"I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students."
— Carl Sagan
I'm pretty sure Michael knew a thousand things about dinosaurs – not just well-known species but uncommon ones too – before he could tie his shoes. He could pronounce them, which was a feat all its own in some cases – Ankylosaurus, Deinonychus, Pachycephalosaurus – and he studied books and videos, and earnestly spouted facts about them. "Diplodocus was as big as four elephants," he would say, for example. Then came his 'whale phase,' and I'm pretty sure he could've worked at Shedd. There are dolphins and belugas in an oceanarium at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, and staff members stand by the tanks and exhibits and cheerfully educate visitors. Michael was qualified at five years old. He could easily list 20 types of whales (nevermind various facts about them). Try it... 20 of 'em, it's not easy. Yes, dolphins are whales. By outward appearances, I'd say Michael's enthusiasm for science peaked in early elementary school; I agree with Carl Sagan.
Megan leans to the artistic more than the scientific, but little-bitty Meg-pie was enthusiastic to build, make, grow, and understand things, also. As with Michael and all kids, it's human nature. And it's awesome! We enjoy these activities throughout life, but it's a special energy, the excitement and enthusiasm of youth – wasted on the young, some say – the way we see things with wonder at first exposure, the way we process without preconception our experiences (because so many are new). It's why I love traveling now: it's the closest thing to that first-time wonder and energy we get high doses of as kids. Dinosaurs, animals, history, sports, music, spaceships, the Wild West. Trucks, tractors, and trains. Vikings, pirates, and princesses, and on and on. It's all cool shit, really, especially when first introduced. I wish I remembered that state, that sensation, of extreme newness to the world and everything in life. Maybe we rekindle it every time we try something new? Zen Buddhists have a concept called 'shoshin' – aka 'beginner's mind' – which is the cultivation of this feeling of novelty, of invigorating openness and appreciation, but for a familiar activity or object, as if we haven't been exposed to and formed opinions about it already. 'Experts' can become closed off to new ideas; they assume, dismiss, and prefer familiar and validating information over fresh perspectives. Many don't want to be seriously challenged or conflicted. The minds of children and beginners can't be this way; they're empty, wide open, curious, hungry. I hope M 'n' m fill their heads with positive, helpful, inspiring stuff with my help. Probably not, since I don't limit their device use enough. And young minds famously become open to everything except the advice and ideas of their parents. Maybe M 'n' m aren't listening anymore, or observing my example. Megan isn't for sure. Michael's in high school. Fine, if they resume someday, they can have a 'beginner's mind' about it. I welcome advice from my parents now and often request it, even though we live hundreds of miles apart. Bummer, we were under the same roof for almost 20 years and I didn't absorb even a fraction of what I could've learned.
I'm afraid Limp Bizkit was right: "Life is a lesson, you learn it when you're through."
"Does anybody really know the secret,
Or the combination for this life, and where they keep it,
Its kinda sad when you don't know the meaning,
But everything happens for a reason,
I don't even know what I should say,
'Cause I'm an idiot, a loser, a microphone abuser,
I analyze every second I exist,
Beatin' on my mind every second with my fist,
...
And there ain't nothing I can do,
'Cause life is a lesson, you learn it when you're through.
– Limp Bizkit, Take a Look Around
Friday, February 23, 2018
Friday, February 16, 2018
Stuff About Things #17
"It's just that the thing you never understand about being a
mother, until you are one, is that it is not the grown man – the
galumphing, unshaven, stinking, opinionated offspring – you see before
you, with his parking tickets and unpolished shoes and complicated love
life. You see all the people he has ever been all rolled up into one. I
looked at Will and I saw the baby I held in my arms, dewily besotted,
unable to believe that I had created another human being. I saw the
toddler, reaching for my hand, the schoolboy weeping tears or fury after
being bullied by some other child. I saw the vulnerabilities, the love,
the history."
— from Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
"You know family is always going to be there for you, no matter what. My dad gave me a freakin' kidney!"
— Sarah Hyland, actress in Modern Family
"I have a great relationship with my dad."
— Justin Bieber
"We're always talking to each other. We're close."
— Niall Horan of One Direction, about his dad
"Everything takes time, Will, and that's something that your generation find a lot harder to adjust to. You have all grown up expecting things to go your way almost instantaneously. You all expect to live the lives you chose. Especially a successful young man like yourself. But it takes time."
— from Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
"The world is all gates, all opportunities."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I have half-sisters, who are much younger than I am. I've always been fascinated by their relationship and the relationships some of my friends have with their sisters. What I'm most captivated by is that ability to be at each other's throats one moment and yet totally bonded and presenting a united front the next. If you are an only child, as I was for nineteen years, that kind of relationship is pretty mesmerizing."
