i dunno if they air these commercials in the US but they are awesome and advertise chocolate.
oh and happy bday paloma
For your listening pleasure. Hopefully.
5.20.2009
If you're happy and you know it take a risk!
This is a pretty cool article, I would place us in the "golden third" for sure!
Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously
Bill Gurstelle is Geek Dad’s current guest blogger.
I’ve spent the last two years writing my just released book Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. It’s an exploration of a single, important question, which I think is relevant to GeekDads, or anybody raising children, for that matter.Are people who take risks happier than those who do not?
It’s a simple question, but it took a while to come up with an answer. First of all, I had to better define the question. Physical risks? Emotional risks? Monetary risks? All of them? I looked at it a number of ways and decided to focus on physical risk taking. Basically, I wanted to know if it was intrinsically better to be an Evel Knievel or a Caspar Milquetoast? Better to be Chuck Yeager or Niles Crain? Are lion tamers happier with their lives than monks?
The answer is a bit complex. Psychologists can assess and numerically describe a person’s risk-taking proclivity. Risk-taking behavior can be summarized as a single number from one to 100. A one is a house-bound agoraphobe and a 100 behaves like a fire-eating crazy person. Not surprisingly, the distribution of risk-taking proclivity is described by a normal bell-shaped curve. Most people cluster around the mean score, as the graph below shows:
But here’s the cool thing.
I found that moderate, rational risk takers, that is, those with scores between the mean and one standard deviation to the right are the people who are most satisfied with their lives. I call that area “the golden third” because it’s about 1/3 of the population. Studies show that people who take just a bit more risks than average, that is, those in the golden third, tend to do better than average. They tend to be happier and more fulfilled. To me, that’s a stunning conclusion. And it’s something for parents to think about, as well.
I also found that getting good at risk taking requires practice. So I researched and experimented, coming up with dozens of rather interesting projects to build risk-taking skills. For instance, if you know what to do, you can walk into a Home Depot and come out with everything you need to build a rocket – a real rocket. You can make gunpowder. You can throw knives, eat dangerous food, do all sorts of things that would make your mother shudder. But it starts with knowing what to do and what not to do.
So get out there, geek dads, and live life dangerously and artfully.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/05/absinthe-and-flamethrowers-ruminations-on-the-art-of-living-dangerously/
wait, is it kosher to re-blog someone else?
loves! -M
Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously
Bill Gurstelle is Geek Dad’s current guest blogger.
I’ve spent the last two years writing my just released book Absinthe and Flamethrowers: Projects and Ruminations on the Art of Living Dangerously. It’s an exploration of a single, important question, which I think is relevant to GeekDads, or anybody raising children, for that matter.Are people who take risks happier than those who do not?
It’s a simple question, but it took a while to come up with an answer. First of all, I had to better define the question. Physical risks? Emotional risks? Monetary risks? All of them? I looked at it a number of ways and decided to focus on physical risk taking. Basically, I wanted to know if it was intrinsically better to be an Evel Knievel or a Caspar Milquetoast? Better to be Chuck Yeager or Niles Crain? Are lion tamers happier with their lives than monks?
The answer is a bit complex. Psychologists can assess and numerically describe a person’s risk-taking proclivity. Risk-taking behavior can be summarized as a single number from one to 100. A one is a house-bound agoraphobe and a 100 behaves like a fire-eating crazy person. Not surprisingly, the distribution of risk-taking proclivity is described by a normal bell-shaped curve. Most people cluster around the mean score, as the graph below shows:
But here’s the cool thing.
I found that moderate, rational risk takers, that is, those with scores between the mean and one standard deviation to the right are the people who are most satisfied with their lives. I call that area “the golden third” because it’s about 1/3 of the population. Studies show that people who take just a bit more risks than average, that is, those in the golden third, tend to do better than average. They tend to be happier and more fulfilled. To me, that’s a stunning conclusion. And it’s something for parents to think about, as well.
I also found that getting good at risk taking requires practice. So I researched and experimented, coming up with dozens of rather interesting projects to build risk-taking skills. For instance, if you know what to do, you can walk into a Home Depot and come out with everything you need to build a rocket – a real rocket. You can make gunpowder. You can throw knives, eat dangerous food, do all sorts of things that would make your mother shudder. But it starts with knowing what to do and what not to do.
So get out there, geek dads, and live life dangerously and artfully.
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2009/05/absinthe-and-flamethrowers-ruminations-on-the-art-of-living-dangerously/
wait, is it kosher to re-blog someone else?
loves! -M
5.06.2009
Brought to you by the letter P.
Now I'm not saying that I deserve ALL of the credit for getting the ball rolling on this one but you can't deny the connection here.
Leading headline on MSN homepage.
Leading headline on MSN homepage.
4.30.2009
4.28.2009
You better hope these ants don't start talking.
Mycocepurus smithii
A group of Amazonian ants have evolved an extremely unusual social system: They are all female and reproduce via cloning. Though their sexual organs have virtually disappeared, they have also gained some extraordinary abilities.
University of Arizona biologist Anna Himler orginally began studying the ants, called Mycocepurus smithii, because they had incredible success as farmers. Many breeds of ant keep domesticated “farms” where they breed various kinds of fungus for nourishment. But Mycocepurus smithii was able to breed fungus far more successfully, and in greater varieties, than other ants Himler had encountered.
As she and her team studied the insects, they realized there were no male ants anywhere to be found. Himler told the BBC that it’s possible the ants evolved so as “not to operate under the usual constraints of sexual reproduction.” Interestingly, the fungi that the ants cultivate also reproduce asexually. But why would these ants choose to emulate the reproductive cycle favored by their crops? Himler explains:
“It avoids the energetic cost of producing males, and doubles the number of reproductive females produced each generation from 50% to 100% of the offspring.”
All the members of the colony are clones of the queen. While that means the queen can control every aspect of the population, it also makes the colony vulnerable to pandemics. A virus that can kill one ant can kill all of them, since they all have the exact same immune systems. On the other hand, it seems that a lack of men gave these women more time and energy to cultivate some of the most elaborate forms of ant agriculture ever studied.
According to Himler, ants often evolve highly unusual reproductive strategies. But all-female ant societies are highly rare.
4.26.2009
4.21.2009
Action Shot
This picture is from Oregan, where someone set out a motion sensor camera to see if any big bucks were passing in the area where he was thinking about bow hunting.
When he downloaded the pictures, this was one of them. It's wild to see that cougar sneak up so close. It doesn't look like the deer knows he's there yet.
4.20.2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
