Interesting article today, from The Atlantic:
"How to Land Your Kid in Therapy" by Lori Gottlieb
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/07/how-to-land-your-kid-in-therapy/8555/1/
This is a story about how we shouldn't try to shield our kids from everything, that it's counterproductive. And I think it's safe to say that I don't coddle my kids like that. So no problem there.
But the thing that really strikes me about the story is that I find myself, as an adult, relating to it from the point of view of the children in the story. Initially, "Lizzie" reminded me of ... me. I have nothing to be unhappy about. Yet I feel adrift and afraid to trust my instincts in my personal life.
Check out this line of the article: "How happy should she be?" I've wondered this same thing. Except replace "she" with "I." And this line: "Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy."
No great conclusion here, sorry. This article left me with only questions, no answers.
I take that back. There is one good lesson, at least one good lesson that I was able to extract from the article. It is this quote: "Happiness as a byproduct of living your life is a great thing. But happiness as a goal is a recipe for disaster." - Barry Schwartz, professor of social theory at Swarthmore College.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Monday, June 13, 2011
Making the Movies Jealous
File this under "innovative uses of technology" or "romance." Either one, or both. I found this to be extremely clever and touching. You know exactly how the video is going to end, but you don't care.
Making the Movies Jealous, by Matt & Ginny
http://www.youtube.com/mattandginny#p/a/u/1/pnVAE91E7kM
They also have a website, if you're curious.
http://www.mattandginny.com/
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Song of the Day: Tracy Chapman - She's Got Her Ticket
A couple days ago I posted a song by Tracy Chapman. It reminded me of another song of hers, one that leads to greatly mixed feelings on my part. First, the song:
Tracy Chapman - She's Got Her Ticket
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCwpeyM_FGs
Beautiful song. So why do I have mixed feelings? Well, it stems from the fact that while some people are great artists, they are not necessarily the world's greatest thinkers.
I saw Tracy Chapman live in concert a while back, in Minneapolis. This was during the Elian Gonzalez affair. She said that Elian Gonzalez should be returned to Cuba, which is an issue that separates the men from the boys, so to speak, even though it is one of the very few issues where there is an obvious right and wrong answer. Then she played "She's Got Her Ticket" later in the concert. I don't believe she got the irony there. Great singers are not always great thinkers. Or even thinkers of any kind.
All of that song, every damn word, could apply to Elian's mother. She gave her life to get her son to freedom. And this is what we do to her memory.
"Give your life and invariably they leave you with nothing."
Tracy Chapman - She's Got Her Ticket
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCwpeyM_FGs
Beautiful song. So why do I have mixed feelings? Well, it stems from the fact that while some people are great artists, they are not necessarily the world's greatest thinkers.
I saw Tracy Chapman live in concert a while back, in Minneapolis. This was during the Elian Gonzalez affair. She said that Elian Gonzalez should be returned to Cuba, which is an issue that separates the men from the boys, so to speak, even though it is one of the very few issues where there is an obvious right and wrong answer. Then she played "She's Got Her Ticket" later in the concert. I don't believe she got the irony there. Great singers are not always great thinkers. Or even thinkers of any kind.
All of that song, every damn word, could apply to Elian's mother. She gave her life to get her son to freedom. And this is what we do to her memory.
"Give your life and invariably they leave you with nothing."
Monday, June 6, 2011
Song of the Day: Dire Straits - So Far Away (Wembley Arena)
Here's an oldie but a goodie, as they say. I must be getting old to be posting stuff as old as this. Hey, I remember when Dire Straits was HOT, by the way. Money for Nothing, Walk of Life, Brothers in Arms, and all that. But this is one of my favorites of theirs.
Dire Straits - So Far Away (Wembley Arena)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hVKG9wFelk
Dire Straits - So Far Away (Wembley Arena)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hVKG9wFelk
Saturday, June 4, 2011
What are YOU afraid of?
Saw this in my surfing the other day. Simply hilarious.
