Holiday Open Chat

By -
Happy Christmas/Solstice/Saturnalia/Hannukah/Yule/Kwanzaa...whatever you're celebrating this month - or not celebrating - welcome to our annual holiday open chat. If real people are too much, we're (not) here for you!


How's the end of the year going for you? Is this year a traditional holiday or are you trying something new? Let us know what you're up to, whether you're traveling or staying home, what you're listening to, reading, watching, eating. I'm staying home this year and looking forward to resting and relaxing.

My seasonal traditions include watching A Christmas Carol (the 1986 one with George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge...the ONLY version!):


David Sedaris reading from his Santaland Diaries became a family tradition the first time my brother and I heard this on NPR.


And it's always time for C&H. Happy holidays, Cult!




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Common Sense

By -
Image
I only wish it were not so common. That probably disappoints a lot of you, maybe even makes you wonder if I am being satirical. Most assuredly, I am not. Plus, this is my second rodeo on common sense. I am not as certain that people will take it any more seriously, but I do hope that they'll.  It may be written rather flippantly, but I am completely serious. Common sense usually serves as a proxy for obvious solutions to easy problems. Which then prompts people to recommend commonsense solutions to all problems. Consider some that you might have heard: "If only we had some common-sense gun laws, we would not have these mass shootings." "Our healthcare system is far too complicated. What we need is to replace it with some common-sense solutions." "People losing their retirement savings in the financial crisis was sad. If only these investors had exercised some common sense and not bought houses they could not afford!" "You do not ne
Read more

Slavery FTW, because starving kids in Africa

By -
Image
The Cult has been silent for a while. If anyone is still around and reading, I'm sorry about that! Technology is advancing rapidly and I'm awaiting cyborg-based or fully virtual existence, but real life still gets in the way sometimes. I had another post (related to science and Covid) almost ready last weekend when the aforementioned IRL interfered. This morning I ran across an item that looked more urgent, especially in light of current events in the US. [Photo and story, Wikipedia ] For those who don't already know, Scott Adams is the creator of the popular comic strip Dilbert , which is a well-done satire of US office life. Normally at this point I'd share an example or two. Not this time, and not sorry. I don't want to make light of the decidedly not-humorous material  he's generating about slavery and efforts at making reparation . [To determine what slavery stole from the black community] ...[C]ompare what would happen to the average black pe
Read more

The One With the Sunk Cost

By -
Image
We've been on the topic of fallacies lately and I owe my esteemed co-blogger  SK  a thank-you for educating me about them, so I thought I'd offer one. I look forward to your thoughts. (I'll also borrow SK's disclaimer that thought experiments are included in this post, and if you dislike Friends you may want to stop reading now. Are there people who dislike  Friends ?) This fallacy is a favorite of mine: "sunk cost." Logically Fallacious  offers a nice definition and examples, but basically I think of it as, "This [project/relationship/activity] isn't working and doesn't seem likely to get better, but I can't walk away because I've already put so much [effort/time/money] into it!" As an example, I like to ask people whether they finish a book or movie they're not enjoying. If they tell me they stick with it to the bitter end, I'm always curious about their reasoning. Because they've already spent time on i
Read more