(copying my post to another board where I learned about the movie, slightly out of context) I saw the movie Gasland about fracking last night at Cooper Union and heard Josh Fox, the guy who created it, speak. I don’t recommend many movies, but I recommend this one. If you can talk to Josh Fox, all the better. I’ve since watched and read other web pages and videos. I don’t[…] Keep reading →

Want a liberating concept? Our brains and senses are limited. Our ancestors didn’t evolve minds to understand everything or senses to sense everything. They evolved them to navigate their environments enough to propagate their genes. That’s it. The ones that could had children eventually resulting in us. The ones that couldn’t didn’t. Limited senses mean we have limited access to the universe. The observable universe stretches for tens of billions[…] Keep reading →

When you think of deciding, do you think of going toward the choice you decide on? I tend to and I think most others do too. But if deciding is about going toward something we like, why can it be so hard? The –cide in decide is the same -cide as in pesticide, homicide, and suicide — from Latin, meaning cut or kill. However much we think about deciding as[…] Keep reading →

Do you or people you know get stuck “winning” arguments only to find they’ve annoyed or alienated people around them? It’s hard to do anything about it because when people aren’t arguing they tend to feel they don’t do it — that only others do. And when they are arguing they’re often least open to exiting argument mode into self-reflection mode. A scene in The Big Lebowski that illustrates the[…] Keep reading →

An incredibly useful perspective in some half-baked notes to a friend. I’ll develop them more in future posts. Feedback and criticism appreciated. — You wrote about lying as an example of a “bad trait”. I’d like to suggest another perspective (generalizable from just lying to other aspects of apparent lack of empathy): that the reason people communicate is not to convey truths. Evaluating people according to truths and lies holds[…] Keep reading →

One of the great lessons I learned from my father was that when people talk about how they spend their time, they’re talking about priorities. As he put it, “When people say they don’t have time to do something, they mean they prioritized something else higher. People have time to do anything. The question is if what they put aside to do something.” Internalized over the years, the perspective seems[…] Keep reading →

I have a friend who says he can voluntarily let go of emotions he doesn’t want to hold on to anymore. I’ve let go of many things, but never in the moment from conscious intent. He sounds sincere, but frankly I doubt him. Like telling an angry person to calm down, suggesting someone let go of something is counterproductive advice. Trying to let go of something voluntarily focuses your mind[…] Keep reading →

I was helping a colleague install some software on an Apple computer a week or two ago. In the process we had to install a c compiler, which was Free Software. I don’t remember the details, but somehow Apple had set it up so he had to register with Apple to install the software. I’m sure there was a way around it, but Apple set it up that way. There’s[…] Keep reading →

[This post is part of a series on turning rejections into motivation. If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.] Despite ourselves, accepting things can demotivate as much as rejections can motivate us. Physics, at its core, has always meant to me studying the most basic elements of our environment: space,[…] Keep reading →