Category: FUN THINGS

Missing Mondays

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I don’t exactly know why it is that I sometimes miss Mondays in terms of posting. You would think that I’d have plenty of time on the weekend to write up my brilliantness for the coming week. You would think that during the weekend, I’d have at least one hour of quiet driving somewhere during which I would think through one blog post storyline. You would think that I’d write up the details of the ideas from the previous week.

For all you bloggers out there, how many posts do you have in your drafts version? I have about 120 versions in draft form. Yaow! I start one, write a title (sometimes that comes last), type up, “S, find this reference, combine it with this amazing study, and post that.” And then I have new ideas when I come back to the writing screen again and want to write up new things and don’t always go back to those thing.

And for non-bloggers, how many emails do you have in your drafts folder? :)

In any case, I am psyched to combine the two aspects, my draft versions and my Mondays… I like the two goals of shrinking the number of draft versions, and of having something preplanned for Mondays. Ok, see how it goes in a week. :)

Have a great week. Short story coming at you tomorrow. S.

Today is Everyday

Posted on by Senia

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
~ Annie Dillard

“How you do anything is how you do everything.”
~ Tonya Pinkins (earlier on this blog)

“…for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
~ Steve Jobs (in this speech)

“Today is everyday.”
~ Senia

Life Moves Forward

Posted on by Senia

Sometimes you have to be reminded of the things that you believe. I was reading Elona’s teachers-at-risk blog about advice for students on organizing. Elona suggests having students do something for two minutes. Just two minutes.

    And I thought, “Man, sometimes I forget to do things in those two minutes in which they could most easily be done in!”

    About a week ago, there were some cool comments to posts on this blog, and I got too tied up, and I didn’t answer those comments. And now life moves on. Life moves forward. I have gone back today and answered those comments briefly. But it feels like moving backwards to do it a week later: the cool folks who wrote back then don’t even know that I wrote today, saying “thanks for those comments” or “neat idea!”

    Life moves forward. I need to address things at the time that they happen – in those two-minute increments. This is why sometimes when I get email, I will see it in my inbox and not read it. Because once I read it, one of two things happens – either I reply right away, or I put it off. And if I put it off, I might forget (because my brain thinks that I’ve already taken care of it! When I haven’t!) And forgetting replying to an email is terrible for me – terrible. That’s one of the worst things I could ever do.

    So I create a shortcut for myself – no reading new mail unless I can answer it. (And gee-whiz, I’m not perfect at this!… but I aim strongly for this… immediate answers when I read the email.) Because doing can be easier than not doing.

Life moves forward. In 1986, NBC moved its peacock from facing left to facing right. Because the future in a timeline faces right. And NBC wanted to be positioned towards the future.

NBC before NBC now

Just like George Vaillant says in his book Aging Well, “biology flows downhill.” Meaning that life moves forward.

This can be a hard concept. This can be an emptionally hard and painful idea. There is sometimes little joy in this idea. It can be hard because it makes people think about the uphillness.

And yet, there can be a lot of joy in it.
It’s the visual of a smiling baby: that’s the future.

SENIA.COM Summary – August, 2006

Posted on by Senia

Hi guys! Here’s what you’ve seen on senia.com in August, 2006! Thanks for stopping by this month!!!

The Brain

Expertise is Trainable! – nurture may be winning over nature in the debate of how expertise develops.
First, You Copy – copying can be an excellent way to gain expertise.
Consistency – what do you choose to develop your expertise in? (aiming for a one-shot win or steady-Eddie getting things done).

Doing Can Be Easier Than Not Doing – get something done (like watering your plants) when you think of it rather than wasting brain space by remembering to do it later.
How to Diminish Effects of Stress on the Brain – mainly, the answer is exercise (and sleep, diet, and physical activity).
Change One Habit at a Time – focus on one habit with examples from rock climbing.
Quantum Speech – jardon is key to understanding a field or industry.

