“Vintage Antiques? Well, honestly I was hoping you had some brand new antiques!”
In Closing: sick and tired; CISPA is back from the dead; “Lack of exercise responsible for twice as many early deaths as obesity”; ok ok, we’ll tell you what the NSA is doing, but we aren’t planning on stopping; institutional sexism; a third of Americans think cops are liars; Target pulling out of Canada; on a living wage.
Some years ago, I read a book called the Inner Game of Music. In a manner of speaking, it was about getting out of your own way. Oddly enough, one of the things that stuck with me about this book was a peculiar concept: giving yourself permission to fail. Apparently many people have learned this lesson from many sources.
So yes, it can be a good habit to permit ourselves to fail. And although I am far from the first person to explore the concept, I would like to share why I think it is so.
Paying attention to failure teaches how to succeed. Of course, this only applies when we pay attention, and fail “mindfully.” The truth is that most of us fail a time or two when we are learning something new. One anecdote from the Inner Game of Music relays how when a pair of musicians tried to isolate when their duet went awry, suddenly it was perfect! When we pay attention to how, when, and why we fail, we come up with solutions.
Failure teaches us about ourselves and about reality. How we react to failure can give us insight to who we really are — but again, only if we are willing to pay attention. But more importantly, failure can be the beginning of discovery! Or, as Isaac Asimov put it, “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka’ but ‘That’s funny…'” Consider Alexander Fleming discovering that the “contamination” in his bacterial culture was actually exactly the exact bacteria-killer he’d been looking for. If he hadn’t been willing to learn, he might have thrown away that specimen and never discovered that antibiotic.
Sometimes, our failures fail spectacularly! No, I’m not talking about all those online videos we’ve watched many times of people doing stupid things on skateboards or motorcycles. I’m talking about a failure that turns out for the best. My favorite example occurred in the original Iron Chef series. Chen Kenichi was the chef who specialized in Chinese cuisine (a footnote, his father invented “shrimp in chili sauce”). A French challenger chef decided to take on Kenichi-san rather than the show’s French specialist, perhaps thinking this gave him an advantage. The secret ingredient was yogurt, unused in Chinese cuisine. You can see for yourself: between 8:30 and 9:00 minutes into the video, Kenichi-san gives himself permission to fail. After all, he’s never used this stuff, never even tasted it. But freed from the need to succeed, he experiments and innovates his way into one of his most memorable wins.
There’s nothing wrong with failing now and again, as long as you aren’t doing something colossally dangerous.
In Closing: milk fail; chart fail; vax fail (don’t do this one); wedding fail; jobs report fail; weight loss fail; just, fail; patient confidentiality fail; accidental paleontology win!
Today’s question:
Do you tend to order the same thing at restaurants? Or do you like to jump around the menu?
Answer: yes. It depends where I am. There are places where I just want the one or two things that I know are awesome. There are other places where I am busy trying new things. Remember, Vegas is a world class food city! Sorry, I don’t have much more to say about the issue than that.
In Closing: no regard for the Supreme Court; catching the cold; one Indiana lawmaker doesn’t think you should have a choice whether you raise a child with severe disabilities; cybersecurity; doing the same thing and expecting different results; finally somebody said it out loud.
Today’s question from the nice folks at BlogHer:
Do you enjoy repetition, or do you always need change?
What a meaningless question. The only thing that does not change is that everything changes. This has been known for thousands of years in both the East and the West. Clinging to the way things are or the way things were is a fast road to discontent.
On one side, we have Tucker Carlson opining that one particular religion is a problem. Maybe his bow-tie is a little tight.
On the other side, we have someone pointing out the extremists in the “dominant” religious group of our nation.
But the gripping hand is Pope Francis preaching that breastfeeding is completely natural and welcomed where he preaches.
Now then, which of these has shown love for his neighbor?
In Closing: best commentary you will ever see anywhere on President Obama’s “free college” plan; I’d like some truth with my news, please; alarming statistic.
Congrats to Jon Keeyes and Nightmare Box on its multiple nominations in the Winter 2015 Macabre Faire Film Festival.
Serial: High school students may be more, er, connected than they thought. And not in a good way.
The ugly truth: The NYPD work stoppage is showing how little what they do impacts public safety.
Economic Noble Truths: Who knew that Buddhism and economics had anything in common?
Fly Like an Eagle: To Lake Mead.
I’ve only been saying this since 1991: Colleges have no business whatsoever prosecuting crimes.
Pattern of Misconduct: Ferguson isn’t the first time that prosecutor presented a misleading case against a cop.
Republicans and Social Security: interesting.
And Finally: The Big Fat Book of Offensive Religious Cartoons.
See everybody tomorrow!
Today’s question:
Do you think you have more good habits or bad habits?
