As part of the January Book of the Month Club thread on Broken Forum, I read You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney. This is a collection based on McRaney’s website of the same name. Here’s my review, which can also be read in the thread linked above.

I finished the book in about three weeks after setting it aside for most of a week. It’s one of those books that is very put down-able while still not being a bad book at all.

The concept of the book as described on amazon.com:

You believe you are a rational, logical being who sees the world as it really is, but journalist David McRaney is here to tell you that you’re as deluded as the rest of us. But that’s OK- delusions keep us sane. You Are Not So Smart is a celebration of self-delusion. It’s like a psychology class, with all the boring parts taken out, and with no homework.

Based on the popular blog of the same name, You Are Not So Smart collects more than 46 of the lies we tell ourselves everyday, including:

• Dunbar’s Number – Humans evolved to live in bands of roughly 150 individuals, the brain cannot handle more than that number. If you have more than 150 Facebook friends, they are surely not all real friends.
• Hindsight bias – When we learn something new, we reassure ourselves that we knew it all along.
• Confirmation bias – Our brains resist new ideas, instead paying attention only to findings that reinforce our preconceived notions.
• Brand loyalty – We reach for the same brand not because we trust its quality but because we want to reassure ourselves that we made a smart choice the last time we bought it.Packed with interesting sidebars and quick guides on cognition and common fallacies, You Are Not So Smart is a fascinating synthesis of cutting-edge psychology research to turn our minds inside out.

On the plus side, the book is an easy read, the conversational tone works well to draw the reader in and McRaney has done his homework on the subject. While a lot of what he writes about seems self-evident when it’s laid out for you, I still found it valuable in the general sense of knowing that your brain can be a tricksy thing and better understanding how it tries to trick you can be helpful when it does so in a way that can have negative or unintended consequences.

The last chapter, which chronicles the horrifying mock prison experiment, ends the book on a somber note compared to the overall tone and left me with the feeling that a deeper take on the subject might have worked better. The book betrays it roots as a series of blog posts and McRaney really does nothing to expand the book beyond a series of vignettes with nothing to tie it all together. I would have enjoyed it more if McRaney had adopted a specific angle on why he had collected these examples of how ‘we are not so smart’. There are hints of it here and there where he offers advice (from himself or others) on how to work against your brain’s need to shortcut or fill-in but the larger picture of what all this means and what we can all do about it is left mostly untouched.

In short, an enjoyable and easily digested book but I’d have preferred a more substantial take on the matter.

This is the last day I’ll do this, I swear.

Today started with temperatures well below freezing and another blanket of snow fell (damn snow) but we saw the return of a more typical weather pattern follow than has been seen in recent years as temperatures slowly rose and that snow turned to freezing rain and then plain old-fashioned rain.

Torrents of it.

This left the roads and sidewalks seas of slish. I opted not to return to running. I’ll monitor the weather over the weekend but with warming temperatures and the relentless assault of ‘liquid sunshine’ I suspect the snow will not be an issue for more than the rest of today.

I wanted to highlight two blogs of PIKOTI (People I Know On The Internet). I made acquaintances with both of them through the Quarter to Three forums and like me, they both cherish the romantic dream of writing and getting paid fat piles of cash for doing so.

Matt Bowyer’s blog is nascent, with a mere four posts to date. It’s called Loading Screen and as Matt puts it:

I started this site for two reasons. 1) MattWBowyer.com was available, and since that’s me, I thought I should do something about it. 2) I’m writing a book. Actually, I wrote a book, or at least I wrote a first draft. It’s not too good, but I think it will end up being good.

I shall tease him unto the end of days if he doesn’t stick with his promise to post three times a week. This will be done to help him build character, lots and lots of character.

The other blog dates back from when FrontPage was considered hip. Actually, it was never considered hip, but Jason Pace’s blog was nonetheless started back in 1998, when Duke Nukem Forever had only been in development for a single year. His blog is called Aim for the Head. Quoth Jason:

This weblog itself is just where I ramble about the things I feel like rambling about. There is a smattering of armchair game design. I review every book that I read. I put forth the effort to track down passes for free movie screening and I review them too. I occasionally writing creative things and post them. And sometimes, like this About page, I just ramble.

Looks like Jason may need an editor. I’m available and cheap. And easy.

Jason doesn’t mention it in his About section but he also does this word of the day thing. On Broken Forum he describes it thusly: “I am also now doing a drawing each day based on either the reference.com or webster’s word of the day (I cheat and choose the better word, and also because some days one will have a word that doesn’t lend itself to drawing).” You can see one of the results in this post. This is exactly the sort of neat idea I love to steal borrow.

These are both a couple of super-friendly and helpful guys. Read their words and when the time comes, buy them!

The first day I can officially start running again and the ground is too icy to run on. Plus I had to wait for a bed to show up during the daylight hours.

On the plus side it’s a pretty nice bed.

