Buddha on the True Cost of Anger

You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.

Johann Hari On Botox/Collagen/Surgery

I was watching the hypnotically horrible Coen brothers movie, No Country For Old Men, and I couldn't shake off the sense there was something different, something thrilling and vivid, about the performances of all the lead actors: Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin. It was only after half an hour of awe that I realised what it was. They can all move their faces.

[...]

Botox is much more extreme for an actor. It doesn't just tighten or alter skin; it paralyses nerves. In Sarah Churchwell's brilliant book The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe, there is a small story that shows how important the tiny, almost unreadable facial signals rendered impossible by Botox are to big screen acting. In the 1956 movie Bus Stop, Marilyn was cast opposite Don Murray, a much-garlanded stage actor breaking into the movies for the first time. When he shot scenes with her, he concluded that she was a dead, dismal actress, because she didn't seem to be doing anything in their scenes but standing there limply. Later, Dame Sybil Thorndike had exactly the same reaction.

But when they saw the rushes, they realised Marilyn was the only one among them who knew how to act for the camera: she had tiny, toned-down facial responses that were sure to melt the boy in the 22nd row.

If Marilyn had been Botoxed, she would have been turned into precisely the clothes-shop dummy Murray and Thorndike thought she was. Collagen is just as bad: if a face has puffed-up, immobile lips, its capacity for basic expression is largely gone. This is, I'm sure, one reason why British actresses have been doing so well at the Oscars for the past 10 years: they haven't been facially paralysed.

Rosenthal On Empathy

CH: What is the greatest gift you have received from your own diagnosis?

KR: One night during treatment I was in so much pain I wanted to die. This event of facing my own mortality cracked open part of my heart, and brought me closer to understanding how others face pain and suffering. As a result I've become a much less judgmental person. It sounds so cheesy. I'm not a touchy feely person, but there is no other way to couch the experience.

kevin-527 On Mad Dog Time

This movie is an allegory. Formally, an allegory is a representation of abstract ideas by elements in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form; in this case, the screenplay, the set design, and especially the actors are the elements by which the abstract is portrayed.

If you look for cool narrative structure and are familiar with, well, the Bible, you'll probably enjoy this tongue-in-cheek view of why "heaven is such a mess."

I'll just describe the characters: have fun with the rest of the analysis.

Vic -> God

Grace ->The grace of God

Rita, Grace's sister -> Justice (akin to God's grace is God's justice, and Rita means right)

Nick Falco -> Lucifer (Old Nick is a synonym for the devil, and don't forget the imposter). His philosophy was "to hell with every God d*mn thing".

Mickey -> the archangel Michael (Nick sees him as weak)

Gabriella -> the archangel Gabriel (just hangin' out until it's time to blow the horn)

Wacky Jacky Jackson -> chaos, which seeks to dismantle God's world ("I don't give a f*ck")

Mr. Gottlieb -> When you die, you will be in the hands of Gott Lieb--God's Love-- represented by an undertaker.

Ben London -> Man (ballsy, but rather slow and full of himself)

Finally, the title itself is a play on words itself: Mad Dog Time -> God

D*mn time.

Don't be so hard on this movie until you watch it for what it really is.

Linus On Christmas

"And there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them! And they were sore afraid ... And the angel said unto them, 'Fear not! For, behold, I bring you tidings o great joy, which shall be to all my people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ, the Lord.'

"And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the Heavenly Host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth peace, and good will toward men."

"That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown." - Linus Van Pelt

Sen. Sanders On Credit Card Companies

The Bible has a term for this practice. It's called usury. And in The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri's epic poem, there was a special place reserved in the Seventh Circle of Hell for sinners who charged people usurious interest rates.

Today, we don't need the hellfire and pitch forks, we don't need the rivers of boiling blood, but we do need a national usury law.

We need a national law because state laws no longer work. States used to protect consumers from predatory lenders, but strong state usury laws were obliterated by a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision. Justices allowed national banks to charge whatever interest rate they wanted if they moved to a state without an interest rate cap. So major credit card issuers moved to places like South Dakota and Delaware that don't have usury laws.

