Bertrand Russell's Three Passions

Quote of the Day;

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair....

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

via Information Processing

Contemplating the Meaning of Life

The Big Picture on Ramadan

Exlporing one's spirituality

Advice of the Day-

For me, having a clear purpose in my life has been essential. But it was something I had to think long and hard about before I understood it. When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra year’s worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasn’t studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life.

Had I instead spent that hour each day learning the latest techniques for mastering the problems of autocorrelation in regression analysis, I would have badly misspent my life. I apply the tools of econometrics a few times a year, but I apply my knowledge of the purpose of my life every day. It’s the single most useful thing I’ve ever learned. I promise my students that if they take the time to figure out their life purpose, they’ll look back on it as the most important thing they discovered at HBS. If they don’t figure it out, they will just sail off without a rudder and get buffeted in the very rough seas of life. Clarity about their purpose will trump knowledge of activity-based costing, balanced scorecards, core competence, disruptive innovation, the four Ps, and the five forces.

Related:
The Summoned Self

In plotting out a personal and spiritual life, he applies the models and theories he developed as a strategist. He emphasizes finding the right metrics, efficiently allocating resources and thinking about marginal costs.

Clayton Christensen's Purpose-Driven Life

Gratitude Journal- Be Grateful that you can read

After Howard Engel (author of 12 best-selling mystery novels featuring his beloved detective, Benny Cooperman) realized that he couldn't make out the printed word that summer morning in 2001, he took himself off to the Emergency Room of his local hospital where the doctors diagnosed his condition as "alexia sine agraphia" (which came about owing to a stroke that he had suffered). A person with alexia can write without difficulty but will no longer be able to read what he writes. This was almost impossible for Engels to accept, after all, he had always been a reader, his brain was hard-wired to read "...I could no more stop reading than I could stop my heart. Reading was bone and marrow, lymph and blood to me", besides, he made his living writing, if he couldn't read what he wrote, how would he make his living?

via Lotus Reads

I Wish Your Wish

Creativity Link of the Day- I Wish Your Wish

Advice of the Day

Be grateful. Yes, I often hear from people that they are tired of being admonished to be grateful. It’s no wonder there is a sort of societal “gratitude fatigue” given how much press this concept have received in self-help literature over the past ten years or so. However, there’s a good reason why this advice persists not just from modern authors, but also from the earliest philosophers and religious writers. It works. Gratitude for what one has in their life is a critical part of contentment. Without gratitude, contentment will always be elusive. The results of the first major study on the efficacy of gratitude for cultivating contentment and happiness is presented in a recent book, Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier, by Robert A. Emmons. He is a big proponent of gratitude journaling, recommending that writing out a few items for which we’re grateful every day will help instill a “grateful heart” and contribute to us “loving what we have.”

via Smaller Living

Grattitude Journal- Lets be grateful we are not deaf

8 Month Old Deaf Baby's Reaction To Cochlear Implant Being Activated

via David Henderson

“The meaning of life is that it ends”- Kafka

Just finished reading the book 'How Doctors Think' by Jerome Groopman.

Came across two moving stories from the NYT- I recommend the book to every one.

Floyd Norris talks about his cancer treatment.

I am undergoing radiation and drug treatment for cancer.

The drug is Erbitux, which at least is something I had heard about. (You may recall that was the drug involved in the Martha Stewart lying-to-the-S.E.C. case.) It has made my face look worse than anyone’s face ever looked when I was in high school.

I know that it is not news that radiation treatment can be miserable. I did not do all the homework I could have done, so perhaps I should have been better prepared.

But the pain involved is more than I have ever experienced. It is virtually impossible for me to eat. I am losing weight at an impressive rate, to the dismay of the radiation doctor. I have little energy, which is probably both because of the radiation directly and because of the lack of nutrition...

It is not fun, but it has been inspiring. In a way, I am happier about my life than at any time I can remember. Clint Eastwood once asked, “Do you feel lucky?” My answer is a shouted yes...

I am 62, and have had the honor of being a financial columnist here for more than 20 years. I have been happily married for 26 years, and last Friday saw our son graduate from high school. He will be attending an excellent college in the fall.

I hope to have a lot more years. But I’ve had a lot already, and they have been better than a lot of people have any reason to hope for. I am grateful.

A Scare, a Scar, a Silver Lining;

This is trite but also so, so true: A brush with mortality turns out to be the best way to appreciate how blue the sky is, how sensuous grass feels underfoot, how melodious kids’ voices are. Even teenagers’ voices. A friend and colleague, David E. Sanger, who conquered cancer a decade ago, says, “No matter how bad a day you’re having, you say to yourself: ‘I’ve had worse.’ ”

Related:
My surprising inspiration (death!)

Why humans sing?

According to David Attenborough;

It's tempting to think that human beings very early in their history used music in a similar way. And there can be little question that a male with a good singing voice in our own society today is still a source of sexual attraction and excitement. What else is a serenade? Watch a pop concert! And just as among the great reed warblers, quality counts. Females have been selecting males with a versatile larynx since way back in our ancestry.

Today young men sing together to generate camaraderie, and religious people use song to generate the deepest and most profound emotions among themselves and their listeners. But the prime function of song is something else. Shakespeare wondered if music was the food of love. Well, vocally at least, it certainly was. And what is more, it still is.

Be sure to check our Carnival of Podcasts.

Eat, Pray Love

Elizabeth Gilbert at Google

Ancient Wisdom and Modern Solutions

Ancient Wisdom and Modern Solutions

Charter for Compassion

Charter for Compassion

Weekend reading

Carl Jung and The Holy Grail of the Unconscious;

Some people feel that nobody should read the book, and some feel that everybody should read it. The truth is, nobody really knows. Most of what has been said about the book — what it is, what it means — is the product of guesswork, because from the time it was begun in 1914 in a smallish town in Switzerland, it seems that only about two dozen people have managed to read or even have much of a look at it.

The rapture of the geeks?

Truly said, 'Death makes strange even the most rational of minds';

Using technology, he plans to bring his dead father back to life. Kurzweil reveals this to me near the end of our conversation ... In a soft voice, he explains how the resurrection would work. "We can find some of his DNA around his grave site - that's a lot of information right there," he says. "The AI will send down some nanobots and get some bone or teeth and extract some DNA and put it all together. Then they'll get some information from my brain and anyone else who still remembers him."

When I ask how exactly they'll extract the knowledge from his brain, Kurzweil bristles, as if the answer should be obvious: "Just send nanobots into my brain and reconstruct my recollections and memories." The machines will capture everything: the piggyback ride to the grocery store, the bedtime reading of Tom Swift, the moment he and his father rejoiced when the letter of acceptance from MIT arrived. To provide the nanobots with even more information, Kurzweil is safeguarding the boxes of his dad's mementos, so the artificial intelligence has as much data as possible from which to reconstruct him. Father 2.0 could take many forms, he says, from a virtual-reality avatar to a fully functioning robot ... "If you can bring back life that was valuable in the past, it should be valuable in the future."

The Corruption of Intentions

Ramadan Overeating Danger

Ramadan Mubarik to all Muslims

Photo: NYT

Photography connects us with the world

The Gift of Time

The Gift of Time-Letters from a Father
By Jorge Ramos

Book recommendation

My Stroke of Insight

The Last Lecture

Professor Aimed 'Last Lecture' At His Children ... and Inspired Millions
The Online Legacy of Professor Pausch