Apparently Kickstarter has decided I fit the profile of someone who wants the perfect bag. They may not be wrong. One reason why I love winter is I can justify wearing a coat. My favorite coat has a gallon in pocket space. I can carry ALL THE CRAP. Phone, novel, notebook, pens, change, receipts, camera, chargers, headphones,…
Saw something that looked clickbait-y and for once glad I clicked on it because I learned a new term I want to scream from the mountaintops: bullshit curation. Clickbait sounds almost respectable. One of my favorite recent terms I learned from Jon Stewart was “Bullshit Mountain.” It refers to the Orwellian spin of stories from political…
There is a Twitter thing running around where people post their first seven jobs. I do not think mine would fit in a tweet, so I put it here. This title should show up there as a hashtag and be my contribution. If you count by employers, then I have had 1-3. University System of…
Michelle Obama: I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves. Bill O’Reilly: Slaves that worked there were well fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government, which stopped hiring slave labor in 1802. If he used a weasel word like “some” to say slaves had relatively decent treatment, then I…
My introversion is strong, so I feel the need to spend time alone to recharge my batteries. That does not mean I hate people. That is my elitism and narcissism. I do recognize the benefits of meeting new people, especially the complete stranger phenomenon described in Crossing Paths: Sometimes a complete stranger can answer our questions…
Motivated Reasoning aka soldier mindset: This phenomenon in which our unconscious motivations (our desires and fears) shape the way we interpret information. So some information and ideas feel like our allies and we want them to win. We want to defend them. And other information and ideas are the enemy. We want to shoot them…
Twenty years ago I was able to watch some soccer Olympic events in person. We watched the first women’s tournament where the US played Sweden. And Nigeria (who eventually won) play Japan. These were all at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando. It made me happy two teams we watched went on to win both the…
Saw a probably clickbait title “Mishaps overshadow message at the Republican National Convention.” It got me thinking that this is probably another case of media attention hyperbole. The media fixation story I recall was several years ago about child kidnappings. Every week it made national headlines about a child who disappeared or was taken by…
Daniel H. Cohen makes an interesting case that: We equate arguing to war; such that there are winners and losers. The loser is the one who makes a cognitive improvement, so losing gains the most. So, we should strive to lose. “It takes practice to be a become a good arguer from the perspective of benefitting…