Perhaps as a distraction you would enjoy this 1994 article in which a doctor (? researcher?) re-discovers integration and names it after herself! Because, well. Why not. http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/17/2/152.abstract
The quote implies that silence is typically some desirable, tranquil, meditative time, but is it really? Isn't it just as likely to be awkward or boring?
From now on, everyone will refer to "gravity" as "Halford's Law."
I'd feel better if there was an "interesting" or "informative" clause in there b/c interesting often rumps boring silence for me.
6: See, I was reading "does it improve on the silence" as a loophole. So, it might not be kind or necessary or true. But, hey! It broke that horrible silence.
If I asked myself this I would never say anything. Instead, I ask "Wait, was I annoying?".
Not talking doesn't guarantee that one won't be annoying.
"You just sit there all smug and silent! It's so annoying!"
Some such words have been said to me from time to time.
Does it have to be all of those things or just one of those things?
Annoying blowhards are more likely to yes to any of the four questions, so if anything, the maxim if followed seems likely to increase the ratio of blowhards to non-blowhards speaking.
14: annoying blowhards will always be with us.
6: See, I was reading "does it improve on the silence" as a loophole
It's a pretty big loophole for Doctor Who fans. Almost anything is an improvement on the Silence.
It reminds me of this: http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2012/225/5/1/how_to_live_with_introverts_guide_printable_by_sveidt-d5b09fj.jpg
which I sort of grok but the tone of which sort of offended me, b/c it implies that extroverts are vampires towards introverts, and introverts don't gain anything from extroverts. And it sort of ignored the whole dynamic where an introvert gloms on to a kindly extrovert and doesn't give back but also prevents that extrovert from replenishing themselves with the company of other extroverts. Which is definitely a dynamic I've experienced in the past.
I am flummoxed that heebie objects to the test in the OP while endorsing this.
Me, I continue to believe in the superiority of the Rotary Four-Way Test. For one thing, "is it fair?" strikes me as a more reasonable limit than "is it kind?", which is too restrictive of unkind statements to people who have it coming.
17: Aren't most people some combination of introvert and extrovert? The vampires I know simply have nothing real to offer, whatever the social setting.
"Is it necessary" seems out of place, or maybe just out of order; whatever algorithm this is, shouldn't `necessary' be at the top to short-circuit efficiently?
Would shut this site down, good style.
Before you speak, ask yourself, is itkindfunny, is itnecessaryprovocative, is ittruevaguely plausible, does itimprove on the silenceannoy the fuck out of the trolls?
Didn't heebie make this exact post before?
17: You should draw the reciprocal cartoon, then - how to treat the extrovert in your life.
Extroverts draw power from other people like Superman draws power from the sun. If you block their exposure to others, it weakens their life force, just as shade weakens Superman.
[Funny picture of a group of happy extroverts emitting energy-rays, and a single sad extrovert in the shade of an introvert standing in between.]
19: Rats! Rats! Rats! Thousands! Millions of them! All red-blood! All these will I give you! If you will obey me!
I am flummoxed that heebie objects to the test in the OP while endorsing this.
The difference is - and I hadn't put my finger on it before - the four questions are things that make my life easier, when I implement them. Don't take anything personally? Life gets much easier. Say what you mean and mean what you say? Ditto. I don't use them in order to make the world zenner for everyone else.
This quote tells you to constantly be making the world better for everyone else, by monitoring everything that comes out of your mouth, and fuck that. I want to be a catty bitch and I resent being told not to be one.
Aren't most people some combination of introvert and extrovert?
The distinction always annoys me.
"You should draw _____" is the tragedy of my life. I really can't draw at all. But yeah. There's a lot of languishing that can happen when an extrovert doesn't realize it's not their duty to take care of introverts all the time.
Didn't heebie make this exact post before?
Possibly. Like I said, I come across this quote more often than I'd like to.
27: Me too. And likewise, I enjoy being insulting from time to time. If there were no stupid assholes in the world I probably couldn't do much good.
28 eh, kinda.
I think the reason why the 4 agreements works better than this is that this is too generic, whereas the 4 agreements is clearly for a sort of a seriousness, big picture guideline.
In isolation, I think these are pretty innocuous and potentially even useful.
In the actually-existing world, though, they get my back up immediately. I can't quite figure out why. My current hypothesis is that they seem to assume an equal footing that doesn't exist, either in the power dynamics of any given interaction, OR in the general way that a person approaches the world.
People aren't all socialized in the same way. Some of us (hi!) are much more comfortable assuming that that the world is entitled to hear our opinions on any given thing.
