February 10, 2015
I’m getting back into running after a few months’ break. In the meantime, my fitness has evaporated and I’m carrying some extra pounds. Not only that, but my Achilles tendon has been sore for a while, probably due to overtraining on these beautiful but brutal coastal trails. For example, last summer, my brother and I put […]
June 24, 2014
Before he was sentenced to death by hemlock, Socrates rejected the court’s clemency because it was offered under the condition that he cease questioning the people of Athens. The philosopher responded that, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’. Many have considered the implications of this and the force with which the unexamined life should be rejected. One translation has it […]
June 18, 2014
In an attempt to understand my place in the cosmos, I wanted to create a pithy analogy that would sum up the vastness of everything in a concise image. Preliminary research went well. I learned that the observable universe has a volume of 4 x 1080 m3, Earth has a volume of 1.083 x 1021 […]
May 13, 2014
The philosopher of Buddhism, Jay Garfield, gave a great interview to The New York Times’ philosophy blog, The Stone. “Treat the past reflectively and with gratitude and responsibility, and with an awareness that much of our present life is conditioned by our collective past; take the future seriously as something we have the responsibility to […]
April 15, 2014
I’ve been following Robert Wright’s MOOC on Buddhism and Modern Psychology. One of the most interesting ideas at the heart of this course frames Buddhism as a rebellion against natural selection. Wright investigates whether by helping us to see the world more clearly, Buddhism, and particularly meditation, irons out some of the perceptual and affective […]