The AP reporter tried to explain that she had a digital recording device, so there was no tape to give up. Ms. Konz said the deputy seemed baffled by that.

The marshall then proceeded to erase the recordings.

This is an action far beyond the pale. In such a benign setting, with such a small incident, are great changes wrought.

A Justice's Sense of Privilege

"... The second one is eudaemonia, the good life, which is what Thomas Jefferson and Aristotle meant by the pursuit of happiness. They did not mean smiling a lot and giggling. Aristotle talks about the pleasures of contemplation and the pleasures of good conversation. Aristotle is not talking about raw feeling, about thrills, about orgasms. Aristotle is talking about what Mike Csikszentmihalyi works on, and that is, when one has a good conversation, when one contemplates well. When one is in eudaemonia, time stops. You feel completely at home. Self-consciousness is blocked. You're one with the music...

Coming out this month as part of the DSM is a classification of strengths and virtues; it's the opposite of the classification of the insanities. When we look we see that there are six virtues, which we find endorsed across cultures, and these break down into 24 strengths. The six virtues that we find are non-arbitrary — first, a wisdom and knowledge cluster; second, a courage cluster; third, virtues like love and humanity; fourth, a justice cluster; fifth a temperance, moderation cluster; and sixth a spirituality, transcendence cluster. We sent people up to northern Greenland, and down to the Masai, and are involved in a 70-nation study in which we look at the ubiquity of these. Indeed, we're beginning to have the view that those six virtues are just as much a part of human nature as walking on two feet are."

"But there's a third form of life, and if you're a bridge player like me, or a stamp collector, you can have eudaemonia; that is, you can be in flow. But everyone finds that as they grow older and look in the mirror they worry that they're fidgeting until they die. That's because there's a third form of happiness that is ineluctably pursued by humans, and that's the pursuit of meaning... Aristotle said the two noblest professions are teaching and politics, and I believe that as well. Raising children, and projecting a positive human future through your children, is a meaningful form of life. Saving the whales is a meaningful form of life. Fighting in Iraq is a meaningful form of life. Being an Arab terrorist is a meaningful form of life.

Notice, this isn't a distinction between good and evil. That's not part of this. This isn't a theory of everything. This is a theory of meaning, and the theory says, joining and serving in things larger than you that you believe in while using your highest strengths is a recipe for meaning. One of the things people don't like about my theory is that suicide bombers and the firemen who saved lives and lost their lives both had meaningful lives. I would condemn one as evil and the other as good, but not on the grounds of meaning."

A focus on studying and building positive psych.

EUDAEMONIA, THE GOOD LIFE - A Talk with Martin Seligman

Brilliant commentary on configure-your-friends/six-degree style social network sites.

small world

"A detailed survey of birds and butterflies in Britain shows a population decline of 54 percent to 71 percent, a finding that suggests the world may be undergoing another major extinction.

Researchers said the study helps support the theory that the sixth big extinction in Earth's history is under way, and this one is caused by humans."

The last one was 63 million years ago when we lost dinos.

Scary Biodiversity Findings

"Each of us knows very little, really, about the companies we invest in—certainly not how they're going to perform in the future. Yet our collective buying and selling often sends stunningly accurate signals about a company's prospects, which are reflected in the stock price. "When our imperfect judgments are aggregated in the right way," Jim concludes, "our collective intelligence is often excellent." Well, okay, not in the middle of a bubble—that's the madness of crowds—but most other times."

I wonder what line differentiates wisdom and madness in collective knowledge.

The Wisdom of Crowds

Imminent threat? I never said there was an imminent threat!

Warning: this is almost painful to watch.

See Rumsfeld Backpedal!

"Notes:
This word combines pomo, shorthand for postmodern, with the suffix -sexual. Although she didn't invent the word, pomosexual was made famous (in certain circles, anyway) by editor Carol Queen who used it in the title of a 1997 anthology of essays, PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality (Cleis Press). On the back cover of the book, PoMoSexual is described, unhelpfully, as the "erotic reality beyond the boundaries of gender, separatism, and essentialist notions of sexual orientation."

The Word Spy tracks the creation of new words, complete with citations.

A silly Orkut thread on alternatives to the word "metrosexual" (one guy proposed "fauxmosexual", I thought that rather clever) let on a linguistic browse.

Be sure to check out the latest additions like "chofa", "job spill" and "cankle".

Faux-mos, Pomos and Other Linguistic Creations

"In the long run, though, the thing even execs should fear is this: What would happen if America's once-prosperous middle class, the sine qua non of a vibrant democracy, grew too strapped to purchase the goods and services that businesses produce? True, as workers in China, India and elsewhere move up the value-added chain, they should prop up global demand. But here at home, increasing income inequality could lead, as Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) warns, to a two-tier economy, with a small but ever wealthier coterie of capital holders and a sprawling proletariat. It's not inevitable, but worth worrying about. Even if the future plays out according to the economists' models, it might not be the type of society we want to live in."

Very consise, pretty scary.

Maybe We Could All Deliver Pizza ...

] I travel a lot and one of my favorite destination lead
] through poisoned with radiation, so called Chernobyl
] "dead zone" It is 130kms from my home. Why favourite?
] because one can ride there for hours and not meet any
] single car and not to see any single soul. People left
] and nature is blooming, there are beautiful places,
] woods, lakes. There is no newly built roads, but those
] which left from 80th in fairly good condition

This is absolutely stunning, spellbinding.

Photoblogging Chernobyl

"Imagine doing a Google search for a phone number, weather report or sports score. The results page would be filled with links to various sources of information. But what if someone typed in keywords and no results came back?

That's the scenario critics are painting of a new bill wending its way through Congress that would let certain companies own facts, and exact a fee to access them."

"The House Judiciary Committee approved the bill and the commerce committee is expected to review it on Thursday."

I want my infomation, fast, free and complete.

Wired News: Hands Off! That Fact Is Mine