With this accelerated retirement I’ve been puzzling about how to manage my website. I’m not nearly as concerned with making money now; but I am much more concerned about staying in touch with the people who have been my friends, family, and my wonderful clients.
So, my blog is moving. You can find the news, the newest goings on and our travels on the Blog Peggy and I are writing now: Away We Go. Come along with us and see what mischief we get into.
From the Walker Outdoor Sculpture Garden, Minneapolis
This time of year my mind turns to wamer climes.
Many brilliant people have some communication weak spots. Unfortunately, the reality is that written communication is a big part of business, and how you write reflects on you. Poor spelling and grammar can destroy a professional image in an instant.
Even if your job doesn’t require much business writing, you’ll still have emails to send and notes to write. And if you’re looking for a job, your cover letters and resumes will likely mean the difference between getting the interview or not.
Bad grammar and spelling make a bad impression. Don’t let yourself lose an opportunity over a simple spelling or grammar mistake.
Here are seven simple grammatical errors that I see consistently in emails, cover letters and resumes.
Tip: Make yourself a little card cheat sheet and keep it in your wallet for easy reference.
You’re / Your
The apostrophe means it’s a contraction of two words; “you’re” is the short version of “you are” (the “a” is dropped), so if your sentence makes sense if you say “you are,” then you’re good to use you’re. “Your” means it belongs to you, it’s yours.
You’re going to love your new job!
It’s / Its
This one is confusing, because generally, in addition to being used in contractions, an apostrophe indicates ownership, as in “Dad’s new car.” But, “it’s” is actually the short version of “it is” or “it has.” “Its” with no apostrophe means belonging to it.
It’s important to remember to bring your telephone and its extra battery.
They’re / Their / There
“They’re” is a contraction of “they are.” “Their” means belonging to them. “There” refers to a place (notice that the word “here” is part of it, which is also a place – so if it says here and there, it’s a place). There = a place
They’re going to miss their teachers when they leave there.
Loose / Lose
These spellings really don’t make much sense, so you just have to remember them. “Loose” is the opposite of tight, and rhymes with goose. “Lose” is the opposite of win, and rhymes with booze. (To show how unpredictable English is, compare another pair of words, “choose” and “chose,” which are spelled the same except the initial sound, but pronounced differently. No wonder so many people get it wrong!)
I never thought I could lose so much weight; now my pants are all loose!
Lead / Led
Another common but glaring error. “Lead” means you’re doing it in the present, and rhymes with deed. “Led” is the past tense of lead, and rhymes with sled. So you can “lead” your current organization, but you “led” the people in your previous job.
My goal is to lead this team to success, just as I led my past teams into winning award after award.
A lot / Alot / Allot
First the bad news: there is no such word as “alot.” “A lot” refers to quantity, and “allot” means to distribute or parcel out.
There is a lot of confusion about this one, so I’m going to allot ten minutes to review these rules of grammar.
Between you and I
This one is widely misused, even by TV news anchors who should know better.
In English, we use a different pronoun depending on whether it’s the subject or the object of the sentence: I/me, she/her, he/him, they/them. This becomes second nature for us and we rarely make mistakes with the glaring exception of when we have to choose between “you and I” or “you and me.”
Grammar Girl does a far better job of explaining this than I, but suffice to say that “between you and I” is never correct, and although it is becoming more common, it’s kind of like saying “him did a great job.” It is glaringly incorrect.
The easy rule of thumb is to replace the “you and I” or “you and me” with either “we” or “us” and you’ll quickly see which form is right. If “us” works, then use “you and me” and if “we” works, then use “you and I.”
Between you and me (us), here are the secrets to how you and I (we) can learn to write better.
Master these common errors and you’ll remove some of the mistakes and red flags that make you look like you have no idea how to speak.
A fascinating article from Wired Magazine.
The human mind sees minds everywhere. Show us a collection of bouncing balls and we hallucinate agency; a glance at a stuffed animal and we endow it with a mood; I’m convinced Siri doesn’t like me. The point is that we are constantly translating our visual perceptions into a theory of mind, as we attempt to imagine the internal states of teddy bears, microchips and perfect strangers.
