I read Blink by Malcom Gladwell a few months ago and didn’t like it much. I was hoping to find some insight to my chronic indecision and a way to chip away at it. I also love psychology and like to read about how the mind works. Unfortunately, i felt that the book contradicted itself, gave no usable advice and was generally quite overrated.
When we were at Powell’s in Portland at the beginning of the month, i saw that How We Decide was on the bestseller list. I read the blurb and thought the book sounded like what i had hoped Blink would be. I picked it up from the library last week, and i’ve only read fifty pages and jumped around to a couple of interesting-looking bits of the book, but i’m pretty sure i know where it’s going.
Both books start each point with a dramatic story about a person who had to make a tough decision, then describe what was really going on in his or her brain at the time of decision-making, and finally illustrate the phenomenon with quotes from scientists who have done studies on it. Each book has a story about a decision-maker in the armed forces, a sports enthusiast who just knows what to look for, and a homicide that shouldn’t have happened. The moral of the story? Trust your emotions! No, wait – don’t trust your emotions!
Although i don’t plan to finish How We Decide, i do think it may be more insightful than Blink. My attention was caught by one part in particular which describes how Christians and Republicans have been shown in studies to willfully ignore information that contradicts their point of view. In the study cited, Christians actually chose not to turn off static that was garbling a message debunking their faith, for example, while the atheist test subjects quickly pushed the button that turned the static off. In another study, Republicans failed to recall positive changes that took place under the Clinton administration. There might have been a bit about Democrats doing the same sort of thing, but um, if there was i honestly can’t remember.
For the most part, though, it seems to me that Jonah Lehrer just read Blink and thought, “Wow, this book stinks and Gladwell is getting filthy rich off it! I think i’ll just re-write it and cash in on his idea!”
I didn’t get anything out of either book, really, except for a few accounts of interesting psychological studies shrouded in a lot of journalistic fluff. This CNN article, 10 Ways to Be a Better Thinker, succinctly sums up the scraps of advice in Blink and How We Decide and adds a couple of insights of its own. I have come away from these books with a brilliant idea, though – i think i’ll read The Tipping Point and just re-write it, and voila! I’ll be a New York Times bestseller.
Hey everybody, i’m twenty-four today!! Nathan promised me that there was a lot of knowledge to gain upon turning 24, and i do believe i’m feeling wiser already.
Twenty-four has some pretty big shoes to fill, actually. Twenty-three was an awesome year for me: meeting the love of my life and spending many happy days hanging out with him, moving to our sweet loft downtown and getting to work from home. I’ll miss that last one a lot when it’s over. 
In the last few months i realized that there are quite a few songs in my music library that mention being twenty-three. I tweeted about them yesterday, but i’m not sure anyone was paying attention, so here is the list:
Blink 182 – What’s My Age Again?
And that’s about the time she walked away from me
Nobody likes you when you’re twenty-three
And you still act like you’re in freshman year
What the hell is wrong with me?
My friends say i should act my age
What’s my age again?
On the day that I turned 23
I was curled up underneath a dogwood tree
When suddenly a girl
Her skin the color of a pearl
She wandered aimlessly, but she didn’t seem to see
She was listening for the angels just like me
Amazing still it seems
I’ll be 23
I won’t always love what I’ll never have
I won’t always live in my regrets
Look good in that red dress
I bet the boyfriend’s happy
Your face is scarred with age
You’re twenty-three but, how can that be?
Still hooked on cellophane
Killing time with Gin and lime
Each second numbs the pain
Love’s just another rhyme.
A decade ago
I never thought I would be at twenty-three
on the verge of spontaneous combustion
Woe is me
But i guess that it comes with the territory
An ominous landscape of never-ending calamity
None of these lyrics really reflect my experience of being 23 (except maybe the gin and lime bit), but i’ve always thought it fun to listen to songs that mention the age i am currently. So, the search for songs about being 24 begins…
We’ve been home for a week now, so i suppose it’s about time i blog about our vacation. Nathan and i flew out to Oregon together on the 28th of July to visit various friends and family members of mine and to look at Portland a little more closely.
We awoke at 4am in Des Moines to catch our 6am flight and arrived in Portland by 10:40am local time. It took about two hours to figure out how to get to the rental car place and get our wheels, but it was worth the $200 or so to sacrifice just picking it up at the airport. It was about 106 degrees by then and we were tired, so we headed to the Kennedy School b&b to have a drink and relax before checking in at 3pm.
Kennedy School is actually an old elementary school that has been turned into a b&b and hangout, complete with a heated sitting pool, a restaurant, three bars, conference rooms, and a movie theater with couches for seats. We had so much been looking forward to the heated outdoor sitting pool that we decided to take a dip despite the heat. The pool was a little cooler than the air at 102 degrees, but, being water and such, it felt warmer. This made getting out and sitting on the edge of the pool feel absolutely wonderful, and thanks to the heat we pretty much had the whole thing to ourselves.