I thought about going a little zen on this question and simply saying “yes.” I have good habits, I have bad habits, I don’t know that I ever bothered comparing the two. I suppose I’d like to think I have more good than bad, and there are people who might disagree.
Sorry, not the best post. But hey, yesterday you got a good rant!
In Closing: Stingray; the London Stone; Women of the Senate; with more people identifying as liberal, I wonder when politicians will stop fearing the word; climate denial; policy; and the Real Johnny Appleseed.
A couple months ago, I planned to go to the gym after class. However, I forgot my water bottle. So rather than go all the way back home to go to a gym down the street from the college, I stopped at a convenience store and bought a couple of the cheapest bottles of water they had. I didn’t realize at the time that I had purchased “alkalized water” that was “infused with negative ions.”
Yeah, my chemistry professor — the one that studied with the Nobel laureate — had a good laugh about that.
I only used one bottle and the other ended up in the fridge, forgotten until I overheard someone say that alkaline water was so much better for you than regular water, would change the entire pH of your body, and improve your health.
Time for science. To the refrigerator!
So the first thing I wanted to do is see how stable this stuff is. Was it actually alkaline? After spending a couple months on the shelf, was it in fact still alkaline? Thankfully I own a pool test kit, so this was easy to check:
Yup, pH of roughly 8.0, or close enough to it to not matter. At least this stuff is what the label says. This was a pleasant surprise.
But what about the health benefits? Or rather, are health benefits even possible? To answer that question, let’s look at what happens after you swallow this stuff.
First stop is your stomach, which is full of gastric acid: a blend of hydrochloric acid, potassium chloride, and salt. If you’ve ever been responsible for swimming pool maintenance, you know it doesn’t take a whole lot of acid to neutralize a whole bunch of somewhat alkaline water. In other words, odds are very good that this stuff is just-plain-water by the time it gets to the intestines. In fact, one of the few research studies I was able to find about alkaline water suggests that a pH of 8.8 would be needed to get any kind of results. Since pH is a logarithmic scale, you’d need water 8 times more alkaline than the stuff in this bottle according to the study. Oh, and before I forget, this study was done in test tubes, not people.
But let’s say for the sake of argument that some of this water makes it past the stomach, past the intestines, and into the blood. Your body has over 5 liters of blood, and this little bottle contains a half a liter. Human blood has a pH between 7.35 and 7.45. It can be hard to maintain a swimming pool pH between 7.2 and 7.6, yet your body maintains a range a quarter that size all day, all night, without you even thinking about it. And it’s bad news if the pH gets out of the normal range! Your body can regulate this with your kidneys, your lungs, and even with normal reversible chemical reactions within your blood. You’re alive, which is evidence that your body is very, very good at this.
So in conclusion: there is little evidence and no logic whatsoever to support alkaline water having any health benefits. And remember that like all bottled water, the stuff that comes out of your tap is better regulated.
In Closing: Moi aussi, je suis Charlie; point of view; more prisons than colleges.
Today’s question:
Do you have any good habits that were hard to start but you’re happy you worked to build them?
Well yes, I have a lot of habits that were hard to start. For example, it was very hard to get started working out regularly. Sadly, it’s much more fun to hit the snooze button than to get up and sweat. It’s more fun to go out to breakfast than to go to yoga class when you’re starting. But you know what? I’m stronger and more flexible than I was the day I graduated high school.
I also had a hard time getting in the habit of keeping my nails polished. Let’s face reality, I’m not one of those naturally-girly girls but rather one who has to work at it. So finding the time to give myself a manicure (and a pedicure) is something I do in the name of feeling more feminine. Sure, I could pay somebody to make this happen, but this way it happens on my schedule.
So yes, good habits are worth developing.
In Closing: New antibiotic; calorie myths; a pound of fat a day; ok I promise my last weight link of the day; wasting no time. See everybody tomorrow.
Today I’m actually using the official prompt:
Have you ever tried to break a habit and failed? What made it so difficult to break?
Ok, this is a weird one. I’m still not quite over this habit: I have a hard time passing up things that are cheap or free.
I’ve got dozens of books on my Kindle that I don’t know when I’ll have time to read them, but they were free! I’ve got canned food in my pantry that I only have because it was on sale — and theoretically I’ll use it eventually. I’ve been known to buy clothes that fit but aren’t really my style because they were so inexpensive.
Why is this a hard habit to break? Well, because it’s easy to think I’m being thrifty. In the case of free ebooks, it doesn’t actually cost me anything. In the case of food, well, I guess I’m well prepared for an emergency. In short, one person’s bad habit is another’s good habit.
Oh hey, and just the other day I got this free ebook on how to break bad habits!
In Closing: the case of the blonde MIT student; Ha Ha Harvard; not entirely sure how one solves problems without strong reading and math skills; crime, security, and privacy; and the intellectual heirs of MacHack.