In the latest Science News, I read a blurb that partially supports the theory I posited in my rant about the height study a month ago. In particular, my assertion that “if one is undernourished as a kid, the body gets most of the nutritive value and the brain is starved.” The article, entitled “Ketones […]
Category: thoughts
Extremism
Last month, I was chatting with somebody who, upon finding out that I went to MIT, asked me if I had ever taken a class with Noam Chomsky. I said that I hadn’t, but I’d read a couple of his books, so he asked me what I thought of them. I said something like “I […]
Language in Thought and Action, by S.I. Hayakawa
Amazon link (originally posted on 8/17/03, link fixed on 11/17/03) I found this book in a roundabout way. In Conscientious Objections, Neal Postman reviewed the book Science and Sanity, by Alfred Korzybski, calling it one of the most important books of the last century. Korzybski developed the field of general semantics, a system of thinking […]
Playing with rules
I want to spend some time explaining nerds. In particular, nerds of the type that I get along with. I mentioned in my rant about questioning the assumptions that “The difficulty comes in dealing with people who believe that the rules are the rules full stop.” It’s interesting because after reading that in the context […]
Introversion
So, as I mentioned in an earlier post, “I’d love to become instantaneously more sociable and more comfortable around people.” It’s hard to explain to folks who aren’t introverts how difficult being sociable is. My friend pointed me to an article in the Atlantic Monthly on the subject which has a lot of good stuff […]
Question the assumptions
(written 11/14/03) A friend of mine offered up this piece of advice about how to deal with children, learned from experience with his own two-year-old: Offer them choices where you’re happy with both outcomes. That way, they get to make a choice and feel in charge of their life, and you’re happy regardless. Choices like […]
New vs. the Old Testament
(written 11/12/03) Whee. Short post. Too much going on in life (chorus rehearsal last night, salsa class tonight). Maybe another long post tomorrow. While I’m on the general anti-religion bashing theme, I was chatting with a friend about the people who think that the Bible is the literal word of God. The interesting bit to […]
Evil cults
(written 11/10/03) This is going to be a rant. It’s not a reasoned discussion, it’s not an unbiased look at the facts, it’s pretty much just a rant. Go with it. It started with a friend of a friend trying to drag people to a Landmark Forum event, raving about how it had changed their […]
Being tall makes you richer!
(written 11/8/03) A few weeks ago, I read an article on Yahoo that caught my eye because the headline mentioned claimed that tall people earn more. In particular, “Tall people earn considerably more money throughout their lives than their shorter co-workers, with each inch adding about $789 a year in pay, according to a new […]
Joe "Bush" Millionaire?
(written 11/7/03) We were talking yesterday at lunch about the new Joe Millionaire. Apparently, it features a young Texas cowboy, who’s pretending to be the heir to an oil fortune worth $80 million. The women wooing him are European women, who appear to be a gaggle of loud-mouthed, ineffectual, jealous moneygrubbers. My immediate thought is […]
