Do you feel if you don’t deal with difficult things you’re denying or avoiding reality? Does that bring you down or make you feel irresponsible? Does that compel you to do things you don’t want to? Here’s how to make sure you don’t. After a conversation last night, my friend said she looked at enjoying life in a whole new way for the better. Let’s start with an analogy. On[…] Keep reading →

The New York Times wrote yesterday about Eben Moglen, whom I wrote about recently. “We have to aim our engineering more directly at politics now,” he said. “What has happened in Egypt is enormously inspiring, but the Egyptian state was late to the attempt to control the Net and not ready to be as remorseless as it could have been.” … If revolutions for freedom rest on the shoulders of[…] Keep reading →

Here’s a model for you: think of a baby learning to walk. No baby learns to walk right the first time. Not even the tenth time. So-called failure for them is not just figuratively painful, it looks physically painful. Yet babies learn to walk. They try and fail. And try and fail. And try and fail. For months they try and fail. This model alone shows how poorly the popular[…] Keep reading →

I’ve written before how I like to read the results of the finishers of marathons I run, especially the last and oldest. From the publicly published information, it’s the most inspiration you can get. I’m sure it barely scratches the surface of what some athletes overcome to finish, but I look for inspiration where I can. Since I registered for last year’s New York City marathon lottery (but didn’t get[…] Keep reading →

Typical e-book readers today have a few gigabytes of memory, enabling holding thousands of books. Where did the choice for this amount of memory come from? Am I missing something? What is the value of holding that many books? Even if you were trapped on a desert island you would die before finishing reading them, leaving aside the issue of recharging the battery. On the face of it you could[…] Keep reading →

Do you want a better life? The book Predictably Irrational is a great entry point to one, and to my philosophy. It’s also a great book in its own right — informative and well-written. From my perspective it’s a great gateway to how to live a better life. Its title describes its two-part thesis. First, humans react irrationally to many things. Using “irrational” this way presupposes a definition the book[…] Keep reading →

After yesterday’s post, I thought of another little rule I made that makes something some people consider difficult into a game. I’m almost embarrassed to share it because of how geeky it is, but it makes something otherwise challenging into fun, or at least a way to make myself a better me. First, you should know, I love eating food that tastes good and chips are included. I can eat[…] Keep reading →

Here is a simple way to reduce one type of stress. I used to get annoyed when people would show up late to meet me. I imagined them disrespecting me and such. One day I made a rule for myself: Everybody gets fifteen minutes. That’s it. If someone shows up anywhere less than fifteen minutes late, it’s fine. I don’t ask questions, I don’t ask where they were, I don’t[…] Keep reading →

Continuing this post that our access to reality is limited by our senses and our minds can’t comprehend it all, what then do we have in our minds? We form beliefs or mental models. What is a model? A model is a simplified representation of reality for a purpose. That previous post dealt with the ramifications of models being simplified — that they are all flawed. If they are all[…] Keep reading →