Sometimes when people want me to do an option, they will offer it seemingly out of nowhere (out of nowhere in Latin might be phrased creatio ex nihilo, or creation from nothing).

So with this friend of mine when we were out for dinner, I would finish my dinner and she would finish hers. She would then present an option, saying, "Do you want to have desert or are you going to not have desert?" Then I would say that I wanted desert. By presenting the option that wasn't there before, my friend Diane mastered a fundamental sales technique. The creation of the situation is what prompted the option to have it be chosen.

The option was not there in the first place.



People do this intentionally and unintentionally. For Diane it was a mixture of both.


Come to think of it, I believe that a great number of our actions are more of a cross between raw functional habit and intense focus and consideration.

Maybe we in fact do these extremes (feel these extremes) during acts of doing. Maybe right now, as I am typing, the action is a combination of intense consideration or maybe it's completely absent minded.


On a different note:

What about gum on the bottom of desks? I reach down to feel how smooth the desk is to find some semi-sticky lump.

We don't consider this that big of a crime because it's not seen. No one is going to start an anti-gum placing campaign because this isn't like littering.

I told my friend Rick that the worst crimes are the crimes that are legal. The crimes that are the worst are the ones where no one really notices. Of course, this is a mistake, but I think there is some truth to it.


One of my editors has been ragging on me at the Technician. He gives out orders when he does not have to and he does it in a way that makes me feel bad, which I call pulling rank.

But no one knows about this problem and there is not too much I can do about it.