Tuesday, December 4, 2007
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Last night was cold - 30 degrees or so - and I barely had enough propane to see me through the night. I'm going to have to find some today and with that in mind I've decided to head south from Leeds on AL route 25 and keep an eye out for a propane dealer. I found one about 25 -30 miles out and AL 25 took me south of Birmingham and then gradually westward, eventually crossing I65 at Calera AL where I've holed up for the night, once again at Wal-Mart. My Verizon broadband connection is a little slow here but I'll get by. So far this service has performed very well for me.
Night camp: Wal-Mart in Calera AL
That's the Point of Emotions: Survival
That's the point of emotions: survival. Normal emotions are essential to staying alive and well. ... To most people this doesn't make sense. We humans tend to think of emotions as dangerous forces that need to be strictly controlled by reason and logic. But that's not how the brain works. In the brain logic and reason are never separate from emotion. Nothing is neutral. That's what you have to remember. ... A lot of people's emotional life is unconscious a lot of the time, especially when you're calmly thinking something through. You feel like you're just using logic, but you're actually using logic guided by emotion. You just aren't aware of the emotion. ... I recommend Descartes' Error to anyone who's interested in emotions, intuition, and decision making. ... Nature seems to have tried to wire animals and people to have useful emotions, useful meaning emotions that keep us alive long enough to reproduce. Emotions keep us alive by letting us make good predictions about the future, and good predictions let us make good decisions about what comes next.