If your working assumption is that you're free to speak, then pausing yourself might in some cases be a helpful check. If your working assumption is that you can't or shouldn't assume a right to speak, then they seem like a pretty problematic roadblock.
Shorter me: Better in theory than practice.
People keep saying "four questions" and I keep thinking Passover because I'm religious like that.
In the actually-existing world, though, they get my back up immediately.
Part of it is that it seems like they miss absolutely everything about what the problem is about who talks when. Blowhards will think the answers are "yes" when they aren't, the sat-upon will think the answers are "no" when they aren't, and then you will wind up with exactly what you have now.
34, 37: The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
Well, you're a woman, so I can see why this would be annoying. ("Why shouldn't I say anything I want if that's how I FEEEEL!")
For not-very-interesting reasons I see it more often than I'd like to.
Oh, I dunno. I'd be interested in knowing how/why you so frequently encounter this annoying quote. I believe this is the first time I've seen it (unless you've mentioned it before? but I've only seen it as cited by you, in other words).
I suppose the quote is meant to encourage a more "mindful" relationship to others? less vanity, more thoughtfulness, and so on. But it reminds me of those horrible and crazy-puritanical dietary rules in What to Expect When You're Expecting ('Before you take a bite of food,' as I recall it, and here I'm paraphrasing from memory, 'Ask yourself: is this going to help my baby? or am I just being a selfish, greedy slob who uses pregnancy as an excuse to indulge in ice cream?' And then they suggest you have half a bagel per month as a special treat. Not a whole bagel, mind you: just a half.)
I once knew a very earnest AP-type mother who would carefully count out 10 almonds per day as her special (but healthy, and protein-packed!) pregnancy "treat." Not 9 almonds, not 11 or 12, and certainly not a handful: there was something about that round 10, the prissiness of it, that irked me to no end. I can totally imagine her posting that "before you speak" quote to her fb page.
You might as well stand outside Cirque de Soleil clumsily juggling three hacky-sacks as come around here and try to troll in the shadow of bob mcmanus.
10 almonds per day as her special (but healthy, and protein-packed!) pregnancy "treat"
Good lord, what was she eating the rest of the time?
The only matzoh available at the nearest store were either the $20-a-box hand-made guys or some bullshit "gluten-free matzo-style squares". WTF.
what was she eating the rest of the time?
She was big on flax seed oil, as I recall. Also, a variety of nut butters, but never ever peanut butter.
She was my first introduction to the world of extreme AP. She refused to vax her kids, because (something about a global conspiracy involving Big Pharma) and "no amount of risk is acceptable for my child." And I didn't "know" her IRL, btw, so for all I know, she was a composite of a caricature. But I honestly believed (and still believe) she was for real. Apparently she lived in Eugene, and was a member of an online cadre of PNW alterna-mummies.
41: it's a friend's email signature tagline.
You must write some loud-ass emails.
it's a friend's email signature tagline.
Oh, wow, really? I guess I thought it was some annoying facebook thing.
Is it meant to be aspirational? or inspirational? or just what? But in any case, it is clearly not directed toward you, or not you personally.
That said, have you thought about responding in kind, with an inspirational/aspirational email signature tagline of your own? Something from Leviticus, for example? And the coney [er, the rock-badger?], because he cheweth the cud, but divideth not the hoof; he is unclean unto you. You could really mess with some heads, with a signature tagline like that.
Biblical verses that would make hilarious e-mail signatures sounds like a good project for an Unfogged thread. And... go!
So would they eat a hyrax in Texas?
This whole thread reminds me of that old joke about Socrates:
One day, a friend of Socrates encountered him in the Agora, and said, "Socrates! Did you know what I heard about one of your students?!"
"Hold on," said Socrates, "I can tell by the expression on your face that you've got some kind of juicy gossip to share, but before you say it, I'd like to ask you some questions, for I would rather hear nothing at all than something spoken wrongly."
"Sure, Socrates, I'm always up for a little dialectic."
"Would you say that it is right to say a thing that ought not be said?"
"Of course not."
"So the only things to be said are those which it is right to say?"
"That would seem to follow."
"What, then, makes a thing right to say?"
"Well, it is a right thing to speak the truth, Socrates."
"Okay, then, do you yourself know that what you are about to tell me is true?"
"No, I suppose not. It's just hearsay."
"And yet you wish to say it anyway, not knowing whether it is right or wrong to do so."
"You seem to have me at a loss, Socrates."
