I've feeling a big stretched out these days, often wondering how I'm going to get everything done. In the midst of this, I noticed this article by Heidi Grant Halvorson in the Harvard Business Review. She offers nine things that successful people do differently, and I do like this list.
There are a few news media figure who are taking principled stands regarding the the horrific way that the United States government is treating Bradley Manning, who has not been convicted of any crime. Glen Greenwald is one of the few with scruples. Other principled voices can be read at Alternet, including Lynn Parramore, who (rightfully) suggests that we'd be outraged if we viewed a fictitious movie of someone being treated as badly as Manning, but since it's happening in real life we don't give a shit. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake has admirably covered the story. Andrew Sullivan has weighed in. Barack Obama has fully earned the title of America's Second Modern Torture President. This is not hyperbole. Bradley Manning is being tortured by the United States. We are enthusiastically treating Manning the way we treated the (mostly innocent) prisoners at Gitmo. We are doing to Manning what we criticize when other countries do it. Dylan Ratigan of MSNBC has also presented the story with energy. The torture is bad enough, but the silence by mainstream Democrats is infuriating. We're running a great country, aren't we? No need to speak out about Wall Street corruption, massive problems with health care "reform," the right to assassinate U.S. citizens, government spying on its own citizens, and not blatant torture.
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Yesterday, I was trying to get some work done in a tall office building in downtown Saint Louis. In the early afternoon, I was distracted by lots of crowd noise and drum beating outside. It was March 12, which somehow means that it was time for the downtown Saint Patrick's Day parade (St. Louis also has an 
annual Hibernian parade on March 17). I decided to grab my camera and go down to street level to see things up close. I'm posting a dozen photos with this article.
I'm somewhat of a introverted non-drinking semi-misanthrope, which gives me a special perspective whenever people gather for merriment. Whenever I notice great energy being funneled into big social gatherings, I am immune to being swept up myself. Some would consider the way I am to be a curse, but I disagree. On these occasions I put on my armchair-anthropologist hat and I enjoy the opportunity to get to work. I ponder why it is that human animals so 
often burn such energy for reasons that almost always escape me. For instance, at Christmas time, very little of the energy is spend pondering Jesus. On the forth of July, very few Americans seriously consider whether we are better off not being part of the British Empire. We are people of food, drink, presents, fireworks and being groupish. We are also prolific excuse-makers.
How would a first rate scientist or historian size up yesterday's big parade? I believe that the answer is instructive regarding the issues raised here and here).
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Brian Walsh of Time bemoans the increasing anti-science attitudes of Americans and its effect on our conversations regarding climate change.
We like to think of ourselves as rational creatures who select from the choices presented to us for maximum individual utility — indeed, that's the essential principle behind most modern economics. But when you do assume rationality, the politics of climate change get confusing. Why would so many supposedly rational human beings choose to ignore overwhelming scientific authority? Maybe because we're not actually so rational after all, as research is increasingly showing. Emotions and values — not always fully conscious — play an enormous role in how we process information and make choices. We are beset by cognitive biases that throw what would be sound decision-making off-balance.Walsh mentions "loss aversion" as a driving factor (the fear that actively decreasing CO2 will lose jobs), and group identification . The bottom line is that "no additional data — new findings about CO2 feedback loops or better modeling of ice sheet loss — is likely to change their mind."