Three dimensional television is the dumbest thing I have ever heard of. It’s not the glasses that bother me. It’s the fact that the extra dimension is superfluous: two dimensions are perfectly evocative of reality. I believe that adding a third dimension just gives the TV networks and movie studios an opportunity to charge more for their broadcasts and films.
Moving pictures with sound: more realistic.
Moving pictures in color: more realistic.
Moving pictures in 3D: distracting.
Did I mention stupid? Dumb, stupid, stupid, dumb 3D TV.
My sister (who just got her PhD in applied mathematics) Katy sent me a great article about a talking, learning 5-year-old intelligence research parrot named Alex (parrot) - Wikipedia:
He called an apple a “banerry”, which Pepperberg thought
to be a combination of “banana” and “cherry”, two fruits
he was more familiar with.
This part is great, too:
If he said “Wanna banana,” but was offered a nut instead,
he stared in silence, asked for the banana again, or took
the nut and threw it at the researcher or otherwise
displayed annoyance, before requesting the item again.
When I was little young fellow, I loved to go to the car wash with my Dad. On bitterly cold days, we’d sit in the line-up for a car wash, listening to Car Talk on NPR. At the high-intensity air-dryer at the end of the wash, I looked at the windshield wipers fluttering in the wind. I still my remember my stupid little joke that I thought was so funny at 7 years old: “It looks just like a nervous bride on her wedding day!”
I guess I’ve never been that funny. I love analogies, metaphors, imagination, and I’m fond of irreverence and non-sequitors. I agonize over stupid things I’ve said, over-analyzing and over-thinking previous conversations. This is interesting, because sometimes I have a reason to agonize — I tend to struggle with describing things… I’ve been working really hard on proper nouns. Otherwise it’s — we went to that theater to see some movie with that one actor written by the guy from *snap snap* who rebooted that franchise. What’s more, I’m terrified of hurting other’s feelings, and I favor the most gentle forms of humor possible: ones which hurt and offend nobody.
As a conversationalist, I need some practice.
It’s all stuff I’m working on, especially because imagination and irreverence are completely out of place in doctor-patient relations. I have found, however, a few great rules to follow in casual conversation:
Listen your ears out. Listen so hard that you think
you’re right there by this person in whatever
event they’re describing. If their dog puked on the
carpet this weekend, you’re right alongside them, trying
to clean it up… imagining how awful that must be.
Listening will bring up things you can relate to in your own mind: “oh yeah, I remember cleaning up cat hairballs.” Do not share these things unless they’re short and do a great job of furthering the person’s point. If you’ve cleaned up any sort of animal refuse, don’t bring it up. If you’ve also cleaned up pomeranian vomit from wool shag, now would be a good time to offer tips on cleaning products. Your job, however, is to keep the person talking about themselves. Which brings me to the next point.
Keep your conversational partner talking about themselves. They are not listening to stories from your weekend, however much they may feign interest. Stay one step back from “and how did that make you feel?” but keep them talking.
Remember. The best way to pick up the conversational thread is the follow-up. The fact that you remembered will touch a deep, primal chord in this person. They will feel cared for, though they won’t necessarily realize this. (Corollary: don’t remember too much. People love to feel cared for, but dislike feeling stalked. If you do remember every detail from the conversation, you should hide this fact.)
When the person is new, use open-ended initiators. I always have liked “How are you today?” with my patients. It is too formal for casual interaction, so I leave those examples as an exercise for the reader. Anyhow, seemingly simple questions help you immediately gauge your interaction: did they immediately skip to politics? Are they in pain that should be addressed? Did their response exhibit an equivalent understanding of the rules of conversation? As quickly as possible, you must figure out what is safe ground and what are risky areas.
Understand how your conversational partner uses fillers between utterances. Some people appreciate you completing their thoughts, as doing so indicates to them that you are tracking their thought process. Others will immediately, almost unconsciously, contradict your attempts to show you are listening. In those cases, it is best to withdraw into vague, positive affirmations. Some people would rather argue than converse.
Most of you understand these things instinctively. I did not, and sometimes still do not. I vividly remember sitting in band class in ninth grade. It was a Monday. A guy I knew struck up a conversation with a girl on whom I had a crush. “So, how was your weekend?” A synaptic foghorn went off in my conversationally stunted adolescent mind. AHA. THAT’S what you’re supposed to do to start a conversation! It’s been an uphill battle ever since. I’ll fight on.
I’ve been thinking about this one for SEVENMONTHS, and finally decided stopped being lazy enough to post it. Denmark Thrives Despite High Taxes:
Mr. PETERSEN: Yeah, there’s a kind of slack in the
system.