At long last the three months of non-running officially comes to an end today. I am relieved more than anything.

I had joked that on the day that I was first able to resume running again we’d get a major snowstorm. It turns out I accidentally predicted the future as Environment Canada has issued a snowfall warning for Metro Vancouver tonight, warning of ‘significant snowfall’. Ho ho.

I’m also going to be busy doing that ‘wait for a vague but large block of time’ for delivery of a new bed tomorrow and on top of that am hoping to squeeze in the time to get to a career fair downtown, even though these things usually amount to a whole lot of not much.

So I can jog tomorrow but I’ll be up to my shins in snow and too busy, otherwise. Maybe I’ll jog in place inside for 10 minutes just to make the muscles know they’re there.

It snowed again last night and is once again sunny and clear now. I call this ninja snow.

Here’s a shot similar to yesterday’s showing the terrace out back but with the colder temperatures today it’s looking a little more frosty.

I remember the delight as a child when waking up to discover the world had been blanketed with snow. It was even more magical if it was still snowing and better still if it was the weekend.

Today I got up to see we had received our first notable snowfall of the winter and it is indeed the weekend. However, it’s also already +4ºC which means that the snow is already melting and will turn into a giant slush pit shortly.

Damn snow.

Pic below. Even the hospital helipad is covered.

I tried to watch Batman & Robin. Yes, the 1997 movie with George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger. There’s a Warner movie channel on preview now so I figured I’d record it on the PVR (in HD!) and give it a shot, having never seen it before. I was aware of its less than stellar reputation. I cringed at the first butt shot, winced at the batsuit with nipples and watched through my fingers as if at a horror movie while Arnie lumbered onto the screen and bellowed, “Da ice man cometh!” I found it odd that Batman and Mr. Freeze would meet right at the start of the movie and that distracted me until the hockey guards/attackers skated in.

At that point kitsch was no longer enough. Or it was too much. In any case, that’s as far as I got. I’ll assume Batman won in the end and be happy with that.

The Dark Knight Rises (which is almost as dumb a title as Batman Begins) is coming out this summer. My only concern is that Nolan will fall into his own navel and make it too Grim and Serious. What it is unlikely to be, however, is too campy. I’m fairly confident that Batman & Robin sucked all remaining camp out of the universe.

I like Lovecraft. Yes, purple prose, eldritch this and gibbous that and of course, the latent racism –  but he could spin a good yarn. Warning has started blogging his short stories. Give his reviews a read. Like me, they may leave you wanting to pick up a Lovecraft collection again.

Zounds, I am mere days away from being able to run again.

I am afraid and uncertain.

I will run either 2.5 or 5K to start. I expect to be sluggish and for my leg muscles to be sore afterward. I am going to wrap my ankles in titanium or something.

While mulling over a blog site redesign (which I’m leaning more against, though tweaks are possible) I looked at some of the other images I had made to use as a possible masthead/header for the site.

And here they are!

This Sims 3 masthead I rejected because while it’s cute, it just looks odd visually with the breakaway walls of the house and it’s difficult to see who the other person being hugged is, which lessens the (allegedly) humorous nature of it.

I still like this one. It’s maybe too centered and it’s my partner, not me, strolling along through the woods. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just seems odd to feature someone else in the masthead of my own blog. Then again, I ain’t fishing in the one that’s up there now.

Barley is, like most chocolate labs, eminently photogenic. The biggest problem with this image is that I no longer live in the same house as Barley, so the picture isn’t strictly accurate anymore. But he’s so dang cute.

I’ll probably peruse the photos I have to see if anything stands out as a solid replacement for Buntzen Lake. I do really like that shot, I just wonder if sometimes some poor sod might stumble across my blog and expect some kind of nature thing instead of my rambling nonsense.

This afternoon Jeff and I did a brisk walk around Burnaby Lake, only the second time I’ve been out there since the last run I did back in September. It was raining when we headed out but I figured my winter coat and cap would be sufficient.

The trail around the lake was about what I expected — mostly dry with puddles and pools of water around the edges in numerous spots. There was only one place where we had to skirt along the edge of the trail proper to avoid slopping through a pool of water like an over-eager eight year old. We kept up a good pace, too, finishing up with 10.11 km covered at an average pace of 5.8 km/hr and taking 1:47 to do it. This was almost 15 minutes faster than our previous walk there. Zoom zoom. A few hardy walkers and joggers were out but I only noticed one person giving their dog a good soak in the downpour.

Speaking of which, the relentless rain did not ease up at all. By the end the bottom third of my jeans had absorbed every bit of water around, my cap was almost but not quite soaked through (keeping my head dry, woo) and my winter coat did in fact get soaked through to the point that my t-shirt underneath was wet. Stupid rain. I know it’s dumb to complain about it here but we seem to be getting downpours every time we plan on doing something outdoors. At least if it was snow it would be fluffy and kind of neat.