Life is a Gift — and so is Suffering

A few weeks ago, there was a rather poignant interview that aired between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper. I didn’t see or read much of the coverage of it, but the thing that kept coming across my feed was the first thirty seconds of the clip below. And, in seeing the views on this video, …

Wanna Make a Name for Yourself: Answer One of These Questions

In The Guardian today, there’s an article that lists “20 big questions in science.” If you want to be famous (at least in some circles), answer one of the questions. Of course, there are some ‘answers’ to the questions already. Or maybe it’d be more accurate to say that there are some hypotheses or that …

When Was the Last Time You Took the Long View?

I really like psychology. I like it so much that even though I’ve already got a couple of degrees in it, I continue to learn/read about psychology. I also really like magic and illusions. There’s something about the mystique of believing that what you’re seeing is actually happening — even though you’re sure that it’s probably …

Tying Up Loose Ends — Again

Earlier this year, I did a post where I talked about a number of ideas in one post. This served a couple of interconnected purposes: 1) it emptied my “posts to write” list, and 2) it allowed me to flood that list with some new ideas. (I said the purposes were interconnected.) My list has …

Art Imitating (Rather, Predicting?) Life

I was reading this past week’s edition of The Economist and came across an article on 3D printing. Specifically, the article was addressing how 3D printing was (or could) change the face of manufacturing. If you’re not familiar with 3D printing, it is exactly like it sounds: printing in 3D. From Wikipedia: “3D printing or additive …

Remembering What’s Important to You: Lessons from Hurricane Irene

With much of the East Coast preparing for the potential effects of Hurricane Irene, I can’t help but think of what an opportunity this could be for many people. I keep hearing the figure 65 million people being quoted as how many that are potentially affected by this storm. That’s just about 20% of the …

Let’s Treat All Cars Like School Buses: Drive Safe!

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, “Fatalities per 100 million Vehicle Miles Traveled” has been trending down since 2005. In 2005, there were 1.46 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. This means that for every 100 million miles traveled by car in the United States, there were 1.46 fatalities. That may sound …