This is sometimes called present bias – being unable to grasp what you want will change over time, and what you want now isn’t the same thing you will want later. Present bias explains why you buy lettuce and bananas only to throw them out later when you forget to eat them. This is why…
Category
Thoughts
A Precocious Autobiography by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
“My grandfather came into my room. I had already undressed and was lying in bed. He sat down on the edge of my bed. He had in his hands a box of liqueur-filled chocolates. His eyes, usually mischievous and smiling, that night looked at me from under his gray prickly crew-cut with a tired and…
A countercultural, beautiful lifestyle of outrageous love? Yes please.
Greg Boyd speaking about the Constantinian influence on Christianity. This is so important.
The philosopher should not care about eating and drinking
The philosopher should not care about eating and drinking, but of course he should eat as much as is necessary; there is no suggestion of fasting. And we are told that Socrates, though indifferent to wine, could, on occasion, drink more than anybody else, without ever becoming intoxicated. It was not drinking that he condemned,…
Pretiola: Delicious Little Prayers
Pretzels were invented by monks, used for the teaching of religion, to feed the poor, and to symbolize the marriage bond. The monks used the inter-connected sections of the “pretiola” (literally, “little prayers”) to help the children understand the Christian Trinity of “Father, Son and Holy Ghost.” Their success with the re-shaped crusts spread to…
Feeling the Pain
I put down the bread and the cup and get up on my knees, twisting a little. I pull up my shirt so she can see my wound. She gives it a sympathetic frown. “I can clean that.” She gets up and goes for something. When I was a kid and skinned my knee or…
Real Activism Being Replaced by Virtual Activism
But it gets worse. Gladwell’s argument, as I read it, isn’t simply the observation that Web 2.0 is ill suited for social activism. The real worry is that Web 2.0 creates an illusion of activism. That is, real world activism is being traded in for a virtual activism. And the dual meanings of the word…
Happy Saint Martin’s Day!
“November 11th, commonly known in the United States as Veterans Day, is the feast day of Martin of Tours, venerated by Catholics as the patron saint of conscientious objectors. He was born in what is now Hungary in 316, the son of an officer in the Roman army.” Read more…
New Poem: The Question NOT To Ask
The Question NOT To Ask Start from the top. Pretend like I don’t know a thing and see if that helps you explain it. oh I get it, this is about what you know and what I have yet to learn. Don’t act as if everything is obvious. Smugness is not a good substitute for…
Why I am voting (and why I almost didn’t).
But there is still the delicate point of participation in elections. Should anarchists vote? If so, should they form a party? For my part, like many anarchists, I think not. To vote is to take part in the organization of the false democracy that has been set up forcefully by the middle class. No matter…