As a follow-up to David McRaney’s previous book You Are Not So Smart, You Are Now Less Dumb not only has a more positive spin to the title, it’s an overall better book. While the former reads much like what it was–a collection of blog posts assembled into book form–the latter is a more fleshed-out examination of how and why we act the way do, with tips on how to be “less dumb”, even if some of the tips amount to little more than “Here is some awful behavior you may find yourself engaging in, try to be aware of it.”
While the book follows the light tone of the first previous entry, each chapter offers more detailed analysis and studies covering many aspects of our social behavior. Some of the things revealed are not exactly revealing (most of the confirmation bias material) while others are downright chilling, like the chapter describing mob mentality, complete with examples of people yelling at potential suicide jumpers to jump–and then the jumpers doing just that, resulting in their deaths.
This isn’t a book that will change your life or make you overhaul the way you conduct yourself around others but it is informative, insightful and may make you that much more aware of the way you act, both positively and negatively. And that’s not a bad thing.
Back on June 1 2012 I encountered a coyote while running. It was ahead of me on the trail and dashed off into the bushes as I approached, probably because I wasn’t carrying a nice juicy baby in my arms. I also encountered coyotes twice this summer on my way to or from Burnaby Lake. In each case the coyote scooted away at my approach, then stopped at a safe distance as I passed by. Again, each probably did so because I wasn’t covered in layers of sausage links or raw meat.
Coyotes are generally to be avoided because you never know. Maybe the one you see is scouting ahead for a pack that will tear you apart. Maybe the one you stumble across is starving and will tear you apart. Maybe it’s just in a bad mood and will tear you apart.
The City of Vancouver knows this and near the trail that circumvents the Langara Golf Course they have erected this sign:
One thing I’ve learned while jogging is that people ignore signs. I’m fairly certain that if you put up a sign that said the following:
WARNING: If you take ten more steps you will fall into a pit filled with lava and large iron spikes. This will kill you very painfully. You should immediately turn around now.
At the end of the day the lava and iron spike pit would be filled with so many bodies that they would pile above the edge of the pit and thus the pit would no longer be an obstacle to all the other people ignoring the sign.
I am being unfair, though. Many people do read signs. They just interpret them. I’m not sure why they do this. Perhaps it comes from a lot of dangerous free thinking or a general belief that rules are for bad people and no one sees themselves as bad so the rules obviously don’t apply to them.
With that in mind, I present the interpretation of the coyote sign that many people may have:
This is not my best example of sign fakery but I spent way too much time on it as it is. At least I put my research skills to use in trying to determine which font was used (my best guess is Century Gothic).
By the way, if you use your favorite search engine (okay, Google) you can find enough stories about coyote attacks to convince you to never step outside again. Especially if you’re a juicy baby. Heck, just check out the Vancouver Coyote Sightings Map. There’s about a billion coyotes out there. Imagine if they all operated under some kind of hive mind and began a reign of terror. Now imagine someone writing a really crappy novel about it. Now go buy the novel on Amazon because I’m pretty sure someone has already written this book.
Run 364 Average pace: 5:25/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 27:13
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 8-11ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 365
Total distance to date: 3029
Device used: iPhone 5c
Various factors contributed to me missing both runs during the week so today’s effort was the first in a week and the first after my appalling tortoise time of 5:38/km. I was confident that unless I got eaten by a bear on the trail I could manage to beat this slothful pace, even with a week of stuffing potato chips into my face.
And I did! My pace was still very slow for a 5K at 5:25/km but it was still good enough to knock a lucky 13 seconds off last week’s run. I had no issues on the run and though my left foot started getting cranky after the run I still managed to walk the rest of the way home (about 9K) at a brisk pace.
The weather was the coolest it’s been since early spring, starting around 8ºC and rising to 11ºC by the end. It didn’t feel particularly cool, though. It was actually kind of nice and though I wore my long sleeve t-shirt, I think I would have been fine in a regular one.
With the rain of late there was a certain amount of puddle-dodging required, though the run itself remained dry. I also remained dry until the very end and I mean this literally. Just moments before I hit the 5K mark I hit the tree-lined section adjacent to the athletic fields. The drainage here has basically stopped functioning so when we have heavy rain it tends to flood from the edge of the field and across the entire width of the trail. I tried skirting the edge but the water and muck was unavoidable.
It didn’t actually matter because farther up the trail was again flooded in an impossible-to-avoid way. Such is the way of running in the fall once The Rains have started.
I also nearly had a dog incident just prior to the first boardwalk (about 1.5 km in) when a couple had let their spastic canine scamper off ahead of them. Judging by the insane way it was capering about I surmised that they keep it locked in the basement most of the time and now that it was out it was determined to enjoy its precious freedom to the full. I keep a wary eye on it but sure enough it abruptly changed direction and cut right in front of me, causing me to do a sudden detour. Had this happened on the boardwalk the detour would have been into the swamp and I would have been rather displeased.