Most of the time, this approach works well enough. If I notice someone squinting their eyes and clenching their jaw, I automatically conclude that he must be angry; if she flexes the zygomatic major – that’s what happens during a smile – then I assume she’s happy. The point is that a few cues of body language are instantly translated into a rich mental image. We can’t help but think about what other people are thinking about.
But this intricate connection between mind theorizing and sensory perception can also prove problematic. For instance, when people glance at strangers who look “different” – perhaps they dress funny, or belong to a different ethic group – they endow these strangers with less agency, a fancy term for the ability to plan, act and exert self-control. Or consider a 2010 MRI experiment that found that when men glance at “sexualized” women they exhibit reduced activation in parts of the brain typically associated with the attribution of mental states. These are obviously terrible habits – a hint of cleavage shouldn’t make us care less about someone’s feelings, nor should a different skin tone – but we mostly can’t help it. We judge books by the cover and minds by their appearance. We are a superficial species.
And this brings me to a fascinating new paper by an all star team of psychologists, including Kurt Gray, Joshua Knobe, Mark Sheskin, Paul Bloom and Lisa Feldman Barrett. The scientists nicely frame the mystery they want to solve:
Do people’s mental capacities fundamentally change when they remove a sweater? This seems absurd: How could removing a piece of clothing change one’s capacity for acting or feeling? In six studies, however, we show that taking off a sweater—or otherwise revealing flesh—can significantly change the way a mind is perceived. In this article, we suggest that the kind of mind ascribed to another person depends on the relative salience of his or her body—that the perceived capacity for both pain and planned action depends on whether someone wears a sweater or tank-top.
In order to understand why sweaters and tank-tops influence the kind of minds we perceive, it’s important to know about the different qualities we imagine in others. In general, people assess minds – and it doesn’t matter if it’s the “mind” of a pet, iPhone or deity – along two distinct dimensions. First, we grade these minds in terms of agency. (Human beings have lots of agency; goldfish less so.) But we also think of minds in terms of the ability to have experience, to feel and perceive. The psychologists suggest that these dual dimensions are actually a duality, and that there’s a direct tradeoff between the ability to have agency and experience. If we endow someone with lots of feeling, then they probably have less agency. And if someone has lots of agency, then they probably are less sensitive to experience. In other words, we automatically assume that the capacity to think and the capacity to feel are in opposition. It’s a zero sum game.
What does all this have to do with nakedness? The psychologists demonstrated it’s quite easy to shift our perceptions of other people from having a mind full of agency to having a mind interested in experience: all they have to do is take off their clothes. Take the first experiment by Gray, et al., which showed 159 undergraduates a variety of photos. Some of these photos were of an attractive female named Erin, appearing in either a headshot or a bikini. Other students looked at a handsome man named Aaron, glancing at either his face or sculpted bare chest.
After looking at these pictures and reading a brief description of Erin/Aaron, subjects were asked to evaluate the mental capacities of the person. They answered six questions, which took the form, “Compared to the average person, how much is Erin capable of X.” The X was filled in by various agency-related capacities, such as “self-control,”“acting morally,” and “planning” and a slew of experience-related capacities, such as “experiencing pleasure,” “experiencing hunger,” and “experiencing desire.” Participants answered these six questions on a 5-point scale from 1 (Much Less Capable) to 5 (Much More Capable).
It turns out that a glimpse of flesh strongly influences our perception of Erin/Aaron. When the pictures only showed a face, they had lots of agency. But when we saw their torso, we suddenly imagined them as obsessed with experience. Instead of being good at self-control, they were suddenly extremely sensitive to hunger and desire. Same person, same facial expression, same brief description – but a hint of body changed everything.
In another experiment, the researchers varied the volunteers’ mindsets, sometimes asking them to look at photos as if they were on an online-dating website, focusing on attractiveness, and sometimes asking them to look at the photos as if they were hiring for a professional job, focusing on the mind. Once again, thinking about how “sexy and cute” someone is – those are bodily attributes – led students to endow them with more experience and less agency. The opposite held when people were asked to evaluate intelligence and efficiency.
