Professional sports and nationalism have a lot in common. I heard a story of young girl at a Buffalo Bills game, maybe 11 years old. She was standing up and cheering for the opposite team. A man threw a full beer can at her head. She got knocked out.

Talk about a loyal fan. 

Nationalism and sports loyalty tap into the same brain circuit. Maybe this circuit is in our brains because we evolved in a world when tribes had to band together to defeat the enemy, so it made sense to see the other side as inhuman so you could fight them. Nowadays, though, this circuit creates all sorts of nasty things. And you can be a really smart person and still have this circuit turned on. It’s an emotional thing.

The rest of this post is a collection of quotes on the theme that nationalism blows.

***

I recently stayed with couchsurfing host named Erik who traveled around the world for a year. He had this to say on the topic:

I used to think that the solution to intolerance was travelling. If only people traveled, they would see that all people are basically the same. They want a good job, food for their family, and a little vacation. But that’s not true. I had a friend who was a smart guy. He joined the military and traveled all around the world. When he came back he said: I’ve realized that all people are kind of the same. But I just want to give a toast to the American Dream, which motivates us to be better, and to have all the freedoms and great things that we enjoy here. To America!

-Erik

***

Here’s one from a great little book on evolutionary biology:

As we write, there are many parts of the world where it is obvious to outsiders, and to many of the inhabitants, that almost everyone would be better off if they ceased to identify with the subgroups – Muslim, Serb or Croat; Tutsi or Hutu; Jew or Arab; Protestant or Catholic – and worked together for the common good. Yet a sufficient proportion of the population identify with one or other subgroup, rather than with the human population of the region as a whole, to make such cooperation impossible. Why?

The clue is that group identity, and hence behavior, is influenced by myth and ritual, as well as, and even to the exclusion of rational self-interest. Historical myths concerning people’s origins, reinforced by ritual, are a powerful influence on human behavior. Why should this be so? What we are seeking as an evolutionary explanation for a universal human characteristic –the ability to be socialized (or indoctrinated, depending on your point of view) by myth. The particular stories, tunes, apparel and ritual behavior that bind a group together are clearly cultural, but the capacity to be influenced by them is innate, and calls for an evolutionary explanation.

-John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry, The Origins of Life

***

And just for something a little different:

I dreamt one thousand basketball courts / Nothing holier than sports – CocoRosie, K-Hole

***

George Carlin!

People are wonderful. I love individuals. I hate groups of people. I hate a group of people with a ‘common purpose’. ‘Cause pretty soon they have little hats. And armbands. And fight songs. And a list of people they’re going to visit at 3am. – George Carlin

***

Punk Rock!

People are essentially jingoistic. Look at a football parade tonight, and you’ll see how jingoistic they are. It doesn’t matter whether it’s guns of football. When the men are out, they’re out. -Crass

***

One of the world’s most decorated generals:

Let the workers in these plants get the same wages — all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers — yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders — everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!  Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.  

Why shouldn’t they?  They aren’t running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren’t sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren’t hungry. The soldiers are!  Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket — that and nothing else. –Major General Smedley Butler

***

Bloggers!

First, recognize that the people catalyzing conflict are generally not the majority in any given instance. It’s usually a militant group, a collective of extremists, or government officials who decide which outsiders are allies and which are enemies. They decide who is good and who is bad, and when and where violence will be used as a tool for political/economic/philosophical gain. They draw the lines in the sand, and tell us the people on the other side of those lines are different. – Colin Wright

I started an experiment to stay off facebook for a month. I did this because:

• I was compulsively checking facebook. When I posted a comment or blog post, I craved the positive feedback of “likes.” This felt unnatural to me. I shouldn’t spend my time seeking the approval of far-away acquaintances I may never have even had a real conversation with.
• I was getting updates on people I didn’t know very well, and these people’s babies and adventures were invading my consciousness.
• Facebook itself was becoming my best friend. I would talk to it, see how it was doing in my idle minutes, and spend more time with it than any of my real friends.
• After a while of going to events I got invited to via facebook, I lost track of who my friends were, because facebook was doing all the inviting. I started to long for the phone call invite to a party. A phone call or even a text invite says: “We’re friends, and I care about your presence at this thingy.” All a facebook invite says is, “I clicked a box next to your name.”

