Category: People & Human Interest

Procrastination Can Be Good

NewMexiKen is reposting this item from 2005 for those of you who haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.

An essay on Good and Bad Procrastination from Paul Graham:

So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well.

There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I’d argue, is good procrastination.

Key quote: “What’s the best thing you could be working on, and why aren’t you?”

Yank

So, in a comment, Avelino says: “So, no posts today thus far. Is this the appropriate time to start noting the lack of activity?”

Short answer: Yes.

Longer answer: I had a wisdom tooth pulled this morning and the tooth won.

Between pain and drugs this afternoon I am choosing drugs.

How I thought I’d become a footnote to history

In 1976, the House of Representatives established a Select Committee on Assassinations to investigate the murders of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Among the things the Committee sought was a thorough examination of all the photographic evidence in the Kennedy murder. At that time it took a mainframe computer to do what probably could be done on a personal computer today — that is, scan, enhance and thoroughly analyze the images. The image enhancement would be done at the Aerospace Corporation in California. The agreement with the National Archives, which had custody of the Kennedy assassination evidence in Washington, stipulated that the photographic records must be in the custody of the Archives or an Archives employee at all times. For two days I was that employee.

The only copy of the photographs, film, x-rays, etc., was brought by courier to California and put in a safe within a secure area at the National Archives facility in Laguna Niguel, where I worked at the time. The image enhancement was being done in El Segundo near Los Angeles International Airport, some 60 miles away. Each day we opened the safe, verified that each item was present, put the briefcase and “suit” box (think of a four-inch high pizza box) into the trunk of a rented car and made the commute.

That first day (it was Easter week 1978) I followed the procedure carefully even taking the materials with me to lunch, thinking to myself “if the people around me only knew what I had.” It was fascinating to see the enhancements and hear the analysis of the few experts working on the project and sworn to secrecy (as was I). Late in the afternoon I packed everything back up, put it in the trunk, returned to the office and locked it all in the safe. I remember thinking on the way home, this stuff would be worth a million dollars or more on the black market. Am I being followed? Am I in danger?

The second morning we began the inventory. Everything was there, of course. Except — EXCEPT! — on one x-ray, right in the middle of the damaged part of President Kennedy’s skull, there was a bubble. I didn’t remember any damage to any of the x-rays. Now it looked as if this one x-ray had been too close to heat and the image had been burned. How did this happen? Where had I put the box that this could have happened? Was the computer console in the lab too hot? Was there a problem with the exhaust in the rental car that the trunk floor got excessively hot? My god, somehow I’ve damged the only copy of a piece of evidence in the most important murder of the 20th century. My boss was visibly shaken. I was hyper-ventilating. My career is over. I’m a footnote in the Kennedy conspiracy books.

There was nothing to do but put the briefcase and box in the car (inside with me this time) and make the drive to El Segundo. It was a lonely 90 minutes. Once there I trudged in and immediately confessed my crime.

“Oh, that. Some doctor got it too close to a lamp years ago.”

[The photographic and forensic experts I talked to were convinced the photographic evidence at least was consistent with one shooter — Oswald. As a reward for my participation in this project I was later permitted to see some other the other evidence including Oswald’s clothing (blood stained) and his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.]

The Last Tour

[Park Ranger] Ken Phillips got a photograph of Travis Twiggs. “I’ve made a lot of wanted posters,” he said. “But this was the first time I had to crop out the President.” The bulletins that went out over the wires gave both Travis and Will a “violent criminal history,” although before the carjacking neither had any such thing. A local lawman told me that he’d been informed they were extremely heavily armed, although all they had was the .38—“and in Arizona that’s not even close.” The Twiggs brothers might be bent on committing “suicide by cop,” according to one alert. That possibility seems closer to the mark. The two men were certainly leaving the world as they had known it. The lingering, punishing question is why. Travis, who had two young daughters whom he doted on, might have believed that he was back in Iraq. Will’s thinking was more opaque. They drove into the night, and there is no record that they ever spoke again to anyone but each other. Two days later, they were dead.

The above from a fascinating, scary, sad and important story published in the September 29th New Yorker.

Strongly recommended.

Early Action

A fun essay from Joel Stein on early voters. One excerpt:

But I was interested less in which candidate Hamilton County will vote for than in finding out what kind of person votes a month before the election. To my shock, none of them told me they were voting early “to avoid old people.” Equally surprising, no one found that question to be strange. The voters were, however, dubious about my professionalism when I asked whether “people sometimes call them anal”–though 36% said yes. Also, 36% had already done some Christmas shopping and their taxes, 44% applied early admission to college, and one-third had stamps on them. Two even said they don’t carry stamps because they pay all their bills online. One woman was saving her I VOTED sticker so she could wear it on Election Day. If all Americans were like early voters, we’d have a perfectly run country that would get beat up by all the other countries.

Read it all and be sure to read his results, too.