From StumbleUpon:
"ThePhobia List"
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1xY6nz/phobialist.com/
"I started this list in the late 1980's and put it on the web in 1995. It's since been adopted and adapted onto many pages since then. Please don't ask me about curing phobias because I know little about them. My interest is in the names only. All the phobia names on this list have been found in some reference book. If you're looking for a phobia name that's not on the list....I'm afraid I don't have it."
Honestly, I don't even know where to begin! There is so much material here that you can practically write your own joke. I had no idea that there were so many phobias. Thank goodness I don't have elecrophobia or I wouldn't be able to do my job.
From StumbleUpon:
"ThePhobia List"
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1xY6nz/phobialist.com/
"I started this list in the late 1980's and put it on the web in 1995. It's since been adopted and adapted onto many pages since then. Please don't ask me about curing phobias because I know little about them. My interest is in the names only. All the phobia names on this list have been found in some reference book. If you're looking for a phobia name that's not on the list....I'm afraid I don't have it."
Honestly, I don't even know where to begin! There is so much material here that you can practically write your own joke. I had no idea that there were so many phobias. Thank goodness I don't have elecrophobia or I wouldn't be able to do my job.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Profiling
Here is a fascinating article about profiling, and about how we make generalizations. Is profiling effective? Should we be doing it? Are there alternatives?
From Gladwell.com:
"Troublemakers"
http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_06_a_pitbull.html
It's a little longer read than many articles I post, but I think it's worth it. Here are a couple impressions from the article:
Raymond Kelly, New York City's police commissioner, knows his shit. Give guidelines and let people do their job. Don't micromanage. From the article:
"Before Kelly became the New York police commissioner, he served as the head of the U.S. Customs Service, and while he was there he overhauled the criteria that border-control officers use to identify and search suspected smugglers. There had been a list of forty-three suspicious traits. He replaced it with a list of six broad criteria. Is there something suspicious about their physical appearance? Are they nervous? Is there specific intelligence targeting this person? Does the drug-sniffing dog raise an alarm? Is there something amiss in their paperwork or explanations? Has contraband been found that implicates this person?
"You'll find nothing here about race or gender or ethnicity, and nothing here about expensive jewelry or deplaning at the middle or the end, or walking briskly or walking aimlessly. Kelly removed all the unstable generalizations, forcing customs officers to make generalizations about things that don't change from one day or one month to the next. Some percentage of smugglers will always be nervous, will always get their story wrong, and will always be caught by the dogs. That's why those kinds of inferences are more reliable than the ones based on whether smugglers are white or black, or carry one bag or two. After Kelly's reforms, the number of searches conducted by the Customs Service dropped by about seventy-five per cent, but the number of successful seizures improved by twenty-five per cent. The officers went from making fairly lousy decisions about smugglers to making pretty good ones. 'We made them more efficient and more effective at what they were doing,' Kelly said."
Another important point? Beagles (have I mentioned how much I love beagles before?) and bassets were specifically mentioned as NOT being represented as bad dogs. :) From the article:
"'I've seen virtually every breed involved in fatalities, including Pomeranians and everything else, except a beagle or a basset hound,' Randall Lockwood, a senior vice-president of the A.S.P.C.A. and one of the country's leading dogbite experts, told me."
Having said all that, I'm not sure I agree with the article's conclusion.
"It was a textbook dog-biting case: unneutered, ill-trained, charged-up dogs, with a history of aggression and an irresponsible owner, somehow get loose, and set upon a small child. The dogs had already passed through the animal bureaucracy of Ottawa, and the city could easily have prevented the second attack with the right kind of generalization—a generalization based not on breed but on the known and meaningful connection between dangerous dogs and negligent owners. But that would have required someone to track down Shridev Café, and check to see whether he had bought muzzles, and someone to send the dogs to be neutered after the first attack, and an animal-control law that insured that those whose dogs attack small children forfeit their right to have a dog. It would have required, that is, a more exacting set of generalizations to be more exactingly applied. It's always easier just to ban the breed."
