our 2005 model children are matched in their bear fear!

Yes, but you had a bear in your area, so this is a justifiable fear. OMG, CHECK THE BATHTUB FOR ROUGE SHARKS !

eta: i is never going to make the text blinvisible, just slightly thinner and tilted. Why can't I remember the quick edits?

t cheery Also, I don't think there are enough nice people in the world to make altruism work as a sustainable system. People's capacity for nasty and mean and selfish is amazing and civilisation is a thin veneer that makes a lot of us look nicer than that while still serving our selfishness

t /cheery

Actually, Bhutan is an interesting example of ..something. I haven't fleshed it all out. It's definitely an outlier,but the national identity is something so tied up in being nice and mindful, but it's also small, isolated and pretty homogenous. And goodness knows there are some cranky nepali -bhutanese refugees living in Nepal... So.

Real nice, cat-of-tommyrot!!

But does it still count as being nice if you do it for the thanks? If nice is equated with altruism, not really.

This is the train that got my college philosophy professor to assert that Mother Teresa was the worst person ever.

ION, I got a new apartment. I was feeling really pessimistic after one place rejected me due to bad credit, but this place accepted me. It's a large-ish efficiency in an old building on Jarvis (which is very close to the Evanston border on the North side of Chicago).

I'll be moving at the end of the month. Most of my stuff will be going into storage, due to the bedbugs....

It sounds like when I would get in arguments with my economics professor said socialism/communism was inevitable, and I said there would always be people who would want to have something that others didn't and the whole equality and "according to their needs" would fall apart. Even if everyone is happy with a shovel, someone's going to want to have their shovel gold-plated.

Congrats, tommy!

I need to read this book: [link] I had a great long conversation with a friend of lisah's about it and Bhutan.

Hi!

I just woke up from a nap, so I'm posting to get rid of the gronklies and a headache before we head back out.

Today on vacation we went to the Georgia O'Keeffe museum (lovely and informative) and the Wheelwright, which had a display of artwork created by people who were students at the Santa Fe Indian School between WWI & II. Amazing.

We also ate lunch at a great sidewalk cafe where it looked like we were going to get terrible service, but both the service and the food turned out to be excellent.

After the Wheelwright, it rained, so we headed back to the hotel, where I crashed out until just now. We're about to go hear a band, but I gotta wake up for that.

Yay, vacation!

Yay for new apartment!

Real nice, cat-of-tommyrot!!

She's now sitting triumphantly on my butt.

But does it still count as being nice if you do it for the thanks? If nice is equated with altruism, not really.

Well, I should have made it clear that I don't think a nice person is doing the nice thing *for* the thanks, but does that mean they don't deserve some?

I can be altruistic and still be pleased if someone says, "Hey, thanks for helping out." I just wouldn't expect it.