Winners & Losers

For Father's Day, my sister-in-law HG gave me a book called winner & losers by Sydney Harris. Published in 1973, the book is a collection of observations regarding the contrast between winner and losers. Examples include:

A winner
makes commitments;
a loser
makes promises.

A winner
isn't nearly as afraid
of losing
as a loser
is secretly
afraid of winning.

A winner listens;
a loser just waits
until it's his turn
to talk.

You get the point. It's a quick, interesting read but hard to turn the sayings into action. But the book could be a good source of quotes and/or inspiration in the future. Thanks, HG, for the gift.

Einstein and the Mind of God

I was reading through a different blog the other night as well - Potomac Current. Interestingly, it's written by a woman who lives in the D.C. area - where I grew up. Anyway, she had a good post called "Global Warming: Who Should We Believe?". But the one I really liked was called "Einstein and the Mind of God" - the best excerpts here:

There are those who believe that it strains credulity to think that Einstein would have thought in terms of the "mind of God." These observers disparage such a thought as a religious anthropomorphism of the kind that Albert Einstein criticized and abhorred. The truth about Einstein, however, is more subtle and more intriguing, as the truth often stubbornly insists on being. In fact, Einstein famously said that his entire effort in physics was in order to know the mind of God. Einstein, to be sure, also said that he did not believe in a personal God in the traditional sense and was interested in design rather than theology. He saw true religiosity as knowing that "what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms." When he was close to death, Einstein said, "I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details." Clearly, although he was not orthodox, he had no qualms about using religious phraseology to evoke the wisdom and beauty of the universe that is beyond measure ... [We should] teach children by example to respect both science, as the study of the measurable aspects of the universe for which we have physical evidence, and spirituality, as the appreciation of the awe, mystery, and meaning that lie beyond the grasp of our limited instruments and dull faculties.

I actually don't think science and religion are incompatible. The more I learn about the elegance math and science, the more I appreciate God. And even though you can't definitively prove or disprove the existence or nature of God (as you could with the validity of a scientific hypothesis), I don't think it diminishes religion or the role it can play in our lives. You can't definitively prove or disprove how someone is feeling, but it doesn't invalidate the existence or legitamacy of those feelings. It's just different from your traditional scientific inquiry.

Stress management

I was browsing through blogs the other night. It's fascinating to see what other people write about in their blogs. One of the blogs I came across is called Master P and had a good post on stress management. I've copied it here for convenience:

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "How heavy is this glass of water?"

Answers called out ranged from 20 g to 500 g. The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it."

"If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

He continued. "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden."

"So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can. Relax; pick them up later after you've rested. Life is short. Enjoy it!"

I need to remember this more often. And I could certainly use a vacation at the moment. Now that my nanotechnology class is over, hopefully I'll be able to (and allow myself to) take things a little easier for a couple weeks.

Global warming heating up

Activity around global warming is really heating up (pun intended). Over the weekend, I read an article from the Discovery Channel regarding a new report from the National Academy of Sciences saying that "recent warmth is unprecedented for at least the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia" and that "human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming." No big surprise there but good to see that Congress requested such a report be generated. Today, I read an article in CNN.com regarding a case that the Supreme Court has agreed to take on - considering whether the Bush administration must regulate carbon dioxide to combat global warming (setting up what could be one of the court's most important decisions on the environment). It will certainly be interesting to see how that case unfolds.

fat2phat: Week 4 results

Weight can be such a random thing sometimes. That's why a friend of mine recommended focusing my goals around things that I control (frequency of workouts, quality of eating) than things I don't control (what the scale says). This week, I failed on the things I control - I ate poorly and didn't workout - but I succeeded on the thing I don't control - when I weighed myself this morning, I was 203.2 pounds and 19.9% body fat (down almost a pound and a half from last week).

Killing dragons

Last Sunday was Father's Day. In explorefaith.org, I read an interesting essay entitled "A Father's Day Card From My Son". This was the most relevant excerpt for me:

A few years ago, I received a Father’s Day card from my son Tim. On the front of it was a picture of a little boy sitting up in bed. Terror was written on his face. His hair was standing straight up, and the card said, "Dad, I want to thank you."

Well, I wondered, a Father’s Day card with this boy terrorized, had I done that to my son?
I opened the card up and it said, "I want to thank you for helping me kill all the dragons of my mind so I could go out and fight the real ones."

You know, we all have our dragons of the mind. My old professor, Conrad Sommers, the psychiatrist whom I trained under in St. Louis, said, "There are five drivers that get in the saddle and drive us. They’ve got spurs on their boots and they kick us, and all of our emotional miseries come from being dominated by one of those drivers."

Here are the drivers he listed: Be perfect. Please everybody. Try harder. Be strong. Hurry up. Have you got any of those driving you? At one time, I had them all.

These dragons of the mind keep us from going and fighting the real ones. They keep us from living in our humanity or experiencing God’s grace, and they certainly keep us from the joy of growth. We can’t take time to grow. We have to do it now. We’re driven by pleasing everybody and doing everything perfect. These are dragons of the mind.