— Jojo Moyes
"Simple questions can be anything but simple to answer. Or, to put it simply, if you want to understand something complex, ask a simple question."
— Alan Duffy, astronomer
"I admired everything about my dad, to the extent that I was absorbing lessons from him without knowing it.... It's very interesting, my dad never really gave me hell (when I got in trouble) but he said, you know, "You can do better than this.' And just saying that, I mean, I felt like I was letting him down basically. So, in all ways, he was teaching me, he never taught by telling me things, he just taught by example. He had unlimited confidence in me, even when I screwed up, and that takes you a long, long way.... The best gift I was ever given was to have the father that I had when I was born."
— Warren Buffet, business magnate, investor, philanthropist, at last count worth about 90 billion
"If the studies are to be believed, the more digitally connected we are, the more isolation and doom we seem to feel."
— Michael Paterniti, GQ magazine
"Love isn’t a perfect state of caring. It’s an active noun like ‘struggle.’ To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now."
— Mr. Rogers
"Hard work works."
— Denzel Washington
"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."
— Gustave Flaubert
"The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing."
— Marcus Aurelius
"When Miss G. made up her mind about somethin', there was no stoppin' her man, for real."
— the movie Freedom Writers
"Beware the barrenness of a busy life."
— Socrates
"I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."
— Socrates
"When the debate is over, slander becomes the tool of the loser."
— Socrates
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
— Carl Sagan
"Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had."
— Michael Crichton
"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world."
— Michael Crichton
"Grief is the price we pay for love."
— Queen Elizabeth
"Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory."
— Albert Schweitzer
"It was the settlement of Port Jackson in 1788 that finally brought a few ships to Kiribati. Port Jackson, which was to become Sydney, was where England sent its unlucky people. I am not exactly sure why they did this. It seems to me a lot of bother to ship thousands of petty criminals from one side of the planet to the other. And it's not as if they were just dropped off there and told to fend for themselves. No, they were placed in dank, wretched prisons that were similar to the dank, wretched prisons back in merry old England. What was the point? Plus, as the medal tallies at subsequent Olympics suggest, England managed to ship out its entire gene pool of athletes."
— J. Maarten Troost, The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
"Sylvia, who is ravishingly beautiful, possesses a formidable intellect, and whose very existence illuminates my life, sings like a distressed cow. Entire villages scatter into the bush when we sing together. I try to explain this to Tawita, but she is having none of it. 'You must sing. Do not be shy.'"
— J. Maarten Troost, The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
— from Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
"You know family is always going to be there for you, no matter what. My dad gave me a freakin' kidney!"
— Sarah Hyland, actress in Modern Family
"I have a great relationship with my dad."
— Justin Bieber
"We're always talking to each other. We're close."
— Niall Horan of One Direction, about his dad
"Everything takes time, Will, and that's something that your generation find a lot harder to adjust to. You have all grown up expecting things to go your way almost instantaneously. You all expect to live the lives you chose. Especially a successful young man like yourself. But it takes time."
— from Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
"The world is all gates, all opportunities."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I have half-sisters, who are much younger than I am. I've always been fascinated by their relationship and the relationships some of my friends have with their sisters. What I'm most captivated by is that ability to be at each other's throats one moment and yet totally bonded and presenting a united front the next. If you are an only child, as I was for nineteen years, that kind of relationship is pretty mesmerizing."
— Jojo Moyes
"Simple questions can be anything but simple to answer. Or, to put it simply, if you want to understand something complex, ask a simple question."
— Alan Duffy, astronomer
"I admired everything about my dad, to the extent that I was absorbing lessons from him without knowing it.... It's very interesting, my dad never really gave me hell (when I got in trouble) but he said, you know, "You can do better than this.' And just saying that, I mean, I felt like I was letting him down basically. So, in all ways, he was teaching me, he never taught by telling me things, he just taught by example. He had unlimited confidence in me, even when I screwed up, and that takes you a long, long way.... The best gift I was ever given was to have the father that I had when I was born."
— Warren Buffet, business magnate, investor, philanthropist, at last count worth about 90 billion
"If the studies are to be believed, the more digitally connected we are, the more isolation and doom we seem to feel."
— Michael Paterniti, GQ magazine
"Love isn’t a perfect state of caring. It’s an active noun like ‘struggle.’ To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now."
— Mr. Rogers
"Hard work works."
— Denzel Washington
"Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work."
— Gustave Flaubert
"The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing."