This research helps to clarify a longstanding debate about what happens we look at other bodies. Kant, for instance, argued that “sexual love makes of the loved person an Object of appetite; as soon as that appetite has been stilled, the person is cast aside as one casts away a lemon which has been sucked dry.” In other words, looking at a naked person filled us with sexual desire, and that desire induced a form of mindblindness. Instead of seeing the individual as having agency, he or she became a means to an end, nothing but a vessel for our satisfaction. Kant was describing a phenomenon known as objectification, in which seeing a body turns the entire person into a physical object. This idea is frequently invoked when describing studies like this, which found that women are far more likely to appear in magazine advertisements as an attractive body, while men are typically represented by their faces.
But the psychological reality turns out to be a bit more complicated. While seeing a body reduces perceptions of agency, it actually enhances perceptions of experience. As a result, Gray et. al. argue that objectification is a misleading term:
The idea that a body focus can lead to both decreased and increased mind stands in contrast to the term “objectification,” because it suggests that people seen as bodies are not seen as mindless objects but, instead, as experiencers: someone more capable of pain, pleasure, desire, sensation, and emotion but lacking in agency. In other words, focusing on the body does not lead to de-mentalization but to a redistribution of mind.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that the redistribution of mind can’t do damage. If you’re a female applying for a job, the sometimes sexist tendency of men to focus on the body will unfairly diminish perceptions of agency and intelligence; you will be punished for having breasts. Although the woman won’t be literally objectified, the redistribution of mind will still make her much less likely to be hired.
This work also raises important philosophical questions. Ever since Descartes, it’s been suggested that people are natural dualists, dividing the world into an immaterial realm full of souls and a physical world full of objects. This simple framework, however, appears to be a bit too simple. Instead, the psychologists propose that humans are actually Platonic dualists, following Plato’s belief that there are two distinct types of mind: a mind for thinking and reasoning and a mind for emotions and passions. What’s surprising is how easily we switch between these different mental capacities. All it takes is a peek of skin before a thinker morphs into a feeler.
PS. Totally speculative musings: I wonder how the invention of clothing influenced our theories about the human mind? Did we become more focused on human agency? And how does this research possibly explain the influence of climate on cognition?
By Jonah Lehrer
Gas is no bargain, nobody can deny that. We’re now paying nearly a dollar more than we were a year ago. However, in our vast and varied land, driving is often the best way to explore a destination, even on a budget. Here are five trips where the driving is not just part of the fun -it’s the main attraction – and the dollars you spend at the pump can be considered the price of admission to some stunning natural scenery.
Driving southern Utah is definitely the best way to see all those National and State Parks and monuments. In particular, the area around Bryce Canyon National Park, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and the state parks of Kodachrome Basin, Petrified Forest and Anasazi Indian Village, is one of the most picturesque drives in the state. The stretch between Escalante and Boulder is known as the Million-Dollar Road, completed in 1935 at a cost of $1 million dollars, quite a fortune in that time. Nowadays, you can fill up your tank before leaving Bryce and make it all the way to Torrey, enjoying scenic slickrock, fins and canyon views.
444 miles of lush, green scenery and history, most of which cut through the heart of Mississippi. Unaffected by flooding, the entire stretch of The Parkway is free is to drive and camping along the way is also free, making this a great, low-cost vacation. Nearby communities offer additional services (including gas stations) and travelers have the opportunity to enjoy one of the most historically significant drives in the U.S.
Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the park, 2011 is a good time to visit. The Skyline Drive posts a speed limit of 35 mph (great way to save money on gas) and runs 105 miles along the crest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Stop and take a look anytime you like; convenient mileposts help determine areas of interest. Be prepared for wildlife and wild flowers throughout the year. Give yourself about three hours to make the trip, and look to the Lewis Mountain tent cabins for inexpensive in-park lodging (starting at $65/night).
