Pretty much every weblog out there has linked to Google’s Year-End Zeitgeist, but let me direct you to the almost forgotten Lycos Top 50 for some similar fun. “Dragonball” was the most searched for term at Lycos.

Reading a related Slashdot thread discussing the results, ya gotta wonder, what do they say about us?

Minneapolis, Minnesota: Since 9/11 my significant other has found more dissonance between his job and his career goals so he decided to quit his job. Unfortunately that dissonance remains and he seems stuck at determining what he wants to do with his life. What suggestions do you have for moving on? In other words the intent to change is high but his actions seem weak. He focuses more on his house repair than on exploring a new career.

Stephen Covey: The ideal career can say “yes” to the following three questions: Am I good at it? Do I really like it? Does the world need it to the point that I can get paid for it? This requires a lot of self-knowledge, and also the study of opportunities to discern the real needs and problems in those opportunities. Then proactively, you go to that opportunity as a prepared solution to their problem instead of being just another problem.

Comment from Stephen Covey: The main reason most people don’t have the job they want is because they don’t do this homework, and they’re nothing but a problem rather than a solution to problems.

Comment from Stephen Covey: Arise to your responsibility and make it happen.

Read the rest in this missed Stephen Covey chat transcript at USAToday.

Stephen Covey is chatting now at USAToday on Job satisfaction.

We have forced air heat. It sucks.

The frog’s vision is filtered to only see objects of a certain size moving at a specific speed. Only these circumstances will cause the cells within the frog’s eyes to fire and generate a reaction — tongue whipping out at the prey.

Unfortunately, any dot of the right size moving at the right speed will trigger this reaction, including a plane flying by overhead.

The human visual system is much more sophisticated, but people are just as capable of filtering; the only difference is that human filtering is deliberate rather than being based on genetics. So you all can go outside an look at planes without feeling the impulse to whip your tongue out. Well, most of you normal people.

Read the rest over at Burningbird. I know that the filters Shelley talks about develop at the earliest ages. Kindergarden even. They simply become more defined and strict as we get older. In high school, of course, we figure after the mess is thru, things will change. But do they? The wise amoungst us do somehow learn to master the reflex. And there are those that fight it.

Question for you… do you think weblogging is instinctually a filtering process? I do. And sometimes it reminds me of high school.

You may get the impression I had some kind of bad high school experience from the above, but that wouldn’t be true. I had plenty of friends. One of which is still my closest. But, then, as I am now, I didn’t like to be categorized. So I moved amoungst the filter defined cliques. I was neither fully “in”, nor “geek”, nor “loner”. I was all three. I resisted the efforts each clique would make to put down the others. There were, however, uncomfortable moments when these things come to blows. I can’t count how many “metal head” vs. “preppie” fights I was in. Kinda like weblogging. There are things to learn, and friends to make, in the most unlikely of places.

Cliques help us to feel safe by letting us know there are others who feel/act/look the same way we do so people defend these boundaries/filters/cliques with plenty of visciousness. If there’s an argument occuring between cliques, watch closely and you will see evidence of argument techniques listed in this baloney kit under “Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric”. Check it out.

I’ve always felt there is some “essential truth” to be found by listening to people across these boundries, real or artificial, no matter what. I’m an Idealist. As my About page says, an ENFJ or ENJP, counting upon my mood. These are Myers-Briggs personality types. You can discover yours by taking the Temperament Sorter II test, but beware, for detailed results it’s going to cost you $15 bucks. Jonathon Delacour has been exploring the subject recently at his weblog in relationship to blogging. I normally don’t buy-in to things like this. But the test is amazing accurate. Of course it’s just another filter 🙂

…”I have friends who pray that science will never discover or explain certain things. I don’t understand that,” he declares. “Nothing we learn about the universe threatens our faith. It only enriches it.”

…Echoing Immanuel Kant, he insists that belief in God is independent of anything scientists discover. More than two centuries ago, Kant argued that science could never disprove the existence of God. But neither, he said, could it prove Him.

Read the rest at Wired.

Throwing away the carpet in the bedroom to use it’s hardwood floor. Looks like we’ll need to re-install the shoe molding that was removed.

Gonna be fun learning and doing this kind of thing.

Today is Richelle’s and my third anniversary. As each year goes by I find it more and more appropriate that it lands so close to Thanksgiving.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

They are doing replays of this excellent show exploring his life and impact.

I caught it yesterday and it was well worth it. I’m probably gonna purchase the DVD for later viewing sometime.

NPR ran an interview with the writers of the show, Ron Blumer and Ellen Hovde.

via Russel Beattie.