That is why I have introduced legislation to require any lender in this country to cap all interest rates on consumer loans at 15 percent, including credit cards. Why did I select 15 percent as the appropriate rate to deal with the usury which is going on in this country? The reason is that 15 percent is the maximum that Congress imposed on credit union loans almost 30 years ago when it amended the Federal Credit Union Act. That approach has worked! Under current law, credit unions are allowed to charge higher interest rates only if their regulator, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), determines that it is necessary to maintain the safety and soundness of these institutions. Right now, while most credit unions charge lower rates, the NCUA allows credit unions to charge an interest rate as high as 18 percent.

Unlike their counterparts at the big banks, credit unions are not lining up for hundreds of billions in bailouts. In fact, they're doing quite well. They are responding to the credit needs of the small businesses in their communities and to individuals. They have not only survived this regulation, they are functioning exactly the way they are supposed to function. In my view, the rules that have worked well for credit unions for decades can work for all financial institutions.

fermion On True Power

People obsess over their right to bear arms, and I do no dispute the inherent importance of killing an animal or blowing off the head of your fellow person, but how long has it been since such primitive weapons as promoted by the NRA has actually really defended a country.

The Iraqis defended themselves with IED. The Israeli's depend on missiles. In both cases an understanding of explosives is important, and in the later case the people must understand rocketry. sure, in some sense the NRA is right. If there is enough cannon fodder around with simple to use guns, of the type they support, battles can be won. This is proved by the weapons smuggled into Mexico from the US and used against the Mexican legal authorities. But really, such things are toys and the people who obsess over them are just playing games.

The real action is rocketry, and anyone who infringes on our right to practice rocketry is risking the security of the free state. Let the toy soldiers wear their camouflage underwear and play with their guns. Those of us in the know see the key in chemistry, physics, and the willingness to build a gadget that will solve the problem. For better or worse.

look again On Spanking

Humans engage in diverse activities that create pleasure and fun from "stress". Horror films, rollercoasters, pranks, rough sports, caving, bungee jumping and so on.

Some research links their pleasure (rollercoasters) to the cortisol release. But their stress is controlled stress--a tease since while one of the brain is put in fear or distress, another knows it is safe. The experience is positive--excitement. The same applies to S&M.

Strauss Disputes Anti-Capitalist G-20 Protesters

In the late 1970s a farming commune in rural China was so poor that it could not even feed its own people. They were, quite literally, starving.

Finally, one night, the farmers got together in secret and made a pact that could have meant death: They decided to divvy up the commune into private plots and let each farmer farm their own land.

Remember - China was at the end of the Cultural Revolution and was still a communist country, in both theory and fact.

Within a year, that farm became the little commune that could, and was soon just about the most productive commune in all the land. Of course, the change (and success) caught the eye of Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping and he scheduled a visit to the commune.

The farmers were terrified. Would the be shot? Sent away? What?

They were rewarded.

Deng saw the proverbial writing on the wall and blessed the privatization experiment. Within a few years, all communes in the country had been partially privatized, and before long,China took a decidedly capitalistic turn. Within a generation China became one of the world's strongest economies, drawing hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty. In fact, it is said that China's embracing of capitalism became the greatest anti-poverty program in the history of the world. All because one small commune decided that farming their own land might offer more incentives than farming a collective farm.

Subar On Heroes In Film

[I]nstitutional power, physical power, sex appeal, technology, intelligence, education, and wealth don't matter. However, two kinds of power do matter:

1) The hero is better than the other people in the film, not because he possesses more of the kind of powers described above, but because he possesses higher principles.

2) The hero is better than other people because he possesses more of what, in the final analysis, defines all heroes: will power.

-Howard Suber, The Power of Film

Nate Silver On GM's Emergency Doughnut I.O.U.

GM was willing to cut its employees some very attractive deals in the 1950s through the 1980s -- provided that they took them in the form of retirement benefits rather than salary, which wouldn't hit GM's books until much later and which until 1992 weren't even required to be carried on its balance sheets all, making its financial statements (superficially) more appealing to its shareholders. That health care costs have risen so substantially in the United States have made a bad matter worse.

This issue is wrongly portrayed by both the liberal and the conservative media as one of management versus labor, when really it is a battle between General Motors past and General Motors present. In the 50s, 60s and 70s, everyone benefited: GM and its shareholders got the benefit of higher profit margins, and meanwhile, its employees benefited from GM's willingness to cut a bad deal -- for every dollar they were giving up in salary, those employees were getting a dollar and change back in retirement benefits. But now, everyone is hurting.

