Department Of First Things First
One of my favorite dates is today. Happy Birthday, She-Who-Was-Not-Intimidated-By-The-Rope-Swing-On-The-Treehouse-Deck. [1]
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Department Of Why I Will Be A Couch Potato (Luger?) For The Next Three Weeks
The Winter Olympics begin today.
Bring on the Norwegians!
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Department Of Human Interaction Is Sometimes Disguised As
– or Enhanced By – a Non Sequitur
Dateline: Tuesday morning; circa 10 am; The Dollar Tree Store‘s Birthday greeting cards section. [2] Moiself is picking out birthday cards, a lot of ’em. To an uninformed observer it might seem that I am choosing them at random, dumping them in my handbasket…but this is not so. There is method to my madness. As I grab one card two envelopes come with it, and the extra envelope flutters to the floor. Only when I reach down to retrieve it do I realize that a woman is standing next to me, in front of the Valentine’s Day card section.
“Excuse me,” I say, as I lean over to pick up the miscreant envelope, which has landed just to the right of her right foot. “I didn’t mean to fling an empty envelope in your direction.”
She smiles, looks at my handbasket, and I expect her to remark on the number of cards in it (which will eventually total 30). Instead, she replies, “My daughter was unable to have children, so she adopted four dogs. I get them all cards for every holiday and special occasion.”
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Department Of Few People Say It Better Than Greta Christina [3]
“Dear Republicans,
Apparently some of you are having second thoughts. Recent events have led you to question your commitment to Trumpism, and even move away from it. A line has been crossed for you, and you can no longer accept the direction the country is going in.
Am I glad about this? Yes. Do I want you to step away from Trump and the Republican Party, to rethink the path you’ve been on and walk it back? Yes….
But as you walk back this path, you need to realize that it’s not going to be covered with rose petals. A lot of people are extremely angry with you, and we have every right to be. You have done a great deal of harm. The Republican Party has done a great deal of harm — not just in the last month, it’s been doing great harm for a long time — and you’ve been part of that. When you’ve hurt people badly, you need to do more than just say “Oops” and expect to be forgiven. You need to work to fix the harm you’ve done. And the greater the harm, the more work you have to do….
We warned you this was coming. Even the Republican Party warned you this was coming: the Project 2025 document spelled out their plans in detail. You chose not to listen. Moving forward, you need to be willing to listen. You need to do the kind of listening that involves not talking. You need to not get defensive, not try to justify your actions. You need to stop saying, ‘I didn’t vote for this!’ You absolutely voted for this.”
( excerpts from author, activist, blogger Greta Christina’s
Dear Republicans 1-28-26, my emphases )
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Department Of The Hidden Power Of Doubt
“What do you do when you’re not sure?”
( from opening monologue, Doubt: A Parable, a play by John Patrick Shanley )
Last week the podcast Hidden Brain concluded their You 2.0 series [4] with, as per the podcast website’s intro, “…a look at the hidden power of doubt — not as weakness or indecision, but as a tool that helps us make better choices and navigate an uncertain world.”
The episode opens with the story of the little known letter General Eisenhower wrote on the eve of the allied invasion of Normandy, Operation Overlord, aka, D-Day. There were so many factors at play – including the weather – and an allied victory was far from certain. Eisenhower drafted what he dreaded, should he have to announce that the mission had failed. When it became apparent that Operation Overlord was succeeding, Eisenhower crumpled the letter and tossed it in his office trash can. His military secretary retrieved the letter and kept it, allowing history to see what (IMO) was the true leadership of the man.
“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.” [5]
Time machine to the present: can you imagine the so-called leader we have today ( The Tantrum-Throwing-Toddler-in-Chief ) writing something like that – taking responsibility so succinctly and directly? #47 will go to his corpulent casket carping and whining and kicking, blaming others for the political, moral, financial and cultural devastation he leaves in his wake.
Yet again, I digress.
HB podcast host Shankar Vedantam and his guest go on to talk about the power of doubt, which is something we tend not to associate with the stereotype of leadership (confident; decisive; never wavering; unwilling to back down).