Recommendations

It looks like I’m getting more into recommendations:
* On the Web: funny David Cowan post, great brain resource Sharpbrains.com, love-this-one! Dave Shearon blog, super video of Dancing Matt, a few great articles about the new eight planets!, and a small critique of a a NYT article about one-size-fits-all bright-color interior.
* Books: Feynman’s Rainbow and two books I like described by Dave Shearon.
* On TV: Josh Ritter on Conan O’Brien .

Regularly-Scheduled Fun Stuff :)

Tuesday Stories:

Thursday Quotes:

Friday Questions:

See you in September! Rabbit rabbit!
Senia

Introducing … Dave Shearon

Posted on by Senia

Hello and welcome to a great new site. This is a classmate of mine from last year’s Master of Positive Psychology program, and he is a wonderful person. He has a super blog about positive psychology and applications to law and to education.

Here is Dave Shearon’s blog! I’m a big fan of Dave’s blog. It’s very descriptive and very detailed and very alive! Check it out yourself!

One of Dave’s last posts was a summary of Positive Psychology Books that he recommends. Great, great summary. I especially like Dave’s summaries of these two books, which are absolutely among my favorites:

The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt (2005) It’s not just intelligences that are multiple! Try multiple brains! Or, at least, multiple relatively independent systems in the brain. Haidt’s metaphor of the rider and the elephant is worth reading the book. Great writer. Sound insights.

The Paradox of Choice, Schwartz. Are you generally a “maximizer” or “satisficer”? Should you care? Good book not only for consumers, but for achievers. Since nothing’s ever “finished”, what does “do your best” mean?

And here is an absolutely delightful little entry called “Poof!” that I find myself recalling with a smile!

Here is a positive psychology study that Dave created for high school students along with two other classmates of ours: high school study.

And here is the positive psychology section of Dave’s blog that I really, really enjoy.

Just because I read him for the positive psychology, don’t think that you shouldn’t tune in for the education, how to run schools, and law discussions! Nice, nice insights. ENJOY!

—
p.s. I specifically meant to post this on August 30!

Quantum Speech

Posted on by Senia

I’ve learned two things in the past couple of decades:
1) Memorize important phone numbers.
2) To learn a new field – get the jargon down.

Jargon catapults you from a mailroom clerk to a business equal in any discussion. No wonder Liza Dolittle was hailed as a princess at the ball. She knew the customs and the jargon: “How nice of you to let me come.”

Imagine that you want to switch careers, for example, from Finance to Media. You might switch wht you’re reading: goodbye Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, hello Daily Variety and Cable & Broadcasting. You might start following weekend box office profits rather than the S&P500.

The jargon of a business, an industry, a group of people tells you so much about the people. Jargon crystalizes the concerns, major attitudes, expectations of a whole new world. Jargon is like the Cliffs’ Notes to a business.

On Wall Street, daily jargon includes matching people that bring “value added” to projects, giving the client everything “from soup to nuts”, looking at the big picture “at the end of the day,” and examining worst-case scenarios for “when the shit hits the fan.” The irony is the same phrases that sound cliche also make a lot of sense at the same time! Value added is one of the most important ideas in business. The best possible end-of-year review commends the employee for adding value to the firm.

An idea tediously pervasive in a culture is often surprisingly acute. Cliches often summarize the crux of an issue. The contradictions in “out of sight, out of mind” and “distance makes the heart grow fonder” underscore the conflict of having a close friend move far away.

Similarly, old wives’ tales are effective despite being common knowledge. The best way to cure a cold is still chicken soup, drinking liquids, and staying in bed.

Listening for the jargon in people’s speech is like picking up pieces of quantum speech, useful tidbits. Have you ever noticed that you speak differently to different people or to different groups of people? You just don’t use as many “like”s when making a presentation or speaking in front of a class.

Two people find a common wavelength to speak on. The wavelength may include common jargon, and jargon or mannerisms from each person. Jargon may get transmuted this way, like a telephone game, from person to person to person. Bits of quantum speech traveling the world.

Eight Planets! (Not 9, Not 12)

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NEWER NEWS: There are 8 planets, and Pluto isn’t one of them.

