The only thing you get to do in this world is choose what a good life is and then aim for it. But that requires being opinionated. Every day you are choosing what’s a good life for you.

“There is nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight.” -Lon Chaney

Got that? They’ll be a quiz. Originally from Little Pet’s Picture Alphabet, 1850’s. (via Nonist Annex)

Look, a lot of people out there write editorials and try to persuade you to change an opinion based on “evidence”. All I’m saying is this – I don’t need that phony shit. When I say something, you can believe it. Turn off that thing in your brain that questions things, and just listen to the truth in front of you. This is how America was made. (Fact.). ((Fun fact - Things in parentheses – always fact.))

Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

How the Free Market works, from Tom the Dancing Bug

Gocomics.com: Comics, editorial cartoons, email comics, comic strips

Here’s some advice for successfully reading a book: You need to stay focused, so try to avoid distractions. Avoid multitasking. Avoid task switching. Turn off the TV. Shift positions occasionally so you don’t get cramps or backaches. Don’t get too comfortable or you might fall asleep. (Interestingly, many of these same rules apply to having sex, except that you can read a book with a cat in your lap.)

Declining books sales have led some publishers into thinking that the way to revive books is to make them more like an online experience. That is truly a mistake! It’s like trying to get people to exercise by making it more like napping.

America’s battle is yet to fight; and we, sorrowful though nothing doubting, will wish her strength for it. New Spiritual Pythons, plenty of them; enormous Megatherions, as ugly as were ever born of mud, loom huge and hideous out of the twilight Future on America; and she will have her own agony, and her own victory, but on other terms than she is yet quite aware of. — Thomas Carlyle, 1850.

Make of it what you will.

The longer I do this, the more I suspect that a good part of the “information overload” story is a myth cooked up by folks who don’t know how to use the internet well in order to demonize something they don’t understand.

My previous post on winning arguments unfairly reminded me of a blog posting by the actor, writer, wit, and all-around bon vivant Stephen Fry. In this post,  (scroll down to “Getting Overheated”) Fry discusses how Englishers and Americans differ when having an argument. While he and his fellow Englishmen love a good hearty tussle of ideas, he finds Americans discomfited by the idea of argument or debate of any kind.

I was warned many, many years ago by the great Jonathan Lynn, co-creator of “Yes Minister” and director of the comic masterpiece “My Cousin Vinnie”, that Americans are not raised in a tradition of debate and that the adversarial ferocity common around a dinner table in Britain is more or less unheard of in America. When Jonathan first went to live in LA he couldn’t understand the terrible silences that would fall when he trashed an statement he disagreed with and said something like “yes, but that’s just arrant nonsense, isn’t it? It doesn’t make sense. It’s self-contradictory.” To a Briton pointing out that something is nonsense, rubbish, tosh or logically impossible in its own terms is not an attack on the person saying it – it’s often no more than a salvo in what one hopes might become an enjoyable intellectual tussle. Jonathan soon found that most Americans responded with offence, hurt or anger to this order of cut and thrust. Yes, one hesitates ever to make generalizations, but let’s be honest the cultures are different, if they weren’t how much poorer the world would be and Americans really don’t seem to be very good at or very used to the idea of a good no-holds barred verbal scrap. I’m not talking about inter-family ‘discussions’ here, I don’t doubt that within American families and amongst close friends, all kinds of liveliness and hoo-hah is possible, I’m talking about what for good or ill one might as well call dinner-party conversation. Disagreement and energetic debate appears to leave a loud smell in the air.

Romantic Love #1
Romantic Love #1

Don’t pack for the worst scenario. Pack for the best scenario and simply buy yourself out of any jams.

Look for kindred souls. They are few and far between, and nothing is more precious.

I've stopped updating my previous blog, Oddments of High Unimportance, after Google's Blogger-bots thought I was a spam-blog and prevented me from making posts for about 2 weeks. They finally decided I was for real and basically republished the blog, adding a "9" to the first part of the URL. This has the charming side-effect of breaking links to all of my old articles. Now, Oddments was my first blog and it was a place to just pin to the wall various Web and other ephemera that crossed my path. I messed about with blogging but was never a serious, dedicated blogger. However, I did take the time and trouble to write some longer posts now and then, and it would be a shame to lose them.

So I thought I'd rescue two of those posts, on what I learned from studying for the GRE in the summer of 2006. My commitment to the GRE project surprised even me, I must say; I knew it needed to be done and I took the steps needed to do it.

V:800 Q:640: http://highunimportance9.blogspot.com/2006/08/v800-q640.html

Rating my GRE study materials: http://highunimportance9.blogspot.com/2006/08/rating-my-gre-study-materials.html

The following notes are from a 1982 book by Daniel Cohen called “Re:thinking: How to Succeed by Learning How to Think.” (Bookfinder link – this book is WAY old, people!) It struck me at the time I read it, sometime in the mid-90’s, as a coherent summary of the mind literature extant in 1982 for a mainstream audience, along with basic primers on logical fallacies and the like.