Right now, I'd say all five dragons are driving me - especially "hurry up". With all the stuff I'm reading on global warming and nanotechnology, I'm quite eager to start doing something about it in a major way sooner than later. That's not realistic or prudent on a couple of different levels but it still really bugs me that I'm not going faster on all this. I was talking to someone about this the other day and made the observation that it's taken me 14 years (perhaps longer) to get to where I am in my current field (including four years of college study). So it's not surprising that it might take longer than 3 months to make the jump to an entirely different field. My rationale mind knows that but my irrational heart doesn't want to hear excuses. It wants action and it wants it now.

Collective Good

I just read about a cool service called Collective Good that recycles spare mobile phones, pagers, and PDAs. As this TerraBlog entry points out, this is valuable for a couple of important reasons:

• Recycling reduces waste. There are about 200 million mobile phone users in the US, and they replace their cell phones every 18 months. This adds up to about 130 million surplus cell phones per year, weighing about 65,000 tons. The cumulative total of retired mobile phones in the US is about 600 million and growing.


• If not recycled, these cell phones will end up in landfills, where they may leach toxic materials such as mercury and lead.


• Cell phones contain precious metals such as gold. Reclaiming these metals reduces pressure for environmentally destructive mining.

The intriguing thing to me is that Collective Good pays people for the used devices by making charitable donations or giving people content (like ringtones). That's the real trick in my mind around programs like this or solutions to global warming in general - giving people an economic incentive to do the right thing. Perhaps that's where I'll be able to do my part over time - coming up with good business models that are also environmentally sound.

fat2phat: Week 3 results

I did my week 3 weigh-in earlier this week for fat2phat but didn't have time to post the results. I was 204.6 pounds and 20% body fat - so basically no change from the prior week. I started off the week really well but things have gone downhill since then - mostly due to lots of eating out. It will be interesting to see what my week 4 results are in a couple of days.

All look same?

Last week, I did an online test to see if I could accurately identify people who are Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. I'm sad to say I only correctly identified 6 out of 18 of the people. My brother got 10 out of 18 correct. The overall average is 7. I'm actually pretty embarassed by how poorly I did. In a world that's becoming more global by the moment, it's unfortunate that I'm not more culturally aware or more proficient in other languages. I suppose I could devote a bunch of time to improving in this area but it's all a balancing act - and, honestly, right now this isn't a priority for me. But it is important to acknowledge it's a deficiency and potential blind-spot for the future. Hopefully others in my life can balance this out for me.

The perfect problem

I just read an interesting article describing global warming as the "perfect problem" for its uniquely daunting confluence of forces:

• complex and inaccessible scientific content


• a substantial (and uncertain) time lag between cause and effect


• inertia in all the key drivers of the problem, from demographic growth to long-lived energy infrastructure to ingrained daily habits at the household level


• psychological barriers that complicate apprehension and processing of the issue, due in part to its perceived remoteness in time and place


• partisan, cultural, and other filters that cause social discounting or obfuscation of the threat


• motivational obstacles, especially the futility associated with what is perhaps the quintessential "collective action problem" of our time


• mismatches between the global, cross-sectoral scope of the climate change issue and the jurisdiction, focus, and capacity of existing institutions


• a set of hard-wired incentives, career and otherwise, that inhibit focused attention and action on the issue

There is a much longer report generated by these top thinkers (see PDF) but I haven't had a chance to read it yet. I guess it's a good thing that my purpose in life is solving complex problems because this one is as complex as they get.

Photosynthesis

I finished my second paper for my nanotechnology class today (download here). The paper is about biomimicry and photosynthesis - how man-made solar cells can benefit from a deeper understanding how nature has perfected photosynthesis over multiple centuries. I was surprised by how intricate it all is. I don't remember it being that complicated when I studied it in high school. At any rate, if you need some bedtime reading, check out the paper and let me know what you think.

Compilations

At the end of JD's preschool year, the teacher asks the parents to do a "compilation" of the year for each child in the class. It was up to the parents to decide what they wanted to do. In my case, I wrote JD a short letter with various photos from the last year as a border:

Dear JD,

You're becoming such a big boy. I love you very much and I'm so happy you're my son. You are kind and gentle. You take care of AJ. You are a great helper for me and Mommy. You are curious and like to try new things. You are creative and confident and do your own thing. You love your family and they love you.

I'm so proud of you and will always love you no matter what.

Love,
Daddy

My wife blew me away by writing a poem for her compilation (available here). I was really impressed with how quickly the poem came together. My wife has some serious talent.

I was commenting to my therapist the other day that I think my personal happiness peaked when I was four years old. Hopefully that won't be the case for JD (and AJ). He's such a wonderful, happy little boy. As he gets older, I really hope he doesn't lose his current joy for life.

