July 2010
31 posts
“your kid doesn’t want to be around you that much. No one does. This isn’t because you’re a bad person but because you’re an ordinary person. You are not such a unique, creative, intelligent or even interesting person that the kid benefits from constant exposure to you. When you have something to offer, maximize and concentrate that time, and then get the hell out of the way. This advice is quite practical. Parents often don’t know what to do with their kids, so they overwhelm them with their attention instead. What no parent realizes is that the vast majority of that overinvolved time is spent irritated. Add it up yourself. Nagging, bored, looking at your mobile. The obvious message is that you’re not satisfied.”
—The Last Psychiatrist: Why Parents Hate Parenting
“If they were to make a movie about my life (just the thought of which scares me), these would be the scenes they’d leave on the cutting-room floor. “We can leave this episode out,” the editor would explain. “It’s not bad, but it’s sort of ordinary and doesn’t amount to much.” Those kinds of memories—unpretentious, commonplace. But for me, they’re all meaningful and valuable. As each of these memories flits across my mind, I’m sure I unconsciously smile, or give a slight frown. Commonplace they might be, but the accumulation of these memories has led to one result: me.”
—What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
“But as we know in Manchester, appearances are always decieving- dark doors in dark alleyways turn out to be entrances to pretty drinking dens, the Northern Quarter never ends up as good a night out as it promises to be and the hobo with the hi-tops turns out to be the owner of a rather successful graphic design company.”
—james b.’s Profile
“Nice report on research from Scientific American: Setting your mind on a goal may be counterproductive. Instead think of the future as an open question. They split people into two groups for a series of experiments. One group was primed for willpower (eg by having to write out the phrase “I will” multiple times); the other for curiosity (eg writing “Will I?”). The groups primed for curiosity went on to significantly outperform the wilful group. There’s a lesson there for control freaks of all stripes. As the post says, “t indicates that those with questioning minds were more intrinsically motivated to change. They were looking for a positive inspiration from within, rather than attempting to hold themselves to a rigid standard.”
—Johnnie Moore’s Weblog: Willpower and its limits
Play
“People will choose what denim they want to wear, and they will choose what newspaper they want to buy, and they want other people to be aware of that, too. Until an iPad is backlit, no one will have any idea that you read Der Spiegel or the Guardian or whatever.”
—Tyler Brûlé, Media Maverick - BusinessWeek
Get it? "Fockers" sounds a lot like "Fuckers"! They did that deliberately so that every time someone unnecessarily says "Fockers", it kind of sounds like they're saying "Fuckers", resulting in all sorts of contexual hilarity.
(via themattsmith)