It’s rather interesting to read notes on a book that predates the computer and internet revolutions. In many ways, the brain’s hardware and software hasn’t changed all that much, and his advice and tips, particularly on creativity, ideas, and handling “information overload,” echo through lots of the “25 Ways to do/be/have X” posts the blogosphere is littered with.

What struck me the most from my notes were the following tips on arguing and how to unfairly win arguments. Cohen spent a bit of time in his book dealing with logical fallacies and illustrating how to break out of one’s default thinking habits. Arguing as a way to change other’s thinking habits never work, Cohen says; he characterizes them as street fights and asks the reader to consider the following before starting an argument:

• I’m not going to change anyone’s mind and I’m probably not going to learn anything.
• Can I walk away from this?
• If I win, what will I win and what do I stand to lose?
• If I lose, what do I lose and what do I stand to gain?
• Do I know what we are really arguing about?

But if you find yourself in an argument, Cohen provides a handy checklist of ways to unfairly win an argument–or, if you’d rather, how others may pull these gambits on you. I’m unfamiliar with classic debating strategies so these may be old-hat, but I found it quite interesting to review in this political season, as the Reps, Dems, and Fox News pull these tricks in press releases, media statements, chatter-TV, and the like.

• Appear calm. Decry the opposition for his “emotionalism.”
• Well-directed show of anger can be effective as it puts the opposition on the defensive.
• Be sure of facts if the opposition knows something about the subject; stick to generalities and attack the opposition on trivial errors.
• Ask the opposition to cite sources–and then discredit the sources.
• Ask the opposition to “define their terms” and then attack the definitions.
• All-or-nothing: extend the opposition’s point to the logical (but absurd) extreme.
• Claim the opposition has misstated your case, which puts him on the defensive.
• If you’re trapped in a misstatement, claim your words have been taken out of context.
• Deny inconsistency. Bring your previous statements in line with what you’ve just said.
• Distract the opposition with a side issue.
• Damn the alternatives.
• Justify your position by insisting it’s necessary because of the evil deeds of the opposition.
• Personal attack. “I never argue with such people.”
• Be gracious, as it makes a good impression on the audience.
• A tie is better than a loss. “You and I are basically in agreement.”
• Declare the question not yet settled and that more investigation/thought/time is needed.

Two-Gun Kid #113
Two-Gun Kid #113

Heidegger

Sometimes I get emails that are more than two pages long, attempting to explain a problem. I’m going to tell you something: All career problems can be described in under 100 words. If you are going over 100 words, you don’t know your problem. If you are going over 1000 words, it’s because your self-knowledge is really bad, so that is your problem.

If you are passing another car on a two-lane road and are confronted with a car coming toward you, there are two things you can do: accelerate or brake. You should brake; in all cars, the brakes are…

So often any film that comes out is going to be a sequel or a remake of a film that’s previously existed — and I’ve said this before, that we will see Johnny Depp playing Cap'n Crunch. It will eventually get down to breakfast cereal mascots!

Adventure Comics #389
Adventure Comics #389

Advice for the creative writer, yes. But the student? My manager is taking a summer class and his teacher told the class, "Don't write down what I say. Write down what you feel about what I say." Interesting advice for a note-taker who's thinking about regurgitating the content for the next test. My reporting background feeds into my natural tendencies to observe and notate, to somehow duplicate what I'm reading or listening to in class; it's distancing. Paraphrasing what the teacher says during a lecture is a good idea, but the cognitive load of paraphrasing something said a minute ago in my own words as new content is also streaming in is too much for me.

But I like the idea of recording my reactions in class, even if they're baffled. It's fast, it's in the moment, it hooks me. Engage me on the emotional level, and I'm halfway there. That said, I can see this strategy applying more to issues-oriented topics than information retrieval algorithms. But it's a new tool I definitely want to try out this fall.

1. Convenience and impermanence. But look at the size of that keyboard! And her happy smile! This is one of the issues that's ruefully discussed in some of my SILS classes, particularly the digital archiving and electronic records courses. It's become one of those burdens we've chosen to shoulder, I think, without really examining why we do it in the first place. Or rather, we propose lots of solutions as we try to understand the problem, which is likely not a technological one at all.
2. I love homilies and rules of thumb, and this Zhurnaly page collects a great set from Physicist David Stearn. It traverses the small (write yourself notes and index them) to the large ("Being a physicist is a great privilege. Be worthy of it. Most of humanity spends its life doing boring repetitive tasks."). Here's a  slightly different version by Stern from his web page.

The bottom line is that you should never spend more than $1500 on art unless you know at least roughly what it is worth at auction. One of life’s good rules of thumb.