Another year gone...

Well, doggone it, there goes another perfectly good year, down the drain.  When we could have used it to fix the economy, end world hunger, cure cancer and AIDS, advance the cause of women and children, begin the process of ending illiteracy around the world and landing on Mars, we wasted it on a stupid Presidential election.

Doggone those Republicans, anyway!

As a sort of consolation prize, I’ve compiled a list of some of the most interesting, or influential, or courageous, people who died this last year.  These people were actors, politicians, entertainers, a king or two, and a smattering of pioneers in science, art or most interestingly, civil rights.  Some of these people braved certain death at the hands of political opponents to champion their causes and thus helped oppose dictators and evil in various places worldwide.  Some were successful, others not so much.  Some of these folks worked in the shadows of the better known or in a faceless bureaucracy, but they still made our lives a little bit better for having done what they did.  Some were simply interesting people.

My favorites (so to speak), and the ones I was most sorry to see go were Neal Armstrong and Sally Ride.  Pioneers, indeed.

So, scroll down and read.  Just in the short description of who they were and what they did, you will learn a thing or two.

So, without further ado, here’s the list:

Andy Griffith, 86. He made homespun Southern wisdom his trademark as a wise sheriff in "The Andy Griffith Show" and a rumpled defense lawyer in "Matlock." July 3.
Ernest Borgnine, 95. Beefy screen star known for blustery, often villainous roles, but who won the best-actor Oscar for playing against type as a lovesick butcher in "Marty" in 1955. July 8.
Eugenio de Araujo Sales, 91. Rio de Janeiro's former archbishop who provided shelter to thousands opposed to the military regimes that once ruled Brazil, Argentina and Chile. July 9.
Stephen R. Covey, 79. Author of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" and three other books that have all sold more than a million copies. July 16. Complications from a bicycle accident.
Jon Lord, 71. British rocker and keyboardist whose driving tones helped turn Deep Purple and Whitesnake into two of the most popular hard rock acts in a generation. July 16.
Kitty Wells, 92. Singer whose hits such as "Making Believe" and "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" made her the first female superstar of country music. July 16.
William Raspberry, 76. He became the second black columnist to win a Pulitzer Prize for his widely read syndicated commentaries in The Washington Post. July 17.
Forrest McCartney, 81. Retired Air Force lieutenant general and former director of Kennedy Space Center who was crucial in getting NASA's shuttles flying again after the Challenger tragedy. July 17.
Sally Ride, 61. She blazed trails into orbit as the first American woman in space. July 23. Pancreatic cancer.
Sherman Hemsley, 74. Actor who made the irascible, bigoted George Jefferson of "The Jeffersons" one of TV's most memorable characters and a symbol for urban upward mobility. July 24.
John Keegan, 78. British academic whose studies of men at war are counted among the classic works of military history. Aug. 2.
Ignacy Skowron, 97. Last known Polish survivor of the opening battle of World War II. Aug. 5.
Bernard Lovell, 98. Pioneering British physicist and astronomer who developed one of the world's largest radio telescopes exploring particles in the universe. Aug. 6.
George Hickman, 88. One of the original Tuskegee airmen and a longtime usher at University of Washington and Seattle Seahawks games. Aug. 19.
Phyllis Diller, 95. Housewife-turned-humorist who aimed some of her sharpest barbs at herself, punctuating her jokes with her trademark cackle. Aug. 20.
Jerry Nelson, 78. Puppeteer behind a delightful menagerie of characters including Count von Count on "Sesame Street" and Gobo Fraggle on "Fraggle Rock." Aug. 23.
Neil Armstrong, 82. He became a global hero when as a steely-nerved astronaut he made "one giant leap for mankind" with a small step onto the moon. Aug. 25.
Juan Valdez, 74. Land grant activist who fired the first shot during a 1967 New Mexico courthouse raid that grabbed international attention and helped spark the Chicano Movement. Aug. 25.
Michael Clarke Duncan, 54. Hulking character actor whose dozens of films included an Oscar-nominated performance as a death row inmate in "The Green Mile" and such other box office hits as "Armageddon," ''Planet of the Apes" and "Kung Fu Panda." Sept. 3. Heart attack.