As it was I turned my head back and barked (ho ho) a curt “Leash your dog!” I have no doubt they thought I was rude and some kind of rules Nazi to boot. the rest of the run was free of further incidents of either a two or four-legged nature.
I’m not sure what will happen on Tuesday. It looks like we may get the remains of the season’s first hurricane rolling in, which will make things very windy and wet, plus the sun is now setting before 6 p.m., making it a challenge to complete even a 5K before darkness descends. If I had a mutant power I would want super-awesome night vision. Plus the ability to fly. And invisibility. But only those three. Yes.
If Tuesday looks like a no-go I may try running on the treadmill (bleah) at the Canada Games Pool, try the elliptical there instead or see if the track at a nearby high school keeps the lights on in the early evening.
Six players (including my human rogue) waiting for Guard Thomas to respawn in Elwynn Forest so we can turn in quests. He was killed by a Horde (opposing faction) player. There is no reward for killing an NPC like this, nor any challenge–you just click a button and the NPC obligingly keels over, taking several minutes to magically spring back to life. There’s also no real way to stop this from happening.
Guard Thomas, we hardly knew ye.
This is the regular low level experience in World of Warcraft, an ongoing opportunity to observe sociopaths in the wild, as it were (or more accurately, their aftermath).
This is the image a retailer uses in their ads to entice you to buy phones. Based on how smartphones have evolved in the few short years they’ve been around, I am projecting that this phone will exist in 2017:
After flailing about I have come to a decision on what to write for National Novel Writing month 2014 with a week to spare: Road Closed.
As with 2009, I am taking an unfinished short story and expanding it to short novel-length. There are a few differences this time. I am actively working on the story “Road Closed” while “The Ferry” had been abandoned many years prior. I also had planned on completing “Road Closed” before November 1, using it as my warm-up for the contest.
But with it already clocking in at 7,000 words and only just laying the foundation for the grisly meat of the story (ho ho) I realized I might be able to turn it into a novel by expanding certain aspects of the story while keeping the basic plot/framework in place.
I can’t say I’m optimistic about my chances of being successful, as my writing has floundered for most of the year. “Road Closed” began as a writing exercise back in January before being abandoned and it was only a few weeks ago that I dusted it off, chucked most of what I had written and dove back into it. But the intervening months did give me time to think about the story and I found a hook that eluded me. My intent is to keep the story light while dealing with alcoholism, death and dismemberment. We’ll see how it pans out in 36 days.
Run 363 Average pace: 5:38/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Ran Spruce and Conifer Loops and Piper Mill Trail
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 28:19
Weather: Partly sunny
Temp: 18-22ºC
Wind: moderate with occasional gusts
Calories burned: 366
Total distance to date: 3024
Device used: iPhone 5c
For today’s run I wore my Brooks Cascadia 9’s since they would offer a little more support in case my left foot started crying early. It did start wailing but was nice enough to wait until after the run.
Way back three days ago I said this:
The bad parts resulted in a sluggish pace of 5:15/km, a big drop from last week’s under-5 minute triumph. Improving on this during the weekend shouldn’t be too challenging but you never know.
As it turns out, not only did I not meet this supposedly not-too-challenging challenge, I didn’t even meet it in the first km of today’s run when my pace was already a lolwut pace of 5:20/km.
The one bright spot came at the 4K mark when my pace improved by 9% to 5:21/km. This occurred on the Cottonwood Trail, a stretch that is straight for the better part of a km. That may not seem like an improvement but my pace for the third km was 5:54/km. I undid the improvement by wrapping up with a “please let it end” pace of 5:41/km.
So why was today’s run so terrible? I didn’t experience any cramps but I think I ate and drank too much before heading out and the threat of cramps probably acted as an inhibitor. But I was slow right from the start. I wasn’t feeling especially tired, though my previous night’s sleep was a bit restless. It was as if the totality of the week just left me without gas.
Strangely, this horrible turn has me eager to go on Tuesday. I’ll be back on the river trail and racing against the setting sun and probably getting soaked to the butt if the forecast is accurate, but I’m anxious to get back on track while I still have some time to run after work before the winter dark descends.
Rendezvous with Rama is an incredibly lean science fiction mystery. Clarke doesn’t spend dozens or hundreds of pages world-building, he doesn’t bolt on any number of subplots or drama between the crew members of the Endeavour, a solar survey vessel whose crew is tasked with exploring and analyzing the massive alien vessel dubbed Rama before it journeys out and beyond our solar system, possibly never to return.
In exchange for detailed character development and a complex plot Clarke serves up an almost documentary approach to how the Endeavour’s crew tackles the enigma of the Rama vessel, with government figures offering advice and orders from the moon, one of the many colonized celestial bodies in this world set in the 2130s.
