What Does a President Really Do All Day?

image This is a great reflection by Joel Achenbach (Washington Post) on the job of the president and how it has changed over the past 200 years. It makes you wonder. No one can really prepare for this job. My preferred candidate is still Barak Obama.  But I recognize that we are all taking a leap of faith that our choice will be able to make the right decisions.

A simple and deceptively tricky question: What does a president do?

If you had to put together the Help Wanted ad for the position of chief executive, what would you write? Something like: “CEO needed to supervise 3 million employees. Must be at least 35, native-born, willing to work at home. Spectacular public failures likely.”

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Diary, Astute Observations

No Comments 27 April 2008

The Smell of Romantic Attraction

image Different languages have come up with a way to express that the smell of other people has a profound effect how attracted we are to them. English talks about the “chemistry” that two people have. In German, you literally say “I cannot smell you” (Ich kann dich nicht riechen) to express that you don’t like another person. The Economist reports on the latest developments in the science of smell and interpersonal attraction.

How to find a mate: The scent of a woman (and a man)


A new kind of dating agency relies on matching people by their body odour
ONE of life’s little mysteries is why particular people fancy each other—or, rather, why they do not when on paper they ought to. One answer is that human consciousness, and thus human thought, is dominated by vision. Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, regardless of the other senses. However, as the multi-billion-dollar perfume industry attests, beauty is in the nose of the beholder, too.

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Diary, Astute Observations

No Comments 16 January 2008

How the Brain Makes Moral Judgments

image STEVEN PINKER pulls together in the New York Times magazine evidence that suggests that the human brain is pre-wired for developing a moral instinct. The article is a bit long but well worth reading.

The Moral Instinct

Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it

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Diary, Astute Observations

No Comments 12 January 2008

Nobel Lecture: My Father’s Suitcase

image Sometimes the lecture by the recipients of the Nobel Prize for literature are superb (e.g. Guenter Grass) and sometime they are quite disappointing (e.g. Heinrich Boell). Just read the Orhan Pamuk gave in Stockholm a few months ago after receiving the 2006 prize. It is a great read. Try it…

By Orhan Pamuk:

Two years before his death, my father gave me a small suitcase filled with his writings, manuscripts and notebooks. Assuming his usual joking, mocking air, he told me he wanted me to read them after he was gone, by which he meant after he died. ‘Just take a look,’ he said, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘See if there’s anything inside that you can use. Maybe after I’m gone you can make a selection and publish it.’

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Diary, Astute Observations

No Comments 14 January 2007

Jazz Washes Away the Dust of Everyday Life

image Art Blakey uttered this wonderful line in the superb documentary on Jazz by Ken Burns. I am presently watching the 10th and final episode of a film that taught me a new understanding of American history.

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Diary, Astute Observations

No Comments 20 October 2006

For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn

image Ernest Hemingway proved that it is possible to write an entire novel in one line.

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Diary, Astute Observations

No Comments 12 October 2006

Where is Paradise?

image The Economist reviews two books on the idea of paradise throughout human history. By historical standards, people in the industrialized countries are close to paradise in a material sense. The trick is to feel spiritually this way. The Germans have proven in the past few weeks that possessing a good national soccer team helps a long way to take the final step. But then the Italians, who seem to be closer to God with the Vatican in Rome, showed the Germans that full Paradise remains one step, that is one small goal away.

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Diary, Astute Observations

No Comments 7 July 2006

How Christian Dominations Reacted to Modern Science

image  The followers of Jesus have been fighting about the proper way to interpret his teaching from the very beginning. Since Jesus did not write down his philosophy the writers of the ghospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) that made it into New Testament had signficant interpretative flexibility to write up his message, making it all the easier for church leaders to disagree on what should be official doctrine. If you don’t agree (and it does not matter here whether you are right or wrong) and if you have leadership skills you simply split with mother church. Today there are at least 300 different Christian demoninations, with every single one telling their children that they are being taught the correct faifth, and this means that there must of been hundreds of groups that broke away from the mother church over the past 2000 years.

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Diary, Astute Observations

No Comments 17 April 2006

The Dalai Lama and Science

image Last July, Cardinal Christoph Sch

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Diary, Astute Observations

No Comments 18 February 2006

Is Christianity Compatible with Republican Values?

I always found it curious that fundamental Christians preferred in large numbers Republicans over Democrats. After all,  the core values of the democratic party seem to be much more in tune with Christianity. At least one evangelic pastor woke up recently and remembered that Christians are supposed to support peace and not war. Read this interesting Op-ed piece in the NY Times of January 20, 2006.

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Diary, Astute Observations

No Comments 2 February 2006

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