Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Barry Schwartz TED Talk: The War on Practical Wisdom

Swarthmore professor Barry Schwartz claims that the rules and procedures of contemporary society retard a person's "practical wisdom" (which, according to Aristotle, is nothing more than a person's moral skill and moral will).

A wise person:
1. knows when and how to make the "exception to every rule."
2. knows when and how to improvise.
3. uses these moral skills in pursuit of the right aims.
4. is made not born.

Schwartz observes that society generally use two tools when things go wrong, rules and incentives. Unfortunately, neither rules nor incentives fix problems on their own; in fact, they tend to make situations far worse in the long run. "Moral skill is chipped away by an over-reliance on rules that deprives us of the opportunity to improvise and to learn from our improvisation. And moral will is deprived by an incessant appeal to incentives that destroy our desire to do the right thing. And without intending it, by appealing to rules and incentives, we are engaging a war on wisdom."

Every person, let alone every head of an organization, should view this talk.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Sunset on Mars


Sunset on Mars casts bluish light over the distant horizon.

from the Nat Geo photo series, Visions of Mars.

Assume the Position with Mr. Wuhl









If links are dead, try Wimp.

Icelandic Jeep



from the TV show Top Gear.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

All We are Doing is Manifesting

Old school parkour and breakdancing:



Wednesday, February 11, 2009

The Destructive Cult of Celebrity

We all have gods, it is just a question of which ones. And in American society, our gods are often celebrities.

In celebrity culture, the object is to get as close to the celebrity as possible. Those who can touch or own a relic of the celebrity hope for a transference of celebrity power.

Real life, our own life, is viewed next to the lives of celebrities as inadequate and inauthentic. Celebrities are portrayed as idealized forms of ourselves. It is we who are never fully actualized in a celebrity culture.

Soldiers and Marines speak of entering combat as if they are entering a movie, although if they try to engage in movie-style heroics they often are killed. The difference between the celebrity-inspired heroics and the reality of war, which takes less than a minute in a firefight to grasp, is jolting. Wounded Marines booed and hissed John Wayne when he visited them in a hospital in World War II. They had uncovered the manipulation and self-delusion of celebrity culture. They understood that mass culture is a form of social control, a way to influence behavior that is self-destructive.

Celebrity culture is a hostile takeover of religion by celebrity culture. Commodities and celebrity culture alone define what it means to belong to American society, how we recognize our place in society and how we determine our spiritual life.

Our choice of brands becomes our pathetic expression of individuality. Advertisers use celebrities to promise us that through the purchase of a product we can attain celebrity power.

Celebrity culture plunges us into a moral void. The highest achievements in a celebrity culture are wealth, sexual conquest and fame. These values are hollow hallucinations that leave us chasing vapors. They urge us toward a life of self-absorption. They tell us that existence is to be centered on the practices and desires of the self rather than the common good.

Celebrity culture encourages us to turn our love inward, to think of ourselves as potential celebrities who possess unique if unacknowledged gifts. It is the culture of narcissism. The banal chatter of anyone, no matter how insipid, has in celebrity culture cosmic significance. Reality, however, exposes something very different. And the juxtaposition of the impossible illusions inspired by celebrity culture and our insignificant individual achievements leads to frustration, anger, insecurity and a fear of invalidation. It leads to an accelerated flight toward the celebrity culture, what Chris Rojek in his book “Celebrity” calls “the cult of distraction that valorizes the superficial, the gaudy, the domination of commodity culture.”

This cult of distraction masks the real disintegration of culture. It conceals the meaninglessness and emptiness of our own lives. It deflects the moral questions arising from mounting social injustice, growing inequalities, and costly imperial wars as well as economic and political corruption.

The fantasy of celebrity culture is not designed simply to entertain. It is designed to keep us from fighting back.

Paraphrased from the column Truthdig column "What Price Hollywood" by Chris Hedges.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

A Valentine's Day Treat

From the Oakland Zoo website:
Ever wonder about the love lives of Animals? Do they really fall in Love? This Valentine’s Day, surprise your sweetie with something unique—an animal encounter you both will never forget! Join us for “Animal Amore” and learn about the courting, mating, and child-rearing habits of some of Oakland Zoo’s most amorous Zoo animals.

This year, we are hosting an “Animal Amore” evening event on two nights, February 13 & 14, 2009. Participants must be 21 years of age or older, because alcohol will be served. Guests will be served appetizers, drinks, dessert and enough information to keep the dinner conversation exciting for years! There will be live animals, prizes, and an erotic tour of the Zoo!

And not to be outdone, the San Francisco Zoo offers its own animal sex tour:
Be you Penguin, Primate or Possum…you are cordially invited to celebrate a San Francisco Zoo original 20th Annual Sex Tour/Woo at the Zoo with Jane Tollini. Come join us for new animals, new positions, new kinky information, ins & out, ups & downs of animal sex, all animals A to Z including U.

Heads & tails above flowers & candles; no better way to impress your Valentine; and if that is not enough…get up-close with an animal encounter! "Woo at the Zoo" also features a romantic brunch including; mimosas, French toast station, scrambled eggs, pastries, chocolate covered strawberries, fresh fruit and a delicious surprise. The special evening events will include; beef tenderloin, herbed couscous, sautéed spinach w/ pine nuts & golden raisins, salad and chocolate dipped strawberries. Reservations are required as this “sense”ational event sells out each year.

I kid you not. I would have gotten tickets, of course, if they weren't already sold out.