— Marcus Aurelius
"When Miss G. made up her mind about somethin', there was no stoppin' her man, for real."
— the movie Freedom Writers
"Beware the barrenness of a busy life."
— Socrates
"I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."
— Socrates
"When the debate is over, slander becomes the tool of the loser."
— Socrates
"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
— Carl Sagan
"Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had."
— Michael Crichton
"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world."
— Michael Crichton
"Grief is the price we pay for love."
— Queen Elizabeth
"Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory."
— Albert Schweitzer
"It was the settlement of Port Jackson in 1788 that finally brought a few ships to Kiribati. Port Jackson, which was to become Sydney, was where England sent its unlucky people. I am not exactly sure why they did this. It seems to me a lot of bother to ship thousands of petty criminals from one side of the planet to the other. And it's not as if they were just dropped off there and told to fend for themselves. No, they were placed in dank, wretched prisons that were similar to the dank, wretched prisons back in merry old England. What was the point? Plus, as the medal tallies at subsequent Olympics suggest, England managed to ship out its entire gene pool of athletes."
— J. Maarten Troost, The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
"Sylvia, who is ravishingly beautiful, possesses a formidable intellect, and whose very existence illuminates my life, sings like a distressed cow. Entire villages scatter into the bush when we sing together. I try to explain this to Tawita, but she is having none of it. 'You must sing. Do not be shy.'"
— J. Maarten Troost, The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
A Slow Death (A Morte Devagar) by Martha Medeiros
This is my rough translation from Portuguese, thanks to Google Translate and some Brazilian colleagues...
They die slowly who do not exchange ideas,
Nor exchange discourse.
Who avoid their own contradictions.
They die slowly who become a slave of habit.
Who repeat the same journeys every day,
And the same purchases at the market.
Who do not change brands,
Nor risk wearing a new color.
Who do not talk to someone they don't know.
They die slowly who make television their guru,
And their daily partner.
Many cannot afford a book or a movie ticket,
But many can, and still they alienate themselves,
In front of a tube of images that informs and entertains,
But should not, with just its few inches, occupy so much space in a life.
They die slowly who avoid a passion,
Who choose black over white and dotting i's to a whirlwind of turbulent emotions,
Precisely those that return glitter to our eyes,
That cause smiles and sobs,
Heart stumblings and feelings.
They die slowly who do not turn the tables when unhappy at work,
Who do not risk certainty for the uncertainty of a dream.
Who do not, at least once in their lives, run away from sound advice.
They die slowly who do not travel,
Who do not read,
Who do not listen to music,
Who do not find grace in themselves.
They die slowly who destroy their self-esteem.
It can be depression, a serious illness that requires professional help.
They die every day who do not let themselves be helped.
They die slowly who do not work and who do not study,
And most of the time this is not an option, but rather a destiny,
Then a government that is absent can slowly kill a good part of the population.
They die slowly who spend their days complaining,
About bad luck or incessant rain,
Giving up on a project before starting it,
Not asking about a subject they don't know,
And not answering when asked what they do know.
Many people die slowly,
And this is the most ungracious and treacherous death,
Because when it comes close,
We are ill-prepared to go through the little time remaining.
May that tomorrow, therefore, be late and instead be our special day.
But since we can not avoid a sudden end, at least avoid death in small doses,
Always remembering that being alive demands an effort much greater than simply to breathe.
They die slowly who do not exchange ideas,
Nor exchange discourse.
Who avoid their own contradictions.
They die slowly who become a slave of habit.
Who repeat the same journeys every day,
And the same purchases at the market.
Who do not change brands,
Nor risk wearing a new color.
Who do not talk to someone they don't know.
They die slowly who make television their guru,
And their daily partner.
Many cannot afford a book or a movie ticket,
But many can, and still they alienate themselves,
In front of a tube of images that informs and entertains,
But should not, with just its few inches, occupy so much space in a life.
They die slowly who avoid a passion,
Who choose black over white and dotting i's to a whirlwind of turbulent emotions,
Precisely those that return glitter to our eyes,
That cause smiles and sobs,
Heart stumblings and feelings.
They die slowly who do not turn the tables when unhappy at work,
Who do not risk certainty for the uncertainty of a dream.
Who do not, at least once in their lives, run away from sound advice.
They die slowly who do not travel,
Who do not read,
Who do not listen to music,
Who do not find grace in themselves.
They die slowly who destroy their self-esteem.
It can be depression, a serious illness that requires professional help.
They die every day who do not let themselves be helped.
