“There is nothing wrong with me. In fact, I’m a very good boy. I do all the math. I separate color and white clothes before laundry. I can tell when a traffic light is red, a floor slippery or a person angry, thus increasing my owner’s probability of survival. And man, do I enjoy all of it! (more…)
When I was in my twenties, I used to go to the movies every weekend with a friend of mine. It would be fair to say that he was the one who taught me the real art of watching films, the art of really considering them and learning from them.
In spite of that, he wasn’t precisely a person of the enthusiastic type, (more…)
It happened the other day. I was having the habitual fast-paced walk that is currently my sport of choice (remind me to recover my skates one of these days), when my way got obstructed by a family group. (more…)
In “Getting Things Done”, David Allen affirms that the size of projects does not matter (for those who are not familiar with the GTD methodology, Allen defines “project” as any desired result that requires more than one simple action-i.e. a “pack” of actions with a defined purpose), and in terms of logic, he is right. Everything in his book is rigorously logic. But it makes me think of certain Zen masters. (more…)
I write this post after having heard this same cliché from the lips of several people, belonging to areas of the academic spectrum that range from illiteracy to PhD. In all cases, it exuded that feeling of filthy simplicity that I hate the most, and it’s my job to eradicate clichés and try to replace them with thinking. Here is the troublemaker: (more…)
If you’re as lucky as me, you’ll have, or you’ll have had this fantastic relative (grandpa, an aunt or uncle maybe) who takes care of you in an almost frenzied manner. A sort of die-hard fan of yours obsessed with (more…)
These reflections come as a consequence of a period using my replacement computer -the regular one had a keyboard problem that the tech service spent ages to fix-. More precisely, they are due to the fact, quite shocking, that, during those days revisiting my old, faithful Compaq Presario 1200, (more…)
In terms of energy consumption, pedantry is an outrage. It could be defined as an inflammation of language in which a lot of resources are invested in saying quite little, sometimes even nothing. (more…)
It is always nice when a science guru ratifies something you had been doing merely by instinct. In “Emotional Intelligence” (chapter 14), Daniel Goleman talks about Jerome Kagan’s research on the effects of overprotective mothers on their children. In short, Kagan’s conclusion is that those mothers of very reactive children who try to protect them in excess (more…)