What Your House Says About Your Politics

I’m not talking big house vs. small house — that’s too easy, and simplistic. A new study in The Journal of Political Psychology looks at the state of your house — are you messy or a neatnik? — and what that says about your politics.

mental_floss Blog has the story. Here’s the underlying report from Scientific American.

NewMexiKen was mostly attracted to this whole thing by the discussion we once had here and the Berenstain Bears book cover.

So true

In the book that Pallop was reading by Kahneman and Tversky, for example, there is a description of a simple experiment, where a group of people were told to imagine that they had three hundred dollars. They were then given a choice between (a) receiving another hundred dollars or (b) tossing a coin, where if they won they got two hundred dollars and if they lost they got nothing. Most of us, it turns out, prefer (a) to (b). But then Kahneman and Tversky did a second experiment. They told people to imagine that they had five hundred dollars, and then asked them if they would rather (c) give up a hundred dollars or (d) toss a coin and pay two hundred dollars if they lost and nothing at all if they won. Most of us now prefer (d) to (c). What is interesting about those four choices is that, from a probabilistic standpoint, they are identical. They all yield an expected outcome of four hundred dollars. Nonetheless, we have strong preferences among them. Why? Because we’re more willing to gamble when it comes to losses, but are risk averse when it comes to our gains. That’s why we like small daily winnings in the stock market, even if that requires that we risk losing everything in a crash.

From a good 2002 article by Malcolm Gladwell profiling the investor Nassim Taleb.

Worth repeating

“Happiness among American men and women reaches its estimated minimum at approximately ages 49 and 45 respectively.”

National Bureau of Economic Research

First posted here one year ago. Original link via Paul Krugman.

By the way, I’m feeling less gloomy since I burned my gloom in the Zozobra in Santa Fe a month ago. Really! Of course, it could be the recent visit with 5/6ths of The Sweeties® and the upturn in the polls for Obama, but I actually think it’s the Zozobra too.

On the road again

Debby, official younger sister of NewMexiKen, has graced these pages from the earliest days with her comments and from time-to-time her stories. You may remember not long ago reading about her day on horseback rounding up cattle.

Anyway for family reasons — among others, she just became a grandma — Debby has moved back to Arizona. And she loves being out in the country. How far out in the country you ask. Would you believe she just moved into a town and got P.O. Box 5?

100 Photographs That Changed the World

NewMexiKen posts this every September 12, so no need to be different this — the sixth — year. Here’s what I wrote two years ago:

View 28 of the 100 Photographs that Changed the World, originally from Life magazine. NewMexiKen has posted this link each year on this date and I hesitated this morning. I mean, why repeat it for the fourth time?

I then went and looked at the 28 photos and said to myself, “Oh, that’s why.”

Mindset List

This month, almost 2 million first-year students will head off to college campuses around the country. Most of them will be about 18 years old, born in 1990 when headlines sounded oddly familiar to those of today: Rising fuel costs were causing airlines to cut staff and flight schedules; Big Three car companies were facing declining sales and profits; and a president named Bush was increasing the number of troops in the Middle East in the hopes of securing peace. However, the mindset of this new generation of college students is quite different from that of the faculty about to prepare them to become the leaders of tomorrow.

Beloit College Mindset List

Here’s some of the 60:

For these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Freddy Krueger have always been dead.

Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team.

They have always been looking for Carmen Sandiego.

GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.

Coke and Pepsi have always used recycled plastic bottles.

Shampoo and conditioner have always been available in the same bottle.

Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.

Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.

Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.

All have had a relative–or known about a friend’s relative–who died comfortably at home with Hospice.

Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.

The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.

Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.

Schools have always been concerned about multiculturalism.

We have always known that “All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”

There have always been gay rabbis.

IBM has never made typewriters.

McDonald’s and Burger King have always used vegetable oil for cooking french fries.

The Tonight Show has always been hosted by Jay Leno and started at 11:35 EST.

Authorities have always been building a wall along the Mexican border.

Lenin’s name has never been on a major city in Russia.

Employers have always been able to do credit checks on employees.

Personal privacy has always been threatened.

Caller ID has always been available on phones.

Living wills have always been asked for at hospital check-ins.

The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same starting quarterback.

They never heard an attendant ask “Want me to check under the hood?”

Iced tea has always come in cans and bottles.

Soft drink refills have always been free.

They have never known life without Seinfeld references from a show about “nothing.”

The Hubble Space Telescope has always been eavesdropping on the heavens.

98.6 F or otherwise has always been confirmed in the ear.

Off-shore oil drilling in the United States has always been prohibited.

Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.

Kos ♥ Schweitzer

The Montana State House is a relic from a bygone era — it sports little security. Really, nothing more than two bored looking cops at a desk in the center of the main floor rotunda. They didn’t even look up as we walked in. We followed someone’s instructions to the governor’s office, where you could just walk in. [Governor] Schweitzer tells the story of the tourists he once caught in his office eating lunch at his conference table. They had a great conversation until the tourists asked Schweitzer what he did for a living.

kos has more Schweitzer stories.