Everyone has important things to say, regardless of what paths they take in life, and so everyone can benefit from becoming better writers. Here are some great writing tips from successful entrepreneur and writer Paul Graham:
- write a bad version 1 as fast as you can;
- rewrite it over and over;
- cut everything unnecessary;
- write in a conversational tone;
- develop a nose for bad writing, so you can see and fix it in yours;
- imitate writers you like;
- if you can't get started, tell someone what you plan to write about, then write down what you said;
- expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong;
- have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are confusing or drag;
- don't (always) make detailed outlines;
- mull ideas over for a few days before writing;
- carry a small notebook or scrap paper with you;
- start writing when you think of the first sentence;
- write about stuff you like;
- don't try to sound impressive;
- don't hesitate to change the topic on the fly;
- use footnotes to contain digressions;
- use anaphora to knit sentences together;
- read your essays out loud to see (a) where you stumble over awkward phrases and (b) which bits are boring (the paragraphs you dread reading);
- try to tell the reader something new and useful;
- work in fairly big quanta of time;
- when you restart, begin by rereading what you have so far;
- when you finish, leave yourself something easy to start with;
- accumulate notes for topics you plan to cover at the bottom of the file, but don't feel obliged to cover any of them;
- write for a reader who won't read the essay as carefully as you do;
- ask friends which sentence you'll regret most;
- go back and tone down harsh remarks;
- publish stuff online, because an audience makes you write more, and thus generate more ideas;
- print out drafts instead of just looking at them on the screen;
- use simple, germanic words;
- learn to distinguish surprises from digressions;
- learn to recognize the approach of an ending, and when one appears, grab it.

Last night, around midnight. Sitting outside, along, looking up at the endless sky. Thinking. What if cosmological natural selection is correct? What if the Many Worlds interpretation is correct? Or both, or something even bigger yet to be discovered? How can I describe this feeling on my blog tomorrow? What is the name for the emotion I feel when I try, unsuccessfully, to comprehend the vastness of all that exists? Is emotion even the right word for it? Then I remembered a quote from Martin Gardner's The Night is Large and realized that I couldn't express it any better than he did: "If you have never experienced before those fortunately fleeting moments during which you are suddenly overpowered by the mystery of Being, arousing an emotion of dread (Sartre's novel Nausea is about this kind of metaphysical sickness) then you and I are on different wavelengths. There will be pages in this book you will not even understand." He did not mean this as an insult, nor do I. On this blog I will try to explain what it's like to be me, but the more different you are than me, the less I'll make sense to you.

Do you think you have control over what goes through your mind? If so, try this experiment. Sit in a quiet room with your eyes closed and try to think of nothing at all for five minutes. Or even one minute. Unless you have experience with meditation, you will probably find it surprisingly difficult. And if you can't choose to think of nothing for even a minute, if you can't choose whether to have thoughts, is it really reasonable to believe that you are in control of which specific thoughts you have?

A few more of my favorite quotes:
"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." - Edmund Burke
"A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for." - William Shedd
"Whether you think you can or think you can't - you are right." - Henry Ford
"We have it in our power to begin the world all over again." - Thomas Paine
"May you live all the days of your life." - Jonathan Swift

I just stumbled upon a blog about the search for happiness from an eloquent and insightful author named Gretchen Rubin.
http://www.happiness-project.com
Although my blog lacks the focus of hers, I did notice a lot of similarities between her approach and mine: a fondness for asking big questions, a willingness to look for wisdom wherever it might be, and a healthy combination of optimism and realism. I encourage you to check out the site (and the book once it's published).