    In a stunning reversal, astronomers who were ready to expand the solar system by three planets just last week voted to shrink it yesterday instead, stripping Pluto of its status as the solar system’s most distant and quirkiest planet. (From Baltimore Sun).

    The decision by the prestigious international group spells out the basic tests that celestial objects will have to meet before they can be considered for admission to the elite cosmic club…. Much-maligned Pluto doesn’t make the grade under the new rules for a planet: “a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a … nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.” … Pluto is automatically disqualified because its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s. Instead, it will be reclassified in a new category of “dwarf planets.” (From Detroit Press).

    “It could be argued that we are creating an umbrella called ‘planet’ under which the dwarf planets exist,” [Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a specialist in neutron stars from Northern Ireland who oversaw the proceedings] said, drawing laughter by waving a stuffed Pluto of Walt Disney fame beneath a real umbrella. (From Detroit Press).

OLDER NEWS: You’ve probably heard the news. The International Astronomical Union (IAU) got together last week and proposed a new definition of “planet” that would mean that we have 12 planets instead of 9. Here is an excerpt from the article on space.com:

    The definition, which basically says round objects orbiting stars will be called planets, is simple at first glance:

    “A planet is a celestial body that (a) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (b) is in orbit around a star, and is neither a star nor a satellite of a planet.”

    “Our goal was to find a scientific basis for a new definition of planet and we chose gravity as the determining factor,” said Richard Binzel, an MIT planetary scientist who was part of a seven-member IAU committee that hashed out the proposal. “Nature decides whether or not an object is a planet.”

Here is a very enjoyable NYTimes essay by Dennis Overbye about the twelve planets. The essay notes that several potential mnemonics are coming out for kids to memorize the order of the “planets”: “My Very Excellent Mother Could Just Serve Us Nuts, Pizza, Carrots ’n’ Xylophones!” (by David Sturm). The essay also discusses the controvesial “No Ice Ball Left Behind” policy. :)

Note: I’m actually glad about the reasoning for the new definition. I’ve been reading a bit of Feynman recently, and he says to keep questioning things. The Binzel quote above outlines gravity as the scientific basis of the definition. That makes a lot of sense to me. What do you think?

Feynman’s Rainbow

Posted on by Senia
Feynman's Rainbow This is a great book about Richard Feynman. It’s writted by Leonard Mlodinow, who was a young faculty member at Caltech while Feynman was a Nobel-prize-winning professor there. Mlodinow audio recorded several conversations with Feynman about life and about how and why Feynman did science. Mlodinow describes how years later he pulled the Radio Shack audio cassettes out of his basement and realized that he wanted to uncover Feynman’s thoughts and write them up.

Feynman’s Rainbow is written as a series of stories of Mlodinow himself figuring out how and why physics works and academia works interspersed with pages of direct quotes from Feynman.

Best parts of the book: Feynman talking about why he does science, Feynman describing his first love Arlene, Feynman scolding Mlodinow about Mlodinow’s reasons for choosing one research area over any other. It’s an active book. You hear the two characters Mlodinow and Feynman talking. It’s nice.

Surprising parts of the book: The string theory explanantion was surprisingly interesting. Also, just how much of a kid Feynman was – was surprisingly interesting. Just that he had to take everything apart and put it back together himself before believing it.

One of the best messages: Do what you love, man. Because otherwise, there could come a time when you’re looking at the ceiling and you have no reason for doing what you do. Avoid that, love it in the first place.
(Messages are personal, what a person gets out of a book is usually quite personal, so this is just one of the best messages).

Reading this book also made me go back to the library and immediately check out the two great books of stories that Feynman wrote about his own life: Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman and What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character.

Fri (Aug 11) Josh Ritter on Conan

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Speaking of self-assurance in a musician…

One of my favorite musicians, the young and experienced way beyond his years Josh Ritter, is appearing on the Conan O’Brien show on Friday. This is Josh’s first national TV appearance. About 2.5 million people will see him. Here’s Josh’s bio. I highly recommend his CDs.

Time and Place: NBC. Just past midnight on Friday night, Aug 11 (as it becomes Saturday). 12:35am.