R Withheld
You like professional ghost stories, right? And robopsychiatrists?
Then you’ll love:
Don’t thank me, I’m just repeating what I heard around the schoolyard.
Dude, You Suck at Multitasking
I have a confession to make. I’m an interrupt junkie. Sure, I’ve read what Tim Ferriss has to say, and what Leo Babauta has to say, and what pretty much everyone else has to say, but it’s always been one of those ‘other people’ kind of topics for me. You know, like, you should totally eat more leafy greens, and excercise more, and hey, would it kill you to call your Mom today? That stuff.
I’ve read it, and not cared with the best of them. Until now. I recently realized, no doubt because I was actually trying to get something done instead of procrastinating as usual, that interruptions are pretty fucking annoying. And since I frequently have the attention span of a field mouse (oh, shiny!), then every time I get an email notification or IM or phone call or whatever it is this ten seconds, my concentration jumps to the new, random topic. Which, of course, derails my current train of thought. Getting back on track is harder and more irritating than working through the current task at hand, due to the Law of Work Inertia, which states that it is easier to stay on task or procrastinate forever than to actually get any work done.
So, with that said, here’s the new plan:
No more email notifications. You know what? If it’s that important, they can call me. Nobody in their right mind sends a note in a bottle to tell someone they’ve caught on fire. Email is not real-time, get used to it. My mail client will pull mail no more than once an hour. If that.
IM is off, not on busy when I’m doing something. I don’t know about you, but the busy status in IM is more like a red cape where I work than anything else, like my coworkers take it as a personal affront. People will actually IM me to ask, “Are you really busy?” Thanks, jackhole.
Phone is on silent when I’m on task. This one is a bitch. I actually have to turn my phone over, because I can see it light up in the corner of my eye, and then, of course, I have to see who it is. Then either answer it, or listen to the voicemail right then. Which means at that point, I have completely forgotten where I was ten seconds ago. I’m weak, sue me. I do turn the phone back on whenever I’m not in the middle of something. I like to say it’s so I can be available and a team player and all that jazz, but really, I just like it.
I started this about a week ago, and so far it’s been a lot easier to get things done, and suprisingly (to me, at least), a lot less stressful. The first day or so I always had that nagging feeling that I was missing some important something-or-other, but I got over it, and my whole level of OMG EMERGENCY ALERTNESS faded out into something a lot more pleasant.
I recommend it.
The Post-Zombie Apocalypse
Post punk, post modern, post zombie.
Zombies used to be damn scary. Night of the Living Dead, for all of its black and white, hard to see, grainy murkiness was terrifying. Dawn of the Dead in full, glorious color? Pants wetting. The idea of the walking dead was bad enough, but the execution and the technicolor gobs of flesh and squirting blood just pushed it over the top. It was the Best. Thing. Ever.
And of course, there can never be enough of a good thing. Zombie movies started to crowd the limits of the B-movie sandbox. Then they started spilling over into the triple-A neighborhood with remakes, conceptual tweaks (infected, not zombies! And FAST!), and then finally, when the market was as bursting at the seams, the inevitable happened.
The Post-Zombie Apocalypse. And it was good. Shaun of the Dead and Fido at the movies, Stubbs the Zombie in gaming (Remember that? Good times!), and in music, the surreal and entertaining Naked Ape video, Fashion Freak:
It’s a goddamn cornacopia of ironic, tongue-in-cheek zombie goodness. But it wasn’t until I ran across this image by Jason Chan that I realized that zombies had officially gone from night terror to cherished childhood memory:
When the inevitable zombie apocalypse comes, we’ll look at it not with horror or panic, but with nostalgia.
Mobile Blog Test
Trying out the dreaded mobile blogging, scourge of the waiting room and balm of the bored. I’m at the place where I get my hair cut (I’m too manly to have a stylist). See?
John Scalzi on The Business of Writing
Would you ignore advice from this man?
John Scalzi is a great writer. Better yet, he’s a great businessman. Take a gander at his financial advice for writers, then follow it no matter what you do for a living.
Oh, and while you’re over there, take a peek at the rest of his blog if you’re one of the last ten people on the internet who isn’t a regular reader.
I Swear This Is Not A Political Blog
Wait, we live where?
