Gut instincts

Oklahoman sportswriter Berry Tramel today characterized Charles Barkley as a "man who speaks first, thinks second and then repeats what he said the first time," which may sound like damning with faint praise but which strikes me as something almost worthy of emulation: you follow your gut, even when it's making untoward, Barkleyesque noises.

Which, as it happens, might be the best advice for most of us anyway:

In years gone by, I'd been known to waffle on such insignificant matters as "Paper or plastic?" I can't legitimately claim to be a spur-of-the-moment kind of guy, but I have learned that the consequences of jumping into a decision need not be heinous: I spent barely fifteen minutes inside this very house before I decided that this was the one I wanted.

Then again, it was the eleventh house I'd looked at.

Matt Rosenberg would like to see this sort of speedy decision-making enforced at the governmental level:

This I couldn't say. In the case of pending legislation, it's hard enough to get them to read the damn bills; if you take away the pontification periods, you're going to wind up with, say, Joe Biden learning how to talk fast enough to do FedEx commercials, which would not be much of a gain.

Still, if someone wants to base a campaign on the theme of "Screw nuance," I'm listening.