After 2 days without facebook, I have found that I’m doing a lot more phone calls and hanging out with people in person. Some of my 1-D friends are becoming 2-D and even 3-D! I have a friend who has a broken phone and memorizes her friends’ numbers. If these are your friends, put some time and effort into memorizing their digits. That says something!

We only have a limited number of hours in a day. Talking to a sphere of 40 people on facebook quasi-regularly means you aren’t talking to a sphere of 10 people very regularly in real life. I don’t know about you, but I like my friends three-dimensional. Without facebook, some of my 1-D friends are vanishing, but that means other friends are gaining extra pixels, coming into a closer orbit.

That said, I think I’ll be doing a monthly facebook day, because I do like facebook in moderation. I’ll stay friends with this ex but there’s got to be limits.

Hobbies give perspective and fun, whether its handstands or airplanes or golf, it’s all good.

“I’m an environmental engineer who should have been an illustrator. Drawing is much more than a hobby for me. I draw out of necessity. I’ve gotten yelled at in so many meetings for drawing.” – Guy in a coffee shop drawing with an india ink pen (6/17/2013)

Hobbies can be big or little or somewhere in between.

Had a convo with my rabbi on the subject of marriage. He went to Israel because he heard there was this great girl for him there. He got to know her over the span of 1.5 months, and then married her. Here is the 3-step method by which my rabbi found his wife:

1. Values. He already shared a lot of values with his wife because he was looking for her in the orthodox community.
2. Checklist. Even though the prospective pair were both orthodox, some of their ideas still could be different and cause tension in the relationship. So my rabbi went through a mental checklist with her to get her views on certain issues. For instance, how much work would my rabbi’s wife expect him to put into rearing the kids? My rabbi came from a very traditional family where his mom did 100% of the work with the kids and his dad never changed a diaper.  He wanted to pitch in more than his dad, but still thought his wife should do a majority of the work. My rabbi discussed these issues with his future wife to make sure she more or less agreed.
3. Emotion. Only after making sure that 1 and 2 were compatible, did he put his emotional chips on the table. They had chemistry, and so they got married!

In secular culture, people do this process backwards. They first get into emotional relationships based on physical attraction. Then later on they talk about values. If they realize that they have different values from their significant other, it can be hard to call-off the relationship, because they are already emotionally involved. So people with major incompatibilities sometimes get married, and this leads to problems down the line.

Some more points from the conversation:

• Both people in a marriage should be ready to compromise. He talked about a couple where the girl grew up in a family where the mom and dad had separate bank accounts. The couple got into an argument about a purchase, and the girl said: “You think this is a waste of money, but I don’t. I will work to make the money I need to buy it.” In effect, the girl doesn’t want to compromise. According to my rabbi, this is a problem.
• Personality differences are OK. My rabbi is a homebody, his wife likes to go out. These differences are less important if all this other stuff is there. She can compromise and he can too.
• Love should grow over time in a relationship. A couple should have chemistry initially, but love grows from the work the pair put in together, day in and day out.

Got home tonight badly in need of a backrub and thought, “This is how I feel quite a lot these days.” I bet our patients are badly in need of backrubs too. And we always forget to order the backrub consult!

A cardiologist said in a lecture today: “Every field has it’s go-to drug with a lot of benefit and minimal side effects. In cardiology, it’s beta blockers. For the most part, every one of my patients should be on a beta blocker.” What about backrubs? We need more trials on the effects of backrubs. I bet the results would be astonishing.

Attending (to a bunch of students): “What are the treatments that reduce mortality in COPD?”

Student: “Oxygen and smoking cessation.”