They die slowly who do not work and who do not study,
And most of the time this is not an option, but rather a destiny,
Then a government that is absent can slowly kill a good part of the population.
They die slowly who spend their days complaining,
About bad luck or incessant rain,
Giving up on a project before starting it,
Not asking about a subject they don't know,
And not answering when asked what they do know.
Many people die slowly,
And this is the most ungracious and treacherous death,
Because when it comes close,
We are ill-prepared to go through the little time remaining.
May that tomorrow, therefore, be late and instead be our special day.
But since we can not avoid a sudden end, at least avoid death in small doses,
Always remembering that being alive demands an effort much greater than simply to breathe.
Friday, February 9, 2018
Against All Odds...
"In the past 40 or so years, a strange fact about our Universe gradually
made itself known to scientists: the laws of physics, and the initial
conditions of our Universe, are fine-tuned for the possibility of life.
It turns out that, for life to be possible, the numbers in basic physics
– for example, the strength of gravity, or the mass of the electron –
must have values falling in a certain range. And that range is an
incredibly narrow slice of all the possible values those numbers can
have. It is therefore incredibly unlikely that a universe like ours
would have the kind of numbers compatible with the existence of life.
But, against all the odds, our Universe does.... Some take the fine-tuning to be simply a basic fact about our
Universe: fortunate perhaps, but not something requiring explanation.
But like many scientists and philosophers, I find this implausible. In The Life of the Cosmos
(1999), the physicist Lee Smolin has estimated that, taking into
account all of the fine-tuning examples considered, the chance of life
existing in the Universe is 1 in 10229, from which he concludes: 'In
my opinion, a probability this tiny is not something we can let go
unexplained. Luck will certainly not do here; we need some rational
explanation of how something this unlikely turned out to be the case.'"
— Philip Goff, Aeon digital magazine
— Philip Goff, Aeon digital magazine
Monday, February 5, 2018
Stuff About Things #16
(Jimmy, I'm gonna be a dad! Advice?) "Yeah, you can ignore anyone who says nothing really changes. I bet those people never had kids. Because everything changes. Listen to people who know, starting with your parents. They'll have plenty of stories, believe you me, about what a little... uh, angel you were. And guess what? They can help. Trust me, you'll need it. Oh, and you hear how quiet it is? Savor that."
— Jimmy the Bartender, Men's Health magazine
"I still check on her in the middle of the night and put my fingers under her nose just to make sure she's still breathing. Is that insane? I feel like it might be a little bit insane."
— Ryan Reynolds, referring to his daughter, 2016
"I learned discipline from my father. Not in terms of corporal punishment, but being determined in whatever you do."
— Ryan Reynolds
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
— Carl Sagan
"Science is not only compatible with spirituality, it is a profound source of spirituality."
— Carl Sagan
"Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe, with a fine understanding of human fallibility."
— Carl Sagan
"Do the work. (Stephen) Curry puts up at least 100 shots before each game 'to see the ball go in and build some confidence. There's really no way to cheat the system,' he says. 'You either put the work in and reap the benefits of what you're doing, or you try to take shortcuts and think you're going to be all right. But it doesn't work that way. The guys who put in the most reps are usually the ones who are most successful.'"
— Men's Health magazine
"Find your mantra. No pregame tuns for (Stephen) Curry. 'My line is Lock In. That's how I focus,' Curry says. 'I say it to myself over and over: Time to go. Lock in and get ready to play. It's a mentality. Focus on what you need to do to lead your team. A hundred percent focus on the game.'"
— Men's Health magazine
"If you're the best version of yourself, things will work out. You might have to be more patient, but hard work will be rewarded."
— Stephen Curry
"Constant training and regular deployments further develop SEALs' tolerance for adversity. And they have a strong support network within their tight-knit community, a factor that, research suggests, can be more powerful than genetics."
— Pacific Standard magazine
"Meditation reduces heart rate and lowers blood pressure, and it strengthens the brain's neural pathways, improving the flow of information. Specifically, meditation has been shown to increase gray-matter volume and bolster synapses in the brain's pre-frontal cortex, which hones attention and helps put an event in context, rather than letting the amygdala, the brain's fight-or-flight center, hijack the body's reaction to stressful situations."
— Pacific Standard magazine
"Your thoughts are secondary. That's just chatter. Your attention and awareness are primary."
