Saturday, October 07, 2006

“It is impossible to pray for the dead if you do not know their names.”

“The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million” Daniel Mendelsohn
If you want to make the world a better place through your actions, you must know the person or people with whom you are making a change. Relationships that matter, are individual and personal. (even: “know your enemy” — or you may never understand how to protect yourself from them)

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Stumbling on Happiness
by Dan Gilbert (Knopf 2006)
frontal lobes = anticipation and planning for the future
subjectivity. each person’s subjective experience is uniquely their own.
happiness (emotional, moral, and judgemental)
Zappa: writing about music is like dancing about architecture …
happiness — an experience, not the events leading to it — differentiate between cause and event
remembering differences is very difficult: candid camera — switching people in the middle of a conversation can generally be undetected …
card tricks - remembering color swatchs - memory of description of event, rather than the specific details of events