“And backrubs!” I almost blurted out. I guess I’ll have to wait until the randomized trials get done before I can say that… 😦

I was walking down the street and saw these middle school jocks playing lacross and thought about saying “Hi.” But in my head I instantly morphed into the unpopular kid I was in middle school and walked by, laying low. “Phew, that was a close one, thank god they didn’t make fun of me!”

I bet if I went to my high school reunion I’d act all high-schooly around all my former classmates, trying to be cool. The brain has all these little patterns of neurons hiding in there. Even if they aren’t being used right now, they can be activated. Mental patterns probably last longer than FOREVER postage stamps.

(But I suppose recognizing them is the first step to either changing them or not activating them in counter-productive ways).

“He who creates new technologies is gambling in human lives.” – don’t know the source.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the discoveries of quantum physics didn’t come with the side effect of possible nuclear war?  Wouldn’t it be nice if cars were kept in our garages only for fun road-trips, and didn’t have the side effect of changing our cities into suburban sprawls? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could go to the technology cafe and order sandwiches with only the desirable aspects of different technologies? Sadly, once we let a new technology out of the bag, there’s no controlling how it changes the world.

“Oh, you don’t use facebook because you think it’s creepy how they analyze all of your personal information? I can respect that, but it’s going to be a pain in the butt to communicate with you now.”

“Oh, you don’t use a car because you want to save the planet? I can respect that, but now I have to drive you places because our city is all sprawled out.”

There’s a nearly 5-fold increase in the time that it takes to produce pretty letters vs. scraggly ones.

It’s probably similar in other industries. I have a family friend who is a glassblower who said that people aren’t paying $400 for beautiful vases anymore when they can get cheap ones from Wal-Mart for $20. I guess it’s all a trade-off and IKEA has its place in our go-go-go throwaway world. But it’s nice to be a craftsman and get lost in the art when you can. Plus the investment pays off if you actually use the well-made thing you make or buy. You have something that’s a pleasure to use, won’t break, and works better.

A friend: “Whenever anyone asks my how I make something, I always say that the #1 ingredient is love.”

My uncle: “If you don’t do something well, then don’t do it at all.”

What if everything I did I did with love. What if every project was an immortality project, something that I was doing to be remembered for after I die? What if every project felt real?

I like nature and warm weather, but live in a cold town and spend most of my time indoors.

A professor once said to me, “Each thing you love doing is like a finger on a hand, and people that are doing all the things they love have all 5 of their fingers outstretched all the time. Most of the time I walk around with about 3.5 out of 5 of my fingers outstretched.”

So that’s life. You work and you work and you work and you still end up unfulfilled in certain ways and fulfilled in other ways and it’s all good.

Buffalo is a great place with great people. I’m probably at 3.5 out of 5 right now too and will be like that even if I move to a tropical island. 5/5 is a ridiculous goal.

The best kind of drugs are the drugs you train your neurons to make themselves. Then you don’t need a dealer.

My brother said, “If I’m sitting without anything to do, I just look at patterns in things, and I’m content.” The brain has an ability to be fascinated by the world with zero exogenous substances, but you have to train this ability. Drugs are much easier. You swallow a substance and feel a certain way. But doing them a lot makes the brain less self-reliant.

Shel Silverstein said it well in this poem.

—

One real danger with drugs is that they take up way too much brain real estate. For instance, when I was drinking coffee, I would be thinking about coffee a lot of the time.

A heroin addict patient of mine who is checking into rehab said: I want to get excited about normal life stuff, not thinking about drugs all the time.

To an extent, we are all linked up to addictions: everyone needs food, for example. But it’s nice to clear as many addictions out of the brain as possible. For instance, fasting to prove to yourself that you don’t really need food that much, and you don’t need to be thinking about it all the time, because it won’t be the end of the world if you miss a meal.

Saying no to drugs and other addictions really means cleaning house in the brain.

—

A quote from a drug-focused episode of This American Life:

My dad was a good dad. He read to us every night, took us on long hikes in search of snakes and salamanders to keep as pets. But his drug use did leave at least one lasting effect on me. I can’t hear any story about a seemingly functional pot-head with anything but a skeptical ear.

