When I’m pressured, I tell people I’m working on a pros and cons list.

If someone ever pressures you into a decision, a great delaying tactic is to tell them you’re working on a pros and cons list. I do this myself, though I’m rarely pressured into making decisions.

I wonder if anyone actually writes pros and cons lists before making decisions? I don’t think I ever have. If you’re so conflicted about a decision that you need to write a pros and cons list, you could probably make just as effective a decision by flipping a coin.

I’d also wager that most people making a pros and cons list, eventually decide on the “pro” choice. Why? Because you don’t need a list to tell you to say no to things. If you’ve invested enough psychic energy (toward a potential yes decision) to compel you to make list – you’ll probably say yes in the end anyway.

With the above in mind, creating a pros and cons list can actually be harmful. You’re delaying satisfaction by making a list, which ultimately will compel you to say yes in the end anyway. So why not just say yes now?

We could see the collapse of these 2 countries.

I'm sure many countries will collapse in our lifetime - especially many undeveloped countries. But here are 2 predictions for you:

In the next 5 years, I'm predicting the collapse of North Korea. Sure, they are an undeveloped country, but they've also been in existence since the late 40s, despite being shunned by the world. Well I think their time is up. They're currently suffering from another famine and many countries can't afford to send food aid because of the shaky world economy. Plus their "dear leader" is sick and may soon die. Look for North Korea to collapse.

Next prediction: Japan. This is a bold prediction considering they're currently the second largest economy in the world. I give them 40 more years. The big problem is that they're facing a HUGE demographic crisis. They're an aging country with a falling birth rate. Starting about 2015, they're population will fall drastically until 2095 at least. This is extremely bad news for any economy. Economies need growth and you can't grow if you're losing people. Most countries can fix this by immigration, but Japan is a deeply xenophobic country and net immigration is basically zero.

Bribing your child.

In the two years that we've tried to encourage Jake to eat, we've never had one doctor, community support worker, occupational therapist, physiotherapist, speech therapist or specialist suggest bribing our child.


All the books and articles I've read about getting your child to eat say, "Don't force your child; it's up to them and they'll eat when they want to."


I was telling this to our behaviour therapist yesterday and she sort of winced and said that all books and workers believe in a "child-centric" approach, which doesn't work. Especially for kids like Jake.


She said that all the behavioural academic literature says the exact opposite - you should "bribe" your children to eat and then phase out the bribe. She did say, "We don't call it 'bribing'. We call it reinforcement."


So why is there such a difference between the people in the field and the people doing the research? No idea. I can only think that as parents we've been brainwashed to think that reinforcement is bad. For some reason, the community workers think the same thing - or agree with general cultural wisdom that says you shouldn't manipulate your kids.



The funny thing is they don't get results. Whenever we asked for help with Jake they said, "We'll get you in touch with other parents whose kids are on a gtube."



No! I don't want a support group. I want advice that works. I don't want to talk to parents with the same problem. I want to talk to parents who fixed the same problem.

Listening to traffic reports on the radio is totally useless.

When I first started commuting I listened avidly to the traffic reports on the radio. Now I don't bother.

They don't help. First, they're often wrong and way out dated. They will still report an accident that happened hours ago. (They often beg people for updates. "If you're in the area let us know what's going on!" I want to yell, "Where's your chopper? You tell me!"

Second, there are only a few alternate routes and they're so slow that it isn't any faster taking them - even if the radio reports an accident on your route.

Third, often they say, "It's super slow, there's an accident on this road." When you get there, it isn't slow at all. In other words, the radio exaggerates the problem. I guess this is related to point #1 - they're wrong.

Finally, 95% of the information is useless. They say stuff like, "Mary Hill bypass is busy and slow going." Okay... So what? It's like that all the time. That doesn't tell me anything new.

I've concluded that traffic reports are simply for the illusion of control. Sort of like weather reports and child birth training. Pretend that you know what you're doing so you feel better about the random, uncontrollable situation.

The weather guy on the local news is always the "goofy" one.

I've noticed that usually the weather guy on the local news is kind of the goofy, lovable guy that everyone makes fun of. The other newscasters make jokes about him and he just laughs like a good sport.

Often they wear Hawaiian t-shirts or dress up for Halloween. They also go WAY off tangent and talk about other stuff besides the weather because - frankly - the weather is boring.

In other words, the weather guy is the LEAST boring member of a newscast. Yet he does the most boring thing. Interesting.

Are the weather guys on the local news actually trained meteorologists? I think some of them are. The news promo brags about it like "And now the weather with meteorologist Josh Smith."

But I would think most of them are not. I'd think they would just google the weather before hand and then come on and tell you what they just googled.

Sometimes they might make their own bold prediction like, "They're calling for rain all night but I think it will stop raining in a few hours!"

They always seem surprised the next day when it snowed and they didn't call it. "Wow, we got that surprised snow fall last night!" You would think after years of reporting the weather, they wouldn't be surprised when the weather changes unpredictably.

I think it would be such an awesomely easy job to be a weatherman in Vegas. Or any desert city. "Today is going to be hot and sunny. Tomorrow, hot and sunny. Basically, all summer hot and sunny."

But very dull. Do those places even need weathermen?