Links go to iTunes samples . . .
Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was born on this date in 1830. Happy Birthday, Emily!
I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,—the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
Let’s party!
Prescription Drugs by Email!
I get about 200 emails a day — 90 percent junk — and 90 percent of the junk is targeted at human weakness, weariness, disappointment, regret and self-loathing.
Happy Birthday to Me
You say its your birthday? Its my birthday too, yeah! We’re gonna have a good time! I’m glad it’s your birthday! Happy birthday to you!
We gonna party like it’s my birthday! We gonna sip Bacardi like it’s my birthday!
I’m 45 today, probably a lot further from birth than death . . . what a hell of a note.
More Bacardi, please!
Huh?
My son just said something to me that sounded like
Meesa favo word yall dog homie thats a foul yo in yo face hippie homo bozo ooheehoohaahaah?
I’m not going to respond to that . . .
An Evening at Home
I’m trying to listen to classical music with a 10-year-old who won’t stop pretending he’s an intergalactic space admiral:
Chopin . . . great composer . . . he was from Earth, wasn’t he?
The Sanctity of Marriage
Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman. Today’s decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court violates this important principle.
Here’s what’s really undermining the sacredness of modern marriage: soap operas, wedding planning, longer work days, cuter secretaries, fights over money, reality TV, low-rise pants, mothers-in-law, boredom, Victoria’s Secret catalogs, going to bed mad, the billable hour, that stubborn 7 pounds, the Wiggles, Internet chat rooms, and selfishness. In fact we should start amending the Constitution to deal with the Wiggles immediately.”
How Family Traditions Get Started
At a family gathering a few years ago, a couple of my nieces were experimenting with makeup — including bright red lipstick — when one of the maiden aunts told them that girls with red lipstick look like whores.
Well, that made quite an impression on these girls . . . now at any family get-together that the aunt attends, every girl — from high school seniors down to 5-year-olds — puts on the tawdriest shade of red lipstick they can find.
At Thanksgiving this past week, one of the girls added some ghastly white face powder, for the total painted lady look . . .
High Failure Rates on the Web
. . . when public website users perform simple Internet tasks, they’re successful two-thirds of the time on average. In other words, users fail 35% of the time . . .
Six sigma tolerates no more than 3.4 defects per million manufacturing opportunities; in contrast, the Web generates 350,000 defects per million interaction opportunities. The difference between the two quality levels is a factor of 100,000.
The only reason the Web works at all is that people are flexible and persistent enough to try again when their first attempt fails.
The good news, I suppose, is that the opportunity for improvement is virtually limitless.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Margaret Cho
My wife estimated the audience as 75 percent gay, which I think, if anything, was a little bit low.
A Damnable Doctrine
I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlasting punished.
And this is a damnable doctrine.
Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published on this date in 1859.
A Visitor from the East
Have you ever had a house guest — an in-law, perhaps — who thought that your life would be a lot better if you ran your business the same way she does, lived where she does, managed your money the way she does, ate certain foods in certain portions because she does, put on a sweater when she gets cold, and so on?
Well, I have . . .
Unskilled and Unaware of It
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities.
Related Links
Can You Hear Me Now?
I have instructed my family to bury a phone with me . . . then call it.
If I answer, grab a shovel.
Management 101: How to Demoralize Your Top Performers Into Early Retirement
Sanders quit because Lions weren’t winning
Background
Barry Sanders, as you may already know, was a running back for the Detroit Lions — one of the best running backs ever.
It was shocking news — to the extent that an athlete’s retirement can be considered “shocking” — when Sanders retired in 1998 because, at age 31, he was at the peak of his career, and on the verge of breaking the all-time NFL rushing record.
Some Lions fans — to this day — still expect him to change his mind and play again.
What Sanders Said
Sanders has an “as told to” autobiography coming out, in which he says that he retired, not — as the above headline says — because the Lions weren’t winning (which they weren’t), but because of his realization that the management of the team no longer cared about winning.
Big difference.
Here’s what he says in the book:
“That realization trivialized everything I did during the off-season to prepare myself. It trivialized everything I dreamed about from the time I was a kid in Wichita . . .”
It’s very similar to something DeMarco and Lister said in Peopleware:
Most forms of teamicide do their damage by effectively demeaning the work, or demeaning the people who do it. Teams are catalyzed by a common sense that the work is important and that doing it well is worthwhile.
People want to do great work. People are dying for opportunities to do great work.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Men Are From Mars, Chickens Are From KFC
A man and a 10-year-old boy bring home the evening meal: 12 pieces of KFC for $9.99.
“Get some plates,” his wife says.
“We don’t need plates,” the man replies.
“We’re men!” the boy explains.
Wife: “You’re going to make a mess.”
Man: “Of course we’re going to make a mess”
Boy: “We’re men!”
Break a Leg
One of my nieces in Australia — she must be 11 or 12 by now — fell off the roof of her house and broke her leg.
“What was she doing on the roof?” I ask my wife.
“Her mom told her she couldn’t play in the house.”
Nice. Or as they say in Australia, noyce.
Forgive Us Our Debts
I got an email today with the subject line “Even Christians have financial problems,” advertising “debt counseling from a Christian perspective.”
Where did the idea come from that Christians should be immune from financial problems? Jesus had to walk at night because he couldn’t afford a pair of shoes.
Talk about a guy with financial problems . . .
So Much Trash
On this date in 1851, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick was published. The book, considered by modern scholars to be one of the great American novels, was dismissed by Melville’s contemporaries and belittled by reviewers as “so much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature.”
Melville took bad reviews pretty hard and gave up writing fiction a few years later. He died in New York on September 28, 1891, at the age of 72, almost completely forgotten.
Existentialism in the Cafeteria
HOLDINGFORD, MINN. — Millionaire dishwasher Kathy Welle seemed incredulous as she stared into the TV cameras and explained why sharing a $95.5 million Powerball jackpot with 15 fellow Holdingford schools cafeteria workers wasn’t reason enough to quit her $9-an-hour job.
“And I don’t plan to quit my other job, driving a school bus for the district, either,” Welle said Tuesday. “What else would I do? What else would any of us do?”