From magazine features about rappers who are constantly high but still put out platinum records to casual asides about this friend I know who smokes weed all day but is a great husband and father, some part of me just can’t buy it, can’t help but think, there’s more to that story. There’s always something being run from. And there’s always at least one person wondering, is that something me?

—

On the flipside, it is cool to experience alternate states of consciousness, because this helps break out of mental patterns. Drugs offer one way to do this, but there are also non-pharmaceutical ways. Here is a running list of my sober drugs:

• Yoga. Doing a long sequence alone in the living room is hard. Having a buddy or going to a class helps.
• Trampoline. This is great if I get into a flow, but the first 5 minutes are hard.
• Running, or any sports involving running.
• Contact improv. Especially effective with eyes closed.
• Silent hikes. To do this, team up with a group and walk through the woods for a few hours, without talking. It is also possible to go on a silent hike through a city.
• Non-doing. Turn off all distractions and let the moment bloom. One specific way to do this is to get up early in the morning and watch the sun rise, or to watch the sun set. It’s very cool and rarely done in our indoor-based world.
• Realistic drawing. Trying to sketch something realistically activates a different set of mental patterns that emphasize attention and deconstrution of the world (vs. judgement). For more on this, see: Drawing on the right side of the brain.
• Acroyoga. This requires a lot of concentration and communication and brings me right into the moment.
• Thai massage. This requires time, and a willingness to not rush and pay attention.
• Music. Especially when dancing or moving to it.

With so many sober drugs to choose from, who needs psychedelics?

—

See also: Righteousness programming and Brain and body, going for a nice long walk together. Addictions to drugs, like addictions to anything material, lead to a kind of mental slavery. It’s no wonder 12-step programs are usually religious at heart.

Read across, they are:

1. Hobby

2. Good job

3. Not good job

4. Not good job that pays well (the comic below is about this kind of job)

The style was inspired by the comic indexed.

Me: Those dental students have to do just 1 year of residency.

Julie: And then they’re living large.

Me: I don’t need to live large, I just want to be done with all this constant application and test stuff.

Julie: Yeah. For me, going on bike rides is living large.

When I get home from the hospital I don’t want to do anything, so I just lie in bed like this.

Maybe after 39.8 more hours of this, I’ll make a decision…

Us kids are spoiled with too many choices, said my mom. Drawing this cartoon made me realize how silly this over-thinking activity is. All the roads are beautiful.

UPDATE (6/7/14): I just read this article and it really helped me make a choice. Now I can get out of bed and live and learn!

When my great uncle’s kids were thinking of leaving Moldova for Israel, he and his wife said: “Our whole family will leave as a unit, on one airplane.” And so they left together and stayed close-knit as a family.

Technology is nice. Skype lets you see people. Facebook let’s you wish people “Happy Birthday” once a year. But the list of “Happy Birthdays” on my facebook is not generally a list of the closest people in my life.

Today is my brother’s birthday. I thought about wishing him “Happy Birthday” on facebook, but instead my family drove to see him in 3D. Society places a lot of emphasis on careers and this leads to families and friends living far apart, being 2D at best.

There’s a lot of value in living in one place for a long time. My uncle said: “How can you compare the friends I have here to the ones back home? I grew up with those people. I knew them for 40 years. They didn’t need to call and ask if they could come over.”

I’m not saying nomads can’t have great lives, but this is stuff worth thinking about.

My friend made up this simple test to see whether or not someone is your friend. If you take time out of your schedule to hang out with someone, that person is your friend 93% of the time.

With so much talking going on on facebook, less talking is going on in real life.

—

Me: What have you been up to the past week?

Josh: Making bonfires and hanging out with friends.

Me: That sounds really nice.