Joe South, 72. Singer-songwriter who performed 1960s and '70s hits such as "Games People Play" and "Walk A Mile In My Shoes" and penned songs including "Down in the Boondocks" for other artists. Sept. 5.
Verghese Kurien, 90. Engineer known as "India's milkman" who helped revolutionize the country's dairy industry despite his own dislike for milk. Sept. 9.
Chris Stevens, 52. U.S. ambassador to Libya and a career diplomat. Sept. 11. Killed during an attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya.
Peter Lougheed, 84. As Alberta's premier, he turned the province into an oil-powered modern giant and an equal player in Canada's confederation. Sept. 13.
Andy Williams, 84. Silky-voiced, clean-cut crooner whose hit recording "Moon River" and years of popular Christmas TV shows brought him fans the world over. Sept. 25.
Barry Commoner, 95. Scientist and activist who raised early concerns about the effects of radioactive fallout and was one of the pioneers of the environmental movement. Sept. 30.
Norodom Sihanouk, 89. The revered former king who was a towering figure in Cambodian politics through a half-century of war, genocide and upheaval. Oct. 15.
E. Donnall Thomas, 92. Physician who pioneered bone marrow transplants and won the 1990 Nobel Prize in medicine. Oct. 20.
George McGovern, 90. Former U.S. senator and a Democrat who lost to President Richard Nixon in 1972 in a landslide. Oct. 21.
Antoni Dobrowolski, 108. Oldest known survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp, he was a teacher who taught defiance of his native Poland's Nazi occupiers. Oct. 21.
Russell Means, 72. Former American Indian Movement activist who helped lead the 1973 uprising at Wounded Knee and also appeared in Hollywood films. Oct. 22.
Milt Campbell, 78. First African-American to win the Olympic decathlon in 1956, he went on to play professional football and become a motivational speaker. Nov. 2.
Ewarda O'Bara, 59. Miami woman who spent 42 years in a coma. Nov. 21.
Larry Hagman, 81. Actor whose predatory oil baron J.R. Ewing on television's nighttime soap opera "Dallas" became a symbol for 1980s greed. Nov. 23.
Joseph E. Murray, 93. Doctor who performed the world's first successful kidney transplant and won a Nobel Prize. Nov. 26.
Oscar Niemeyer, 104. Architect who recreated Brazil's sensuous curves in concrete and built the capital of Brasilia as a symbol of the nation's future. Dec. 5.
Norman Joseph Woodland, 91. He was the co-inventor of the bar code that labels nearly every product in stores and has boosted productivity in nearly every sector of commerce worldwide. Dec. 9.
Galina Vishnevskaya, 86. A world-renowned Russian opera diva who with her husband defied the Soviet regime to give shelter to writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn and suffered exile from her homeland. Dec. 11.
Maurice Herzog, 93. He became the first person to scale an 8,000-meter peak but lost all his fingers and toes to frostbite on the way down. Dec. 14.
Richard Adams, 65. Same-sex marriage campaigner who helped begin the push for gay unions four decades before the issue reached the center of the national consciousness. Dec. 17.
Charles Durning, 89. Twice nominated for an Oscar, he was dubbed the king of character actors. Dec. 24.
Jack Klugman, 90. Actor who made an art of gruffness in 1970s and 80s TV in "The Odd Couple" and "Quincy, M.E." Dec. 24.
H. Norman Schwarzkopf, 78. General who commanded the U.S.-led international coalition that drove Saddam Hussein's forces out of Kuwait in 1991. Dec. 27.

These people often influenced the lives of countless human beings, now and in the foreseeable future.  To those and all the brave notables here, I bid farewell and give them a hearty “Thanks”!   It is so little compared to what they gave us.

Robert Ahrens
The Cybernetic Atheist

Towards Better New Year’s Resolutions

by Gary Berg-Cross

I’m not a big one for making New Year’s resolutions. Mark Twain touched on it-
“New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.” Further, according to Wikipedia New Year's Resolutions come from the old Summerian-Judeo-Christian concepts of human imperfection. This has evolved to institutionalize the idea of getting God’s mercy by apologies for one’s wrong doing over the past year. It also fits the Protestant idea of self-improvement which is OK.

It also fits what Barbara Ehrenreich calls America’s love affair with positive thinking, which is taken to task (along with an urgent call for a new commitment to realism) in Bright-sided How Positive Thinking is Undermining America.

