So, since my old device was biting the dust and completely untrustworthy, I now have a new one for typing these posts on and it has sound which the old one did not and hadn’t had for probably a year or more. I’m having a horribly hard time not listening to lectures on YouTube all day — because I LOVE learning new things — and have been trying to convince myself all day that I was hunting for inspiration for writing. The most recent one is a lecture by Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky about behavioral evolution — God only knows now how I got to him, but when I saw him pop up in the “recommended for you” section, I jumped on it — and his was after several others.
I watched a documentary about him, Dr. Sapolsky, years ago and his work with primates and found him irresistibly fascinating. He is a very engaging speaker and I simply couldn’t resist a Stanford University-level education series — the link is for the second part and it goes on and on — I will likely watch them all. And they’re free of commercials!
Of course, one thing leads to another and as he was outlining what his course would entail in the first lecture, part 1, he brought up required reading and one book was Chaos by James Gleick. He went on to state that some percentage of people who read it will have a life-changing experience and will have no use for meditation thereafter due to the mind-altering experience they will have. I found that so compelling that I ordered a copy of the book. Not willing to risk mushrooms or other psychedelic inducements and still not disciplined enough to try meditation or yoga, I’m looking forward greatly to the hope I have for this book to enlighten me.
And it didn’t stop there because somewhere in this second part he brought up the question of whether or not there is an advantage to madness. That was beyond my resistance so I typed the question into my browser and came to a sight called LessWrong that is jam packed with information about thinking — “improving reasoning and decision making” — right up my alley.
You must be able to see where I’m going with this by now. The best I think I can do for today — since it’s quickly approaching 12 pm, (even though there are a couple of drafts left incomplete before this that didn’t meet with my own expectations) — is a confessional of sorts and this post is it.
Tomorrow’s another day (for watching lectures??)
Writing Spool 