Did you know that governments killed over 170 million of their own citizens in the 20th Century? Here are the top 20, from R.J. Rummel's Death by Government. (Note that this table is only through 1994; I was unable to find more recent data.)
Location (Regime) - Deaths (Era)
Soviet Union (Communist) - 61,900,000 (1917-1990)
China (Communist) - 35,200,000 (1949-1994)
Germany (Nazi Third Reich) - 20,900,000 (1933-1945)
China (Kuomintang) - 10,400,000 (1928-1949)
Japan (Imperial-Fascist) - 6,000,000 (1936-1945)
China (Communist Guerrillas) - 3,500,000 (1923-1948)
Cambodia (Communists) - 2,000,000 (1975-1979)
Turkey ("Young Turks") - 1,900,000 (1909-1917)
Vietnam (Communists) - 1,700,000 (1945-1994)
North Korea (Communist) - 1,700,000 (1948-1994)
Poland (Communist) - 1,600,000 (1945-1948)
Pakistan (Yahya Khan) - 1,500,000 (1971)
Mexico (Porfiriato) - 1,400,000 (1900-1920)
Yugoslavia (Communist) - 1,100,000 (1944-1990)
Russia (Czarist) - 1,100,000 (1900-1917)
Turkey (Mustafa Kemal "Ataturk") - 900,000 (1918-1923)
United Kingdom (Constitutional) - 800,000 (1900-1994)
Portugal (Fascist) - 700,000 (1926-1975)
Croatia (Fascist) - 700,000 (1941-1945)
Indonesia (Suharto) - 600,000 (1965-1994)

Here's one recipe for happiness, from one of my favorite books, Roy Baumeister's Meanings of Life:
- form and maintain positive social relationships
- satisfy your basic need for meaning
- maintain goals and aspirations that are achievable
- do reasonably well in objective terms
- cultivate self-flattering, optimistic illusions
Of course, some of these are easier said than done. And there does seem to be at least one potential challenge hidden within these guidelines: how can one foster confidence, high self-esteem, and a can-do attitude, without being unreasonably optimistic? But as general rules I find these guidelines to be very useful.

Most people think that consciousness is transparent, that it yields to introspection and that each person has a full and accurate picture of his/her own mind. But consider these lines from a fictional character in Marvin Minsky's Alienable Rights:
"Brains evolved to use parallel distributed processing. In other words, most of their decisions are made by adding up the outputs of thousands of brain cells - and most brain cells are involved in thousands of different types of decisions... the trillions of synapses involved in this make it almost impossible for the other parts of their brain to figure out how those decisions are made. So far as their higher level reasoning can tell, those decisions just happen - without any cause."
"Consciousness means knowing what's been happening in your mind. And although humans claim that they're self-aware, they have scarcely a clue about what their minds do. They don't seem to have the faintest idea of how they construct their new ideas, or choose words and form them into sentences. Instead, they say, 'Something just occurred to me' - as though someone else had done it to them."

A few weeks ago I posted a link to a Scientific American article which made the case that the mastery of skills such as chess and music is largely a function of "effortful study". I think this is equally true of the skill of living. Most people spend no time thinking about how to live better, and may even find the question strange. But with a small time investment of ten or fifteen minutes a day, substantial improvements are possible. In the business world it's often said that what gets measured gets improved, and the same is true outside the business world. My recommendation is to put together a short list of questions to ask and answer each day. For example:
When you wake up:
- How will I spend my time today?
- Is it the best use of my time?
- Will it help to further my long-term goals?
- What do I need to accomplish in order to consider today a success?
When you go to sleep:
- Was today successful?
- Did I progress as expected toward my long-term goals?
- If I had a second shot at today, what would I do differently?
- What should I do tomorrow?

