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- Jen: I like the Han Solo quote. Stole it for my Facebook page. :)...
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Oct
6
Coffee craziness and hot steam.
Posted by Eddie O'Shan at 18:45 | Filed In General | Add a Comment
Economists and stock analysts are always trying to place monetary values on abstract behaviours and ideals but here’s a great commentary about what you pay for when you go to Starbucks, or to one of its hipster overwhelmed competitors.
…you are paying a vast premium for the heating of your milk — but not the milk itself. The main ingredient is a double shot of espresso, and that costs $1.85. My Starbucks doesn’t charge for a single pump of vanilla, so that’s free. And at the sugar-and-napkins counter, you can pour all the milk into your cup that you like. So that’s free, too.
The $1.37 premium is therefore just for the labor of steaming the milk, which takes about 20 seconds.
He makes the point that we do it for the shared experience, the imaginary sense of community. We’re all still savages around the campfire, trying to reinforce the survival bonds to our tribe. Here’s the link so you can read it in the author’s own words.
MSN Money - Starbucks’ genius blends community, caffeine
I raise my paper cup to you!
Oct
4
Music and the brain.
Posted by Eddie O'Shan at 12:10 | Filed In Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Wired has an interview with Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain about the experiences of different people in response to music. He has some amazing stories.
Let me play something for you. This is Woody Geist, who I describe in my new book. He’s had Alzheimer’s for 40 years, and is profoundly disabled in almost every way, but is a member of an a cappella group called the Grunyons. After I’d written about him, he sang professionally again, and it was beautiful, though people were afraid he’d be lost before the performance. Ten seconds afterwards, he had no memory of it.
He’s a bit of an advocate for music and art, for the flowering of creativity that seems to get lost in a consumerist, corporate world. Here’s his take on smelling the roses:
All of us are apt to get a little desiccated if we don’t make a point of holding on to the delights of art and music and landscape. It’s very easy to become preoccupied with theorizing and the activities of daily living and stop noticing the beauties of the world.
What’s locked deep in your brain beyond your conscious control?
Oct
3
The downside of The Good Life
Posted by Eddie O'Shan at 15:58 | Filed In Happiness | Add a Comment
My friend Kelly sends a link to an article making the claim that the better your life is, the more upset you get when something goes wrong.
Put another way, a hidden price of being happier on average is that you put your short-term contentment at risk, because being happy raises your expectations about being happy. When good things happen, they don’t count for much because they are what you expect. When bad things happen, you temporarily feel terrible, because you’ve gotten used to being happy.
We’re all familiar with the idea of the spoiled little rich kid. We’re more resistant to the idea that there is a ungrateful brat inside all of us. Maybe we should schedule a good spanking when things go our way, just to keep things in perspective. Of course, for some of you, that would make you even happier!
