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Q: Do I spend too much time watching tv?

A: Probably. I should cut down to 3 show specific hours a week (any guesses at what my 3 hours are?), plus some Daily Show and PBS here and there. Doesn’t include social tv watching, gathering around the glow of the electric campfire to spend time with the tribe.

Q: Do I spend too much time on the internet?

A: Absolutely. Harder to pinpoint what I should limit myself to, but soduku has to go.

Q: I’ve been thinking of rejoining the workforce full time, is working really for suckers?

A: Yes, but it probably wouldn’t be as bad as I imagine/fear if I could land an interesting job.

Q: How much time do I really want to spend working out?

A: I was working out for 1-2 hours, 6 or 7 days a week for a while. That is too much (but it did get me in great shape, or as I like to call it, unemployed shape). 1 hour 3 or 4 times a week isn’t enough. I think the time in the former might be good if I replaced half the gym time with fun activities, like intense games of dodge ball or running from the swine flu.

Q: Climbing a mountain sounds like an awesome goal, for somebody else. What’s my mountain?

A: I don’t know but I want to find out. It’s not running a marathon (nice little challenge, but what’s the point) or getting an advanced degree in a somewhat difficult subject (too easy). Suggestions are welcome, I’m looking for a challenge.

Last weekend, Kate Ranger and Trent Stevenson got married. Which I mentioned briefly before, but didn’t congratulate them on, and whats the point of keeping a blog nobody reads if you don’t congratulate your friends on getting married.

I took a lot of pictures, but pretty much all of them are of drunk people dancing, so I can’t post a nice wedding picture of the couple.  One of the great things about Trent & Kate is that they’re the type of couple that won’t let marriage stop them from throwing parites that revolve around kegs, funny clothes and 4-square. At least until they start making little Stevensons.

Congratulations, Trent and Kate.

Don’t let anyone tell you living across the street from the beach doesn’t have it’s dangers.

A friend came to visit this week, so naturally I took him (and a Costco case of beer) over to enjoy the sand and surf on Saturday. Then the track on Sunday, were I came out 16 yen ahead on my first adventure with horse racing. I returned to the beach Monday, not a bad couple of days.

What do all these activities have in common? That mean, mean Sun. So my forehead feels itchy at work today. I scratch…and see tiny brown pieces of me floating down onto my keyboard. I like to think of myself as have a certain level of self control, but when that skin starts coming off, there is something unnaturally satisfying about peeling it . Someone save me from myself. I tried not to do it, when that didn’t work I tried to be discreet. Pretty sure that didn’t work either. I’m sure one of my coworkers is writing on their blog about the icky guy peeling skin off his forehead all day.

I just peeled another piece.

My new health insurance’s website tried to teach me about health and wellness, and part of their propaganda was about learning to control your mood. I read it. I still don’t know how to control my mood, but it got me wondering why people don’t spend more time trying to control moods.

I don’t mean that in a Dr Evil ray-gun kind of way, although that does sound like a decent Austin Powers plot. What I mean is why should we spend all our time trying to do things to be happy when we could cut to the chase? The obvious argument is you can’t just learn to make yourself happy, but I don’t think that’s true.

Over at Marginal Revolution, they linked to this post at the Happiness Project. I first read the Happiness Project a while ago, and I like the concept but never found the posts interesting or inspiring, but this one is worth a read. A blog I do like, Freakonomics, had this related post about the effects of rejection.

So am I going to focus my life on learning to change my mood to happy? I don’t suppose I am, but I still think its a good idea. I’m waiting for someone to make a happy ray-gun.

 

November 2009
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RSS I Read & Enjoyed…

  • Detroit fact of the day markets in everything November 25, 2009
    Here's all you need to know about the real estate market in Michigan: The 80,000-seat enclosed Silverdome, built for $55.7 million in 1975 to house the Detroit Lions, has sold for $583,000.And you thought your home had lost its value during this recession.Think about it this way: $583,000 will get you a decent, but not terrific, house in a nice neighbor […]
    Tyler Cowen
  • Caplan on Education November 10, 2009
    How much does increasing college-going rates matter to our economy and society? Caplan: College attendance, in my view, is usually a drain on our economy and society. Encouraging talented people to spend many years in wasteful status contests deprives the economy of millions of man-years of output. If this were really an "investment," of course, it […]
    Alex Tabarrok
  • Dolphin markets in everything, Gresham's Law edition November 4, 2009
    I enjoyed this story: Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fi […]
    Tyler Cowen
  • How to improve basketball October 29, 2009
    Tim Miano writes to me: I am a longtime MR reader. I have a hypothesis about how basketball could be much more exciting, and I can't for the life of me figure out why people who are into sports haven't widely considered it (as least as far as I know).Here is my simple thought: games should be played as best 4 out of 7 periods -- perhaps 7 minutes e […]
    Tyler Cowen
  • The coin toss: not 50-50 after all October 25, 2009
    Using a high-speed camera that photographed people flipping coins, the three researchers determined that a coin is more likely to land facing the same side on which it started. If tails is facing up when the coin is perched on your thumb, it is more likely to land tails up. How much more likely? At least 51 percent of the time, the researchers claim, and pos […]
    Chris Blattman
  • Motorcycle helmet externality of the day October 13, 2009
    Our estimates imply that every death of a helmetless motorcyclist prevents or delays as many as 0.33 deaths among individuals on organ transplant waiting lists. Here is the paper and I thank Brent Wheeler for the pointer.  So should we mandate or tax the use of such helmets?
    Tyler Cowen
  • Sobering Reality September 28, 2009
    From Bill Easterly's, Can the West Save Africa.Hat tip to for the link and table to Hit and Run.
    Alex Tabarrok
  • The McFarthest spot September 27, 2009
    Strange Maps reports:Somewhere in South Dakota is the McFarthest Spot, the place in the US geographically most removed from the nearest McD’s...If you started out from this location, a few miles north of State Highway 20 (which runs latitudinally between Highways 73 in the west and 65 in the east), you’d have to drive 145 miles to get your Big Mac (if you co […]
    Tyler Cowen