— Pacific Standard magazine
"She's a diligent writer of thank-you notes.... She still refuses to pay a lot for clothes.... She has an evolving relationship with money, coming from none.... (Brie) Larson's hardscrabble upbringing has imbued her with a humility that has earned her the admiration of some of the industry's biggest talents. 'Brie's a bright, unaffected young woman who is in a wonderfully corrosive business that would ruin most people,' says Samuel L. Jackson. 'But it's not going to ruin her.' Like Samuel L. Jackson, (Naomi) Watts marveled at Larson's humility and earnestness. 'Brie is totally down to earth, charming, and unspoiled,' Watts says. 'She's already surpassed that precarious thing that can transpire after winning an Oscar.... She's balancing it well. For God's sake, she just directed a film."
— Vanity Fair magazine
"An avid reader and journal keeper, (Brie) Larson has saved her diaries from her youth. 'I've gone back to the ones when I was really young, and those were really funny because you realize that no matter what age you are, no matter where you are in your life, you're just going to have problems."
— Vanity Fair magazine
"Walking around with our Pleistocene-epoch genes can be tough, especially on a college campus. The average freshman sees more attractive females in a single day that our hominid ancestors saw in an entire lifetime. Combine this with social media and dating apps and mate choices seems limitless.... Today's 20-somethings are showing anxiety.... There's this pressure to pick the perfect person who will make them happy and fulfilled for the remainder of their lives.... (But) research has found that the more premarriage partners people have, the lower the sexual quality, communication, and relationship stability is during marriage.... Skills like communication and compromise aren't developed. (And too many partners) can lead to the 'comparison effect.'"
— Men's Health magazine
"Study after study suggests that physical fitness and muscle strength decline less with age than previously believed, and that a committed exercise program can drastically slow this decline well into your seventies."
— Men's Health magazine
"The key to happiness is maximizing each day. So if you're unhappy, here's a simple prescription: Live harder."
— Laird Hamilton
(Some paraphrasing) "The promise and peril of A.I. are deeply intertwined.... The list of things humans can do better than computers is getting smaller and smaller. But we create these tools to extend our long reach. Just as, two hundred million years ago, mammalian brains developed a neocortex that eventually enabled humans to invent language and science and art and technology, by the 2030s, we're going to be connected to simulated neocortices in the cloud, giving us access within our own nervous systems. We will be smarter, funnier, more musical, wiser.... It's going to enhance us. It does already. Who can do their work without these brain extenders that we have today (smartphones, the internet)? And that's going to continue to be the case.... But the goal is to reap the promise and control the peril. There are no simple algorithms. There's no little sub-routine that we can put into our AIs to make them all benign. Intelligence is inherently uncontrollable. My strategy, which is not fool-proof, is to practice - in the collaborative development guiding of A.I. - the kind of ethics and morality and values we'd like to see in the world in our own human society. Because the future society is not some invasion from Mars of intelligent machines. It is emerging from our civilization today. It's going to be an enhancement of who we are. So if we're practicing the kind of values that we cherish in our world today, that's the best strategy to have a world in the future that embodies those values.... With these new technologies, it's not hard to come up with scenarios where they could be highly destructive and destroy all of humanity. Biotechnology for example. We have the ability to reprogram biology away from disease. Immunotherapy, which is a very exciting breakthrough in cancer—I think it's going to be quite revolutionary, it's just getting started—it's reprogramming the immune system to go after cancer, which it normally doesn't do. But bioterrorists could reprogram a virus to be more deadly and more communicable and more stealthy and create a superweapon.... Technology is always going to be a double-edged sword."
— Ray Kurzwel
"I've been accused of being an optimist, and you have to be an optimist to be an entrepreneur because if you knew all the problems you'd encounter you'd probably never start any project."
— Ray Kurzwel
"Without suffering. No beauty."
— French saying
"Not long ago, biologists examining a dead bowhead found old harpoon fragments buried in its flesh. Research revealed that the harpoon was of a kind last manufactured in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in the 19th century. The scientists conjectured that bowheads can live for up to 200 years. In other words, some of the whales still undulating through the icy waters off Alaska may have already been fully grown by the time Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick."
— Men's Journal magazine, 2016
"If I could invite someone to dinner for a fantastic discussion I would put the following on par: Leonardo - the genius, Jesus - the enigma, Socrates - the philosopher."
— Brunello Cucinelli
"I'm not a very smart guy. But I learned from everybody around me. When I was a waiter, I learned from the busboy how to quickly clear tables. I paid attention to the businessmen's lunch conversations. I've always been a scavenger for education. The world is full of education if you choose to open your eyes and ears to it."
— Robert Herjavec
"Gratitude is the most powerful connection you have to your higher self. You always, always, want to start your day connected to this higher self."
