Why I don’t eat meat differs from why I stopped eating meat, though the reasons overlap in matters of taste. As I mentioned, I lived over half my life since I stopped eating meat and, as you might expect, my reasons changed. The main reasons for the changes were realizing that I found no objective reason for eating meat or not. I’ve looked and they all turn out subjective. People[…] Keep reading →
Yesterday covered more the physical side of the change in the trucker’s life with food. Today let’s look more at the emotional side. The movie showed that, however ingrained the punishment of “food” and its related confusion-based helplessness, just a few days of new experience can overcome it. The trucker’s physical health didn’t change overnight, but his emotional health did. And a major point of this blog is the fundamental[…] Keep reading →
I’m not a fan of putting positive spins on things. You can’t call something positive without calling something else negative. Calling some emotions negative makes some people want to shun them and act like they don’t have them. How many times have you seen someone obviously angry or enraged, saying through gritted teeth and clenched jaws, “I’m not angry,†in blatant denial of their emotions? They confuse how an emotion[…] Keep reading →
Continuing yesterdays’ post… In the examples above, the categorization schemes worked because they categorized something with an underlying structure — the photon and its wavelength, the atom and its nucleus and electrons, natural selection and DNA, the (so far) fundamental particles and the laws governing their interactions. But not everything with patterns has an underlying structure. Let’s look at anatomy, for example. As we’ll see, it will reveal a lot[…] Keep reading →
Discovering the periodic table of the elements told us wonders about chemistry and pointed the way toward understanding atoms. Figuring it out pointed the way toward tremendous understanding and improving our lives. We found similar structures that revealed underlying structure in the spectrum of light, life’s family tree, the standard model of particle physics, and others. Wouldn’t it be great to find such a structure for our emotions and motivations?[…] Keep reading →
This morning I woke up planning to do my first 2,000 meter sprint on my rowing machine. I had a great experience I’ll describe after extolling the machine’s benefits. Anyone who knows me knows I rarely promote commercial products. Non-commercial products like GNU/Linux, fresh fruit, and public libraries, I promote all the time, but commercial stuff, rarely. This thing has been great. I got it after Thanksgiving last year and[…] Keep reading →
For my last post on Ultimate Frisbee in North Korea for a while, I’ll post some far-reaching ideas, link to articles about it, and give thanks and credit. Einstein said “you cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.” And George Santayana said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Well, if you want peace, I suggest you begin with fun and games, or at least make[…] Keep reading →
Okay, you’re asking, I get the value of sport in opening communications anywhere and thawing relations with people across adversarial borders. What about the games themselves? Did you have fun? Did they? You’ll have to wait for when my posts on pictures from North Korea reach the Ultimate games, but don’t worry, I’ll post interesting stuff in between. For now I’ll say this. You can read books, search online, watch[…] Keep reading →
Yesterday I hinted at why playing sports yourself differs from watching sports, especially the big ones. Why not promote interactions through the big sports, like basketball, soccer, Olympics, and so on? First, I don’t discourage them, but I would point out their size, scale, and corporate and government backing make everyday human interaction more difficult. All the profit available makes them easy pickings for rent-seeking government bureaucrats and corporations. As[…] Keep reading →