Tag Archives: Norman Rockwell

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 26, 2014 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, Humor, Hurt Feelings Tags: Norman Rockwell, Thanksgiving, Turkeys Leave a comment

Obsession of the day

Being above reproach

Random Quote of the Day

Reproach is usually honest, which is more than can be said of praise.

Angst of the Week

Inflation

Ugly American of the Week

The Statue of Liberty

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501 German Oddities? Is that really all there are? Google Play, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Scribd, etc.

Brain Quest - A Fantastic Voyage through the Progressive Mind is out now!

"Other than a slight run-in with an errant gang of deviant subculture corpuscles our passage through the blameless victim ventricle proved to be rather uneventful."

Order now at Amazon, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Smashwords and other select retailers.

It's "dry Martini," not "drei Martini."

Sprechen Sie Dumb Deutsch? It doesn't matter. You don’t have to speak a word of German to get a real laugh out of this comic collection of frightful faux pas. Apple, Barnes & Noble, Scribd, etc.

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Important Terminology

Abilene Paradox
Affect Bias
Asch Conformity Experiment
Availability Heuristic
Capitalism
Cognitive Dissonance
Collective Intelligence
Collective Narcissism
Condition Branding
Conspiracy Theory of Society
Conditioned Reflex
Confirmation Bias
Crowd Psychology
Cultural Identity
Disease Mongering
Fear Marketing (FUD)
Feedback Loop
Goodwin's Law
Group Polarization
Groupthink
Herd Mentality
Historicism
Hypocrisy
Hysteria
Interventionism
Mean World Syndrome
Misery-line
Posthypnotic Suggestion
Probability Blindness
Risk Society
System One Thinking
The Halo Effect
The Lizard Brain
The Open Society
The White Male Effect
Transference

The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.
- Frederic Bastiat

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.
- Margaret Thatcher

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
- H.L. Mencken

All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.
- Marshall McLuhan

It is like information theory; it is noise posing as signal so you do not even recognize it as noise. The intelligence agencies call it disinformation. If you can float enough disinformation into circulation you will totally abolish everyone's contact with reality, probably your own included.
- Philip K. Dick

Ninety percent of the politicians give the other ten percent a bad reputation.
- Henry Kissinger

Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to achieve the intellectual corruption of a whole generation.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

German schadenfreude knows no bounds, particularly when it comes to the United States. The country loves to feel superior to a superpower like America. Yet Germany also harbors a childish infatuation with Obama — one which has little political grounding. The reasons are psychological. …The criticism of America has always been a bit infantile. One is familiar with the theory from psychoanalysis, when people talk about transference, or when suppressed feelings or emotions are overcome by projecting them onto others. It may work for a while, improving one’s feeling of self-worth by devaluing an imagined adversary. But it always falls short. Which is why the ritual must be constantly carried out anew.
- Jan Fleischhauer

Intellectuals, in the words of the writer Eric Hoffer, "cannot operate at room temperature." They are excited by daring opinions, clever theories, sweeping ideologies, and utopian visions of the kind that caused so much trouble during the 20th century. The kind of reason that expands moral sensibilities comes not from grand intellectual "systems" but from the exercise of logic, clarity, objectivity, and proportionality.
- Steven Pinker

The difference between Greek pessimism and the oriental and modern variety is that the Greeks had not made the discovery that the pathetic mood may be idealized, and figure as a higher form of sensibility. Their spirit was still too essentially masculine for pessimism to be elaborated or lengthily dwelt on in their classic literature... The discovery that the enduring emphasis, so far as this world goes, may be laid on its pain and failure, was reserved for races more complex, and (so to speak) more feminine than the Hellenes had attained to being in the classic period.
- William James

A doctrine must not be understood, but has rather to be believed in. We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand. A doctrine that is understood is shorn of its strength. Once we understand a thing, it is as if it had originated in us. And, clearly, those who are asked to renounce the self and sacrifice it cannot see eternal certitude in anything which originates in that self.
- Eric Hoffer

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