KESTENBAUM: Denmark has an interesting kind of
hybrid economy. It has this huge welfare state, but it
has also fiercely embraced a lot of free market ideas.
The unemployment benefits are generous, but it’s also
very easy to fire people. That makes the economy nimble.
Employers can get rid of workers when they dont need them
and hire them back quickly when they do. Petersen says
losing your job here is just not that big a deal.
Now,
all countries face choices like this: How do you want to
set up your economy? Those decisions shape how you live
and your psychology. In Denmark, for instance, there
aren’t severe class distinctions because the poor get
helped, the rich get taxed, so everyone gets squashed
into a big, fat middle class.
One economist told me:
Look, we dont have any geniuses and we dont have the best
pro athletes - they leave because of the high taxes - but
overall we’re doing well.
Naturally, there are some concerns about just being average as a nation. However, with so many people falling out of the United State’s middle class, I think something has to change the distribution of wealth.
I hear all these arguments about raising taxes and welfare: “oh the government’s inefficient” or “I don’t want my money going towards some low-income person who puts rims on their car and gets a cell phone before buying food” or “I worked too hard for what I’ve got to waste it”. These are simply rationalizations for not wanting to part with money. If you don’t want to give other people money to help them, just say that. Don’t do a bunch of logical gymnastics around the issue — you’re either comfortable with trusting your money to a greater good, or you aren’t. Just say which one, and we’ll stop wasting one another’s time.
A banana equivalent dose is a concept occasionally used
by nuclear proponents to place in scale the dangers
of radiation by comparing exposures to the radiation
generated by a common banana.
I was able to determine that a panoramic x-ray for your head is the equivalent of eating about 150 bananas:
0.009863 millirems per banana
15µSv / pan * 1 millirem / 10 µSv = 15 millirems / pan
15 millirems / pan * 1 banana / 0.0099 millirems = 150 bananas
I hope to break that one out to a patient… when I find the right combination of intellectual curiosity and concern for x-rays in a patient. That may, possibly, be never.
Implicature is when you suggest an idea by what you say, but your words don’t have to be taken that way. And, well, I guess there’s a whole field of linguistics where people structure how we talk with one another into ordered rules. For example, Gricean maxims deal with assumptions about your conversational partner: that their contributions are relevant, clear, true, and that they aren’t too long-winded in responses. However, the rules still work when we choose to break (flout) them:
Speakers who deliberately flout the maxims usually intend
for their listener to understand their underlying
implication. In the case of the clumsy friend, she will
most likely understand that the speaker is truly not
offering a compliment. Therefore, cooperation is still
taking place, but no longer on the literal level.
Conversationalists can assume that when speakers
intentionally flout a maxim, they still do so with the aim
of expressing some thought. Thus, the Gricean Maxims serve
a purpose both when they are followed and when they are
flouted.
Why Parents Hate Parenting — New York Magazine is a great summary of the research findings that having kids makes people less happy. However, it teases out exactly what that means. For example, it’s the moment-to-moment happiness that people lose out on when they have kids. They have less freedom to do what they did before. “Small cracks” in their relationship with their spouse (which is integral to happiness) become “huge gulfs” under the pressure of children. What’s more, the later people wait in life, the more autonomy and enjoyment they have experienced from working and socializing, and therefore the more they give up when they do have children. My favorite part, however, was the idea that it isn’t so simple as moment to moment happiness… there’s a larger factor, one of purpose, to consider:
When I mention this to Daniel Gilbert, he hardly disputes
that meaning is important. But he does wonder how
prominently it should figure into people’s decisions to
have kids. “When you pause to think what children mean to
you, of course they make you feel good,” he says. “The
problem is, 95 percent of the time, you’re not thinking
about what they mean to you. You’re thinking that you
have to take them to piano lessons. So you have to think
about which kind of happiness you’ll be consuming most
often. Do you want to maximize the one you experience
almost all the time”—moment-to-moment happiness—“or the
one you experience rarely?”
Which is fair enough. But
for many of us, purpose is happiness—particularly those
of us who find moment-to-moment happiness a bit elusive
to begin with. Martin Seligman, the positive-psychology
pioneer who is, famously, not a natural optimist, has
always taken the view that happiness is best defined in
the ancient Greek sense: leading a productive, purposeful
life. And the way we take stock of that life, in the end,
isn’t by how much fun we had, but what we did with it.
(Seligman has seven children.)
The article goes on to say that the feeling of regret is much more powerful for things you have not than for things you have. I have found this to be extremely true. There was a free Dashboard Confessional concert at St. Thomas that I didn’t go to because I was studying some thing. I can’t remember the thing, but I’ve always regretted not going to that concert. I regret not figuring out how to study in college, and missing many things as a result.
