When I was a child the world was infinite, spreading out in all directions without end. From the sugar sand beaches of the northern Gulf Coast through the hushed waters of the Okefenokee, out to the sprawling deserts of Nevada, up to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness separating Montana from Idaho, my …
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Thinking About Nothing
Have you ever tried to think about nothing?
It seems easy enough. Just think about everything you know not existing. Go ahead. Do that.
Nothing is a term we use a lot, but it's actually a conundrum, a paradox, a falsehood. It is not possible to conceptualize nothing; to create …
read moreZen Garden
The Second Constant
"Change is the only constant in life." - Heraclitus
In 500 B.C. that may well have been true. Even 100 years ago, that may still have seemed true.
However, the expanding mass of humanity has engendered new perspectives, and from those perspectives we draw new conclusions.
Careful examination of the …
read moreFeedback Loop
A long time ago, a guy named Skinner proposed that how we behave is a consequence of environmental histories.
We are either the giver or the receiver in interactions with our world. We stimulate, they react. They stimulate, we react. Both sides provide feedback to the other. This goes on …
read moreCommunication, Guts Out
I recently read an article about how to speak in a manner that would make me sound more confident. There were good points in it.
While the writers were technically correct, their advice was sharply focused on a single aspect of communicating: presentation. There is much more to communicating than …
read moreTroglodyte
Nothing has really changed. Sure, we speak with sophistication, wear finely woven fabrics and adorn our feet with coverings to enhance or protect. We are able to keep ourselves out of uncomfortable circumstances for the most part. We adjust the way we smell to make close proximity less revolting, or …
read moreCognition Ignition
A Tear-Down of a Hidden Process
How do you know anything? Most of us never ask the question.
We engineering types want to know how things work. We'll spend tons of time learning how things works so that we can make things do what we want them to do. So …
read moreSelf-Evident
I want to talk about truth. ("Oh boy, here he goes . . . ")
You might be inclined to think the definition of truth is pretty well settled. A lot of people believe that, and for a lot of those people, there's no need to even talk about what truth is. So I'm …
read moreTime
I don't think we will EVER get there. I've been sitting in this back seat for most of my life. Every time I ask the people in the front seat how much longer, they say stuff like, "About two minutes less than the last time you asked."
The day is …
read moreLaugh With Me
Life is serious. You might die.
Uh. Yeah? I guess so.
My dear mother gave me one gift that has been more valuable to me than anything I know or can imagine. She taught me to laugh at myself.
It's easy to laugh at other people or at situations that …
read moreThe Necessity of Failure
If you haven't noticed, in spite of what some folks would like to believe, we are not all the same.
We are not all the same height. We are not all the same build. We have different smiles, different hair, different tastes.
We do not all make the same first …
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