disclosed data, but the difference is that you don’t have control over the data once you post it — another user does.

4. Incidental data is what other people post about you: a paragraph about you that someone else writes, a picture of you that someone else takes and posts. Again, it’s basically the same stuff as disclosed data, but the difference is that you don’t have control over it, and you didn’t create it in the first place.

5. Behavioral data is data the site collects about your habits by recording what you do and who you do it with. It might include games you play, topics you write about, news articles you access (and what that says about your political leanings), and so on.

6. Derived data is data about you that is derived from all the other data. For example, if 80 percent of your friends self-identify as gay, you’re likely gay yourself.

by Bruce Schneier
Chief Security Technology Officer
http://www.schneier.com

The formation of intelligent critical world citizens !

If no one answers your call, then walk on alone.
Walk alone, walk alone, walk on alone.

If no one says a thing, oh you unlucky soul, If faces are turned away, if all go on fearing— Then opening up your heart, You speak up what’s on your mind, you speak up alone.

If they all turn back, oh you unlucky soul, If, at the time of taking the deep dark path, no one cares— Then the thorns that are on the way, Oh you, trampling those with bloodied feet, you tramp on alone.

If a lamp no one shows, oh you unlucky soul, If in a rainstorm on a dark night they bolt their doors— Then in the flame of thunder Lighting your own ribs, go on burning alone.

Martha C. Nussbaum:

No nation is so secure in its commitment to democracy that it can afford to gamble its future away by pursuing the false idols of rote learning and mere technical mastery.

Decision making and governance among Inuit authorities.

via Chris Corrigan:

Pijitsirniq, the concept of serving.
Piliriqatigiingniq, the concept of collaborative purpose.
Pilimmaksarniq, the concept of skills and knowledge acquisition.
Qanuqtuurunnarniq, the concept of being resourceful.
Aajiiqatigiingniq, the concept of consensus decisions.
Avatimik Kamattiarniq, the concept of environmental stewardship.
This planet is all we’ve got.

Rachel Laudan:

Eating fresh, natural food was regarded with suspicion verging on horror; only the uncivilized, the poor, and the starving resorted to it.

To make food tasty, safe, digestible, and healthy, our forebears bred, ground, soaked, leached, curdled, fermented, and cooked naturally occurring plants and animals until they were literally beaten into submission. They created sweet oranges and juicy apples and non-bitter legumes, happily abandoning their more natural but less tasty ancestors. They built granaries, dried their meat and their fruit, salted and smoked their fish, curdled and fermented their dairy products, and cheerfully used additives and preservatives—sugar, salt, oil, vinegar, lye—to make edible foodstuffs.

David Gentilcore:

In Italy, up until the 1950s, there was a large part of the country, even where they produce tomatoes, where they wouldn’t eat the stuff.

Most Italian dishes, such as pasta al pomodoro, are fairly recent — from the 1870s or ’80s. Italian immigrants arriving in New York City or Boston were the first generation to eat these dishes as daily things. Making a rich meat sauce with maybe the addition of tomato paste, that Sunday gravy style, is something that happens only in the 20th century.

Dan Jurafsky:

The story starts in the mid-6th century in Persia.

French fries, the “chips” of “fish and chips”, are Belgian, and came to England only in the mid-19th century. And the “fish”, deep-fried battered fish, turns out to be a cousin to ceviche; both of them, as well as some other well-known foods that’ll we’ll get to, are the direct descendents of the favorite dish of the Shahs of Persia more than 1500 years ago.

Name the person that has caused the most harm in the name of religion.

Wha?! Only one?

God’s Lunatics !

Lost Souls,
False Prophets,
Martyred Saints,
Murderous Cults,
Demonic Nuns,
and Other Victims of Man’s Eternal Search for the Divine.

“I was getting kind of crazy at the end of the book. With all the different gods, it got hard to sleep.” – Michael Largo

Gary Jones:

I tend to pretty much disagree with everyone and everything.

Feynman’s assertion that science is the belief in the ignorance of experts seems like simple good sense that generalizes to all aspects of human endeavor. Humans are fallible: this is a feature not a bug. Fail forward faster etc.

Everything that I know is wrong, though I don’t know what is wrong with what I know, or what is right, and assume that the same is true for you since I’ve seldom if ever seen contrary evidence that upon close examination proved to be sound.

I’m comfortable with the fact that we are all lack-wits and bumblers, and comfortable with continuing none the less to pursue immediate objectives that seem to be worthwhile given current circustances and understandings. Our current errors will be revealed shortly, though our general condition will be unchanged by those revealations.

Good cheer and a sense of humor are useful as salve for our embarrassment and wounds.

Not  all brooders and ruminators are created equal.

American brooders show extremely high levels of depressive symptoms. Russian brooders are less likely to be depressed. Rumination is an emotional buffer for Russians, but makes Americans depressed.

Yes, it’s true. Deepest thoughts and feelings are not the same in Moscow or Michigan.

Let’s look at the facts: The emperor Augustus found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble.