It’s so convenient to trash the planet — that key is right underneath our thumbs. Saving the planet? Well, you have to strain to reach that key all the way with your pinky…

When you are tired and busy and have a family to feed, recycling and riding your bike and using reusable grocery bags isn’t top priority. That’s where the government should come in. In Washington DC, plastic bags cost 5 cents, and guess what? People use a lot more reusable bags.

The government should protect the land it governs, not the companies that lobby it. People are pretty simple creatures. They generally follow incentives. The government should make incentives that make us do the right thing for the planet. We need a different keyboard.

Sometimes living in the present is pleasant but doesn’t leave much of a legacy (ant #1).

Sometimes working hard causes stress and feels yucky in the moment, but produces pretty jewel-droppings for the future (ant #2).

It’s up to every individual to decide how much legacy-building and how much present-living they want to do. Working hard and producing a legacy doesn’t have to be stressful, but sometimes it is. For the past few years, I have been studying for tests 99.5% of my days. Today was one of those rare 0.5% of days when I just relaxed, and posted this comic. It sure feels good to be ant #1 right now.

So hard to stop and smell the flowers in this hustle bustle life that I had to make a special to-do list for it!

The mentality of “let’s do this thing real quick so I can be at the next thing on time!” saps enjoyment out of the thing you’re doing. Time stinks! What a not-fun invention!

One of my favorite things is spontaneity. For me, when things just happen in an open block of time, it’s unexpected and magical. Last night I had 2 social things to go to. I was stressed at social thing 1 because I had to get to social thing 2 on time (such terrible problems, I know!). My take home lesson: if the goal of my day is leisure, only schedule one thing to do. That way I’m not going from thing 1 to thing 2 to thing 3, always thinking of the next thing. I’m going to thing 1 and jamming with it as long as the jamming’s good.

“I’m hoping I’ll succeed at creating a world that people will want to spend time in regardless of incentives. It’s a ‘stop and smell the flowers’ kind of game.” – Phil Fish, creator of the video game Fez.

Hurry up, hurry up, we have to get to…the present.

Last night I spent a while playing with a candle. I’d put wax scraps into the burning candle to give it more fuel. It was fun, getting lost playing with candle wax.

All this schooling, all these multiple choice tests, cause me to forget how to play around. It’s fun opening and closing a needle-holder to learn about suturing.  It’s a lot of fun playing with a microscope to learn how to see the retina. It’s fun rearranging words in a text box and coming up with a blog post.

Play is really the best way to learn anything — with time not an issue, with looking good not an issue, with “getting it done” not an issue — just interacting, one on one, with the stuff you’re learning, like a cat playing with string. Cats got it all figured out.

When I was a kid thinking about what I wanted to do with my life, I wanted to rip through all the clichés and do something totally new. Not something never been done before, but something not even in the same category:

But then I read this quote from Richard Feynman:

I have worked on innumerable problems that you would call humble, but which I enjoyed and felt very good about because I sometimes could partially succeed. For example, experiments on the coefficient of friction on highly polished surfaces, to try to learn something about how friction worked (failure). Or, how elastic properties of crystals depends on the forces between the atoms in them, or how to make electroplated metal stick to plastic objects (like radio knobs). Or, how neutrons diffuse out of Uranium. Or, the reflection of electromagnetic waves from films coating glass. The development of shock waves in explosions. The design of a neutron counter. Why some elements capture electrons from the L-orbits, but not the K-orbits. General theory of how to fold paper to make a certain type of child’s toy (called flexagons). The energy levels in the light nuclei. The theory of turbulence (I have spent several years on it without success). Plus all the “grander” problems of quantum theory.

No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it. 

And I realized that “awesomeness” doesn’t really matter, it’s just a human invention. Any problem is awesome if you focus on it long enough. It just matters that I work on problems I can solve:

(A conversation with a friend during college.)

In college, I thought it was bad to go through life fulfilling the pre-defined patterns of society with no creativity or desire to make the world a better place. But now I realize that it’s not what you do but how you do it. There are many ways of getting rich, getting married, and spoiling your grandkids. And there are good ways to do that stuff too.

