A Very Certain Life

What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite by David Di Salvo

My rating: 3 of 5 stars




Cool words and phrases I got from this book

problematic memes

the pleasure of certainty

framing bias

confirmation bias

amygdalae

the need for cognitive closure

embodied cognition

the zeigarnik effort

I just need to go through my bookmarks and dog ears to remind myself what they mean.

A nice book that basically says in our human desire for certainty we will bend, change, morph our thinking to avoid being uncomfortable or acknowledge ambiguity or uncertainty.

That would explain things.

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A Graphic Life

The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I happen to visit a comic book store today and bought this knowing only that Jonathan Ames wrote the series Bored to Death.

Engaging but perhaps a little predictable. His drinking led him from bad to worse as one tends to expect with this sort of story. Still, a good example of a graphic autobiography. And the artwork by Dean Haspiel fits wonderfully.



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The Path Taken After Work

I ended up skipping class to ride my bike. I went up White Rock Trail and then onto part of The Cottonwood Trail that eventually goes to Richardson. It took a lot out of me but I finally got to see the trail thread through the north Dallas High 5 traffic ramps.

Along the way I snapped a few photos and while preparing them to post I accidentally saved two with the wrong orientation and felt they looked way better than the intended view.

The one below threw me when I first looked at it since I couldn't figure out what was wrong. I honestly didn't know what these things floating in the air were. Of course I had the water reflection at top and the sky on the bottom... I wish I had thought of that myself.

Aimless Aim

Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A slim book with some really wonderful insights, but the good stuff takes up less that half of the tale. The parts where he simply describes himself learning Japanese archery and what the teacher told him are really, really great.

I especially like this...

"The right art," cried the master, "is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will receed."


But whenever he tries to go beyond that it just seems a bit pretentious.

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