The Willpower Paradox: Scientific American says that asking yourself whether you will do something results in a more open mind that can accomplish more… getting you closer to your goal. Forcing yourself doesn’t work as well as asking of yourself:
And in this real-world scenario, he got the same basic
result: those primed with the interrogative phrase “Will
I?” expressed a much greater commitment to exercise
regularly than did those primed with the declarative
phrase “I will.”
What’s more, when the volunteers were
questioned about why they felt they would be newly
motivated to get to the gym more often, those primed with
the question said things like: “Because I want to take
more responsibility for my own health.” Those primed with
“I will” offered strikingly different explanations, such
as: “Because I would feel guilty or ashamed of myself if
I did not.”
I hopped on my bike to ride home on from school on this gorgeous evening. The sun illuminated everything in front of me, casting my shadow far in front of me along the bumpy pavement of Washington Avenue. I glided by Punch Pizza with its garage door up, looking at the people who were looking back at me, they dining halfway al fresco, me wishing I were dining on something. Snapping out of my reverie, I went through my compulsive check. See, ever since I began dental school, I walk out of the house the exact same way each day — wallet in my left pocket, keys in my right, phone in the change pocket on the right. I will do this check when walking, when idle, or when I’m leaving for anywhere. Turns out I unconsciously added a wedding ring check to the list.
My thoughts drifted as though floating along on a breeze, from hunger to my ring. I’m not wearing my wedding ring. I looked down at the pale circlet around my left ring finger. I’M NOTWEARINGMYWEDDINGRING. Oh, well I… I took it off to wash my hands in the bathroom. I TOOKITOFFTOWASHMYHANDSINTHEBATHROOM.
I hauled ass. Took a hard right onto Ontario. Flew through a vacant parking lot, almost jumped a curve cutting through another lot. Tailed a car onto Delaware and gave it everything I had. Ran a stop sign through the construction zone and dodged pedestrians outside of Moos until I came to the main entrance. Considered trying to get my bike through the revolving door. Instead, locked up my bike. ALLOUTRAN through the first floor of the building to the restroom. Found my ring right where I had left it, for anyone who came off the street to take.
I don’t really have the time to fully parse out “Solitude and Leadership” by William Deresiewicz at The American Scholar, but holy cow are there some good quotes in there. I’ll follow one of his trains of thought:
Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to
develop an idea about it. Not learning other people’s
ideas, or memorizing a body of information, however much
those may sometimes be useful. Developing your own ideas.
In short, thinking for yourself. You simply cannot do that
in bursts of 20 seconds at a time, constantly interrupted
by Facebook messages or Twitter tweets, or fiddling with
your iPod, or watching something on YouTube.
So, is this just an old guy offering the stereotypical reaction to these new technologies? I think, no:
It seems to me that Facebook and Twitter and YouTube—and
just so you don’t think this is a generational thing, TV
and radio and magazines and even newspapers, too—are all
ultimately just an elaborate excuse to run away from
yourself. To avoid the difficult and troubling questions
that being human throws in your way. Am I doing the right
thing with my life? Do I believe the things I was taught
as a child? What do the words I live by—words like duty,
honor, and country—really mean? Am I happy?
Is our technology-driven distraction truly a bad thing? How are we to understand its impact on our lives? What does Deresiewicz think we are missing out on? He’s quite clear:
Here’s the other problem with Facebook and Twitter and
even The New York Times. When you expose yourself to those
things, especially in the constant way that people do
now—older people as well as younger people—you are
continuously bombarding yourself with a stream of other
people’s thoughts. You are marinating yourself in the
conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for
others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in
which it is impossible to hear your own voice, whether
it’s yourself you’re thinking about or anything else.
That’s what Emerson meant when he said that “he who should
inspire and lead his race must be defended from travelling
with the souls of other men, from living, breathing,
reading, and writing in the daily, time-worn yoke of their
opinions.”
Now, look—I’m not really interested in piling on Twitter along with everyone else. I do think its a truly useful service, but in the context of this argument—the bombardment of other’s ideas—I do understand Deresiewicz’s point: to truly lead, we need a little space to think for ourselves… to form our own ideas. And finally, as a person who tends to value a few close connections over many looser connections with others, this point really made sense:
This is what we call thinking out loud, discovering what
you believe in the course of articulating it. But it takes
just as much time and just as much patience as solitude in
the strict sense. And our new electronic world has
disrupted it just as violently. Instead of having one or
two true friends that we can sit and talk to for three
hours at a time, we have 968 “friends” that we never
actually talk to; instead we just bounce one-line messages
off them a hundred times a day. This is not friendship,
this is distraction.