— I wish I could remember who said or wrote this, because they deserve credit; wise words
"In the frantic pace of life to do more and be more, we hardly think about the importance of focus. That's why, for those free-spirited, creative thinkers and entrepreneurs chasing after their dreams, this prophetic quote by Steve Jobs 21 years ago hits the nail on the head even more so today: 'People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.' ...Without focus, your very ability to think, reason, communicate, problem solve, and make decisions will naturally suffer. You just can't maximize your efficiency or go into a state of flow if your mind is wandering off into multitask land. They key to better focus? Give up multitasking. The reality is, we multitask everything. You're probably multitasking right now as you read this...."
— Inc. magazine
"The common characteristic of people (I interviewed) who had the most time and the highest income is the ability to single-task."
— Tim Ferriss
— Jimmy the Bartender, Men's Health magazine
"I still check on her in the middle of the night and put my fingers under her nose just to make sure she's still breathing. Is that insane? I feel like it might be a little bit insane."
— Ryan Reynolds, referring to his daughter, 2016
"I learned discipline from my father. Not in terms of corporal punishment, but being determined in whatever you do."
— Ryan Reynolds
"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."
— Carl Sagan
"Science is not only compatible with spirituality, it is a profound source of spirituality."
— Carl Sagan
"Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe, with a fine understanding of human fallibility."
— Carl Sagan
"Do the work. (Stephen) Curry puts up at least 100 shots before each game 'to see the ball go in and build some confidence. There's really no way to cheat the system,' he says. 'You either put the work in and reap the benefits of what you're doing, or you try to take shortcuts and think you're going to be all right. But it doesn't work that way. The guys who put in the most reps are usually the ones who are most successful.'"
— Men's Health magazine
"Find your mantra. No pregame tuns for (Stephen) Curry. 'My line is Lock In. That's how I focus,' Curry says. 'I say it to myself over and over: Time to go. Lock in and get ready to play. It's a mentality. Focus on what you need to do to lead your team. A hundred percent focus on the game.'"
— Men's Health magazine
"If you're the best version of yourself, things will work out. You might have to be more patient, but hard work will be rewarded."
— Stephen Curry
"Constant training and regular deployments further develop SEALs' tolerance for adversity. And they have a strong support network within their tight-knit community, a factor that, research suggests, can be more powerful than genetics."
— Pacific Standard magazine
"Meditation reduces heart rate and lowers blood pressure, and it strengthens the brain's neural pathways, improving the flow of information. Specifically, meditation has been shown to increase gray-matter volume and bolster synapses in the brain's pre-frontal cortex, which hones attention and helps put an event in context, rather than letting the amygdala, the brain's fight-or-flight center, hijack the body's reaction to stressful situations."
— Pacific Standard magazine
"Your thoughts are secondary. That's just chatter. Your attention and awareness are primary."
— Pacific Standard magazine
"She's a diligent writer of thank-you notes.... She still refuses to pay a lot for clothes.... She has an evolving relationship with money, coming from none.... (Brie) Larson's hardscrabble upbringing has imbued her with a humility that has earned her the admiration of some of the industry's biggest talents. 'Brie's a bright, unaffected young woman who is in a wonderfully corrosive business that would ruin most people,' says Samuel L. Jackson. 'But it's not going to ruin her.' Like Samuel L. Jackson, (Naomi) Watts marveled at Larson's humility and earnestness. 'Brie is totally down to earth, charming, and unspoiled,' Watts says. 'She's already surpassed that precarious thing that can transpire after winning an Oscar.... She's balancing it well. For God's sake, she just directed a film."
— Vanity Fair magazine
"An avid reader and journal keeper, (Brie) Larson has saved her diaries from her youth. 'I've gone back to the ones when I was really young, and those were really funny because you realize that no matter what age you are, no matter where you are in your life, you're just going to have problems."
— Vanity Fair magazine
"Walking around with our Pleistocene-epoch genes can be tough, especially on a college campus. The average freshman sees more attractive females in a single day that our hominid ancestors saw in an entire lifetime. Combine this with social media and dating apps and mate choices seems limitless.... Today's 20-somethings are showing anxiety.... There's this pressure to pick the perfect person who will make them happy and fulfilled for the remainder of their lives.... (But) research has found that the more premarriage partners people have, the lower the sexual quality, communication, and relationship stability is during marriage.... Skills like communication and compromise aren't developed. (And too many partners) can lead to the 'comparison effect.'"
— Men's Health magazine
"Study after study suggests that physical fitness and muscle strength decline less with age than previously believed, and that a committed exercise program can drastically slow this decline well into your seventies."
— Men's Health magazine
"The key to happiness is maximizing each day. So if you're unhappy, here's a simple prescription: Live harder."
