7 for Sunday

The issue with play structures is that they train you to play only within affordances. When the space that you play in is designed by someone else, you are pushed towards playing only in the ways that they envisioned. A play structure affords a small set of actions, and as a player, you only get…

I first discovered sarcasm as a freshman in college, which I realize makes me a bit of a late bloomer as far as teenagers go. There were certain classmates who seemed to always come across as clever and funny no matter the topic. Over time I noticed there was a simple formula to their contributions…

A million years from now, when alien anthropologists begin gathering evidence about what humans were like, they will definitely want to dig up the Self-help and Spiritual/Religion sections of our bookstores and libraries. There they will find direct evidence of what we yearned for and struggled with. ~ David Cain from, https://www.raptitude.com/2022/07/trying-to-be-more-present-isnt-enough/ For some reason…

Death is a declarative punctuation mark – a period in a life full of commas and semicolons. Death is a full stop, the end of opportunities for the deceased and those who knew them. Death is cruel like that. ~ Hugh Hollowell from, https://www.soverybeautiful.org/if-we-love-we-grieve/ I like the punctuation metaphor. I like the finality of the…

The Wrights’ story shows something more common than we realize: There’s often a big gap between changing the world and convincing people that you changed the world. ~ Morgan Housel from, http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/when-you-change-the-world-and-no-one-notices/ On one hand, we could simply define “changed the world” to be when people have actually noticed, or when the change is wide-spread. On the…

As Marcus stood upon the Stoa Poikile, he would have gazed across the Agora where Socrates once discussed philosophy, and where he was later put on trial, imprisoned, and executed. Beyond the Agora, Marcus would have seen the Temple of Athena known as the Parthenon. At that time a colossal statue of the goddess of…

In recent years I’ve been choosing a touch phrase. The phrases are reminders, intended to cue up a larger train of thought. For 2023 the phrase is “Choose today”. It is inspired by two different quotes, both having withstood the test of time: Stick to what’s in front of you—idea, action, utterance. This is what…

Thank you for reading! I appreciate your time and attention, and I don’t take it for granted. In years past I’ve posted some links to things which I pay for—if I’m not paying for something, then I’m probably the product being sold. So I prefer to pay for things when I can (when I’m able and…

Almost fifty years after it was detected, the Wow! Signal continues to tantalize and defy explanation. […] In 2020, interest in this candidate [extra-terrestrial intelligence] signal was revitalized when Cabellaro identified a Sun-like star in the vicinity of the sky where the Wow! Signal was detected. If the analysis is correct, this famous signal may…

The future of functional fitness is an evolution into functional movement. We see this already in the explosion of more complex movement practices like parkour happening all over the world and being adopted slowly by the mainstream fitness world. Organisms are not machines, and the era of training them like machines will give way to…