"Not so fast! Would you not also say that something that might or might not be true can still be worth saying if it causes the hearer to become better? In short, that it can be worth saying, even if we are unsure of its truth, so long as we believe that the listener will thus become better?"
"How could it be otherwise?"
"Are you about to say something that would make me become better?"
"I... I suppose not."
"Well, then, there is still one more way in which a thing that might not be true, and will make the hearer more good, could still be worth saying."
"What is that, Socrates?"
"Well, while the best sort of speech is about the good and the true, there is also a sort of speech about how to get to the Piraeus from the Agora, or how to hold a sword and shield when defending one's city. Surely we would not want to forbid men from speaking of these things?"
"Surely not."
"And yet most of the time someone speaks in this manner, they do not know for certain that what they say is entirely true, for example that the route described is in fact the best possible way to get to the Agora."
"Indeed, many men are deceived as to what the best practical advice might be."
"And it is also not morally edifying, unless you would say that the man who knows how to get to the Piraeus has more goodness in him than the man who is unfamiliar with that particular route."
"That would seem absurd."
"Then it seems we have discovered a third kind of permissible utterance - the useful. Is what you are about to tell me likely to prove convenient and permit me to accomplish something worth doing?"
"Hmm... Not that I can think of."
"Then if what you want to tell me is neither true nor edifying nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?"
"Indeed Socrates, you have saved me from doing a thing that ought not to be done, and for that I am grateful."
Conversations like these are why Socrates was always held in such high regard as a man and as a philosopher, and never found out that Plato was banging his wife.
Women. You can't live with them, you can't.. Wait, there's cake? Where's the cake?
It's obnoxious advice because if you're a woman, as I suspect heebie-geebie is, it's the sort of guff you hear all the time as you're socialised to keep quiet and let the men talk.
38. Some Irishman wrote a poem about that.
Biblical verses that would make hilarious e-mail signatures sounds like a good project for an Unfogged thread. And... go!
"And they shall take a cloth of blue, and cover the candlestick of the light, and his lamps, and his tongs, and his snuffdishes, and all the oil vessels thereof, wherewith they minister unto it: And they shall put it and all the vessels thereof within a covering of badgers' skins, and shall put it upon a bar." (Numbers 4:9-10)
"Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful" (Romans 1:29-31)
Scarcely had I passed them by when I found my beloved! I held onto him tightly and would not let him go until I brought him to my mother's house, to the bedroom chamber of the one who conceived me. (Song of Solomon 3:4)
Terrors are turned loose on me; they drive away my honor like the wind, and like a cloud my deliverance has passed away.
"Whoever quarries stones will be hurt by them; and whoever splits logs will be endangered by them." (Ecclesiastes 10:9)
Exodus 33:23
And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.
"One day Elisha was passing through Shunem, where a wealthy woman lived, who urged him to have a meal. So whenever he passed that way, he would stop there for a meal." (2 King 4:8)
This one could work as a mouseover text: "These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words" (Jude 1:16).
Psalm 137:9.
Not just for litigators, academics can use this one as well to signal that they are not to be trifled with in departmental politics.
You have killed many people in this city; you have filled its streets with corpses.
And another man dies in bitterness of soul, never having tasted anything good.
Exodus 6:12
how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips?
Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
And another favorite from Ecclesiastes:
All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full: unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.
And when he hath made her to drink the water, then it shall come to pass, that, if she be defiled, and have done trespass against her husband, that the water that causeth the curse shall enter into her, and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thigh shall rot: and the woman shall be a curse among her people.
And if the woman be not defiled, but be clean; then she shall be free, and shall conceive seed.
Numbers 5:27-28
And Ehud put forth his left hand, and took the dagger from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly: And the haft also went in after the blade; and the fat closed upon the blade, so that he could not draw the dagger out of his belly; and the dirt came out.
- Judges 3:21-22.
Her father said, "I was sure that you had rejected her; so I gave her to your companion. Is not her younger sister prettier than she? Why not take her instead?" (Judges 15:2)
God I love the Book of Judges! A moral tale for every occasion.
To be fair, the father is supposed to be a bad guy, whose inaccurate daughter assessment is what sends Samson off on a justified rampage.
Using live foxes as incendiary devices IIRC.
Oh, my god. Self-propelled incendiary devices!
"And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire." (Revelation 17:16)
1 Samuel 6:17 : And these are the golden emerods* which the Philistines returned for a trespass offering unto the LORD...
*Hemorrhoids.
"My bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth" (Lamentations 2:11)
I have a sister who likes to quote the sort of happy horseshit in the original post. She's one of the happiest, most successful, most balanced people I know, which makes it even more annoying.