There’s the older Catholic ethic of giving up pleasures (e.g. alcohol and meat) during pre-Easter Lent as an act of discipline. Discipline is good, self discipline better and looking as these as personal vows not religiously dictated makes sense as a secularist. It;a a gift we give ourselves to enhance the self, others or the world in a way that makes sense to oneself.

I see that people are still getting and giving advice on how to get personal improvements. It is understandable that people try to take possession of 2012 by setting a reasonable personal goals. There are some smaller scale, modern ones such as Nick Bilton’s promise to take breaks from his tech devices (see his Bits blog post “Disruptions: Resolved in 2012: To Enjoy the View Without Help From an iPhone,” )

Getting a job, living the American dreams, change a lifestyle, and losing weight are all popular. More denotations to the poor, become more reflective or becoming more environmentally responsible are all grander goals and sets them apart from ordinary resolutions. In this category I’ve seen worthy goals/projects listed on this blog:

· “Turn-off the TV,

· elect intelligent School Board members,

· void excessive debts from student loans,

· support Head Start”

Edd Doerr might add a resolution to write more letters to the editor on topics of interest.

But as Tara Parker-Pope noted in her New York Times column, a third of resolutions are ditched by the end of January. Four out of five people simply give their resolutions up (see Why Your New Year's Resolution Will Fail by February 1.

One problem comes from the type of resolutions we make. Many of then are just too extreme all-or-nothing New Year’s decisions. Taking on a big challenge is heroic and it is nice to start the year that way, but this one step transformation is often something that is so unrealistic we can’t possibly keep the commitment. Eric Zorn, put it this way-

“Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle.”

People know they will have difficulty especially losing weight or making health gains. Deep down we might not expect ourselves to keep to such a goal, but are proud to start. But as CNN noted in its Why bother with resolutions? Because failure inspires there is value in trying. And maybe there is value in just developing the self control that resolutions require. It may be a dramatic end to procrastination. It seems good in itself to commit to developing what Psychologists call our own “locus of control”

OK, so let’s try. Does Social Science suggest anything useful? Dan Ariely, Decision Scientist at Duke University, has several ideas. They aren’t exactly new, but being based on study have some value.

A place to start is that many resolutions are general and vague (support Head Start might be vague). We don’t really believe we can hit them because the goal is uncertain. So the obvious remedy is Be specific, very specific. Ariely suggests the obvious fact that:

“the more clear cut your resolutions are, the easier they are to handle. Very specific restrictions make it easy to know if you are following the resolution.”

Maybe there is time to rescue that vague resolution before February. So to lose weight it helps to understand where your calories are coming from. You may need to cut down on desserts, but “ don't say you'll simply eat fewer desserts." Instead locate the action in space and/or time. Maybe you have the will power to avoid eating desserts late at night or on weekdays or at that expensive restaurant. This becomes a pragmatic/operational definition of what “fewer” means.

What else? Here are 4 more I’ve adapted from a summary by Ariely and his Duke Colleagues:

Get inspired. That is, make it meaningful to you (but also concrete as noted above). Meaningful resolutions have sticking power even if they aren’t grand challenges. Beth Reardon, director of integrative nutrition at Duke Integrative Medicine put it this way:

"If you want your resolution to act like Velcro rather than Teflon, be sure to link it to deep, authentic intentions. For example, resolving to order more food from Community Supported Agriculture is more powerful if you link it to your desire to support local businesses as well as your own health."

Reflective, Planned Readiness Resolutions are most effective if they are based on a genuine readiness to change a behavior – evidenced by development of a plan and consideration of likely effects, difficulty etc. Don’t just jump into it, but consider it.

Andy Silberman, director of Duke's Personal Assistance Program counsels not resolving to take on a big change until “you can explain how concerned you are about the behavior. It is also useful to outline what your motivation is to change, what specifically you want to accomplish and how confident you are that you can make the change.”

Environment & setting yourself up for success. Scott Huettel, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke who studies decision-making, cites pre-committing to, and expecting, changed circumstances. Environmental structuring is a powerful tool for making a resolution stick. An example might be changing your environment to help reduce monthly spending. OK, so pre-commitment to cutting up a credit card (or placing one in the freezer) to slow down spending.

The right circumstances just help one to make better decisions that are less impulse driven. That’s a step towards more control & less procrastination which is a good end in itself. And it may help avoid Mark Twain’s observation about New Year's Day… “now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”