Paradox of our times

My accountant sent me an inspirational presentation this morning (download Powerpoint slideshow). I assume it's making its way around the Internet. For those of you who don't want to download the file, here is the message contained in it:

Today we have bigger houses and smaller families
More conveniences , but less time

We Have More degrees, but less common sense
More knowledge , but less judgment

We have more experts, but more problems
More medicine, but less wellness

We spend too recklessly
Laugh too little
Drive too fast
Get to angry too quickly
Stay up too late
Read too little
Watch TV too much
And pray too seldom

We multiplied our possessions, but reduce our values
We talk too much, love too little and lie too often

We’ve learned how to make living, but not a life
We’ve added years to life, not life to years

We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers
Wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints
We spend more, but have less
We buy more, enjoy it less
We’ve been all the way to the moon and back
But have trouble crossing the street to meet our neighbors.
We’ve conquered outer space,
But not inner space
We’ve split the atom
But not our prejudice

We write more, learn less, plan more, but accomplish less
We’ve learn to rush, but not to wait,

We have higher incomes , but lower morals
We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies
But have less communications
We are long on quantity,
But less in quality
These are the time of fast foods and slow digestion
Tall men and short character

More leisure and less fun more kinds of foods but less nutrition
Two incomes but more divorce
Fancier houses but broken homes

That’s why I propose, that as of today, you do not keep anything for special occasion, because every day you live is a special occasion. Search for knowledge, read more, sit on your front porch and admire the view without paying attention to your needs. Spend more time with your family and friends, eat your favorite foods, and visit the places you love. Life is a chain of moment of enjoyment, not only about survival. Use your crystal goblets, do not save your best perfume, and use it every time you feel you want it. Remove from vocabulary phrases like "one of these days" and "someday". Let’s write that letter we thought of writing "one of these days". Let’s tell our families and friends how much we love them. Do not delay anything that adds laughter and joy to your life . Every day, every hour, and every minute is special. And you don’t know if it will be your last.

These are all good things to be reminded of. I do wonder, however, how specific this paradox is to our time versus previous generations. This is the only time I've known. I hear about the "good old days" when life was slower, families were closer, and everything was simpler. But I'm not convinced that's actually true. Every generation has had its challenges. These happen to be ours.

fat2phat: Week 2 results

I did my week 2 weigh-in this morning for fat2phat. I was 204.4 pounds and 19.6% body fat (see updated spreadsheet). So up almost two pounds from last week and up about a pound from the initial weigh-in. Last week, I commented that my weight loss seemed like a fluke. Obviously it was. This past week, I managed to exercise twice (one trip to the gym and one day walking to/from work) but my eating was pretty pathetic. I was definitely in grazing mode a lot. To combat that, I'm going to keep a food log this week. In general, though, I've got to admit that I'm not particularly motivated to lose weight at the moment. There's so much other stuff going on right now that I don't want another thing to worry about.

How can we solve this problem?

It's always interesting to see what will come out of JD's mouth. Recently, he has started calling me on my mobile phone. Today, he called me at work to let me know that he was making a family dinner with my wife and that we needed to have dinner soon. He went on to point out that I was going to need to be at work for a long time. Then he said, "Daddy, how can we solve this problem?" I wasn't quite expecting that question. I ended up saying, "I guess we can solve this problem by me leaving work and coming home for dinner". He seemed to like that answer.

It's amazing to me to see how much of a sponge JD is for stuff like this. The other day, he and AJ were fighting over who would get the Bob the Builder plate for dinner. I asked JD, "you both want this plate ... how can we solve this problem so you can both be happy?" A couple of moments later, JD said "I know, we can take turns with the plate". Problem solved. Apparently JD's preschool teacher uses a similar approach in class. Who knew JD was paying such close attention. Makes me wonder when he's going to repeat something I've said or done that I'm not so proud of.

06/06/06

Yesterday was June 6, 2006 - 06/06/06 - or 666. I just read an interesting article from the Discovery Channel saying that the date (and the number 666) shouldn't be feared. While many believe that 666 is the mark of Satan, Phillips Stevens Jr., associate professor of anthropology at the State University of New York's University at Buffalo, says "the number of the beast" refers to Rome, Roman emperors, and Roman cults of god and emperor-worship - and the despotic emperor Nero in particular. As I've gotten a little more into religion, it's been interesting to see all the things that people think they know about the Bible that either aren't true or could reasonably be interpretted in a number of divergent ways. I suppose that's why there is so much contention over religion.

fat2phat: Week 1 results

I did my week 1 weigh-in this morning for fat2phat. I was 202.8 pounds and 18.7% body fat. So down almost a pound from the initial weigh-in but still 12.8 pounds to my goal. Honestly, I'm a little surprised I lost any weight at all. It seems a little random considering I didn't eat particularly well and I didn't work out. If I have another week like last week, I wouldn't be surprised if I bounce back up to where I was before (or slightly higher).

An Inconvenient Truth: Part 2

A little over a month ago, I did a post regarding Al Gore's new movie "An Inconvient Truth". I went and saw the movie tonight. I also bought Al Gore's new book (of the same name) last weekend. The book actually parallels the movie very closely - and both are based on a presentation that Gore has been refining over a number of years in front of over 1,000 audiences. It's powerful stuff and I'd highly recommend you all check it out. We all need to solve this problem and we don't have much time to do it.