The Death of Fearful Eating

Ms. Child would have laughed, and might well have repeated her assertion that there never lived a "healthy, normal nutritionist who loves to eat." Over the years, the author of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" lamented that, with the national obsession for healthy eating, "The dinner table is becoming a trap rather than a pleasure." And it is indeed a sad thing to witness. Take the poor pastry chef at the White House: Interviewed in this week's New Yorker, Bill Yosses starts out with a robust defense of sweets. "Dessert is aspirational," he says. "It's the purest part of the meal: the art part." But then he seems to realize he's strayed from company policy and deftly turns apologetic: "But it's also the greediest part, the eat-it-in-a-closet part. We don't have to have it, and we do."

Read the rest of Eric Felten here.

Quote of the Day

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

- Marcus Aurelius

Transformation: Kill Your Television

Get Rid Of The TVs. All of them. Heck, you'll not only survive you will absolutely thrive. That bland wallpaper that ooozes into our ears will disappear and great ideas will start to evolve. Our children will pick up books again and brows will become knotted with imagination. Conversation will pick up from where it was left in courting days. Read Amusing Ourselves To Death by Neil Postman. Log hours which go on that box. Don't ask how you will stay informed?, ask what will stop you becoming even better informed? In your year of transformation, don't mess about. Get rid of the TVs. All of them.

Read the rest of the incomparable Nicholas Bate here.

The Pilot Prince

Soon they are sailing through a miasma of clouds and fog. Néri is passing notes to Saint-Exupéry. "No bearings. No bearings." The pilot is left to navigate on passion and instinct—traits fortuitously acute in this airman. (One colleague will later say, "When the flight is normal, Saint-Exupéry is dangerous; given complications, he's brilliant.") These are the daring early years of aviation; one mail pilot has died almost every month. Humans have been crossing deserts by camel for millennia, sailing seas for a thousand years, climbing mountains for a hundred—the sky is the last great terra incognita for adventurers.

Read the rest of the 2004 Outside article on Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Happiness Library

Gretchen Rubin at The Happiness Project recommends some happiness reading.

Idiot Watch

Rick Knowles has some gentle advice for the new year: Stop being an idiot.

Cultural Offering has a report from The Onion on idiots and snow storms.

And Stephen Green discusses Colman McCarthy.

The Easy Way

Career advice from The Muppet Movie:

Fozzie: Hey, why don't you join us?
Gonzo: Where are you going?
Fozzie: We're following our dream!
Gonzo: Really? I have a dream, too!
Fozzie: Oh?
Gonzo: But you'll think it's stupid.
Fozzie: No we won't, tell us, tell us!
Gonzo: Well, I want to go to Bombay, India and become a movie star.
Fozzie: You don't go to Bombay to become a movie star! You go where we're going: Hollywood.
Gonzo: Sure, if you want to do it the "easy" way.

Recommendation: "Bleak House"

A good film to watch while hunkering down from the cold: The BBC production of "Bleak House" starring Diana Rigg.

Amazon currently has the DVD at a bargain price.

New Year's Day

I was in bed by 9:30 last night, scribbling on a legal pad and reading a book by Martin Dugard. Occasionally, fireworks would explode in the distance. Midnight found me sound asleep. We used to have neighbors whose tradition was to welcome the new year by marching outside their house - and around ours - beating pots and pans. They are now doing that a few streets away.

In general, I am a New Year's grinch. The significance of changing a date on the calendar escapes me. There is, however, one aspect of the holiday that is inescapable: Its illustration of time's speed. Only the young think that time moves slowly. For the rest of us, it does not merely fly, it rockets past. In 2010, I found that months went by like weeks. My biological clock sensed that Christmas arrived at the time normally reserved for Halloween.

The changing of the year also provides an opportunity not for resolutions - those recipes for disappointment - but for reassessment. I've written earlier of Emma K. "Ma" Herrick, an extraordinary woman I knew years ago, who would use the new year to write down what she'd learned about life. Judging from my observations, she'd learned a great deal. I regret that I never got the chance to read her journals.

Ma Herrick's tradition could be a good one to adopt. Future generations of relatives might find them to be helpful, but the larger benefit may come when our periodic reviews remind us of lessons we once knew, but have forgotten.

So much of life is not a revelation. It is a reminder.

Quote of the Day

Nothing dies harder than a bad idea.

- Julia Cameron