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| Haggard diarist is coming to resemble the Buddhas of Graton |
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| (Image from Fox News) |
In 2010, Fiorina and husband Frank claimed a combined net worth of $30 million to $120 million....her 2010 campaign still owes $486,418 to creditors. Who wants a deadbeat for president?Based on this track record, why would any political consultants or lawyers do any paid work for her?
Like the evil George Wickham in “Pride and Prejudice,” Fiorina skipped California owing buckets of cash to her one-time pals. She owes $60,000 to former campaign manager Marty Wilson, who now works for the California Chamber of Commerce, and another $20,000 to his former communications firm. She shorted her lawyer Ben Ginsberg, formerly of Patton Boggs, to the tune of $44,000. She owes $3,750 to a former press secretary, $5,000 to another communications aide and $7,500 to her erstwhile political director. She stiffed political consultant Joe Shumate, who died in 2010, to the tune of $30,000. (Yes, she stiffed a stiff — even though she lauded Shumate as a “trusted adviser and friend” upon his death.)
it takes a certain kind of brass to not pay off your political operatives, and then set up shop to run for the highest office in the land. [Former campaign manager Marty] Wilson isn’t sure who will want to work for Fiorina, but he does offer a suggestion for Fiorina 2.0: Ask for the money up front."Neither a borrower, nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend." In Carly Fiorina's case she'll lose a lot of votes, too.
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| The air purifier (bottom) helps keep the furnace dust-free. |
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| (Snoopy image from joyintheaftermath.com) |
Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.
Cutting designed an experiment to test his hunch. Over a lecture course he regularly showed undergraduates works of impressionism for two seconds at a time. Some of the paintings were canonical, included in art-history books. Others were lesser known but of comparable quality. These were exposed four times as often. Afterwards, the students preferred them to the canonical works, while a control group of students liked the canonical ones best. Cutting’s students had grown to like those paintings more simply because they had seen them more.
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| Lots of exposure and fame |
for most of its life, the “Mona Lisa” languished in relative obscurity. In the 1850s, Leonardo da Vinci was considered no match for giants of Renaissance art like Titian and Raphael, whose works were worth almost ten times as much as the “Mona Lisa”.But after its theft from the Louvre in 1911 and its recovery in 1913
The French public was electrified.....Newspapers around the world reproduced it, making it the first work of art to achieve global fame. From then on, the “Mona Lisa” came to represent Western culture itself.Build a better mousetrap---then run commercials about it 24/7---and the world will beat a path to your door.
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| No walk in the park: less than a mile from Honolulu's center |
Hawaii has one of the worst rates of homelessness in the country. Though its jobless rate is below 5%, pricey housing keeps even many workers on the streets.The seemingly inexorable rise in the homeless population has triggered a government response:
On December 2nd Honolulu’s mayor, Kirk Caldwell, signed a bill that bans people from sitting or lying on the busiest public pavements between 5am and 11pm. Those who do so can be fined up to $1,000 and jailed for up to 30 days.Long-term solutions, such as building inexpensive housing and effecting behavioral change, will take years, so
In the meantime, there is talk of sending the homeless to an encampment on nearby Sand Island—far from the tourists of Waikiki.Sand Island, which contains a mix of heavy industry and recreational space, isn't Waikiki, but there are worse places to live.
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| (State of Hawaii photo) |
they read from a digital reader or from a book. When they read from an iPad, their evening levels of melatonin failed to drop as much as they should, while they remained at expected levels when they read from a book. That led to a delay in body’s biological signal to go so sleep of about an hour and a half, making the participants more alert and therefore not ready for bed.In addition the participants who read from tablets had shorter REM sleep, though they may have slept the same number of hours that book-readers did.
What’s more, the effect of those differences in sleep patterns spilled over into the next morning. When they read from digital readers, the participants reported feeling sleepier and were less alert (as measured on standardized testing of alertness) than when they used books.My problem is worse: I'll often press quit on the comparatively boring book I'm reading on iBooks or Kindle and stream a Netflix movie, or play one of the 20 games I've downloaded. That'll keep the Sandman away.
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| Thrilling, but not enervating |
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| Grace (far right) is looking good at 100+. |
Preadaptation: There tended to be a lull in the fighting during meals. Those pauses existed for the simple reason that no one, on either side, wanted to interrupt dinner to kill or be killed. But these lulls began to be used as ways to send signals to the other side....So the soldiers would make a point not just of shooting less frequently during dinner: They would let the guns thunder until the stroke of 6 p.m. and then go utterly silent until 7 p.m., every day. And if the other side started doing the same, they had essentially negotiated a narrow truce: no fighting during dinner.In the early stages of the war, before the carnage rendered the enemy "sub-human",
Problems: cheating, when one side takes advantage of a truce to attack, and signal errors, mistakes made when, say, some clueless newbie lets loose with a shell. [snip]
the best way to police against cheating and signal errors is a variant of tit-for-tat—that is, retaliation that is not much more than the magnitude of the violation—and then a return to cooperation....the typical response to a violation of “live and let live” would be retaliation of roughly twice the magnitude.