I have a sister who likes to quote the sort of happy horseshit in the original post. She's one of the happiest, most successful, most balanced people I know, which makes it even more annoying.
80: Call it "the Ned Flanders phenomenon".
For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll. And if you give the scroll to someone who can read, and say, "Read this, please," they will answer, "I can't; it is sealed." (Isaiah 29:11)
41: The What to Expect book is the worst pregnancy book in the world, and it's pretty clear that the author is taking out her pregnarexia on the rest of women. Sorry being pregnant made you feel fat, dear author, but I'm not going on a goddamn diet while I'm pregnant because of your body image issues.
80: Probably nothing for it other than to go all Ecclesiastes on her ass. "All is vanity and a striving after wind." It works for me*.
*Although I recognize that as just more vanity and striving, because I'm a feminist deep down I get it.
Nanao Sakaki's version is a lot better:
"If you have time to chatter, Read books.
If you have time to read, Walk into mountain, desert and ocean.
If you have time to walk, Sing songs and dance.
If you have time to dance, Sit quietly, you happy, lucky idiot."
57: Huh, I didn't know Paul had been to Omaha.
Acts 20:9 - On the boringness of the apostles
"A young man named Eutychus, who was sitting in the window, began to sink off into a deep sleep while Paul talked still longer. Overcome by sleep, he fell to the ground three floors below and was picked up dead."
88: Nice, literally bored to death.
Speaking of boring, my mom just claimed that she never gets bored. She asked me if I ever got bored and I said yes, but probably less often than most people.
89: But Paul "fell upon him" and brought him back to life.
re: 90
I sat opposite someone on a train journey. Oxford to Glasgow. I got on with a couple of books, an MP3 player, and a newspaper. Stuff to keep me occupied. An older lady got on and sat down opposite me and then just sat doing nothing for 8 hours. She was either some kind of deep Buddhist master, engaged in contemplation of the infinite, or there was nothing there, because I'd have been chewing my own face off with boredom. It was amazing. I was super-curious.
90: Wow! That's like a superpower! Does she have a job?
She never has a boring task that just has to get done?
I'm bored right now, because grading is boring, frex.
79: "My bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth"
Similar to the more dramatic version of Judas' death from Acts 1:18: Now this man obtained a field with the reward of his iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.
I appear to have a whole section of the class who cheated off each other and got the same wildly wrong answers for the entire first page of the test. So they're both failing and pissing me off. Fuckheads can't even cheat right.
If I have absolutely nothing to do I don't get bored because I can entertain myself with interesting thoughts. It's the level of activity that makes thinking freely impossible but fails to completely suck up my full mental bandwidth which drives me up the wall. Grading, tracing cables, simple machining, and those sorts of tasks all bore me silly unless I listen to an audiobook or podcast while doing them.
re: 98
Shit, yes. In my defence, I'm not sleeping much.
re: 100
Sometimes I can do that, but I couldn't do it for eight hours. There was a time during thesis-hell when I'd make time out to just sit for X minutes/hours a day doing nothing to give myself time to think productively. But usually I get bored quite quickly.
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My coworker is a member of the chorus for [ local famous symphony ]; she was onstage last night for a performance of a very long, mostly uninterrupted symphony; her job was to stand there and sing for three minutes or so. Sometime during the last movement she fainted and cracked her head as she fell of the risers, stopping the symphony. She is fine, but totally mortified, especially now that she has seen that the lede of the review of the performance in the paper is all about her.
Man, that has to suck.
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100 is me exactly. I can daydream extensively and keep myself entertained, but low-level concentration drives me nuts.
(Also I can't handle auditory competition and still concentrate, which probably ruins a lot of things for me.)
Sometime during the last movement she fainted and cracked her head as she fell of the risers, stopping the symphony.
"Here's my last movement!"
102: Yeah, I think I'm pretty good at amusing myself with my own thoughts, but I'm sure I've never done it for 8 hours straight. It might be a fun challenge, if I could get my co-workers and family to cooperate.
91: But Paul "fell upon him" and brought him back to life.
There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.
It's like when I hear about retreats where no one is allowed to talk for the whole seven days or whatever. Part of me is intrigued by the challenge (but mostly if I had a seven day vacation in the mountains, I think I'd already be pretty happy, so we might as well chat.)
