Category: Personal

  • On Meditation: a tweet drizzle in 11 brief parts

    On meditation: a tweet drizzle (1) #mindful OK, I get it. Morning mediation is important. It creates a shock absorber in my head for the day to come, gives me resources. (2) #mindful The chattering monkeys and skittering spiders of my thoughts need taming, stilling, calming, tranquilizing (3) #mindful Inner peace is probably beyond me,…

  • The Problem with More: Coca-Cola, Electric Cars, Email, Facebook and Satisfaction

    I Pac-Man chomp my way through many articles each week, digesting most with a tiny burp and leaving them to the brass-knuckled mercies of memory.  Yet two recent pieces have stuck with me: Matt Richtel’s October 10th piece in the New York Times, “In California, Electric Cars Outpace Plugs, and Sparks Fly” and Roberto A.…

  • Notes from Bergen 4: the world is less virtual than we think

    It’s 8:30am as I begin writing this post.  Just minutes ago Kathi and our son trotted off towards the University of Bergen, where she’ll drop him off for his last day at Nygard Skole — the Norwegian immersion program he’s attended this year — before going to her last day at the University.  My daughter…

  • Daniel Kahneman kicks my ass, or Reading Fast and Slow

    Like Moe, the schoolyard bully in Calvin & Hobbes, Daniel Kahneman has taken away my cognitive lunch money for the last four years.  To be clear, it isn’t the 81-year-old Nobel laureate himself: it’s his best-selling 2011 book Thinking Fast and Slow. Let me back up. I read fiction quickly, sometimes gobbling up a novel…

  • “Change Your Life” Productivity Apps & How to Use Them— Updated!

    I first wrote about the suite of applications, services, products and gadgets I use to keep my head above water almost three years ago.  In the intervening time things have changed (Smartr/Xobni, for example, has gone away), hence this fresh list. Here are my 14 “Change Your Life” apps and how I use them. Please…

  • Vonage = a Practical Tip when Moving Abroad (Notes from Bergen)

    From the “Department of Things I Wish I’d Taken Care of Faster” Department… Executive Summary of this post: if you’re moving out of your home country, then get a VOIP line that lets your relatives call as if you’re down the street. The Story: Before we left Oregon at the end of last summer for…

  • Thanks to the Kindest of Strangers

    Dear Reader, please help me get this post to Charlie, my hat rescuer, so that he knows how grateful I am. The Story: If you’ve seen me or photos of me the last few years, then chances are you’ve seen me wearing this cap: The cap is from the Goorin Bros shop on NW23rd Street  in Portland,…

  • Notes from Bergen 3: Paternal Victories

    “Dad,” my teenager daughter asked one recent morning as she picked her way through over-easy eggs, seedy toast and Earl Grey tea. “What have you eaten for breakfast?” At a quick scan it’s an innocuous question, but down, deep down, subterranean with stalactites, a parenting victory glints in dim light. Here’s what I mean. This year…

  • Pragmatics: you can only walk through one door at a time

    Sharon washed up at the table next to me during a post-conference dinner here in Bergen and opened up over beer and reindeer steaks. She’s a bright young woman about to finish a Masters in finance and economics who doesn’t know how to approach the post-graduation void. Sharon started reeling off different directions and opportunities,…

  • Against Disruption: Louis Menand, Douglas Adams, Books and Technology

    Have you ever smacked into a glass door when you didn’t realize it was closed?  I have.  It hurts.  The intersection of my face and a glass door happened at my great aunt’s tiny desert house in the 80s, where the mix of a trick of the sunlight and my distracted boyhood mind made the…