Perception

The travel industry fools most of us into thinking somewhere else is more beautiful than where we are. We live in a world of people sitting on beautiful beaches or other beautiful places, looking at pictures of other beaches thinking that place must be better than here. After all I'm here looking there, so it must be better there. If where you are doesn't look beautiful, worth exploring a lifetime, or lacks novelty, or you think it won't provide insight into the universe, or whatever you look for in a place you visit, I suggest the reason you don't see it is what people have done to it. They paved it over. They covered the natural beauty. If you follow the industry's lead, you risk…

I keep reading articles describing food as medicine, describing how vegetables and fruit are especially healthy. Saying so implies vegetables and fruit are abnormal, things you have to go out of your way for, and doof is normal. People can define normal how they want, but to me, fresh fruits and vegetables are normal. From my perspective, food isn't medicine. It's normal, as is health. Doof is poison and abnormal, something we'd have to go out of our way for. In other words, food is medicine like not hitting head against wall is medicine. Doof is like hitting your head against the wall. There's no mystery where your headache comes from if you do it.

Living in Manhattan, I used to think I had access to some of the best tasting food in the world and since a long time, maybe forever. With all the restaurants, chefs, and cuisines, I figured their competition and education must drive them to ever improving quality. The longer I cook at home and shop at farmers markets, the more I find restaurants don't compete on quality of ingredients. What they serve---more doof than food, if they even serve food---derives its main sensory pleasure from salt, sugar, fat, and convenience. They don't showcase the vegetables. On the contrary, they hide them under salty, sweet, or oily sauces. Do American Restaurants Only Serve Comfort Food? The more I buy and cook with fresh ingredients, the more…

In two days I begin my fifth year not flying. I estimate talking to about 1,000 people about not flying and that about 998 of them said that not flying would be impossible for them---not difficult or unwanted but impossible. Suddenly they're able not to fly. Their claims of being unable to avoid flying were never a matter of reality, as they described, but a lack of motivation and imagination. To my ears, they sound like addicts who can see the withdrawal they'd experience trying to kick their habit but not the life improvement beyond. If you tell a heroin addict that they will prefer exercise and working for a living to shooting up, I suspect they won't believe you. They'll probably consider you not…