We had some famous McMenamin’s burgers and beer and watched Year One in the theater (it was pretty bad, but i did laugh). We were too tired to check out the bars and instead had dessert and went to bed after the movie, having been up for something like 22 hours with only brief naps.
The next day we headed for the coast. Cannon Beach was so foggy that we couldn’t tell from the road where Haystack Rock was. We walked on the beach watching gulls and people on fun cycles drift in and out of our field of vision, and were just about to turn around and give up when i started to see the faint outline of one of the smaller rocks. We kept walking and sure enough, Haystack Rock came into vision.
There were a lot of tourists checking out the tide pools, having come to the coast to escape the heat inland.
We continued South along the coast and Nathan started to feel sick, so i took over driving. Gradually we fought our way through the traffic to Yachats, and reached the beach house where my sis Amy, her son Harper and her bf John were waiting for us. The next day we had a full house when my old friend Bonnie, my Dad, my bro Dustin and his friend Ryan all joined us. We had a lovely dinner and then made s’mores over a bonfire on the beach.
The next day Dad took us by some scenic spots that were unfortunately mostly socked in with fog. We saw some sea lions though, and Honeyman park was beautiful as ever. We had lunch in Florence (not at Mo’s) and bought some candy and ice cream for old time’s sake. Then it was on to Eugene.
Sea Lions, from a safe distance.
In Eugene we went to the Saturday Market and went up on Spencer’s Butte and down to the park below. We got some sushi with Bonnie and her new hubby Brian, and took a stroll around their new neighborhood. The next day, Dad and Mary took us along the McKenzie river into the Cascades and showed us a really lovely resort with English gardens and some popular swimming and rafting spots. We also went to Sahalie Falls, and Nathan and i climbed up to the top of the falls and then hiked down to the next waterfall downriver. The water was ridiculously blue and enticing.
For our last two nights, we returned to Portland and went to some recommended eateries and shopping districts, including Jam on Hawthorne, Powell’s books, NE 23rd, Montage and Genie’s Cafe. We didn’t explore the night life much, but i got a pretty heavy dose of that back in October with Dustin anyway. 
All in all it was a nice getaway, and i had a great time visiting and exploring with Nathan.
Now that everyone has gotten all pissed off about my last post, my bitching has once again been vindicated by a reversal of the bad idea at hand (see also: the Tropicana redesign and subsequent reversal after my complaint). The Des Moines Register reported today that DART will replace the Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers’ ad campaign on their buses as a result of meeting with the group earlier this week, getting a lot of complaints from people like me and being pestered by the The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa about the legality of removing the signs.
So Iowa is still a pretty cool place i guess, except for our governor Culver, who unfortunately sided with the people who were “disturbed” by the ads. That’s probably the most disappointing part of this whole controversy.
I’ll write later about the vacation i just took, but i’d like to first talk about what i have perceived to be a very cold “welcome back to Iowa.” I was feeling quite proud of my state when gay marriage became legalized a few months back, but today i feel pretty ashamed of this place. How backward are we that we have to silence a certain group’s point of view even when it doesn’t threaten another’s?
The Des Moines Register reported yesterday that some signs which had been commissioned by the Iowa Atheists & Freethinkers to appear on local DART buses were taken down on Tuesday after being up for only three days because so many people were calling DART to complain about them. The signs simply read, “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone.”
I want someone to tell me how that message is offensive in any way. It’s as if believers are tortured by the mere notion that non-believers exist and might have the HUMAN emotion of loneliness, or the desire to identify with other people who feel the same way. Do you just want to think of us as inhuman or deny our existence altogether? Because that’s the only explanation i can fathom for someone wanting these signs to be taken down.
I see the “-God” billboards all the time. I see the “Babies are a gift from God!” signs all over the place. There are church marquees and hand-made “Jesus Loves You!” signs by the Iowa roadsides and bible verses on my shopping bags and cross necklaces on everyone and “In God We Trust” on my money, but i don’t have the audacity to demand that it all be removed from my sight. It’s obvious that i’m a member of a minority, and i think it’s sad that atheists can’t even reach out to one another and talk amongst ourselves because believers see that sort of public communication as an attempt to convert EVERYONE to our way of thinking. As if believers weren’t trying to do just that!
Look, i would love to be able to express the way i see things clearly enough to open someone’s eyes to it, but that is something i don’t really attempt because i feel it’s beyond my reach. Atheists aren’t trying to convert people, we are merely standing up to be counted, mainly to feel a little less alienated and alone. We just want to know that other people like us exist and let them know that they are accepted, if only by the others like us. Some groups in other states have attempted to also let the general public know that “atheist” does not necessarily mean “immoral person” (see photo above), and their efforts have been met with an identical outpouring of fear and blindness. It’s not an anti-Christian or anti-God or anti-anything message. It’s just a statement! “You don’t have to believe in God to be a good person” – how is that threatening?? Most people don’t even believe it, so why can’t they just laugh it off and go about their charmed, eternal lives?