Such truces emerged repeatedly during World War I, and just as often, the brass in the rear would intervene by rotating troops, threatening courts-martial and ordering savage raids requiring hand-to-hand combat—all to shatter any sense of shared interests between enemies. And still the truces would start up again.The motivation not to be killed oneself is a powerful impetus to peace.
[Christmas] makes it a good time to ponder whether maximising income should really be the be-all and end-all of economic policy.Higher income does correlate with longer life expectancy, better education, and other indicators of quality of life, but everyone---economics experts or not---is dissatisfied by the singular focus on this measure [bold added]:
If income is an imperfect proxy for quality of life, are there any plausible alternatives? In recent years many have instead focused on happiness....[but] happiness is harder to pin down.Economic philosophers have lately become enamored with the idea of capabilities:
The capability approach purports that freedom to achieve well-being is a matter of what people are able to do and to be, and thus the kind of life they are effectively able to lead. The capability approach is generally conceived as a flexible and multi-purpose framework.The good society is one in which a woman has the freedom and capability to become a successful CEO or a successful stay-at-home mother. The capability approach does not value one role over another; it does mean that society should value and support both choices. A Christmas-themed illustration:
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| (Victorian Web illustration) |
Someone who chooses to forgo a Christmas dinner with family and friends (as Scrooge does) is better off than someone who does not have any invitations to turn down.As common sense tells us, it's better to have a choice than none at all.
the capability approach has spawned so many measures, each more complicated than the last, that GDP starts to look appealing again.Maybe that's all we can reasonably wish for: give us a choice and a chance, and let us figure it out. Merry Christmas!
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| A set of new batteries costs $7 at Radio Shack. |
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| HP sells a smartphone app that mimics the 12C. Some of us need the dimensions and buttons of the real thing. |
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| "Tiger Mother" Amy Chua and daughters Louisa and Sophia. |
research, published in September in the Journal of Neuroscience, showed direct evidence that music training has a biological effect on children’s developing nervous systems.
As a follow up, the team decided to test whether the level of engagement in that music training actually matters. Turns out, it really does. Researchers found that after two years, children who not only regularly attended music classes, but also actively participated in the class, showed larger improvements in how the brain processes speech and reading scores than their less-involved peers.
“It turns out that playing a musical instrument is important....We don’t see these kinds of biological changes in people who are just listening to music, who are not playing an instrument”
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| Photo of an Indian beach (coastalcare.org) |
"These plastic particles are like sponges, they're a bit like magnets for other contaminants, things like Tributyltin, the anti-fouling material....We don't know yet whether that then has an impact on the human food chain. It's still very early days to find out how far up the food chains these plastic particles go."Professor Richard Thompson, Plymouth University:
"There are two concerns from a toxicological point of view. There's the issue that plastics are known to sorb and concentrate chemicals from sea water....And the secondary question is about chemicals that have been introduced into plastics from the time of manufacture, in order to achieve specific qualities of the plastic, its flexibility, or flame retardants or anti-microbials."Oceanographers have recently estimated the amount of plastic in the oceans to be [an astonishingly specific] 268,940 tons.
just over 75% of the 268,940 tonnes of plastic is accounted for by items measuring more than 200mm [just under 8 inches]. Chunks of polystyrene were the most commonly observed large items, but by weight lost fishing gear, such as floats, lines and nets, accounted for most. As for the number of items in the sea, the researchers calculated this to be 5.25 trillion bits of plastic of all sizes. The vast majority, some 4.8 trillion, are microplastics [under 4.75 mm] and these were spread across the world.Are these tiny bits dangerous? From the study by Professor Thompson:
the plastics had been found "in relatively low quantities - one or two pieces per fish - so this is certainly not a risk from the point of view of the human population, people eating those fish, because of course we don't eat the guts normally".But isn't the sheer quantity of microplastics alarming?
Although the number of microplastics appears huge, it was much lower than the researchers expected....The researchers surmise that those [sunlight and weathering] processes include faster-than-expected shredding of already brittle microplastics into particles that are too tiny for their nets to catch, along with particles being washed onto beaches and material finding its way into the stomachs of marine life and thence their predators. There is also growing evidence that some microbes can biodegrade tiny pieces of plastic.The fact that the main problem--if there is one--concerns brittle microplastics shouldn't stop us Californians from banning soft grocery bags. We can't wait for the science to verify what progressive minds already know to be true: plastic is bad.
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| (Image from yourpowercentre.com.au) |
Desire: The key to a grace-filled Advent is to begin by identifying where I am experiencing darkness, despair, captivity and war.....We can’t say “Come, Lord Jesus” with any real meaning unless we have a felt experience of what it is we need. Once we experience our need, then the desire can formulate in our heart to ask for what we need.In other words, a spiritual version of mindfulness.
