Community Matters

(Community Matters) Very important article in today’s NYTimes magazine about decision fatigue and ego depletion.

I’d like to know if computer & auto purchase configuration programs are designed to take advantage of this phenomenon and if so, do we consider this ethical.

Note: sugar restoring will power, artificial sweetner not doing so. During ego depletion, our brains respond more favorably to immediate rewards and less to long term prospects. Glucose helps restore ego depletion.

hmm, reinforces my simple sugars (fresh fruits) allowance during dieting – as well as importance of naps.

(Community Matters) I tell myself that.  Do you think it’s true?  Do we revisit these traumas with perspective and somehow make peace with them?  Or do we just scar on top of scar?  If so, I’m just giving kids one more thing to carry.  Something else they may never learn to let go.

– Steven Tomlinson

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(Community Matters) Sorry to have missed JoLynn & Greg Free’s dinner for Sandi Aitken and Bob Tomlinson last night. Glad Steven was there representing us.

Uncle Bob and aunt-to-be Sandi depart for Bhutan soon and will be married at the Tiger’s Nest Monastery

(Community Matters) During conversations the last two days, I’ve been dumbfounded by these stories of violence & racial discrimination:

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(Community Matters) The Unraveling of the Texas Economic Miracle

from AAS postings:

• And now for Gov. Rick Perry’s presidential campaign. Perry has had some very strong poll numbers this week, but to the degree that he had a honeymoon period immediately after his announcement, it’s starting to end. The national media is finding some new anxieties about a Perry candidacy within the Republican Party, as well as picking up on stuff that has long been reported here in Texas.

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(Community Matters) The picture on the far right of Community Matters’ banner is what we affectionately call the North Truro Beach Club. It’s the summer home of my friends artist Hal McIntosh & Eric Varity. I’ll be spending my next few days on their private beach (they set up umbrellas and chairs for guests each morning) with my hosts Barbara Woghlemuth & Carrie Stapleton. I’ve got plenty to read and am adding to my Kindle: French Lessons and A Ticket to the Circus. I intend to go into Provincetown and maybe see some of my friends there from elsewhere – Cody & Lance, Alisa & Lynn, Becky, Chris, Paul and others – but then again, the beach, lobster dinners, good books and friends I only see here . . .

(Community Matters) ugh, on Monday I told two friends I thought the presidential election could be decided by whether Europe goes bankrupt before or after Nov 6, 2012. I was sure hoping for after . . .

The Yen as a safe haven currency? I hadn’t realized Japan is the #1 creditor nation – China is second. Then, Germany, then Saudi Arabia, then Switzerland. Two, three & four aren’t options. Rise in value of Yen and Swiss Franc comes with its own problems for their countries’ exports.  Gold up to $1,867, a 30% increase since beginning of July?

(Community Matters) “He is the third son of the famed paleoanthropologists Louis and Mary Leakey. Parts of his childhood were organized around expeditions to places like Olduvai Gorge where Louis and most especially Mary searched for bones, footprints and artifacts of early man. At 16, he decided to drop out and made a deal with his parents. He would fend for himself if they would hire a tutor to teach him Swahili. Kenya has 42 native tribes, and over the next years Phillip moved in with several. He started a series of small businesses — mining, safari, fertilizer manufacturing and so on. As one Kenyan told me, it’s quicker to list the jobs he didn’t hold than the ones he did.

Katy — an artist who baby-sat for Jane Goodall and led a cultural expedition up the Amazon —

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(Community Matters) The estimated gap between future U.S. tax receipts and spending? $211 trillion according to Boston University Professor Kotilkoff (and yes those figures are discounted to present values). Sure makes the $14 trillion we’ve been debating seem more manageable doesn’t it?

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(Community Matters) Why the heck doesn’t Britain fine Newscorp its 39% stake in British Sky Broadcasting Group for its criminal telephone hacking?

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(Community Matters) I hope our side is capturing video of GOP contenders as they are rallying the tea party base by promising to dismantle environmental protections, disassemble the EPA, and disavowing global warming. I suspect their winner will hide these ambitions once we’re in the general. Voters will be reminded. Posted from my blackberry

(Community Matters) Texas ranked 44th nationally in per pupil funding before the cuts.