— Laird Hamilton
(Some paraphrasing) "The promise and peril of A.I. are deeply intertwined.... The list of things humans can do better than computers is getting smaller and smaller. But we create these tools to extend our long reach. Just as, two hundred million years ago, mammalian brains developed a neocortex that eventually enabled humans to invent language and science and art and technology, by the 2030s, we're going to be connected to simulated neocortices in the cloud, giving us access within our own nervous systems. We will be smarter, funnier, more musical, wiser.... It's going to enhance us. It does already. Who can do their work without these brain extenders that we have today (smartphones, the internet)? And that's going to continue to be the case.... But the goal is to reap the promise and control the peril. There are no simple algorithms. There's no little sub-routine that we can put into our AIs to make them all benign. Intelligence is inherently uncontrollable. My strategy, which is not fool-proof, is to practice - in the collaborative development guiding of A.I. - the kind of ethics and morality and values we'd like to see in the world in our own human society. Because the future society is not some invasion from Mars of intelligent machines. It is emerging from our civilization today. It's going to be an enhancement of who we are. So if we're practicing the kind of values that we cherish in our world today, that's the best strategy to have a world in the future that embodies those values.... With these new technologies, it's not hard to come up with scenarios where they could be highly destructive and destroy all of humanity. Biotechnology for example. We have the ability to reprogram biology away from disease. Immunotherapy, which is a very exciting breakthrough in cancer—I think it's going to be quite revolutionary, it's just getting started—it's reprogramming the immune system to go after cancer, which it normally doesn't do. But bioterrorists could reprogram a virus to be more deadly and more communicable and more stealthy and create a superweapon.... Technology is always going to be a double-edged sword."
— Ray Kurzwel
"I've been accused of being an optimist, and you have to be an optimist to be an entrepreneur because if you knew all the problems you'd encounter you'd probably never start any project."
— Ray Kurzwel
"Without suffering. No beauty."
— French saying
"Not long ago, biologists examining a dead bowhead found old harpoon fragments buried in its flesh. Research revealed that the harpoon was of a kind last manufactured in New Bedford, Massachusetts, in the 19th century. The scientists conjectured that bowheads can live for up to 200 years. In other words, some of the whales still undulating through the icy waters off Alaska may have already been fully grown by the time Herman Melville wrote Moby-Dick."
— Men's Journal magazine, 2016
"If I could invite someone to dinner for a fantastic discussion I would put the following on par: Leonardo - the genius, Jesus - the enigma, Socrates - the philosopher."
— Brunello Cucinelli
"I'm not a very smart guy. But I learned from everybody around me. When I was a waiter, I learned from the busboy how to quickly clear tables. I paid attention to the businessmen's lunch conversations. I've always been a scavenger for education. The world is full of education if you choose to open your eyes and ears to it."
— Robert Herjavec
"Gratitude is the most powerful connection you have to your higher self. You always, always, want to start your day connected to this higher self."
— I wish I could remember who said or wrote this, because they deserve credit; wise words
"In the frantic pace of life to do more and be more, we hardly think about the importance of focus. That's why, for those free-spirited, creative thinkers and entrepreneurs chasing after their dreams, this prophetic quote by Steve Jobs 21 years ago hits the nail on the head even more so today: 'People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.' ...Without focus, your very ability to think, reason, communicate, problem solve, and make decisions will naturally suffer. You just can't maximize your efficiency or go into a state of flow if your mind is wandering off into multitask land. They key to better focus? Give up multitasking. The reality is, we multitask everything. You're probably multitasking right now as you read this...."
— Inc. magazine
"The common characteristic of people (I interviewed) who had the most time and the highest income is the ability to single-task."
— Tim Ferriss
Saturday, February 3, 2018
#391
"Thoughtful travel is well worth the time and the money.... Travel opens us up to the wonders of our world, in so many ways.... It connects you with nature and it connects you with culture, different slices of culture.... And it connects you with people. There are so many misunderstandings between people, and when we travel, we straighten them out. I don't know about you, but I was raised thinking the world is a pyramid, with us on top and everybody else trying to figure it out. And then I traveled and I realized, you know, we have the American dream, and that's a great thing, but other people have their own dream, Norwegians have the Norwegian dream, Bulgarians have the Bulgarian dream, Sri Lankans have the Sri Lankan dream. Travel wallops my ethnocentricity. And I'm very thankful for that. It's something to celebrate. Our dream is beautiful but so is theirs."
