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Getting Addicted to “24”
A couple of weeks ago a friend raved about the TV show 24, which will start its fifth season in January. I rented the first three episodes of the first season from Blockbuster. The entire season takes place in 24 hours. Before I knew it, I had watched the entire season in a few days. The writers of the show have been able to create so much suspense that I (and other people I know) run to blockbuster in the middle of the night to rent the next episodes. This may be the best TV drama that I have ever seen. Go rent it but don’t blame me if you miss work because you stay up late watching one episode after another. I am addicted to this show!
Love and Passion Reconsidered
In college I had the privilege of taking a yearlong reading and writing course that picked a new theme every quarter. In the first term we read books and wrote essays on the idea of love going back all the way to Plato’s Symposium. Although I was fully able to articlulate Plato’s view of love, I emotionally did not understand what Plato was talking about. I wish the review article “Fidelity With a Wandering Eye ” by Christina Nehring had been on our reading list. Nehring is deeply informed, her language is clear, and its a pleasure to follow her guided tour. See for yourself by clicking on the “More” button.
Talk is cheap but surprisingly effective
Sometimes one piece of writing changes one mind. Until today I thought that talk therapy was utterly discredited. But there appears to be strong evidence that a skilled therapist can help the brain to change its relationship to the world.
Depression From The Economist print edition (Apr 14th 2005)
FOR almost a century after Sigmund Freud pioneered psychoanalysis,
Continue Reading“I only need 5 hours of sleep.” Liar!
WARREN ST. JOHN and ALEX WILLIAMS on today’s NYT provide good news for you night owls. The notion that early risers live more healthily and are more productive is a self-promotional myth. People need to find the sleeping patterns that suits them best!
The Crow of the Early Bird
Mr. Iger, who is married to the television journalist Willow Bay, with whom he has four children, is up at 4:30 in the morning, works out and arrives in the office by 6:30.
The New York Times, March 14, profile of Robert A. Iger, the new president of the Walt Disney Compan
What George F. Kennan might have written about the thread of Al Queida
I read for the first time today what Kennan wrote in 1946. I replaced in my mind the words “Soviet Union” with “Al Queida” and “communism” with “terrorism.” From this vantage point, the last paragraph becomes particularly insightful into our current situation.
WORD FOR WORD | COLD WARRIOR
The Man Who Took the Measure of the Communist Threat
By PETER EDIDIN in NY Times:
GEORGE F. KENNAN, who died Thursday at 101, was “the nearest thing to a legend that this country’s diplomatic service has ever produced,” the historian Ronald Steel has said. He was the man who proposed “containment,” the cornerstone of the cold war, as a way to oppose the Soviet Union.
Continue ReadingThe Science of Love
The Economist (print edition) Feb 12th 2004 published an interesting report about what scientists know about the chemistry of romantic feelings.
I get a kick out of you
Scientists are finding that, after all, love really is down to a chemical addiction between people
OVER the course of history it has been artists, poets and playwrights who have made the greatest progress in humanity’s understanding of love. Romance has seemed as inexplicable as the beauty of a rainbow. But these days scientists are challenging that notion, and they have rather a lot to say about how and why people love each other.
Is this useful? The scientists think so. For a start, understanding the neurochemical pathways that regulate social attachments may help to deal with defects in people’s ability to form relationships. All relationships, whether they are those of parents with their children, spouses with their partners, or workers with their colleagues, rely on an ability to create and maintain social ties. Defects can be disabling, and become apparent as disorders such as autism and schizophrenia
Continue ReadingUnite Against the Power Nap Killers!
For the last 20 years I have taken almost daily refreshing power naps. Now the guardians of pseudo disclipine want to banish this smart daily routine from the work place. I fear that we may be returnig to the dark ages of knowledge about human productivity. SUE SHELLENBARGER filed in today’s Wall Street Journal this very troubling report that should be a call to arms for all power nappers around the globe.
The Power Nap’s 15 Minutes Is Over
An Unlikely Fad Gets
A Rude Awakening
After a brief “power napping” craze in the late 1990s, workplace napping has retreated to the corporate closet. When David Oboyski of Kansas City, Mo., suggested starting a naproom at his previous job at a public-relations agency, citing research on how naps aid the bottom line, his boss and co-workers just laughed. “It became a running punch line,” he says. Luckily, “being the ‘nap guy’ didn’t hurt my career, but I learned my lesson and never brought it up again,” says Mr. Oboyski, who is now a self-employed marketing consultant.
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