Friday, February 6, 2009

A Happy Birthday to the Public Servant

"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!"
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 – 1832)

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910)

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot / Nothing is going to get better. It's not."
Dr. Seuss (The Lorax) (1904 – 1991)

"Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere."
Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.
Daniel Burnham, Chicago architect. (1864 - 1912)

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 – 1969)

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
Theodore Roosevelt (1858 – 1919)

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Boredom: Is It Catching?

I left an open prompt on gchat today: "Informal poll: When was the last time you were bored?". Sarah responded, and away we went:


Sarah: saturday. but on purpose.

me: heh. tell me more.

Sarah: stressful week, wanted to feel bored. so i did everything i had to do for a while, and then i sat around for a while and felt bored.
when was the last time you felt bored?

me: Hm. Well, here's the backstory:
Someone was complaining to me yesterday about people who got bored.

Sarah: uh huh

me: "What, you can't read a book? Watch a movie! Fucking do push-ups! Who gets bored!"
...
and I realized I can't really remember the last time that happened
to me, anyway
I mean, maybe 20-hour plane flights

Sarah: i can't remember the last time it happened and i didn't do something about it
hahaha TRUE
if i get bored i go do something else, usually

me: Right. I mean, I've never been exposed to boredom long enough that it ground at me
Right.

Sarah: fair

me: (Maybe I have been, but it's been a long while)
You think that's universal?

Sarah: (amen... 5th grade the last time i can really remember)
that cool people don't get bored
and icky people do?

me: I mean, do people just claim boredom to get a sweetheart to come over for a hookup session?

Sarah: haha well here's what im thinking
maybe there's two states of boredom
paralytic boredom and ... proactive boredom

me: I think probably the first ten minutes of the one lead, when unchecked, to the other
right? Or are some people prone to one but not the other?

Sarah: i think some people are prone to paralytic boredom

me: If you're a proactive bore (har har), can you fall into the other after years of neglecting your impulses?

Sarah: thinking of some of my students here
and never do anything to snap out of it

me: If you're the other way, can you be trained to be proactive?

Sarah: well i think people can change, so yes to both

me: (assuming, of course, that proactive's the way to be -- but I think that's an easy case to make)
woot!

Sarah: i think it's the only case to make
who wants to be a paralytic bore

me: truth. My bet is it's addictive, though
much like depression

Sarah: amen
i wonder if it's any different
maybe the boredom is a symptom of depression

me: Hmmm!
Or vice versa.

Sarah: who knows

___________________________

...do you, gentle reader? When was the last time you were bored? And what kind was it?