— Rick Steves
I hope M 'n' m travel often. It's just essential to the human experience, it seems to me, exploring our world in all its majesty and frightening diversity. I say 'frightening' because I was, for example, embarrassingly fearful on my first 14-hour plane ride to China. I've been back about 14 times since and I love China. Precisely for its differences, although it teaches me about human similarity, and solidarity, also. (And we work our asses off when we're there; but even that adds to the fulfillment and enjoyment of every trip... funny how that is... another lesson for M 'n' m.) The planet is finite – unlike the expanding universe, for example – so bouncing around earth, exploring its corners and unfamiliar places, feels essential to me now. Megan would say, "There are no corners in a sphere, Dad." Okay, explore a few continents then. Explore them all. I've been on four, and hope to make it five soon, and then six; Antarctica (7) is just a hop from Argentina – I'm told by colleagues in Tierra del Fuego – but that might be just checking a box; Antarctica is a sheet of ice with only a few thousand people, mostly doing research. But what if it's a stunningly pure and bright expanse of icy awesomeness? A must-see?! Unlike anything else in the world?! Even so, continents five and six will be Africa and Australia for me. Gotta get there. And gotta keep visiting countries, cities, sights I missed in other trips on other continents.
I really hope M 'n' m travel often and far. And safely. Amen.
Megan and I drove by a store called Ulta. I said, "Should we stop there? You need anything?" She said, "No." I expected a 'no' and probably wouldn't have stopped if 'yes.' It was a litmus test, a sort of confirmation of my hunch and hope that 'we aren't there yet,' if that makes sense. At the tender age of 12, she's not over-interested in 'cosmetics, fragrances, skincare, and beauty products.' That's what Ulta sells, according to their website. I've been in the store too, but my missions there weren't about browsing as much as fast gift-buying and incomprehension; I didn't fully understand all the products, uses, applications, and varieties offered. Stores like Ulta are useful and important. I understand that. Megan already applies a little make-up for big events, and has awareness of the powders, polishes, glosses, washes, lotions, and so on that are part of being a women. Dudes only have three or four things: tooth-brushing, deodorant, hair gel. And occasionally, a shave. We're lucky. Although, as we age, there are medicinal items, products, and practices, I've noticed. Other things. I'll leave it at that. Rogaine is expensive. Tweezing hairs where they never grew before. Nevermind.
— Rick Steves
I hope M 'n' m travel often. It's just essential to the human experience, it seems to me, exploring our world in all its majesty and frightening diversity. I say 'frightening' because I was, for example, embarrassingly fearful on my first 14-hour plane ride to China. I've been back about 14 times since and I love China. Precisely for its differences, although it teaches me about human similarity, and solidarity, also. (And we work our asses off when we're there; but even that adds to the fulfillment and enjoyment of every trip... funny how that is... another lesson for M 'n' m.) The planet is finite – unlike the expanding universe, for example – so bouncing around earth, exploring its corners and unfamiliar places, feels essential to me now. Megan would say, "There are no corners in a sphere, Dad." Okay, explore a few continents then. Explore them all. I've been on four, and hope to make it five soon, and then six; Antarctica (7) is just a hop from Argentina – I'm told by colleagues in Tierra del Fuego – but that might be just checking a box; Antarctica is a sheet of ice with only a few thousand people, mostly doing research. But what if it's a stunningly pure and bright expanse of icy awesomeness? A must-see?! Unlike anything else in the world?! Even so, continents five and six will be Africa and Australia for me. Gotta get there. And gotta keep visiting countries, cities, sights I missed in other trips on other continents.
I really hope M 'n' m travel often and far. And safely. Amen.
Megan and I drove by a store called Ulta. I said, "Should we stop there? You need anything?" She said, "No." I expected a 'no' and probably wouldn't have stopped if 'yes.' It was a litmus test, a sort of confirmation of my hunch and hope that 'we aren't there yet,' if that makes sense. At the tender age of 12, she's not over-interested in 'cosmetics, fragrances, skincare, and beauty products.' That's what Ulta sells, according to their website. I've been in the store too, but my missions there weren't about browsing as much as fast gift-buying and incomprehension; I didn't fully understand all the products, uses, applications, and varieties offered. Stores like Ulta are useful and important. I understand that. Megan already applies a little make-up for big events, and has awareness of the powders, polishes, glosses, washes, lotions, and so on that are part of being a women. Dudes only have three or four things: tooth-brushing, deodorant, hair gel. And occasionally, a shave. We're lucky. Although, as we age, there are medicinal items, products, and practices, I've noticed. Other things. I'll leave it at that. Rogaine is expensive. Tweezing hairs where they never grew before. Nevermind.
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