Similarly, I can say that found Randy’s Diner a cheap greasy spoon with threadbare gingham tablecloths and tomato sauce dispensers shaped liked huge tomatoes.

I made it a gleaming Carlo’s Panini Pavilion franchise featuring Carlotta’s Gelato Annex. Some local residents bemoaned the bulldozing of Randy’s, calling Carlo’s “the Starbucks of Italian-style toasted sandwiches.” Apparently they thought that paying fifteen bucks for a Tuscan Turkey Melt with romaine lettuce, sun-dried tomato, honey mustard and your choice of three cheese toppings on ciabatta was an insanely outrageous expense. Well, an old-fashioned, four buck club sandwich from Randy’s might fill people’s stomachs, but could it fill a full-color center-spread in Happenin’ Around Town with a starred review and arty lomo photographs? No, because a trendy magazine like Happenin’ Around Town wouldn’t bother going to a dreary dump like Randy’s in the first place.

It seems to me people argue the most about what they know the least about.

Restraining flippant theology, Michael Shermer at Big Questions writes, “I have debated many theologians who make the traditional arguments for God’s existence.”

1. the cosmological argument (prime mover, first cause)
2. the teleological argument (order and design of the universe)
3. the ontological argument (if possible for God to exist, then God exists)
4. the anthropic argument (nature, making human life possible)
5. the moral argument (awareness of right and wrong)

I don’t know which of these ‘arguments’ is most popular or likely effective, nor would I choose one over the other.

While “sitting around in a cloud of possibilities”, I think we should be far less uppity with our imagination. With no God, why argue? With God, we better not.

tip humorzo

I owned this car as a teenager. I bought it from a 20 unit Ford lot on a northern highway, true story, for $600. Flush with cash from a timber camp, I flew by, I turned around, I bought it.

Taking it with cash for a new sedan, the dealer did not know it was a Porsche. I said this is a true story. The nameplates had been torn off by blizzard driving and wrapped under the spare tire. Other than unpronounceable type on the papers, I suppose he didn’t much care.

I think I saw this jewel go for $120K not long ago. Made me ill. I found this pic in a NYTimes review of car investing. It’s been tough to find this exact model. I’ve scoured through hundreds of pics at a dozen sites over the years.

Its heater mattered because it wasn’t. I’d wear a full body snow suit under a parka, a half dozen socks, and light a camp heater on the floor just to visit friends. A day in 25-below January I stopped to see a girlfriend and left the car idling in the lot of her apartment. We smooched a bit too long. Sub-zero weather didn’t prevent its neglected pistons from melting like sugar. The only VW mechanic that knew how to import parts for a Porsche was 200 miles away. I just towed the car to his garage and gave him the title.

I could not roll this car. I’d flipped cars into snowbanks and down a ditch, but this thing was flat like your palm on a butt. My Canada had not much more black top than just one highway and our one mile Main Street. Ice and gravel is what this Porsche could do and that’s all I knew about driving. You can bet I could fishtail this baby as well as I could steer it.

I often wonder why that car was abandoned so north in the boonies. I’m guessing a wealthy or professional adventurer wanted to ‘do’ the Alaska Highway but did not know what 1300 miles of gravel would ‘do’ to an adventure.

The Porsche I loved wasn’t branded 356 C as this pic of a USA model. Confusing me for years, I learned that the 12 or so imported to Canada were ‘1600 Super Cabriolet’ – maybe 20″ longer than 1600s and Super Cs – with rear flip up seats to earn a 2×2 classification needed under import rules.

Happiness increases with age.

Young people believe wrongly that happiness declines with age and thus justify taking extra risks to party and binge with abandon.

Here’s more on what we know about happiness, so far:

10. Happiness increases with income; decreases by how much you want.
9. Happiness is a feedback loop.
8. Be careful who you choose as spouse, friends, and neighbors.
7. Relative wealth is more important than actual wealth.
6. Giving makes us happier than receiving. 
5. Happy people love their jobs; jobs alone do not make people happy.
4. We’re bad at realizing how good we are at adapting.
3. Happiness is simple.
2. Focus on what you have, not on what you don’t.
1. There are many unanswered questions about happiness.

1. We judge your attractiveness, likability, trustworthiness, competence and aggressiveness within 100 milliseconds.
2. Our judgment becomes more negative after 500 milliseconds.
3. At 1,000 milliseconds, we’re confident in our decision.

When trying to figure out how winners happen, the first thing to know is that nobody knows.

Faced with imperfect information, individuals make a binary choice to act (to choose or not to choose) by observing the actions of their predecessors without regard to their own information.

Ben Hammersley:

I’m beginning to hate owning physical stuff. Information I love, but physical stuff is really starting to annoy me. I’m thinking about the best way to have much less of everything, and have ‘everything’ mean much less…

Protecting nature should be more important than enjoying it.

Derrick Jensen:

There’s that little nagging fact that this culture is murdering the planet. Any book (film, painting, song, relationship, life, and so on) that doesn’t begin with this basic understanding that the culture is murdering the planet and doesn’t work toward rectifying it is not forgivable, for an infinitude of reasons…