Yes, the conditions were ripe for bad things to happen in the example given in the article. But do all that to other breeds and they don't kill. Pit bulls do. Simple as that.
Ironically, you can't make the generalization that generalization is always bad. :)
From Gladwell.com:
"Troublemakers"
http://www.gladwell.com/2006/2006_02_06_a_pitbull.html
It's a little longer read than many articles I post, but I think it's worth it. Here are a couple impressions from the article:
Raymond Kelly, New York City's police commissioner, knows his shit. Give guidelines and let people do their job. Don't micromanage. From the article:
"Before Kelly became the New York police commissioner, he served as the head of the U.S. Customs Service, and while he was there he overhauled the criteria that border-control officers use to identify and search suspected smugglers. There had been a list of forty-three suspicious traits. He replaced it with a list of six broad criteria. Is there something suspicious about their physical appearance? Are they nervous? Is there specific intelligence targeting this person? Does the drug-sniffing dog raise an alarm? Is there something amiss in their paperwork or explanations? Has contraband been found that implicates this person?
"You'll find nothing here about race or gender or ethnicity, and nothing here about expensive jewelry or deplaning at the middle or the end, or walking briskly or walking aimlessly. Kelly removed all the unstable generalizations, forcing customs officers to make generalizations about things that don't change from one day or one month to the next. Some percentage of smugglers will always be nervous, will always get their story wrong, and will always be caught by the dogs. That's why those kinds of inferences are more reliable than the ones based on whether smugglers are white or black, or carry one bag or two. After Kelly's reforms, the number of searches conducted by the Customs Service dropped by about seventy-five per cent, but the number of successful seizures improved by twenty-five per cent. The officers went from making fairly lousy decisions about smugglers to making pretty good ones. 'We made them more efficient and more effective at what they were doing,' Kelly said."
Another important point? Beagles (have I mentioned how much I love beagles before?) and bassets were specifically mentioned as NOT being represented as bad dogs. :) From the article:
"'I've seen virtually every breed involved in fatalities, including Pomeranians and everything else, except a beagle or a basset hound,' Randall Lockwood, a senior vice-president of the A.S.P.C.A. and one of the country's leading dogbite experts, told me."
Having said all that, I'm not sure I agree with the article's conclusion.
"It was a textbook dog-biting case: unneutered, ill-trained, charged-up dogs, with a history of aggression and an irresponsible owner, somehow get loose, and set upon a small child. The dogs had already passed through the animal bureaucracy of Ottawa, and the city could easily have prevented the second attack with the right kind of generalization—a generalization based not on breed but on the known and meaningful connection between dangerous dogs and negligent owners. But that would have required someone to track down Shridev Café, and check to see whether he had bought muzzles, and someone to send the dogs to be neutered after the first attack, and an animal-control law that insured that those whose dogs attack small children forfeit their right to have a dog. It would have required, that is, a more exacting set of generalizations to be more exactingly applied. It's always easier just to ban the breed."
Yes, the conditions were ripe for bad things to happen in the example given in the article. But do all that to other breeds and they don't kill. Pit bulls do. Simple as that.
Ironically, you can't make the generalization that generalization is always bad. :)
Thursday, June 2, 2011
"Dear Sophie," courtesy of Google
You may accuse me of being a complete shill for Google. I don't care. Guilty as charged.
But see if this video doesn't tug at your heartstrings. And make you say either "What a great idea!" or "Damn, I wish they had all this cool shit when my kids were born!" Depending on your age, of course. :)
From Google, via YouTube, advertising Chrome (and GMail, Picasa, Maps, etc.), written on my not-yet-released to the public Chromebook:
"Google Chrome: Dear Sophie"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4vkVHijdQk&feature=youtube_gdata_player
This is part of a series of advertisements from Google called "The Web is What You Make It." Apparently, more are on the way.
The song in the video is "Sort Of" by Ingrid Michaelson, by the way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_4utiBscIE
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