Despite the presence of political wranglings (the Mercury colony is particularly willful) Clarke also makes no attempt to use his story to set up parallels to the then-present day of 1973, giving it a sense of timelessness, save for a few nods to the “swingin’ 70s” by furnishing the commander of the ship with two wives and having him note the inevitable low-gravity orgy that will happen at the end of their mission (without the wives, as one is on Earth and the other is on Mars).
This is otherwise a terse but fascinating examination of how we might explore a completely alien environment. Despite the sequels that came later, Clarke never intended to follow-up on the story and I would recommend treating it as a standalone.
Rendezvous with Rama is considered a science fiction classic and a cornerstone of Clarke’s body of work. If you like hard science fiction and have somehow missed it, I highly recommend picking it up.
Run 362 Average pace: 5:15/km
Location: Burnaby Lake (CW)
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 26:26
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 17ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 365
Total distance to date: 3019
Device used: iPhone 5c
The good parts about today’s run:
I ran 5K without stopping
I did not fall on my face
I was at no point handed a crying baby to carry with me
No cyclists
No rain
The bad parts about today’s run:
I hadn’t run for a week (ie. was slower)
I was feeling less than 100% due to sinuses/throat (ie. was slower still)
my left foot was sore before I headed out (ie. slower plus bonus hurting)
The bad parts resulted in a sluggish pace of 5:15/km, a big drop from last week’s under-5 minute triumph. Improving on this during the weekend shouldn’t be too challenging but you never know.
I actually had a decent pace for the first two km and had a good finish (despite the left foot saying “lol stop running on me!”) but lagged on the 3rd and 4th km, tired from all the aforementioned items above.
The only other notable part of the run was seeing the huge number of salmon gathered outside the Cariboo Dam, all eager to get to the other side so they could spawn and die. It’s inspiring and depressing all at once.
I am not going to review one of the all-time classic American novels, since people with bigger brains than mine have already made much smarter comments about it over the past 89 years.
I will say that I was curious to see how I’d react to the book as an adult, having last read it as part of my high school curriculum nearly 89 years ago. I didn’t remember much about it except it involved places called Eggs, something something about cars and Gatsby, who was an enigmatic and ultimately pathetic sort of fraud. Mostly I recalled the lack of explosions, monsters, ghosts and sharks. It did have gun play and a car chase, of sorts, so there was that.
Mostly I am left with two things, having now re-read it lo these many years later: the bitter snark of Nick Carraway, the narrator, as he observes these rich and wretched people, and the utter bleakness of the story. Nick leaves West Egg essentially having gained nothing and being worse for the experience. Gatsby, of course, picks a very bad time to finally take a dip in the swimming pool. This is not the book to read when fantasizing about what you’d do if you won the lottery.
For the first time in many months I sat down and wrote. I decided to take another shot at a writing exercise I’d started on my now-moribund writing site. The story is called “Road Closed” and rather than picking up where I’d left off or polishing what I had already written, I just plain started over.
Four thousand words later I am pleased with how easily the words started flowing once I got rolling.
I’d like to thank Green Day and The Bee Gees for musical inspiration while I clacked away on my mechanical keyboard. Yes, punk and disco, back to back, just as nature intended.
My plan is to write every day and to wrap up this story before National Novel Writing Month begins in 18 days. I think I can pull this off.
Run 361 Average pace: 4:59/km
Location: Brunette River
Distance: 5.05 km
Time: 25:12
Weather: Mainly clear
Temp: 20-22ºC
Wind: light
Calories burned: 366
Total distance to date: 3014
Device used: iPhone 5c
Tonight’s route was a 5K loop of the Brunette River. Going in I was not sure what to expect. I felt very tired after the commute home but I was wearing my lucky shorts. But my lucky shorts really need to be washed and I’m sure the odor from them knocked out any nearby wildlife while I ran.
Conditions were nice, with mild temperatures and the sun low enough to not shine directly in my eyes. I surprised myself with a brisk first km (pace of 4:42/km). Despite the usual second km drop-off (tonight it was a 7% drop) and a slower finish I managed to move nimbly enough to get my first finish under five minutes in a good long while. My average pace came in at 4:59/km.
Unlike Tuesday I didn’t experience any weird soreness and my energy level felt solid throughout. I even pushed toward mid-run, feeling things were going well. Some cramps threatened toward the end but never quite materialized. It’s possible they may have slowed me down in the last km, alas.
Still, this was the best 5K in some time and a welcome recovery from the poop run on Tuesday. Excelsior!
You Are Now Less Dumb: How to Conquer Mob Mentality, How to Buy Happiness, and All the Other Ways to Outsmart Yourself by David McRaney