Benzer On Success Without Willpower

In a passage from Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus and his ship are about to pass through the Siren-infested waters. On the one hand, he knows that hearing their song will spell his doom. On the other hand, he's dying of curiosity and is tired of hearing about their song and just wants to hear their song, dammit, and be the only mortal to live to tell.

Now Odysseus is one crafty dude, so he tells all of his sailors to plug their ears with wax so they can't be tempted by the Sirens' song. He keeps his own ears unplugged, but has his mates lash him to the mast and ignore everything he says. That way, he gets to eat his cake and have it too: he hears the Sirens, but doesn't die.

This is what I call the Odysseus Protocol. Essentially it's arranging your physical environment to achieve the outcome you want so you don't have to rely on willpower.

[...] Now a lot of you may have heard a lot about this thing called willpower. Really? Where is it? Next to the pasta sauce at Ralph's? Must have missed it.
Listen up: willpower does not exist. Never had; never will. There's action, and inaction. That's it.

There's a universal principle for realizing potential: things will flourish spontaneously when the conditions are right. Instead of relying on willpower, create those conditions in advance.

Now with people, we have a similar scenario. We all have vast amounts of talent and potential within ourselves; most of us just don't tap into them as much as possible. This may have to do with people thinking that it's all about willpower or its flip side, weakness.

Well, the good news is that you as a human possess the gift of arranging conditions to favor the outcome you want. It's not about your being perfect or having infinite willpower. It's about recognizing that, like Odysseus, you're fallible. So in lucid moments, you structure your life to serve your own best interest.

[...] Let's say you do silly things when you're drunk on a date. Possible solution: try not to order any booze the evening of your next date.

But that's not the full Odysseus: you're still relying on willpower here, and we already know that doesn't work.

The key is to make it impossible for you to have the undesired behavior. So you have the date at a cafe where alcohol is not served at all. Or go for a walk in the park instead of the sit-down dinner.

Louis Armstrong's Executor On The Media

You ask me what's wrong now? When I was going through the troubles and economic hazards of life back then, our values and our priorities were not about status symbols. It wasn't are you a celebrity and what have you acquired? I mean you can murder somebody these days and become a celebrity for it. Journalism has gotten sleazy about this.

One time, when I worked at Rockefeller Center, the doorman at 30 Rock said to me 'Look across the street at all the people standing around the Christmas Tree. All these strangers interlocking arms and singing. It's so beautiful.' And it was.

I ran back in and called the head of press photography at Associated Press and told him to come on down and snap a picture. And he said, 'Phoebe, call me if somebody throws a rock through a window at Saks Fifth Avenue. Nobody wants to see a happy picture anymore.'

I liked it better when it was moon, June, spoon, once upon a time, and happily ever after. It was an escape, sure, but it also choreographed your attitude about living. Now we have survival of the fittest. But what kind of fittest? What are you fit for?

Franklin on the Tyranny of the Majority

Unfettered democracy is just two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner.

Thomas On Gay Marriage

Are we to believe that anyone who doesn't live their life according to the King James Bible isn't protected by the same laws that protect those who do? Using the same argument that I've seen on the 700 Club, that would mean that Jewish, Hindu, or Muslim weddings are also null and void.

Red Flayer On Supply-Side Economics Alternatives

Since I believe trickle-down economics has been shown to not work, I believe taxes levied on capital investment are a good bet.

One can increase capital investment to increase income. There is a limit to how much a person can increase labor to increase income.

Kelly On Donnie Darko's Underlying Theory

The inherently unstable Tangent Universe will collapse in just over 28 days and take the Primary Universe with it if not corrected. Closing the Tangent Universe is the duty of the Living Receiver, Donnie, who wields certain supernatural powers to help him in the task.

Those who die within the Tangent Universe (and would not have died otherwise) are the Manipulated Dead (Frank, Gretchen). Frank, at least, is also given certain powers in that he is able to subtly understand what is happening and have the ability to contact and influence the Living Receiver via theFourth Dimensional Construct (water). All others within the orbit of the Living Receiver are theManipulated Living (e.g. Ms. Pomeroy, Dr. Monnitoff), subconsciously drawn to push him towards his destiny to close the Tangent Universe and, according to the Philosophy of Time Travel, die by the Artifact.

