Teachers and students are interdependent. You can’t have one without the other. Society admires the teachers, especially the esteemed professors, gurus, or senseis (xiansheng 先生). In reality, students are the more important part of the equation. After all, teachers can lead students to water, but only the students’ thirst determines whether they’ll drink. As chapter […]
Continue reading…Are You As Happy As You Should Be?
Asking how happy we are, or wish to be, is an important question seeing that we spend much of life seeking happiness. Are you as happy as you would be if…? could be if…? should be if…? The answers to these questions hinge on what you think will do the trick. This suggests why chapter […]
Continue reading…Keeping Birthday Happy
Today is my 67th year here on earth. The picture is a magazine’s back cover of me in my birthday suit at a lake in Arizona (1). From then until today, fate has been fortunate, for I should have died quite a few times by now. As to my health, wealth, and family, I couldn’t […]
Continue reading…Why Do Idiot Savants Run Things?
First, we should ask, “do idiot savants run things?” I’d say so according to the second definition of “idiot savant” in Merriam-Webster Dictionary, i.e., 2: a person who is highly knowledgeable about one subject but knows little about anything else. Of course, “knowledgeable about one subject” and “knows little about anything else” is relative and […]
Continue reading…Trust But Verify
In some ways, being a true believing Christian might hinder fulfilling Christ’s message to the world. Believers in anything, Christian or otherwise, rely on their tenets of belief to substantiate the very belief they hold. Approached this way, one has little incentive to challenge one’s own understanding. Rather, the understanding becomes the pillar of proof. […]
Continue reading…Are You A Beliefaholic?
I had a fine discussion with a born again Christian recently. These kinds of talks always offer fascinating food for thought. Particularly interesting was his view on global warming, and the conspiracy he thinks lies behind it. His certainty was high despite his limited knowledge of basic science. It may be that the less one […]
Continue reading…Sage Advice from Wall Street
They call Warren Buffett the sage of Wall Street because he is a most successful investor. His chief advice for investing is this: “Be fearful when others are bold, be bold when others are fearful”. Obviously, this advice frequently applies to life in general. It parallels chapter 73’s He who is fearless in being bold […]
Continue reading…Of Course It’s Alive!
The Science News report, Enter the Virosphere, covers a researcher’s discovery that shakes up the current biological paradigm. Apparently, he had actually found a gigantic virus—one so large and possessing such a peculiar mixture of traits that it is challenging the very notion of what it means to be alive. One researcher commented, “I think […]
Continue reading…What Am I Doing?
Chapter 56’s view that one who speaks does not know should logically include writing and thinking as well. After all, speaking, thinking and writing are all interconnected, which suggests that I don’t know what I’m talking about! So what the heck am I doing here? Why do I think and write anyway? I was born […]
Continue reading…I understand, but do I know?
What is the difference between understanding and knowing? Perhaps chapter 70 alludes to this… My words are very easy to understand and very easy to put into practice, yet no one in the world can understand them or put them into practice. Our cleverness at understanding far exceeds our ability to know intuitively what we […]
Continue reading…Just In: We’re All Nuts!
“Some mental disorders aren’t merely common—they’re the norm”, or so a recent Science News article, Rates of common mental disorders double up, reports. Note the tallest bar in the graph showing a recent prospective study of 1000 New Zealanders assessed for mental disorders eleven times between the ages of 3 and 32. No doubt, such […]
Continue reading…The Future is Now!
About ten years ago, humanity’s plausible future became increasingly obvious to me. I saw our advancing technology leading toward a time of plunging human population to a point where, for example, governments would support citizens during their parenting years. Now, when I travel on freeways, I eerily see a time when they will be half-empty […]
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