This isn’t a political blog, but damn it, sometimes things get so unreal out there that I feel the need to point it out, just in case it’s me that’s crazy instead of the world. Today I have two unrelated news items that separately give me the willies. Together they’re downright surreal.
Item One: Unreasonable search and seizure laws permit checkpoints on the border that would be illegal anywhere else in the US. That sounds okay, until you realize that the border definition here has a width of 100 miles, which happens to cover two-thirds of the entire US population.
Item Two: Yesterday the Supreme Court said that evidence obtained through illegal searches is okey-dokie to be used in your trial.
Hell, why not just chuck the whole 4th Amendment? There’s really nothing left of it now but the box it came in anyway.
Free is Good
If you’re an iPhone user, I have good news for you. You can now access the Random House Free Library directly from inside the Stanza application (which is a free ebook reader).
In there you’ll find the complete Hank Thompson trilogy from Charlie Huston, which is Totally Awesome(tm).
Rumor has it that this trilogy will stop being free at the end of January, so just in case that turns out to be true, I’d snag it now. Speaking of Charlie Huston, go pick up his Joe Pitt series as well, it’s even better.
One more thing about Stanza, both the iPhone and the Desktop versions have access to several free libraries, so I highly recommend checking it out. Getting free books is great, but even better is being exposed to new authors that you might otherwise not want to take a chance on.
Earth From Above
Photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand has seen the Earth like few people ever have; vistas both alien and beautiful, prosaic and delightful. Even better, he’s able to capture these images with such consummate skill that others can share in that stunning moment of discovery when looking out onto a new world.
His Exhibit, Earth From Above, is coming to New York next May, but you can see a little of it right now, wherever you happen to be reading these words, courtesy of The Big Picture:
Image from Yann Arthus-Bertrand's Earth From Above
We Hear What We Want to Hear
According to the MediaCurves poll about the first presidential debate last night, Republicans overwhelmingly saw a McCain smackdown, while Democrats overwhelmingly saw Obama as the clear winner.
Are people crazy? Kind of. Confirmation Bias is something we all have, but few recognize or actively try to compensate for. Basically, we tend to seek out information that reinforces our beliefs, and avoid or discount information that goes against them. I call this Football Team Syndrome. If we screw up, it’s your fault, if you screw up, it’s your fault. There was a time when this was a pretty clever strategy, keeping people centered in the tried and true tribal knowledge that kept them in food and rabbit pelts, and away from that guy who always claimed that bears were full of delicious candy.
Today, this tendency is easily and gleefully exploited by political parties who know that lying in an ad won’t hurt them with the faithful, and might just sway the fencesitters. This is why you can hear the most absurd, outrageous things in a commercial or a speech, and at the same time see people in the same room nodding to themselves in satisfaction.
We all have confirmation bias, it’s just how we’re built. But having it doesn’t mean that we can’t overcome it. Seek out information about the other side and think about it. Be skeptical on an item by item basis, and consider the source based on past performance, not affiliation, and when in doubt, check with less biased sources like factcheck.org.
Critical thinking is the single most important part of personal independence. Enough people are working day and night to manipulate you, don’t help them by fooling yourself.
Why Do We Overspend in America?
Take a look at this:
Clicking on the image will take you to the flash app created by the New York Times. What it shows is the per capita consumer spending habits by nation, divided by country. The bigger the block, the bigger the spend. Click through each tab, and you’ll notice that we Americans always have the biggest block. We spend more, per person, than anyone else on everything.
Why is this?
I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it’s not because we’re vapid consumer whores. Okay, we’re not vapid consumer whores for no reason. Let me share a statistic with you.
We see an average of 1600 ads per person every single day.
I know, right? Maybe it’s more amazing that we don’t wake up every morning and sing jingles at the top of our lungs while sticking logos all over our bodies. Although it’s close. Popular songs are now jingles, so I guess we do sing songs that have become advertising anthems, and of course, people have been paying money to wear corporate logos for some time now. But the victory isn’t complete yet, and with any luck, it never will be.
When you see an ad from now on, think about what it says and how it says it. Beautiful people high-fiving each other over Product X is not what how I want my culture defined.
Pervasive advertising is an assault on your judgement, treat it as such.
Fugitive Prose 