I love daydreaming and get some of my best ideas that way. But I am like togolosh when it comes to low-level boring tasks -- I need something for my brain to glom on to. (It works the reverse way too -- eg
I got a lot of grief from my family for being on Twitter so much during the basketball game I went to last weekend. But the thing is that I was watching the game every second they were playing. It was the horrendously boring "30 second" (actually 2-3 minutes due to TV) time-outs that were killing me.
By the third or fourth timeout, I had read or looked at everything visible in the stadium to see. The dance teams were totally uninteresting to me, and the people-watching from my vantage point was limited to say the least. Ten years ago I would have been wanting to scribble notes or read a book -- now I have Twitter.
Whoops. Should be: (It works the reverse way too -- eg I prefer to be folding laundry or something when watching TV, or kneading bread when listening to the Phillies game.)
Aren't you supposed to talk about the game during timeouts? I mean, I'd be on twitter too, because basketball bores me rigid, but I sort of see their point.
One of the most irritating things about being deaf is the inability to do one thing while listening to something else. TV in the background, audiobooks, etc.
I sort of can listen to music I guess.
It's too easy to find wacky Bible verses from the Old Testament. The New Testament is more about odd phrasings and non sequiturs.
I like 1st Peter 2:17.
"Honor everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honor the emperor."
Go ahead! Honor everyone. Why not. Better safe than sorry.
Aren't you supposed to talk about the game during timeouts?
Well, at a baseball game I'd have been doing just that (between innings). But I have nothing to say about basketball, because I know virtually nothing about it, and I was seated between people who were willing to spend some time explaining things to me but were not there to do Basketball 101 with a newbie.
Honor the emperor.
Solid advice. But not, presumably, to the extent of sacrificing on the altar of Roma et Augustus.
115. Fair play then, they have no ground for complaint.
There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.
Not to mention the distinction between the little death and the big one (cf 91, or does that only work for apostles?).
She was mostly talking about things like uninterrupted stretches of time with nothing going on, during which she seems to be able to easily amuse herself (which I also do, so that part I understand). I'm not sure about doing tedious tasks, which she does have to do sometimes. She's a kindergarten teacher, which is kind of a "never a dull moment" job with very little downtime, but she does have to do lesson plans and report cards, which she finds tedious and always puts off until the last moment. I'm not sure if she considers herself "bored" while doing stuff like that, though.
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I'm commenting from an airplane! Whee!
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I'm commenting from a chair ex cathedra!
Also I'm glad essear took the time to italisize the exclamation mark. It's the little things.
In January it's so nice,
When slipping on the italianice,
To italicize hot exclamation marks.
The What to Expect book is the worst pregnancy book in the world
It's really awful, isn't it? Bossy, fussy, faux-friendly and deeply patronizing 'advice from an expert,' with a constant emphasis on what might go wrong and an obsessive interest in quality control. And it has managed to gain a reputation as the best pregnancy book in the world.
obsessive interest in quality control
"What to Expect When You're Expecting: A Lean Six-Stigma Black Belt"
I signed up for the What to Expect e-newsletter, both the main one and the dads version. I think I've mentioned it before, but the W2E dad is the most pitiable, uncomprehending, priapic creature that has ever walked the earth. "Her boobs are growing... but don't touch! They might be sore." "A massage would be appreciated... but she might be too nauseous to fuck you." "The second trimester is the 'golden trimester' because you might finally get your willy touched, you sick, broken beast." Some of those are paraphrases.
Ask yourself, am I about to be an annoyance to my beautiful wife?
The W2E dad is a sad clown, to be sure.
What to Expect When Your Wife is Expanding is an actual spinoff of the original W2E. With "What Your Wife May Look Like" and "What Your Wife Will Be Complaining About" as central organizing principles of this bestselling monthly guide. A 1950s-era "Take my wife -- please" gag line is apparently the leitmotif of the new W2E new dad.
W2E dad is also confused and upset that his wife is so fat now. "She is growing a whole other person in there, so try not to dwell too much on how repulsive her whale-like form is to you right now."
It helps him to be told things like "She may be sensitive about her extra weight. Encourage her to get exercise and keep healthy food around the house, but don't directly mention what a fat-ass she's become."
When search history attacks current search. (At least I presume that's what happened.)
I googled What to Expect When Your Wife is Expanding and there were five suggestions in the "People also search for" section on the right. Four "expecting" books and then Edward Gorey's The Hapless Child. Well-played.
The worrying thing about 5 is the list of citations.
W2E dad is bad, but W2E is not the only one with this set of stereotypes. The hospital's childbirth class instructor seemed to presume that the poor dads just had to be dragged there because why else would they be preparing for the birth of their child? They must prefer watching football. (On a Tuesday night?)