Voltaire On The Road To Hell

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

Von Trier Unhappy With Critics Revulsion

"Of course I am sensitive to the negative reaction of the press," Von Trier admitted soberly -- more intimate with us sitting round him at a table before the sea, than he had been at the press room shouting out he is "the greatest" before the TV cameras. "Of course I am. It's not pleasant when people don't like what you do. You come to your mother with a little drawing, and she says it's wonderful, so you know she loves you."

Gloria Steinem On How It Keeps Happening

Bras, panties, bathing suits, and other stereotypical gear are visual reminders of a commercial, idealized feminine image that our real and diverse female bodies can't possibly fit.

Bridget Gray Incredulous

Dear Hip Hop,

I'm writing to inform you I'm going to have to end our relationship.
I know in the beginning I was down to work my hips,
but I was tricked.
Seduced by your beat.

You had me for three minutes and forty-six seconds
I was suspended in time,
but when I snapped out of it I had to ask
"Did I hear what I thought I did in that last rhyme?"

Now forgive me, maybe I'm getting old or maybe I'm just slow,
but I didn't even know you could say "bitch" on the radio,
yet I was entranced by your beat I heard somewhere before,
oh, I remember that was the original score.

Now unless I'm dreaming I could have swore,
right after you called me a "bitch" you called someone else a whore,
and at this point I'm trying to process a few things.
What were the original words to that song
and you want me to do WHAT with my thong?
I'm trippin' cause nobody is acting like anything is wrong. [...]

Morgen On The Inequality of Authority

Two Boston carters [were] hauling a wagonload of wood along a narrow snow-drifted road one wintry day in 1705 when they met the oncoming coach of the royal governor of Massachusetts and refused to pull aside.

The governor later testified that after he jumped from the coach and ordered them to clear the road, one of them “answered boldly, without any other words, ‘I am as good flesh and blood as you; I will not give way, you may goe out of the way.’”

When the governor drew his sword to assert respect for high office, the carter “layd hold on the governor and broke the sword in his hand.” It was “a supreme gesture of contempt for authority and its might,” Morgan writes.

One shudders to think what might happen to this stubborn working stiff and his supreme gesture in today’s world of terrifying political motorcades with their heavily armed bodyguards.

Morehead on The Fountainhead

The first clue that Howard Roarke has something weirdly wrong with him comes early on. He's going out of business. A friend offers him a loan, and he refuses it. Okay. He has too much pride to take help. That's fine. But he says, "I never ask for nor give help."

What? He never "gives help"? He never helps anyone?

Yup. That's exactly what he means. He's anti-helping his fellow man. In his trial summation, six minutes of Gary Cooper giving a completely unhinged, turgid speech, he actually says, "Mankind is perishing in a sea of selflessness."

Whatever finishes off mankind, it won't be an excess of selflessness. The movie is pro-selfishness and egoism (which is just egotism misspelled), and anti-altruism. It preaches, at length and in a superior tone, that Altruism is Bad. And it means it.

Lurie On Our Shadow

This insane dynamic - the reluctance to accept parts of ourselves that don't fit the self-image that we've created, who we like to think that we are, and who we want to appear to others - is actually a universal human experience. The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung named it the "shadow", because it contains the thoughts and feelings that we've subconsciously sent to the dark shadows of our psyche, hoping not to be found, out of fear that our self-image will be challenged. If our self-image is, for example, I am self-sufficient, I am humble, I am caring, or I am spiritual, then natural thoughts and emotions which conflict with this self-image, such as feelings of incompetence, need for adulation, self-involvement, or anxiety about getting a train seat, will be disowned to the degree in which we identify with the self-image. We then lock these thoughts and emotions behind a wall in our psyche so that we can avoid looking at them, where they remain stagnant, stuck at the age when they were repressed, never growing, and never maturing. We may think that we've eliminated the unwanted feeling by locking it away, but there it waits, ready to emerge when provoked. If unaddressed, our shadow qualities can damage our relationships, limit our effectiveness, and make us anxious, depressed, and frustrated.

[...]

The good news is that we tend to unconsciously select spouses, friends, work and social situations that bring our shadow forward. We do this because, in our hearts, we want to be known and accepted for all of who we are, and we are drawn to these people and situations that we intuit will help lead us toward repair and wholeness. In this way, people who bring up our shadow side are our teachers, to whom, if we can, we ought to feel gratitude.

Pema On Buddhism

A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet. To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is.

-Pema Chodron, as quoted by Jesse Kornbluth