Focus our attention whenever we can, especially during the “background” times of our day. These are the in between times – in the shower, getting dressed, walking down stairs, getting coffee, driving to work, walking down the hall, doing laundry....Whatever is going on in our minds and hearts during those “background” times can easily be refocused. It takes a little practice and some discipline, but it works.
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| (WSJ graphic) |
Bright colors and unexpected materials abound. “We’re seeing textured grains, exotic skins and even a great needlepoint collection,” said Glen Hoff, director of men’s design at Brooks Brothers.Like pocket watches and fountain pens, this explosion in billfold design could be signaling the last hurrah of a consumer good, as it transitions from the mass market to a high-end niche. Technology is miniaturizing or eliminating everything carried in the wallet.
The trick is staying true to personal taste and lifestyle demands. Risk-takers might embrace patterned leather, while guys who play it safer might see a forest green billfold as enough of a digression from basic brown. A man who works in a so-called creative field can flash a flashier wallet without raising eyebrows than one who toils on Wall Street. (Unless that Wall Streeter is comfortably defiant.)
no big record label wanted anything to do with them. Even after sweeping NBC’s “The Sing-Off” in 2011, the group was dropped by Sony’s Epic Records—which had an option to sign winners. So they started making their own records and simple YouTube videos, putting together quirky a cappella arrangements of popular hits without executives weighing in or pushing them toward a commercial sound.Despite enormous pressure to become more conventional, the five singers stuck to their vision of unadorned music. Through hard work and great talent, they "may be one of the few acts to sell a million copies of a 2014 album this year." Once you sample the product, however, it's no surprise that Pentatonix has caught fire. Talent cannot be ignored.
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| The Chronicle is enclosed in a plastic that our Whole Foods groceries are forbidden to wear. |
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| (Business Week photo) |
I like Stephen Curry. Small, you know, quick, shoots the ball very well. Looks not very strong, but has a strong heart.[Update -12/13: the Warriors won their franchise-record 15th in row Saturday as Curry scored 29 points in a 105-98 victory over the Dallas Mavericks.]
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| Steph Curry with fans in Burlingame in 2012 |
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| Screenshot: Apple Pay was also a snap at Whole Foods |
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| Displayed at Grace Cathedral, the Rainbow World Fund Tree of Hope has over 12,000 origami decorations. |
"As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to fashion your life in accordance with its precepts. You are to love and serve the people among whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor.
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| The Revs. Claire Dietrich Ranna, Rebecca Lee Goldberg, and Annie Pierpoint Mertz |
You are to preach, to declare God's forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God's blessing, to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ's Body and Blood, and to perform the other ministrations entrusted to you.
In all that you do, you are to nourish Christ's people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen to glorify God in this life and in the life to come."
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| Next year's color (examples by Pantone) |
A marsala shade of red will be the in color next year across fashion, makeup and interior design. So says the design consultancy firm Pantone, which picked Marsala as the Color of the Year.Comments: 1) the florid language fits right in with the over-wrought descriptions found in any oenologist's column. 2) a marsala silk tie would be a very practical addition to the wardrobe---no more panicking over spilt red wine.
“Much like the fortified wine that gives Marsala its name, this tasteful hue embodies the satisfying richness of a fulfilling meal, while its grounding red-brown roots emanate a sophisticated, natural earthiness”
“A small handful of people are really off the charts,” says Chantrelle Nielsen, head of customer solutions at VoloMetrix. In studying more than 25 companies, ["people analytics" company] VoloMetrix has found executives who consume more than 400 hours a week of colleagues’ time, “the equivalent of 10 people working full-time every week just to read one manager’s email and attend his or her meetings,” she says.Time drainers:
Common time-wasting habits include copying too many people into emails and overuse of “reply all.” Inviting too many people to meetings is another common mistake, says Michael Mankins, lead author of the study and a Bain partner based in San Francisco. He suggests following the “rule of seven” people at a meeting: Every attendee added to that number reduces the likelihood of making sound decisions by 10%.I laugh at colleagues who "reply all" when they decline meetings and disclose too much personal information about their reasons (a sorry, can't make it is sufficient). But the joke's really on me when I sometimes join a new humorous thread based on those responses.
I don't know about you, but my biggest drain on willpower during any given day is my iPhone 6. It calls to me continuously during the day. Often I need to be focusing on something more important, or it would be socially impolite to check my text messages, or I am driving and it would be dangerous. These situations come up all day long. It's mentally exhausting. The conversation in my head goes like this: "Look at phone. DON'T LOOK AT PHONE! Look at phone. DON'T LOOK AT PHONE!" And so on to infinity.]
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| At the chiropractor's office: self-administered laser treatment |
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| (Brittanica photo) |
The main chemical culprit in nutmeg is called myristicin which forms naturally in the seeds (and in other plants, occurring in trace amounts in carrots). Myristicin belongs to a family of compounds with psychoactive potential that occasionally are used to make much stronger psychotropic drugs.
It has been included in recipes for MMDA. And it is chemically related to another compound, safrole, also found in nutmeg, which is sometimes used in the synthesis of the street drug Ecstasy.
