Fred Yankowski

"A few lucky men are at the top of society and enjoy the culture’s best rewards. Others, less fortunate, have their lives chewed up by it. Culture uses both men and women, but most cultures use them in somewhat different ways. Most cultures see individual men as more expendable than individual women, and this difference is probably based on nature, in whose reproductive competition some men are the big losers and other men are the biggest winners. Hence it uses men for the many risky jobs it has." "What seems to have worked best for cultures is to play off the men against each other, competing for respect and other rewards that end up distributed very unequally." "The essence of how culture uses men depends on a basic social insecurity. This insecurity is in fact social, existential, and biological. Built into the male role is the danger of not being good enough to be accepted and respected and even the danger of not being able to do well enough to create offspring." - Fred Yankowski

"WEIRD [Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic] people, the UBC researchers argue, have unusual ideas of fairness, are more individualistic and less conformist than other people. In many of these respects, Americans are the most "extreme" Westerners, especially young ones. And educated Americans are even more extremely WEIRD than uneducated ones." In the Ultimatum game, "WEIRD" people tend to offer nearly-even splits and reject uneven splits. Others are unlikely to reject even the most unbalanced splits. That is, fair splits are more important to the WEIRD. - Fred Yankowski

"Now that family life is in turmoil, reinvigorating our notion of friendship—to mean something more than mere familiarity—could help fill some of the void left by disintegrating household arrangements and social connections frayed by the stubborn individualism of our times." - Fred Yankowski

"Contrary to the Machiavellian cliché, nice people are more likely to rise to power. Then something strange happens: Authority atrophies the very talents that got them there." - Fred Yankowski

"“Great scientists tolerate ambiguity very well,” Hamming says. “They believe the theory enough to go ahead; [but] they doubt it enough to notice the errors and faults so they can step forward and create the new replacement theory.” This is perhaps the most important advice from among Hamming’s many suggestions. The path to excellence requires this balance between confidence and doubt, and though this balance is challenging, it’s tractable so long as your recognize what you’re facing. " - Fred Yankowski

Describes some health hazards related to the working conditions of many programmers and recommends some ways to avoid them. - Fred Yankowski

A relatively short list of useful knots for different situations. - Fred Yankowski

Beware: 1. Comforting yourself with a "treat". 2. Letting yourself off the hook. (e.g., skipping exercise) 3. Retreating to your sofa. 4. Expressing your negative emotions. 5. Staying in your pajamas all day. - Fred Yankowski

An essay by David Brooks about moral naturalism. "Moral naturalists, on the other hand, believe that we have moral sentiments that have emerged from a long history of relationships. To learn about morality, you don’t rely upon revelation or metaphysics; you observe people as they live." " Their [the "moral naturalists"] implied description of the moral life is gentle, fair and grounded. But it is all lower case. So far, at least, it might not satisfy those who want their morality to be awesome, formidable, transcendent or great. " - Fred Yankowski

Pleasure, passion, and purpose. - Fred Yankowski

" Eagleman-the-scientist would love to rev up his high-tech neuroimaging machines to answer the enduring questions about the brain and the mind, the body and the soul. But Eagleman-the-writer knows that those machines aren’t going to answer those questions. Eagleman rejects not only conventional religion but also the labels of agnostic and atheist. In their place, he has coined the term possibilian: a word to describe those who “celebrate the vastness of our ignorance, are unwilling to commit to any particular made-up story, and take pleasure in entertaining multiple hypotheses.” " - Fred Yankowski

"The power of this new view of stress--that our physical health is strongly linked to our emotional state--is that it connects a wide range of scientific observations, from the sociological to the molecular. On one hand, stress can be described as a cultural condition, a byproduct of a society that leaves some people in a permanent state of stress. But that feeling can also be measured in the blood and urine, quantified in terms of glucocorticoids and norepinephrine and adrenal hormones. And now we can see, with scary precision, the devastating cascade unleashed by these chemicals. The end result is that stress is finally being recognized as a critical risk factor, predicting an ever larger percentage of health outcomes." - Fred Yankowski

Clayton Christensen writes to the class of 2010 at Harvard. Create a strategy for your life. Clear purpose. Allocate your resources toward what matters most. Create a culture. Build habit of right choices. Avoid "marginal costs" mistake. Hold to principles; avoid "just this once". Remember the importance of humility. Learn from all. Choose the right yardstick. Individuals you've helped become better people. - Fred Yankowski

"four different experiments show that activating good-luck-related superstitions via a common saying or action (e.g., “break a leg,” keeping one’s fingers crossed) or a lucky charm improves subsequent performance in golfing, motor dexterity, memory, and anagram games. Furthermore, they demonstrate that these performance benefits are produced by changes in perceived self-efficacy. " - Fred Yankowski

"Setting your mind on a goal may be counterproductive. Instead think of the future as an open question." - Fred Yankowski

Jeff Bezos' remarks concerning choices. "I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made. In the end, we are our choices. Build yourself a great story. Thank you and good luck! " - Fred Yankowski

Mark Bittman briefly describes 101 grilling recipes. - Fred Yankowski

Roundabout discussion about flow and happiness. "What to do to be happy and complex?? Try to practice skill in everything you do; when you do anything, give it your complete attention, and try to do it as best as you can. This even includes walking down the street. And I really recommend you read Flow." - Fred Yankowski

"If I were given carte blanche to write about any topic I could, it would be about how much our ignorance, in general, shapes our lives in ways we do not know about. Put simply, people tend to do what they know and fail to do that which they have no conception of. In that way, ignorance profoundly channels the course we take in life. And unknown unknowns constitute a grand swath of everybody’s field of ignorance." - Fred Yankowski

"You might lose some skin, you might start wearing some black and blue marks. But you don't give up. You keep hustling. You might not even win the game every time. You might not even make the play in the end. But you don't give up because you're scared. And you don't give up because you're lazy. You're gonna feel good playing." - Fred Yankowski

Describes some lessons from Galway's "Inner Game of Tennis" book. - Fred Yankowski

"It’s not insufficient schooling or a shortage of scientists. It’s a lack of job opportunities. Americans need the reasonable hope that spending their youth preparing to do science will provide a satisfactory career." - Fred Yankowski

Lengthy essay about social capital: "we examine its nature, some of the issues surrounding its use, and its significance for educators." - Fred Yankowski

Shows samples of "powerful" data visualization techniques. - Fred Yankowski

You procrastinate. You underestimate your goal. You spend more time defending your problems than taking action. You're too enclosed in your own world. You're not working smart. Avoidance (fear). You're easily distracted. You over-complicate situations. You give up too easily. You lose sight of your goals. You're too stuck in your ways. - Fred Yankowski

Some tips for avoiding clutter, and dispensing with clutter. In particular, if you find something you'd forgotten about, you probably don't need it. - Fred Yankowski

Links to various lifehacker articles about setting up XMBC. - Fred Yankowski