Those OnBoard

About the series: Not Being Miserable is my ultimate goal, and I’ll do whatever it takes to achieve it. All other goals are pursued solely for the purpose of serving the needs of this ultimate goal. This series catalogs various insights I have in this area. Please excuse the mind-diarrhea.

Part 3: When work isn’t work.

“Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” In other words, if you find something that you like doing (it engages and challenges you) and you manage to earn a living doing it, you’ll be very fortunate indeed. Of course, it’s easier said than done. Nevertheless, that is my goal. I want to be able to say what this guy said in an article:

A couple of days ago, as I sat in a park in New Orleans with a friend and her son, I was checking my email only to have my friend, who is also an academic, turn to me and say, “Do you ever stop thinking about work?” As I thought about how to answer that question seriously, I realized that it was based on a flawed premise: that I perceive what I do as “work.” That’s not the way it feels. I answered, “In some sense, no, I don’t ever stop thinking about ‘work.’ But what I do does not feel like work. It’s a calling.

–Steven Horwitz

Good luck.

I took a break from reading The God Delusion, flipped on the radio, and heard a familiar voice; Richard Dawkins was talking to conservative radio talk show host Dennis Prager about his latest book that just came out The Greatest Show On Earth.  Soldier on, Dawkins.  Soldier on.

Here’s the quiz:  http://pewresearch.org/sciencequiz/quiz/

Here’s the article:  http://pewresearch.org/sciencequiz/

About the series: Not Being Miserable is my ultimate goal, and I’ll do whatever it takes to achieve it. All other goals are pursued solely for the purpose of serving the needs of this ultimate goal. This series catalogs various insights I have in this area. Please excuse the mind-diarrhea.

Part 2

I’m currently reading the book Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi (pronounced CHICK-sent-me-high-ee) where he examines the question of what makes a good life.  I’m not very far into it but it’s already very interesting and pertinent.  Check out these excerpts; you can view them in-page or download the PDF here: Finding Flow Excerpts pp. 18-22; 36; 41-43

Here’s an open letter I wrote to the Physical Sciences department at Santa Monica College.  I was enraged but I managed to refrain from dropping F bombs all over their asses.  Make sure you watch the video; just be ready for a cold shower because you’re blood is going to boil.

I’m compelled to bring to your attention an upsetting matter:  Bear with me for just a moment.  “The Story Of Stuff” ( storyofstuff.com ) is a so-called documentary that expresses the all-too-familiar opinion that capitalism and America are evil.  It purports to explain the chain of production and it’s effects on the environment, but it also spills over into the the arena of politics and economics. It makes so many arguable statements, exaggerations, and even outright falsehoods that one could spend hours discussing all the misinformation it contains.

This is not new.  Having graduated from college, I am accustomed to having liberal arts professors use their classrooms as podiums to spout their political and social opinions.  What is the shocking news here?  This video, “The Story Of Stuff,” is part of the required coursework in a college biology class!  This is a perversion of an institution of higher learning.  This video does not belong in a biology course!  This professor should not be allowed to get away with this.

Sincerely,

Jay
Los Angeles, CA

P.S. Here are the specifics on the class.

School: Santa Monica College (Santa Monica, CA)
Course:  BIOL 2, Human Biology
Instructor: Jacki L. Houghton
Term: Fall 2009

I’m not deluding myself into thinking that anything will be done about this.  It just depresses me that even science, which I thought was the last bastion of critical thinking left in colleges, is polluted with vile indoctrination.  Et tu, Brute?

About the series: Not Being Miserable is my ultimate goal, and I’ll do whatever it takes to achieve it.  All other goals are pursued solely for the purpose of serving the needs of this ultimate goal.  This series catalogs various insights I have in this area.  Please excuse the mind-diarrhea.

Part 1

What do I need to do to be satisfied?  Tough question.  One of the things you learn as you gain wisdom is that many things are  too complex to be accurately expressed in simple terms.  But inasmuch as it’s possible to sum things up in a word, my latest answer to that question is this:  Create.

Start small.  Begin cataloging your thoughts, insights, musings, ideas, etc.  Write.  Record.  Draw.  Design.  Audio, video, graphics, text, web.  If you look at the careers of people who’ve created something that you find respectable, you’ll usually notice that they’ve been expressing themselves in various forms for some time.  They may have shifted from one form to another as their careers (I hate that word) took them from one medium to another.  For example, a comedian may have in their body of work various books, audio, articles, blogs, stand-up routines, podcasts, radio shows, etc.  At first glance a radio talk show host may seem to have little in common with a stand-up comedian or the author of a book.  But one person could do all three things.  They’re all just different methods of getting their creation out of their brain and into a tangible medium that can be utilized by others.

Don’t forget that creating doesn’t have to be artsy fartsy.  A scientist who expresses a new idea or research findings is creating.  The key is that rather than managing something that’s already there, you’re generating something new with your brain (which certainly includes synthesizing existing stuff).

Now get out there and live, damn it.

If you want your username to appear with the proper capitalization (e.g. JayAaroBe instead of jayaarobe), here’s how you do it:

Once logged in, notice the admin bar going across the top of the page.  Point your mouse to the admin bar’s top-left section where it says “My Account.”  Then click on “Edit Profile.”

Now scroll down and find the box that says “Nickname (required)” and type your name in as you want it to appear.

Now scroll all the way to the bottom and click “Update Profile.”  Done!

You may notice the overall look of the site change several times.  This is because I’m experimenting with the best “theme.”  I’ve narrowed the list of themes down to those which display the author’s name for each article posted (which is important on a multi-author site).

My goal is to decide on one soon and stick with it because I think it’s important for the site’s look to remain at least somewhat consistent.  Feel free to make suggestions.

Everyone should try out Linux (the operating system) at some point.

Screenshot of Xubuntu with Firefox running.

For those who are unaware, Linux is the operating system (OS) of choice for heaving duty IT work, tech savvy people, and anyone who needs reliability and security.

I recently installed Linux on my secondary laptop, specifically the version of Linux called Xubuntu (pronounced ex-ooh-boon-too).  It’s lightweight & fast, has everything you need, it’s interface is similar to that of Windows so it’ll be very familiar to you, plus it’s free!

You can even test it out on your Windows computer without installing it;  it has a mode where you can try it out; it temporarily runs itself side-by-side by Windows without messing up your Windows installation in any way.  When you’re done, you simply reboot and there’s no record of Linux having ever been on your computer.

Try it with one click: Wubi is a program that will download and run it for you.  Once it’s installing, I recommend selecting Xubuntu (it’s more lightweight and faster than Ubuntu or Kubuntu; but basically all 3 are pretty much the same version of Linux).