Because these days it’s more important than ever to monitor your information diet so as not to damage delicate emotional tissues. It’s not that you don’t want to stay informed but sometimes a glancing blow of news is good enough. Get the gist, enough to fill in the right bubbles on the ballot, and move on with your life.
—Murr Brewster
“A glancing blow of news.” Sounds like a great strategy to me!
December 16, 2018
Last Tuesday the House Judiciary Committee questioned Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai about whether Google search had a political bias against conservative points of view. He explained that it didn’t. (Listen to the question even if you don’t listen to his complete answer.)
After his testimony the term idiot became the most searched for term in the US.
For a sample result click here and here.
I’m so glad I’m not famous!
December 15, 2018
A lot of people like variety in their clothes, but Andy and I are with Earl — buy the same style so you don’t have to think about it. Yes, it’s unusual, but it works for us. Minimalism in the extreme?
How do you simplify your life?
December 14, 2018
If you saw a button with a sign like this pointing to it, would you push the button? Neither Andy nor I would, but we’re glad someone did.
December 13, 2018
I wrote about this in 2009:
One of our magazines had the following puzzle: Remove eight letters from the following to reveal a common garden crop.
Okay, there are 20 letters there. So there would be 12 left after we remove 8. But what common garden crop has 12 letters? I couldn’t for the life of me think of one. I had to wait for the next issue to learn the answer.
To see the eight letters that need to be removed and the garden crop, click here.
They got me on that one!
December 12, 2018
About 120 people showed up for Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s recent town hall, his first since losing his U.S. Senate race. The Texas Democrat then went home to live-stream himself cooking a chicken dinner with his wife, daughter and their pet snake Monty.
That 45-minute broadcast attracted 257,000 views on Facebook — along with more than 12,400 comments.
Presidential aspirants take heed: The 2020 campaign, which is poised to kick into high gear next year with dozens of potential candidates, will take place in a media landscape that has shifted in just the past two years and been radically transformed since the 2008 primary, which began before the release of the first iPhone.
—Town hall? 120 people. Live-streamed chicken dinner? 257,000 views on Facebook
Like it or not, we’re living in a new world .
December 11, 2018
Discover your curiosity type — are you an artist, inventor, explorer or scientist? Take the quiz.
I took this three-minute curiosity quiz from the Encyclopedia Britannica this morning, and surprise, surprise, I turned out to be a scientist type. It makes sense — when I have technical problems, especially the kind when various tech support personnel give different answers, I can slip into the patient, curious mode rather than getting frustrated because the problem isn’t solved right away. It helps a lot.
The quiz is short and I enjoyed it. Are you curious? If so, what kind of curiosity?
December 10, 2018
This is a repeat of a 2011 post I came across as I was cleaning up my website:
To be truly happy we need to focus on quality – on the region of overlap.To be truly happy, we need to be pushing these circles closer and not spend energy on necessarily making them bigger. Makes sense?
—Maya, A Simple Happiness Equation
Does that make sense to you?
December 9, 2018
There are few things in life more wonderful than knowing where you want to go and being on the path to getting there.
–Earnie Larsen
I spent a lot more time today immersing myself in my site cleanup, and I had trouble putting it down. I’m about half through with it now and have developed an efficient system so even if the rest of my life intrudes it will be easy to work on it in bits and pieces. It’s a good feeling, and I’m pleased.
December 8, 2018
This is a partial repeat of the 2008 post Can We Really Learn to Love the Weeds? I came across it today while cleaning up a big mess caused by a hacker to my hosting site. It seems very appropriate!
Becoming mature means learning to accept what you cannot change, facing unresolved sorrows and learning to love life as it really happens, not as you would have it happen.
—Barbara Sher
There’s an old Sufi story about accepting imperfection:
Mulla Nasrudin decided to start a flower garden. He prepared the soil and planted the seeds of many beautiful flowers. But when they came up, his garden was filled not just with his chosen flowers but also overrun by dandelions.
He sought out advice from gardeners all over and tried every method known to get rid of them but to no avail. Finally he walked all the way to the capital to speak to the royal gardener at the sheik’s palace.
The wise old man had counseled many gardeners before and suggested a variety of remedies to expel the dandelions but Mulla had tried them all. They sat together in silence for some time and finally the gardener looked at Nasrudin and said, “Well, then I suggest you learn to love them.”
That sounds like a good idea to me — and so far I’m managing to stay cheerful. I spent most of the day correcting old posts, but I have several more days to go. I will let you know how it turns out!
December 7, 2018
