Two Days Each Year I Avoid Spending Money

I enjoy the time spent with family on Thanskgiving and Christmas day. It’s a gathering of my direct family, uncles, aunts, cousins, spouses and so forth. It’s a blessing in life to have family to enjoy. I’ve never required anybody to work on these days in any position of responsibility I’ve had. Certainly there are jobs that must be carried out for a safe society to survive. Fire, police, emergency services, utilities and such. However, the local carry outs, neigborhood fuel stops, department stores and all the ohter mere convieniences in life are just filled with people that would for the most part rather be doing what I’m doing – spending time with family. 99% of you don’t work for anything so important that it needs to be running on those two days. Really, is your business that important?

I do my best not to be the reason someone has to work and not to reward those that ask them to work. I buy fuel, food, whatever is needed the day before. If I can live without it, I get it the next day. If my host asks me to fetch ice or soda or whatever, of course I go get it. I encourage you to consider respecting others family time also. It’s just two days, nothing a little reasonable planning can’t take care of.

Dave

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Diagnosing Confirmation Bias

Humans are built to want answers. We seek to eliminate all uncertainties. Giant institutions are constructed and survive on our desire to know. To comfort ourselves, when diagnosing a problem we often look at one or two points of evidence and decide the “cause”. Once we’ve reached a conclusion, there is a tendancy to interprit all future evidence in a way that confirms our conclusion. Such is an example of confirmation bias.

To effectively diagnose any problem, we must first desire above all to know the answer. One must not be married to any particular conclusion in order to observe the facts objectively. We look at the facts and begin to focus in on everything that could be responsible for something not working. As we check each thing out fully, we slowly eliminate possible causes. We begin to zero in on a theory of why something is not working. We then look for other things to measure and observe what would be true if our developing theory is correct. If we then aquire evidence not consistant with the theory, we back up and reconsider all prior evidence and seek a new conclusion in harmony with all the facts. It is only by repeating this process without bias to any particular conclusion that we can finally arrive at the truth.

Just the facts ma’am,
Dave

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The man who thinks he can.

If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don’t.
If you’d like to win, but think you can’t
It’s almost a cinch that you won’t
If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost,
For out in the world we find
Success begins with a fellow’s will;
It’s all in the state of mind.
If you think you’re outclassed, you are.
You’ve got to think high to rise.
You’ve got to be sure of yourself before
You can ever win a prize.
Life’s battles don’t always go
To the stronger or faster man;
But sooner or later the man who wins
Is the one who thinks he can.

By: Walter D. Wintle

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