Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
By the power invested in me, I am hereby bestowing the latest award for Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) upon a sentence fragment:
…[P]eople don’t get enough done because they are discouraged by the sudden realization that it usually takes a pretty big job just to get prepared for doing a job.
Preach it, brother Andy. He goes on to expound upon the point:
We only want one kind of work in our recalcitrant lethargy, and that’s the kind that gets done. We most certainly have no interest in the kind of work that must be labored through for hours just so you can get started working on the kind that gets done. The hardest part about going to work should be the getting out of bed. It’s almost like forced volunteering, or like having to run out and drill for the oil, then bring it back and pour it your engine. Or even a little bit like when dad said “you have to clean the crawl space if you really want to know what it’s like to drive my car.” Didn’t make sense at the time, but I see now that it still makes no sense at all. Thanks, dad.
Well, this is worth a think or three. If there’s any one thing that has changed in the last thirty years, or one hundred, or three hundred, it is this: We get to specialize in things. You get to be a windshield wiper motor installer guy, I get to be a gearshift-knob-twister-onner guy.
This yields a certain conservation of momentum to us all. The industrial revolution, as we know it today, could not have happened without it.
But while there is a physical challenge being overcome, there are also several mental ones being effectively sidestepped. All of the mental challenges, really, when you think about it. Sure, we ensconce ourselves once again into that stimulating realm of intellectual puzzles once we invent some robots to screw those gearshift knobs on in our place — but it just isn’t the same anymore.
Right and wrong are no longer determined by cause and effect, they are derived from group consensus. How could this possibly be avoided? Think back: When is the last time your livelihood prospered or suffered because you succeeded or failed at nailing down reality? If you’re one of the fortunate few who can provide an answer to that…and it really is fortunate to be able to, believe it or not…you are in a class by yourself.
The world just doesn’t work like this anymore. A judgment call that helps or hurts your personal livelihood, generally, is a judgment call made at work. And that, generally, is a judgment call that is not designed necessarily to be the best one, but rather, the one most closely resembling the call someone else would have made. When you tackle a complex chore — one that is meaningless, until it stands atop the successful completion of a multitude of disparate, interrelated tasks — you are robbed of the luxury of assembly-line workmanship, but you are challenged to think like a real adult. You become your own customer. And so you become responsible for “writing” a whole series of unwritten contracts about service levels.
It isn’t a comfortable arrangement. None of us, or very few of us, are going to choose it if an alternative is available.
But it does challenge the mind in the manner it was built to be challenged, and it recalls a simpler time when this kind of thinking was necessary for our continued survival. And no longer is.
And that is a heavy thought. Not a cheerful one.
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My first BSIHORL. Thanks, Morgan.
- Andy | 08/06/2010 @ 07:47