2007 August : Idiotion


Aug

7

Hot To Trot; Cool As Ice

Posted by Eddie O'Shan at 08:09 | Filed In General | Add a Comment

Ever made a spur of the moment that you later regretted? Wonder why the people around you do such boneheaded things? If you’ve ever been in love, or scared, or hungry, you’ll recognize youself in the informatively headlined Hot and Cold Emotions Make Us Poor Judges by Shankar Vedantam in The Washington Post.

People find it very difficult to imagine how they themselves would behave when strong emotions are involved.

Studies have found that, for some reason, an enormous mental gulf separates “cold” emotional states from “hot” emotional states. When we are not hungry or thirsty or sexually aroused, we find it difficult to understand what effects those factors can have on our behavior. Similarly, when we are excited or angry, it is difficult to think about the consequences of our behavior — outcomes that are glaringly obvious when we are in a cold emotional state.

This sound like a big clue to the origins of our stupid ideas. Time to take up yoga, or meditation, or anger management.

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Aug

3

Scare me harder.

Posted by Eddie O'Shan at 10:43 | Filed In General | Add a Comment

This morning on TV, some news anchor lizard was moaning about the “growing problem” of hazing in schools. And it very well might be a growing problem, but you wouldn’t know it if you analyzed the reports. Here’s the pattern:

  1. Complain about the growing problem
  2. Cite one or two isolated, but egregious, examples
  3. Quote a talking head
  4. Demand that something be done about the “epidemic”.
  5. Rinse and repeat with another random scare when everyone gets bored

Well I’d like to demand that something be done about pompous, parasitic media lizards bombarding the impressionable with balderdash. In fact, I think those baboons should be HAZED!

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