The Danger Of Zippers

People are always scared of new technology. On the first trains, people had nervous breakdowns, because they were going too fast. When the first bicycles came out, people were warned about getting “bicycle face.” [Atwood pulls back the skin on her face to demonstrate, looking like the victim of a bad plastic surgeon.]

What people were really worried about was that it could enable sex, because you could get away from the home and parental control. There were similar concerns about the automobile. And a similar uproar was caused by the zipper. People preached sermons about the dangers of zippers. And now we have velcro! That’s even easier.

I really like Margaret Atwood now. “Every Time Technology Changes, It Changes What People in the Plot Can Do.”

Although to be fair, zippers can be very dangerous…

To get more done, do less

There is no hard and fast rule, but I would suggest incorporating a rest day once every seven to 10 days. The key is to listen to your body and its signals, irrespective of your planned training schedule. Spending the afternoon trawling the Gap for a bargain, pulling up every weed in your overgrown garden or trying in vain to assemble a wardrobe do not count as rest.

Buttocks-on-sofa is the position to assume.

To reiterate, it is not wasted time. Push aside any (unnecessary and self-destructive) feelings of guilt or laziness and trust that resting makes you better, faster, stronger and more resilient (and also gives you the chance to watch “Top Gun” for the 100th time).

Chrissie Wellington, four-time Ironman champ. The importance of R&R

OK. I’ll believe her.

It’s backed up by research on memory — doing nothing really seems to actually get things done. I can definitely attest that working too much is bad for your brain (and body, although I think the physical effects are more obvious). It’s almost like being depressed — it really takes everything out of you. The first time you feel this, you won’t even know what’s happening. It’s only when you look back after a while of relaxing that you can realize it.

The best warning sign: if you find yourself disliking something that you used to love, you should take a break from it. Time off can be a miracle cure, because too much of anything is a bad thing. Even water can kill you.

The dose makes the poison

Paracelsus aka Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim

How Advertisers Convinced Americans They Smelled Bad

And that’s when Young went radical, and in doing so launched his own fame. A door-to-door survey conducted by the advertising company had revealed that “every woman knew of Odorono and about one-third used the product. But two thirds felt they had no need for [it],” Sivulka says.

Young realized that improving sales wasn’t a simple matter of making potential customers aware that a remedy for perspiration existed. It was about convincing two-thirds of the target population that sweating was a serious embarrassment.

…

The advertisement goes on to explain that women may be stinky and offensive, and they might not even know it. The take-home message was clear: If you want to keep a man, you’d better not smell.

The advertisement caused shock waves in a 1919 society that still didn’t feel comfortable mentioning bodily fluids. Some 200 Ladies Home Journal readers were so insulted by the advertisement that they canceled their magazine subscription, Sivulka says.

In a memoir, Young notes that women in his social circle stopped speaking to him, while other JWT female copy writers told him “he had insulted every woman in America.” But the strategy worked. According to JWT archives, Odorono sales rose 112 percent to $417,000 in 1920, the following year.

via How Advertisers Convinced Americans They Smelled Bad | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine.

Abe Lincoln on motivation

I am reminded of a story about Abraham Lincoln. According to the story, Lincoln was riding with a friend in a carriage on a rainy evening. As they rode, Lincoln told the friend that he believed in what economists would call the utility-maximizing theory of behavior, that people always act so as to maximize their own happiness, and for no other reason. Just then, the carriage crossed a bridge, and Lincoln saw a pig stuck in the muddy riverbank. Telling the carriage driver to stop, Lincoln struggled through the rain and mud, picked up the pig, and carried it to safety. When the muddy Lincoln returned to the carriage, his friend naturally pointed out that he had just disproved his own hypothesis by putting himself to great trouble and discomfort to save a pig. “Not at all,” said Lincoln. “What I did is perfectly consistent with my theory. If I hadn’t saved that pig, I would have felt terrible.”

– Ben Bernake

On being really good

Have you ever told someone “wow, you’re really good at SOMETHING”, where SOMETHING could be mean “good at tennis” or “knowledgable about history”, or anything else, and then you get the reply

“Oh, thanks, but I’m not really that good”

Sometimes it’s the person being humble. Sometimes it’s not.

I tend to notice this where it’s something that the person works hard at. To work hard at something means that you’re working to improve things that you aren’t satisfied with. So, when someone says “you’re really good at this”, the person looks at things from their own point-of-view and sees any number of issues they’re still not satisfied with.