Monday, February 9, 2009

"Pate Filo" by Malajube

The ABC's of Indonesian Fruit

Mangosteen, dubbed by Asians the "Queen of Fruits"


Marquisa Telur Kodok, an Indonesian passion fruit that literally means "frog eggs"


MyKugelhopf writes about delicious Asian fruit. I can't vouch for the "frog eggs," but mangosteen is delicious.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

An Enemy

An enemy is someone whose story you have not heard.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Live at the NYPL -- Slavoj Zizek and Henri-Bernard Levy

Watch a recent discussion between Slavoj Zizek and Henri-Bernard Levy on iTunes.

Grow an Indoor Lettuce Garden

I've had trouble growing vegetables and herbs in my apartment, but a gardener I talked to recently suggested lettuce. Apparently, lettuce grows well in cool, shady environments -- perfect for the winter.

Read more.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Being Caribou



Being Caribou
Diana Wilson, Leanne Allison, 2004, 72 min 19 s
In this feature-length documentary, husband and wife team Karsten Heuer (wildlife biologist) and Leanne Allison (environmentalist) follow a herd of 120,000 caribou on foot across 1500 km of Arctic tundra. In following the herd's migration, the couple hopes to raise awareness of the threats to the caribou's survival. Along the way they brave Arctic weather, icy rivers, hordes of mosquitoes and a very hungry grizzly bear. Dramatic footage and video diaries combine to provide an intimate perspective of an epic expedition.


from the National Film Board of Canada.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

100 Most Beautiful Words

A fun list by Dr. Goodword.

Words from the list I'd like to use more:
esculent -- worthwhile
gambol -- to skip or leap about joyfully
imbroglio -- an altercation or complicated situation
oeuvre -- a work
panoply -- a complete set
penumbra - a half-shadow, edge of a shadow
peregrination -- wandering, travels
petrichor -- the smell of earth after a rain
redolent -- sweet smelling

Tom Killion Woodcut Prints



Tom Killion's prints are reminiscent of ukiyo-ë landscape masters Hokusai and Hiroshige.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Bird Photographs by Eliot Porter

Barn Swallow, Great Spruce Head Island, Maine, August 21, 1954

Snowy Egret, Mrazik Pond, Everglades National Park, Florida, January 1974

Winter Wren, Great Spruce Head Island, Maine, July 18, 1969

Chipping Sparrow, Great Spruce Head Island, Maine, June 16, 1971

from the Eliot Porter Collection of the Amon Carter Museum.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Recess Improves Third Graders' Behavior

According to teachers' ratings, 15 minutes of recess improves the classroom behavior of third graders. (>15 minutes recess showed no measurable improvement.) The study, conducted by the Dept. of Pediatrics at the Albert Eintstein School of Medicine, used public data from 11,000 students. The researchers also found that students with no recess were "much more likely to be black, to be from families with lower incomes and lower levels of education, to live in large cities, to be from the Northeast or South, and to attend public school."

Read the abstract in the journal Pediatrics, or the NYT article .

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Thoughts on Fear

Usually in a moment of actual danger we don't have time to think about being afraid. Imagining dangerous situations creates the real difficulty. We have an experience of fear and then we project it out. We do that because it gives us an opportunity to fight against that situation or run from it. But they're both ways of avoiding the actual experience of fear.

To simply experience a moment of danger can open up into wonder and excitement. It's the avoidance of danger that causes us such difficulties.

paraphrased from an interview of Robert Kull on the NPR program, To the Best of Our Knowledge.

Water

Deepa Mehta's Oscar-nominated film Water tells the tragic story of widowed women in India. According to her faith's Holy Scriptures, a Hindu wife has three options when her husband dies: she can kill herself, marry her husband's younger brother, or live in isolation.

The widows in the story live as social outcasts in an ashram, either by choice or coercion, dependent on alms (and, as the audience learns later, prostitution) for their rent and food.

When one of the shamed widows takes her own life, a deeply religious widow named Shakuntala begins to question the morality of her religion's doctrine. She takes an exploited young widow away from the ashram to see Gandhi speak. The Great Spirit -- a champion of India's oppressed widows and Untouchables -- states "For several years, I believed that God is truth; but now I have realized that Truth is God."

Gandhi's speech erases the moral doubt of the widow (and the audience). The message is clear: we should treat every person humanely, even if it means defying our society's most sacred institutions. In the touching final scene, Shakuntala tries to save her young companion from the hardship of a widow's life, by giving her away.

Paul Virchow Quotes

“Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing but medicine on a large scale.”

“It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation.”

“Medical education does not exist to provide students with a way of making a living, but to ensure the health of the community.”

“The physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved them.”

excerpted from Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder.

Greenhouse Gas Poisons Oceans, Too

Carbon dioxide, long considered the primary culprit of global warming, is now facing a second serious charge: it's threatening precious marine life as well.

The burning of fossil fuels in our cars, homes, and factories have led to an ever-increasing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Most of the carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming; one fourth of those emissions, however, are absorbed by the world's oceans.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is soluble in water -- it dissolves in water to form carbonic acid (H2CO3). Scientists estimate that the acidity of the oceans have increased 30% since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

The acidity threatens the survival of coral reefs and shellfish, which in turn, can disrupt the food web of oceans.

Read the original article in the NYT.

Terry Gross Receives 2007 Literarian Award

Sometimes when I love a novel, there is a question I'm tempted to ask, but don't. And the question is something like, 'How did you manage to look into my own heart? How did you find the words to express feelings I didn't even know I had before reading your book?' I guess that's a question a lot of readers might like to ask, but it's also a question no writer can ever really answer.

View Ira Glass' intro and Terry Gross' acceptance speech.