Life is a lonely thing. Parties/hangouts are places to learn about other people and their perspectives, jokes, and skills. Unlike work or school where only a few topics are appropriate to discuss, at a good party, everything’s fair game to talk about openly and you can stumble upon new avenues of thought.

Note to self: eat slower! Eat tiny meals slowly and watch tiny molecules hang out on their receptors and relax…

—–

UPDATE (9/12/2013):

Fall is the best time for camping. You appreciate campfires more. – Liz

Six months after I drew this, it is fall. Today, I sat in a lecture and got a cup of free coffee and filled it up half way and savored it. I was able to “zone in” to the taste. Lunch was also provided today, free. I got just one sandwich, not two. I resisted the free-food greed. I watched a colleague scarf down a second sandwich. That was me for a long long time…

Yesterday I sat in the cafeteria with my food in front of me and just watched the trees in the window sway in the breeze, not eating. And today as I talked to a neighbor, even though I was rushing to get somewhere, I paid attention to her completely for a few minutes. Then I told her, “Sorry, I got to go.”

Maybe the right approach to any experience, whether it is a sandwich or a conversation, is to ask: do I have the time to enjoy this?

Maybe I am becoming more present. Maybe I am appreciating the campfires more. Thank you, fall.

—–

A cool, relevant, sculpture:

Cafe Taza, Buffalo NY. Seats 6 (10 when the weather’s nice and you can sit outside). When there, you have to socialize, it’s a cafe for social ants.

My friend wrote me this letter:

Then I drew this picture:

I was thinking that one definition of the word “spirituality” could be: the ability to take a nice long walk with your brain, and be happy.

My med school professor said there are 4 levels of happiness:

1. Animal happiness (pleasurable things, food, sex, sleep)

2. Accomplishment (being good at something)

3. Relationships (getting good feedback from people)

4. Foundation happiness (This is the happiness that you don’t need the external world for, the happiness you can make in your brain. It can be prayer, meditation, love, thinking, anything, but it’s nice to figure out for oneself what this is and how to improve ones skill at synthesizing it).

A “spiritual” person is someone who can derive happiness just by taking a nice long walk with his brain. To him, the weather, his career, his relationships, his health etc. don’t matter as much (though they still matter a lot).

“It requires enormous intelligence to be alone; and you must be alone to find God, truth. It is nice to have a companion, a husband or a wife, and also to have babies; but you see, we get lost in all that, we get lost in the family, in the job, in the dull, monotonous routine of a decaying existence. We get used to it, and then the thought of living alone becomes dreadful, something to be afraid of. Most of us have put all our faith in one thing, all our eggs in one basket, and our lives have no richness apart from our companions, apart from our families and our jobs. But if there is a richness in one’s life – not the richness of money or knowledge, which anyone can acquire, but that richness which is the movement of reality with no beginning and no ending – then companionship becomes a secondary matter.

But, you see, you are not educated to be alone. Do you ever go out for a walk by yourself? It is very important to go out alone, to sit under a tree – not with a book, not with a companion, but by yourself – and observe the falling of a leaf, hear the lapping of the water, the fisherman’s song, watch the flight of a bird, and of your own thoughts as they chase each other across the space of your mind. If you are able to be alone and watch these things, then you will discover extraordinary riches which no government can tax, no human agency can corrupt, and which can never be destroyed.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti

“Master of the Universe / grant me the ability to be alone; / may it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grasses, / among all growing things, / and there to be alone, and enter into prayer, / to talk to the One to whom I belong.” —Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav

I put up a bunch of my poems on this blog. Some of them even make sense, if you squint at them long enough.

https://danscreativeoutlet.wordpress.com/plomes/

A little fan art based on the song “Springtime” by Jeffrey Lewis.

Just watched this video on “The Overview Effect” – which basically shows that we are all connected and our individual little rat races don’t matter and that we all need to work together to be excellent stewards of this rock we live on.

It brought back memories of a speech by David Foster Wallace, where he talked about standing in line in a grocery store, and how miserable and impatient he felt in his daily rat race.