This type of person is also likely to continue improving. Their cup isn’t full yet.

A university professor went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured the visitor’s cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. “It’s overfull! No more will go in!” the professor blurted. “You are like this cup,” the master replied, “How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup.”

— Zen Stories To Tell Your Neighbors  – Empty Your Cup

Watch for this pattern in life. I see it often.

If money doesn’t make you happy, you aren’t spending it right

Here are some words.

The relationship between money and happiness is surprisingly weak, which may stem in part from the way people spend it. Drawing on empirical research, we propose eight principles designed to help consumers get more happiness for their money. Specifically, we suggest that consumers should (1) buy more experiences and fewer material goods; (2) use their money to benefit others rather than themselves; (3) buy many small pleasures rather than fewer large ones; (4) eschew extended warranties and other forms of overpriced insurance; (5) delay consumption; (6) consider how peripheral features of their purchases may affect their day-to-day lives; (7) beware of comparison shopping; and (8) pay close attention to the happiness of others.

If money doesn’t make you happy, then you probably aren’t spending it right – Journal of Consumer Psychology 21 

We live in a consumer world. This paper seems legit by me. Definitely worth keeping in mind.

hat tip Rahmin

On Learning Someone Else’s Song

I finally own sheet music from a band I’m excited about — Led Zeppelin. “Whole Lotta Love” is one of my favorite songs, and even though there’s not that much drumming in there (the whole middle of the song is basically Bonham clicking the hi-hat and not much else), I’ve started learning it.

Bonham is really good. He keeps time with the hi-hat, and plays complex patterns on the snare and kick drums.

The trick that I realized will help me on this is to learn each pattern alongside the time-keeping, one at a time. So, I can play the hi-hat and kick easily, and the hi-hat and snare easily. Doing all three still leads me to throw notes in the wrong places.

I think that breaking a three-limb harmony into two separate two-limb harmonies will make it easier to memorize, and then I’ll be able to bring them back together.

Consistency of opinion

There’s a blog post I’ve liked for a long time now. It’s from a guy who sent a postcard to Warren Buffett, asking for a piece of wisdom to someone who Warren had never met.

The reply on the postcard was “read, read, read”.

I’ve always liked this answer. And now I like it more.

Bob Rodriguez is CEO of First Pacific Advisors, and is a ridiculously successful investor. In 1974 he asked Charlie Munger (Buffet’s business partner) what would make him a better investor.

“In the fall of 1974 I was in graduate school at USC taking a portfolio-management investment course. The financial markets were in difficulty, and I didn’t understand how securities were being sold at such depressed levels. I had only recently discovered Security Analysis by Graham and Dodd when we had a guest lecturer come in named Charlie Munger, who went on about this idea of value investing. After the class was over, I walked up to Charlie and asked him if there was one thing that I could do that would make me a better investment professional. His answer was, ‘Read history, read history, read history.’ And so I became a good historian, reading both economic and financial history as well as general history.

“What I learned is that people relate to the crises they have experienced. So when the crisis of 2008 came, it felt like an old friend to me because it had so many similarities to the banking crisis of 1907. Asking Charlie’s advice and then reading history allowed me to put those things in context.”

And 34 years later, in 2008, Buffet tells some random guy to “read, read, read”. He didn’t use the words “read everything you can” or “be sure to read lots of books” or “get off my damn lawn”. It was “read, read, read”.

Makes me happy.

Bonus image from reddit the other day, titled “The Issue In A Nutshell”

Feynman

This video is titled “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out”. At about 3:38, Feynman discusses his father and how Feynman was raised.

This is video of someone who is arguably one of the smartest people to ever live, who is widely known for being able to explain things well, and who is at an advanced enough age that he’s had a lot of time to think about his own life, as well as watch other humans grow from children into adults (which means he’s been able to observe the process many times).

To me, that makes the next 90 seconds very interesting. I think he explains the secrets of raising genuinely smart kids (or rather, what to do with kids in order to raise a genuinely smart adult).

  1. Spend time with them
  2. reading facts to them
  3. and discussing what you’ve read with an emphasis on relationships between things, cause and effect, etc.

You’re teaching the kid how to process thoughts — literally a “thought process”. You’re teaching them how to process the written word (and spoken word), as well as what to do when they have the thought in their head: do I understand this thing? Is it true given all the other things I know are true? If this is true, what else must be true?

And the rest of the video is good too.