The Times has a profile of Tibetan monk Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, “The Happiest Man in the World.” He’s released a new book called Joyful Wisdom describing his methods. In his book he recounts being extremely anxious as a child in Nepal, having had what a Manhattan psychiatrist would likely diagnose as panic attacks, and how [...]

There was a great quote in the Times last week. Nicholas Kristoff, writing on the different neurology of liberals and conservatives, had mentioned that we often use the Internet to simply reinforce ideas we already have. To balance this narrowing tendency, he said we should seek out people with opposing viewpoints for regular debates. Jonathan [...]

Well, I’m back in the city again. A few days in Florida with my mom filled me up on oranges (and blues and greens). I feel sunny inside, even if it’s not so much outside. With the return to city life came the return to Twitter, CNN, texting, and emails. (I could have continued them [...]

Scientific American says that rapid thinking makes people happy — “more elated, creative and, to a lesser degree, energetic and powerful.” …although fast and varied thinking causes elation, fast but repetitive thoughts can instead trigger anxiety. (They further suggest that slow, varied thinking leads to the kind of calm, peaceful happiness associated with mindfulness meditation, [...]

Beautiful essay by William Deresiewicz: As we all seek more connectivity, we lose our sense of a private self. We no longer hear the still, small voice that speaks only in silence. It feels somehow wrong to blog about this essay — in fact I interrupted my own reading three times to post it on [...]

Another great video, payback from my dad. Welcome to the singularity. Apologies that the music is 9 years behind the video.

A wonderful animation about string theory, by Rob Bryanton. Looks like he has a book to go with it. Following are the dimensions, with his visual descriptions in parentheses. Not sure if these names are right, he just describes the visuals. Each dimension is actually “twisting and turning in the dimension above” like a Mobius [...]

My friend Jess Allen just posted this Economist article that I just can’t believe: …washing with soap and water makes people view unethical activities as more acceptable and reasonable than they would if they had not washed themselves. Previous studies had shown that feelings of disgust led to more moral behavior — the subjects wanted [...]