It got me thinking that there are 2 basic states of the brain: a brain that is relaxed and ready to appreciate the world as an interconnected symbiotic thingy, and a brain that is stuck in a rat race of little goals. Since we are not all blessed to see the world spinning below us like the astronauts, we need to work to tap into the “Spaceship earth brain” as much as we can. A practical method of doing this is to take some time for yourself to appreciate it all.

“In Pensacola Florida, people have given up on the whole competitive thing, and just try to help each other out.” – Mike. I want to go there!

A relevant video.

Get the reference?

 

This one needs some explaining…

I just saw a TED talk about “Visual Goal Setting.” The method is simple – draw where you are in the present on one side of the page, and where you want to be in the future on the other side of the page. Just having these images down on paper is supposed to help your brain realize if you are on track or not. And, according to the talk, since your brain has an image of where it wants to go, it will take logical steps to get there.

Here’s the TED talk: 

 

Thinking about how molecules could have arranged themselves into cells, organisms, and societies fills me with a sense of awe. It makes me realize how little we know, and how amazing our world is.

“Begin by opening your eyes and be surprised you have eyes you can open.” The video below is really great, I highly recommend.

Found this in one of my old journals, where I used to write down funny quotes. Friends are people you can be silly with!

Great video on the subject, especially the rant at the end:

For a few years in college, I had angst about society encouraging me to go into a “practical” career that made money. I felt like the little kid in this cartoon, being forced to stand in the corner until I gave up on my idealism.

Lately though, I’ve found that it’s possible to make a living, and be idealistic too. I’ve tried to meet people doing this kind of work.

Cory Booker talked about this at the Cornell commencement (at minute 43:20).

A cool video on this theme: 

Was tired yesterday. Coming down with a cold. Mom kept insisting I  do this and do that to cure my cold. I yelled at her. “LEAVE ME ALONE!!!”

Should have put on this trusty necklace first. It has a little box with a little hand inside it. Whenever my mouth is about to run off, the hand comes out and gives a friendly SHHHHHH!

I should keep this necklace in my pocket all the time and put it on whenever I’m tired and liable to overreact. It will prevent:

• Reacting with anger to an insult
• Saying things that are disrespectful or hurtful
• Saying things out of line with the customs of the land

A tribute to a clinic I worked at for a few weeks. The clinic served lots of immigrants, and the staff were from many different countries. Instead of the awkward, “Hey,” or “How was your weekend?” people would hug each other at the start of each day. Little things like that make a big difference.

My cousin: “When you work at a place like that, it’s freaking positive.”

Life is like an n-dimensional teeter-totter, with each side having a trade-off:

-After one yoga class, the teacher said, “It’s your choice what to do with your life. You can go out drinking with friends, or you can practice handstands.”

-Settling down in one place provides the opportunity to build a community or family. Travelling provides new experiences and perspective.

-On the computer, you can socialize (facebook) or learn (wikipedia).

“Mr. Smith, you feel sad because you have 4 extra norepinephrine molecules in synapse Q4.0007.496×738 in the nucleus accumbens. Luckily with these tiny tweezers here we can just pluck them out!”

For a summer, I studied the retina, which has 7 well-defined layers:

-The rods and cones respond to light.

-Then the information gets transferred to the next layers of cells.

-By the time the information reaches the brain, it is in the form of a code of action potentials.

From my understanding of the field, we are still far from taking a readout of action potentials from the optic nerve and generating the image that the rods and cones saw. It would be even cooler if we could look at a bunch of action potentials in the brain and know the person’s precise thought.

But a “neuroscience-based” psychiatry would be even more ambitious. It would say: look, here are the few neurons that are the culprit of your OCD or depression. Let’s change them.

Note: The sporks below are all on sale, proceeds go to start the store

 

 

The gradient of nerd -> cool as you go from front to back.

 

 

 

Drew this when I was into filmmaking. The “storyteller” is the white ghost in the picture, who is the director of the movie the guy on the right side is watching.