Welcome back, after a long hiatus, to TEDification Wednesday. Amongst all the other good reasons to listen to TED presenters is that they don't typically get to be TED presenters by being stupid, uninsightful, or unsuccessful....   (read more)

Pleasingly reminiscent of the Notebooks of Lazarus Long....   (read more)

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This four-minute TED talk is totally lovely (plus funny and wise). Everyone likes firefighters....   (read more)

When she had last been around this group, they had all been full of optimism and excitement and initiative and self-confidence. Now, they had been out in what we call the real world for three years. And all of that was just gone....   (read more)

It occurs to me today that perhaps the proper antidote to the Existenial Outlook is to regard life instead as an opportunity....   (read more)

With a hat tip to Andrew Sullivan, here are Christopher Hitchens's Ten Commandments Reimagined....   (read more)

An amateur novelist doesn't think he's done until his book is under a cover and piled on display tables across the land. Why do these people think this is likely to happen? Moreover, why do they imagine that it will be a rapturous, fulfilling, life-changing event if it does?...   (read more)

"The effortful shepherding of one's confusion and faint nausea, which I assumed was the basic existential package, turns out to have been a temporary condition." - Martin Amis...   (read more)

Would someone please let me in on the secret to happiness? And the Answers are . . . :...   (read more)

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How many times do you really face a choice in life? How many times will you get the benefit of arriving at a crossroads, where you don't have to fight the tug of rolling inertia, and your choice isn't going to hurt someone you love?...   (read more)

The hop from Amboseli to Nairobi was painless, and our quick drive-by of downtown Nairobi tended to underscore why we weren't being dropped off in the city proper. Lamentably, these days, Nairobi is literally one of the most dangerous and crime-ridden cities on the planet. ...   (read more)

Michael, Welcome to the world of the properly-shorn, ya hippie bitch! "Razor's Edge" is *obviously* a reference to your deeply-seated homoerotic bald-head attraction. :)...   (read more)

Oh, Yeah, and What Exactly Am I Doing Anyway? (aka THE SCOOP): I'm closing out my apartment, putting all my stuff in storage, bidding the Bay Area adieu, and flying Back East...   (read more)

Sunday evening, and swinging by Walgreens I picked up: * A new, black, 200-page, 5.5x3.5 Mead "Fat 'Lil Notebook." * Another $3.99 chrono sports watch, with alarm! Yeah! These are two of the top pieces of gear that got me through Europe last year....   (read more)