Toyota...etc...

So seriously... is anyone else totally... totally bored with the Toyota recall? Can anyone really muster up any interest? I mean, I own a Toyota mini van...I think it our third and we love it. It has never suddenly accelerated. It has never failed to break. Generally it runs and accommodates our life. That is no small order. The Sienna and it's predecessor the Previa have been awesome vehicles. Never a complaint. Driven into the ground. Am I really going to abandon Toyota and more then anything else do I have to hear about it every day. I mean I am now driving a Mazda 3 station wagon but I fully expect that any day Toyota will announce a recall of that. I mean, they have got to almost be out of cars of their own brand that they can recall... so since they are in the groove, why would they not start recalling other brands too. I feel really bad for their chairman who keeps going on the air and apologizing and getting a lot of shit from Japanese people and American media screaming that it is too little...too late. Seriously? What a great car company. They clearly screwed up here. My guess is they come back strong.

I am happy that Ford seems to be doing well. We were always Ford people. It really seems like they might have been placed correctly for the economic downturn and with GM still clueless and Chrysler...gone.... perhaps it is their time. Anyway, it is nice to think of one U.S. company still manufacturing a product AND making a profit. That is pretty cool. So maybe there is a bright side to all of this... we might perhaps take up as a nation the chant of..."BUILT FORD TOUGH".

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Winter Olympics.... cannot find anything in me that cares. Sorry the Ukranian guy died.

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Valentines Day: Normally I rant against it. Hallmark Holiday made for people to feel guilty and stupid and to spend money in order to assuage the shortcomings in their relationships which might be... extensive. This year I decided to call out. On the day prior to Valentines Day I went to Walgreens and bought:
1. Leopard Print Snuggie
2. Bad little box of (heart shaped with Snoopy on it) of Whitmans (shitty) chocolate.
3. New Soduko Magazine
4. Two Valentines day cards.
The only win was that my wife got me nothing which made this... special. That and the fact that she really wanted the Snuggy thing although was not particularly crazy about the leopard print until she realized it would not show dog hair.

So we went to church, went to brunch at # Monkeys, napped, went to dinner at Gallaghers in Waterloo Illinois...went to sleep. GOOD VALENTINES DAY!

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I am considering doing a new BLOG strictly on personal creeds. Thoughts?

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I have read some really good things lately. Kevin Horrigan used to be an awesome sports editor for the Post Dispatch. Now he is an editorialist. I reprint last Sundays column out of total respect. Read it and weep.


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When the going gets tough . . .

Kevin Horrigan
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Kevin Horrigan
OF THE POST-DISPATCH
02/14/2010

"There is no expedient to which man will not resort to avoid the real task of thinking."

It's said that Thomas Edison was so fond of this quotation from the English painter Joshua Reynolds that he posted it all over his laboratories. If Edison had to remind himself to avoid mental laziness, think of the problems it presents for the rest of us.

Here's another problem: According to Drake Bennett of The Boston Globe, "One of the hottest topics in psychology today is something called 'cognitive fluency.' Cognitive fluency is simply a measure of how easy it is to think about something, and it turns out people prefer things that are easy to think about to those that are hard."

Well, sure. Who wants to be doing his taxes when the Super Bowl is on? Who wants to read a book when the TV remote control is so handy? Who wants to read "The Wealth of Nations" when James Patterson is at hand? For that matter, who wants to read, period?

The Associated Press, reporting last week on a study from the Pew Center for Just About Everything that said blogging has been become passé among young people, quoted an 18-year-year old college freshman who explained, "It's a matter of typing quickly. People these days don't find reading that fun."

The theory is that cognitive fluency may be left over from our days as cavemen. We learned what animals were unlikely to eat us, and we preferred them to unknown things that might or might not eat us. Thus, psychologist Adam Alter told The Globe, when things are unfamiliar, or "disfluent," alarm bells go off. "It sets up a cognitive roadblock and makes people think, and it triggers a sense of risk and alarm."

Eek! Unknown, and therefore possibly hard! Avoid!

Mood plays a part. When people are unhappy, they may seek out familiar ideas, people and actions that make them feel safe and secure. "Fluent things are familiar," said one expert, "but also boring and comfortable. Disfluency is intriguing and novel. When we're happy, we're more open to the unfamiliar."

Advertisers figured this out long ago. Sell the familiar. Sell ease and comfort. Don't sell things that are hard and challenging. Steve Jobs built a company with simple name, Apple, around the philosophy of making attractive products that were simple and intuitive to use. Budweiser learned that its customers wanted those old familiar Clydesdales in their Super Bowl commercials, even though this year's Clydesdale spot wasn't very good.

Politicians figured this out, too. Sell the simple, sell the familiar. In the midst of the financial turmoil of 2008, Barack Obama campaigned on "hope and change." This sounded safe and familiar, so he got elected.

Then the problems started. Obama had to sell changes that were very difficult and counter-intuitive: Bailing out Wall Street bankers, even though they had started the problems. Spending $787 billion to kick-start the economy, even though it meant trillion-dollar deficits. And then maybe the hardest thing of all: Overhauling the American health care system.

Eek! Unknown, and therefore possibly hard! Avoid!

Even when the president tried to make things simple, as he did in a speech to Congress on Sept. 9, it took him 47 minutes to do it. He had to talk about things like insurance exchanges and pre-existing conditions, cost-shifting and individual mandates.

This failed the cognitive fluency test. Republicans rushed into the breach with talking points like "death panels" and "socialized medicine." They kept complaining about the Senate's "2,700-page bill," as if you ought to be able to overhaul something as complex as health care with a memo.

When Missouri Republican Sen. Kit Bond dropped by the office recently and complained about the "2,700-page health care bill," I remembered that he'd helped write the last federal transportation bill. It was 835 pages long and all it did was fund transportation programs for six years.

All of this may be intellectually dishonest, but it is smart politics. Americans are looking for easy answers.

Nobody in America understands this better than Sarah Palin. The former Alaska governor's speech to the Tea Party convention in Nashville last weekend was a masterpiece of cognitive fluency, offering simple answers for all sorts of difficult problems:

"We need a strong national defense ... cut spending ... spending freeze ... drill here and drill now ... common-sense solutions and values ... the government that governs least governs best ... freedom is a God-given right ... enduring truths passed down from Washington to Lincoln to Reagan...."

It was truly a brilliant speech, utterly free of nuance and complexity. If America is tired, angry, confused and looking for easy answers, she may be just the expedient to which they resort.

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Finally and perhaps more important;y I would like to write something like this:

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

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God Bless.