posted October 18, 2012 12:24 PM            

I start before the snow flys so I have good weather and don`t turn them on until the 1st of Dec. I`m greedy and want them all month
I go more overboard on Christmas than Halloween.
This year will be tricky inside with the new puppy. He mouths everything & I need to be more carefull with lights & bulbs..

posted October 19, 2012 09:47 AM            

Phoenix @ 7-8 weeks old

Thunderbird & Phoenix

posted January 09, 2014 04:57 PM            

Hows sunny Cali? Woo hoo we hit 8 degrees today. Heat wave!!

posted January 09, 2014 08:35 PM            

I think we all don't think straight to some degree, but some people are better than others.
I'm enjoying Predictably Irrational, which was written by a Taurus. So far it's dealt with interesting marketing ploys. It started with an example from the Economist. The Economist was offering a special as follows (roughly):

1. Get the magazine for one year online for $59.00
2. Get the magazine for one year in print for $125.00
3. Get the magazine in-print for one year plus all of the articles since 1997 online for $125

With this type of scheme, most people go for both the print and online combo thinking it's a value, but if you remove the second option as he did in experiments with his class, suddenly the online subscription only became the most picked option. He says that the second option is the decoy, and notes that there's often a decoy in pricing schemes. Thus far the book seems primarily about irrationality towards different market forces, which seems apt for a Taurus.

posted January 12, 2014 03:23 PM            

Thinking Slow and Fast. That sounds interesting but reading time is not my friend right now. It`s been a while since I have just sit and read for pleasure.

A draught. Wow, , I can`t imagine with the rainy Autumn we had along with a winters worth of snow in one month.

posted January 13, 2014 02:14 PM            

The difficulties of statistical thinking contribute to the main theme of Part 3, which describes a puzzling limitation of our mind: our excessive confidence in what we believe we know, and our apparent inability to acknowledge the full extent of our ignorance and the uncertainty of the world we live in. We are prone to overestimate how much we understand about the world and to underestimate the role of chance in events. Overconfidence is fed by the illusory certainty of hindsight. My views on this topic have been influenced by Nassim Taleb, the author of The Black Swan. I hope for watercooler conversations that intelligently explore the lessons that can be learned from the past while resisting the lure of hindsight and the illusion of certainty.

The focus of Part 4 is a conversation with the discipline of economics on the nature of decision making and on the assumption that economic agents are rational. This section of the book provides a current view, informed by the two-system model, of the key concepts of prospect theory, the model of choice that Amos and I published in 1979. Subsequent chapters address several ways human choices deviate from the rules of rationality. I deal with the unfortunate tendency to treat problems in isolation, and with framing effects, where decisions are shaped by inconsequential features of choice problems. These observations, which are readily explained by the features of System 1, present a deep challenge to the rationality assumption favored in standard economics. -Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast & Slow

posted January 17, 2014 02:49 PM            

In the unlikely event of this book being made into a film, System 2 would be a supporting character who believes herself to be the hero. The defining feature of System 2, in this story, is that its operations are effortful, and one of its main characteristics is laziness, a reluctance to invest more effort than is strictly necessary. As a consequence, the thoughts and actions that System 2 believes it has chosen are often guided by the figure at the center of the story, System 1. However, there are vital tasks that only System 2 can perform because they require effort and acts of self-control in which the intuitions and impulses of System 1 are overcome.

I'm always advocating people to use System 2 (the "effortful" system; or the "Slow" system mentioned in the title of the book) when they're settling for System 1 (the "automatic" system; or the "Fast" system).

One of the tasks of System 2 is to overcome the impulses of System 1. In other words, System 2 is in charge of self-control.

posted January 20, 2014 07:25 PM            

It gets my vote!!