Rationalizing Numbers II
When I tell friends I'm a "commercial mediator" and they say "huh?" I say, "I rationalize numbers for a living."
What I'm doing now, however, is procrastinating. Since I promised you "Changing Minds, Part II," I've blogged about creativity, love, blogging/marketing, the Israeli Prisoner Exchange negotiations, and, Outsourcing Associate Jobs. Then I posted The Miniature Earth Video.
It's a lot of work procrastinating, particularly since I'm writing Changing Minds, Part II to procrastinate finishing a Daily Journal article about drafting arbitration clauses. Now there's work worthy of some high-level procrastination.
Still, I think all that brain science from Changing Minds Part I got to me. It made me want to post photos of small children playing on brightly colored floors (below) next to quotations by my favorite authors, like Don DeLillo. 
DeLillo wrote this blazing piece of prose about our addiction to statistics when he was in his thirties. I can rationalize numbers but I still can't write a symphony about them so I think I'll just shut up now.
America is a sanitarium for every kind of statistic. We take care of them. We try to understand them. We do what we can to make them well. Numbers are important because whatever fears we might have concerning the shattering of our minds are largely dispelled by the satisfaction of knowing precisely how we are being driven mad, at what decibel rating, what mach-ratio, what force of aerodynamic drag. So there is a transferred madness, a doubling, between the numbers themselves and those who make them and care for them. We need them badly ; there is no arguing that point. With numbers we are able to conceal doubt. Numbers render the present day endurable, herald the impressive excesses of the future and stocked with a fine deceptive configuration our memories, such as they are, of the past. We are all natural scientists. War or peace, we thrive on the body-count. If I were on my death-bed today, and did not know the date, my cells would probably refuse to surrender. Without a calendar, a stopwatch, a measuring cup on the night table, I couldn’t possibly know how to die.
Don Delillo, Americana
