(7:21 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

Making Friends and Influencing People, Kotsko Style

[Note: this post has been updated.]

By observing the most successful and powerful people in the world, I have devised the following rules for success:

1. If I want to do something in which my friends have some stake, I should decide exactly what I want to do, then patronizingly ask them for approval, while making it clear that I'll do it no matter what they say.
   
2. In order to reduce my credit card debt, I will decrease the amount I pay on my credit cards while simultaneously charging more and more items on them.
   

If I follow these simple rules, before long, I'll be ruling the world.

UPDATES:

Michael Bérubé has this to say regarding the Bush administration's plan to cut overtime pay:

And over the longer term, folks, let’s try to establish a general consensus in this country that people who want to eliminate taxes on unearned wealth while slashing pay for ordinary workers are simply morally unfit for public office.

I'd like to upgrade my cautious recommendation of The Virtual Stoa to an unreserved commandment to read it. (With gratitude I also note, upon going to the page in order to cut-and-paste the rather lengthy address, that he has blogrolled me.)

Our dear friend LitSkunk has decided to end her career as a blogger after five posts. I'd like to thank her for the vigorous debate that one of her posts stirred, both on her own site and here. Incidentally, a portion of that vigorous debate continues with John Halbo's very lengthy and amusing post on the topic. Prediction: Chun the Unavoidable will claim that the articles John read in PMLA are atypical, without pointing him toward any typical ones. I recommend his blog, due to paragraphs like the following:

I'm especially interested in this piece [Ed: link added by me] because I, in my limitless vanity, believed I might be referred to in it. He mentions an Invisible Adjunct thread in which some sneering types made pathetic efforts to defend the MLA against the deadly ridicule of such as Scott McLemee, and I certainly tend to sneer. For instance, when I wrote above that Wormtongue was an "important figure in Tolkien studies," I actually meant two things: "Tolkien studies" is a rather ridiculous thing to be an important figure in, and I doubt that he is, anyway. Also, his blog is called "Wormtalk," not "Wormtongue." Sneering, see? (Actually it's jealousy. I had long ago made up my mind to be the dominant figure in Tolkien studies, and now I'm only a third-tier figure in Terry Brooks studies.)

I conclude this "update" to note that those who wish to duplicate lengthy block quotes containing links and other formatting would do well to copy the source code for the quotation in question. It is likely easier than attempting to reproduce the links oneself after copying the plain text version over into the blogging window, and it stays truer to the original intention of the author. It also saves one the trouble of typing, "He's got a lot of links in the original post that I didn't reproduce here 'cuz I'm lazy." It may also give one valuable insights into the way other people produce certain visual effects on their site, if one is the kind of person who spends all of one's time repeatedly updating one's blog template.

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