“We don’t think of strong leaders as hesitant, doubtful, or unsure of the right answers. Confidence and determination are admirable traits. But they also have drawbacks. Confidence can lead to overconfidence; decisiveness can make leaders less likely to be tolerant of dissent; determination can blind us to risks.
At the University of Virginia’s Darden College of Business, [Bobby] Parmar studies the value of doubt. He says that by avoiding uncertainty, we miss out on opportunities for growth.”
(excerpts, You 2.0: Trusting Your Doubt, Hidden Brain Staff / January 26, 2026 )
It’s a thought-provoking presentation of a compelling subject. Two thumbs up for podcast listeners.
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Department Of Learning To Lie In Another Language
Ég skil íslensku.
Funny how one of the first phrases I learned in my Plimsleur language app, which I’ve been struggling through like a stuttering pig using daily since last Wednesday, is a total lie: I understand Icelandic.
Yeah, fluency is just around the corner.
Adding to the hoax is that five minutes after learning how to say, I do not understand Icelandic, I have forgotten how to say, I do not understand Icelandic.
Just about every Icelander speaks English ( Ninety-eight plus %! English is a compulsory subject in Icelandic schools ), but still, I want to be a gracious visitor when we go there this summer. I think this trying-to-learn-some-conversational-Icelandic is going to be one of those things where I have to repeat lesson one seven times before moving on.
About speaking Icelandic. Knowing that fact (that Icelanders speak English), then bothering to learn to say in Icelandic, Excuse me, do you speak English? while perhaps respectful in intent, could easily come off as, to an Icelander, Why is this doofus butchering my language when it is totally unnessary to do so? Obviously, if I’ve bothered to learn anything about the country (including from when MH and I were there three summers ago), I should know that any Icelander whom I address will speak far better English than I speak Icelandic.
I wish the language course would start off by teaching Icelandic cusswords. That would be more inspiring. Of course, there is the internet, where I discovered, farðu í rassgat, which you would hurl as an insult when you are in the kind of situation where you want to advise someone to crawl up your own asshole. Perhaps I’ll save that one for the United States customs agents.
“May your urine burn, you cowardly goat,” will be my backup curse.
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Department Of Cool Story, Bro… [6]
When I recently saw this spot-on summation of Christian theology I was reminded of an acquaintance who, when I came out decades ago as religion-free, resorted to the believers’ last tactic: when you can’t counter facts and logic and rationality, use fear ( of something only the religious believe in – hellfire/damnation [7] ). He was not amused when moiself, using the following synopsis to do so, laughingly confirmed that I was indeed rejecting his god’s plan for “salvation.”
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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [8]
“Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders? [9]
Faith: not wanting to know what is true.
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad
has made the world ugly and bad.
God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.”
( Friedrich Nietzsche , as quoted in The Very Best of Friedrich Nietzsche: Quotes from a Great Thinker, by David Graham,)
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May you remember to fix the harm you’ve done when you realize you’ve done harm;
May you, as much as possible, not find yourself in farðu í rassgat situations;
May you resolve not to find the world ugly and bad;
…and may the hijinks ensue. [10]
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] Belle can still give you the badass, stinkeye look, should the occasion call for it.
[2] Two for $1!
[3] GC is an author, blogger, speaker, LGBTQ and atheist activist.
[4] The podcast does an annual series, at the end of the old/beginning of the new year, exploring the latest in evidence-based understandings offered by behavioral scientists – understandings which may help people improve their lives via establishing good habits/getting rid of bad habits, overcoming emotional, romantic, career-related, and cognitive challenges, etc.
[5] Note that the draft was dated July 5th. In 1966, when the question about this date was put to him, Einsenhower indicated that it was a minor mistake on his part and that he had actually written it on June 5, 1944. (from D-Day Overlord, Encyclopaedia of the D-Day landings and the Battle of Normandy )
[6] Not.
[7] It’s a knee slapper, when you think about it: they try to make *you* afraid of something that is in fact *their* greatest fear, something which you don’t thing about at all, like pissing off Santa claus.
[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
[9] This is serious stuff; no need for a footnote.
[10] See previous footnote.