Ok, gas prices in California are among the highest in the country and the 120 miles of the curvy, steep road will guzzle up fuel, but this drive along the central coast of California is one that is well worth the expense. From the beautiful redwoods of Big Sur, down along the coast with magnificent views of the Pacific Ocean, driving this stretch of Highway 1 is a dream, even if you don’t own a convertible or motorcycle. Stop at Hearst Castle and exclaim over the opulence, then retire to Atascadero or San Luis Obispo for reasonably priced lodging.
Ok, this one is almost a gimee, since it is a ferry service that carries cars and passengers (among other things) along the south-central coast, the Inside Passage of Alaska. In addition to being a convenient way to travel from Washington to Skagaway, Alaska, the Alaska Marine Highway is also a great way to save on gas this summer. To do the same trip by car would entail about 400 miles way off the coast. Enjoy stops along the marine highway in Ketchikan, Sitka and Juneau. And if you bring your sleeping bag and a tent, inexpensive lodging is just a campground away.
If you have your own driving trip in mind, check out the GasBuddy.com Trip Cost Calculator, which offers route planning and factors in the make, model and gas mileage of your vehicle to offer you a total fuel cost for your trip. The application also offers suggestions about where to find cheap gas along the way, a handy tool to have. A recent itinerary traveling from the San Francisco Bay Area to Zion National Park in Utah shows that it would actually be cheaper to drive than to fly, and the entire trip of about 1,400 miles would only take three-and-a-half fill-ups! I think they might be a little optimistic about my gas mileage; although they do allow you to fill in details about your vehicle’s true gas mileage.
Gudrun Enger is a travel, food and lifestyle blogger
based in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Find her @kitchengirl on Twitter.
Cherokee Wisdom
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf wins?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Wise people, though all laws were abolished, would lead the same life. — Aristophanes
Never mistake knowledge for wisdom: The first helps you make a living; the second helps you make a life. — Sandra Carny
Chance favors the prepared mind. — Louis Pasteur
Love is like playing the piano. First you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart.
Judge each day, not by the harvest, but by the seeds you plant.
Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake. — Sir Francis Bacon
If you have two pennies, spend one on bread to give you life, and one on a flower to give meaning to your life. — Ancient Chinese Proverb
Hospitality meets its greatest test when a new idea drops by uninvited.
The man who trusts men will make fewer mistakes than he who distrusts them. — Cavour
If a wise man contendeth with a foolish man, whether he rage or laugh, there is no rest. — Proverbs, 29:9
A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows. — St. Francis of Assisi
Providing for others is a fundamental responsibility of human life. — Woodrow Wilson
Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. — Harold Whitman
He who marries the Sprit of the Age will be a widower in the age to come.
Action without study is fatal. Study without action is futile. — Mary Beard
No one grows old by living — only by losing interest in living. — Marie Beynon Ray
Simplicity doesn’t mean to live in misery and poverty. You have what you need, and you don’t want to have what you don’t need. — Charan Singh
The three grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, someone to love, and something to hope for. — Alexander Chalmers
Circus performers know that they can break their necks falling into a net; it is the uncertainty which keeps them skillful and careful. They know also that the net can save their lives; it is this confidence which makes them daring. — S. Helen Kelley
Who lives without folly is not so wise as he thinks. — Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld
Happiness is a journey, not a destination. So …
Work like you don’t need the money,
love like you’ve never been hurt,
and dance like no one is watching.
“Make lots of money”, “enjoy the work”, “operate within the law”: choose 2. — Brian Anderson
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune, — often the surfeit of our own behavior, — we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were villains by necessity; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition to the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the dragon’s tail; and my nativity was under Ursa major; so that it follows, I am rough and lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing. King Lear, Act I, Scene ii.
I would recommend to everyone that admirable precept which Pythagoras is said to have given to his disciples: “Pitch upon that course of life which is the most excellent, and custom will render it the most delightful.” Men whose circumstances will permit tham to choose their own way of life are inexcusable if they do not pursue that which their judgment tells them is the most laudable. The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination, since, by the rule above mentioned, inclination will at length come over to reason, though we can never force reason to comply with inclination. Joseph Addison
Life is a test. It is only a test. If it had been real, you would have been told where to go and what to do.
No, seriously, here are some useful
I suspect you will be surprised at how well you’re doing already.
