While searching for a story I heard on Morning Edition about depression, so I could make a point about the treatment for depression being just as stressful as some of the stresses thought to cause depression, I found out that NPR has RSS feeds for some of it’s news and programs. Scratch another couple minutes from my daily routine as I will be throwing some of these on my bloglines account right away.

Oh and I couldn’t find the story I was searching for, but basically the woman who wrote a book was talking about how stressful everything is today, since we have so many demands on our time, and the work week has increased and there is a constant pressure to succeed and do more faster and earn more money to buy more crap (Including her book I guess). Then she talked about the way there is no simple magic bullet cure all for depression and it’s not just medication but a whole management regimen where you have to work hard at controlling your depression.

Well as I was listening to this it sounded like there was a lot of pressure to build up this management framework around your depression, which could in turn cause stress as you could wonder why all the hard work you are putting in at controlling your depression isn’t working and how it is possible fail in this mighty quest to control your feelings, and it just seemed like the total wrong direction to go for dealing with depression. I mean why apply the principles of management and work to your problem if applying those very things to other aspects of your life has caused the growth of this problem. It seems to me the solution to many problems in our society is to do something; do anything. And likely that attitude is how the problem came about in the first place.

Now I don’t really know what depression is, or know if I have ever experienced it. But it seems to me that applying the same thinking that caused the condition in the first place is not going to fix it.

I would recommend buying a hammock, and using it.

Yet another thought provoking article from Paul Graham: Great Hackers.

I’ve found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent. The people I’ve met who do great work rarely think that they’re doing great work. They generally feel that they’re stupid and lazy, that their brain only works properly one day out of ten, and that it’s only a matter of time until they’re found out.

Yeah, I know anyone who reads my blog already saw this somewhere else, or doesn’t really care to read it. Well I want to be able to find it again. And I haven’t found a good way to do bookmark sharing between many different machines. Maybe a good idea for a firefox plugin.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.

-Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – ), Cat’s Cradle (Source)

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

– Mark Twain

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see it’s path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

– The Bene Gesserit Litany of Fear from the novel Dune by Frank Herbert

To all the fear mongers who work for the popular media companies:

I am not scared.

I don’t care who you think has weapons of mass destruction, or what eating a specific food item will do to me, or how bad it’s going to rain tomorrow. At least not to the overhyped levels to which you are pumping these and other popular memes. Specifically when you provide no real news, other than a misinterpretation of a press release from the day before. Do you feel even a little pang of remorse as you prey on fear to sell advertising space?

I am NOT scared.

When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad, and that is my religion.

Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865), (attributed)

Easily accomplished consistent reading of the Quotes of theDay is just one of the many reasons I enjoy using Bloglines

By the way is this similar to how G.W. Bush decided to take our country to war? I am of course referring to the President reportedly quoted as saying: God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam …. Source: here.

“Iam. I think. I will. …”

“What must I say besides? These are the words. This is the answer.”

“I stand here on the summit of the mountain. I lift my head and I spread my arms. This—my body and spirit—this is the end of the quest. I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning. I wished to find a warrant for being. I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction. …”

—Ayn Rand

So be it.