There's an old bumper sticker that reads "If you're not angry, you're not paying attention." While I agree with the sentiment, the underlying assumption is that if you pay attention, you'll know what's happening. But this isn't always true: although information wants to be free, it's usually the case that there are some entities which benefit from preventing the dissemination of the information, and if those entities have enough power, you might not know what's happening, even if you're paying attention. Fortunately, there are organizations that fight such efforts to restrict the free flow of information. One of them is Project Censored, which compiles an annual list of the top socially significant news stories that they feel are being underreported or self-censored by the mainstream media in the U.S. Here's the latest list.
http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm

From David Pearce (As with anything he writes, you may want to read it two or three times. It's worth it.): "The depressive realism of the serotonin-depleted and jaded cynicism of the chronically world-weary are often justified. Yet our descendants may recognize that we are the sociopathic emotional primitives in the grip of an affective psychosis. Jealousy, envy, resentment, ridicule, hate, anger, disgust, spite, contempt, schadenfreude and a whole gamut of nameless but mean-spirited states we undergo each day are a toxic legacy of our Darwinian past. More commonly, perhaps, our genetic make-up ensures we simply feel indifference to the plight of all but a handful of significant others in our lives. Right now, for instance, one knows dimly at some level that there is frightful and preventable suffering in the world. Yet most of us feel no overpowering moral urgency to do anything about it. Idealists might vaguely entertain the second-order desire to care more deeply and give, say, a larger proportion of one's money to Third World charities dedicated to those who need the resources more urgently than we do. Yet the biological roots to sustain 'saintly' self-sacrifice just aren't there in most of us. In contrast, taking MDMA can give rise to a prodigious sense of compassion in even the otherwise morally inert. Regrettably, such compassion is usually ineffectual; it's too short-lived to do much good. If and when we understand the neurochemical basis of empathy, however, then sustaining the molecular substrates of empathetic love can turn boundless compassion into an automatic reaction to distress, not a sign of drug-induced psychiatric disorder. Intervention can go further. If we decode and opt to amplify the molecular machinery of volition too, then such heightened compassion can be translated into effective action.
Fortunately, compassion if not empathy for others may ultimately be redundant. In the long run, if biotechnology can be used to eradicate suffering from the living world, then a shared celebration of life, not sympathy for the misfortunes of others, may come to seem as natural as breathing."

Peter Voss: “The 'freedom' in freewill is the glorious ability of our minds to reprogram themselves and to evaluate automatic thoughts and emotions. We all have this ability, and we all choose to utilize it to a greater or lesser degree. The effects of nature, nurture, random events, and past decisions are not eliminated, but can be modified by our ability to project consequences and by our power to influence choices - by our awareness of freewill itself. All of this abstract thinking, projecting and deciding is the product of mechanistic causation, determined but not determinable. It is this freedom that makes us human. Let’s not squander our freewill by boxing ourselves in with irrational beliefs and counter-productive emotions, poor thinking, or lack of knowledge. The widespread awareness of this new understanding of freewill may help to usher in a great new era of human development based on a morality of reason and understanding, in which true knowledge of the nature of man leads us to a workable pro-Optimal Living ethic and psychology, that minimizes tribalism and fosters individual responsibility. We can reach a new peak of human greatness: The third phase in human development - from primarily genetic determinism, to largely social determinism, to self-determination - is achieved by greater use of freewill and reason. The evolution of mankind is now in our own hands, the genie of freewill is out of the bottle and we cannot put her back. Let’s make the most of our free wishes.”

One technique I've found useful for self-reflection is to make a list of questions to answer periodically. Start with a few important questions the answers to which will reveal something about who you are and who you want to become. Here are a few questions from my list (obviously you should feel free to make your own list):
- Rank the following in descending order of importance: accomplishment, career, family, friends, happiness, health, joy, love, meaning, pleasure, religion, status, truth, wealth.
- What's the smallest amount of money you would accept to be instantly fast-forwarded one year of your life?
- By your estimation, what's the percent chance that our universe was created by an intelligent entity?
- How many people are there in your life who would be willing to use up a vacation day to help you move? How many people would you be willing to do this for?
- In the last month, what percent of the time would you say you were happy?
- What do you plan to accomplish in the coming month/quarter/year? What will you do to make these things happen?
- What do you regret about your actions/behavior from the last month/quarter/year? What do you want to do differently going forward?
I suggest setting a specific schedule (for example, answering the questions on the first of every month or every quarter). Although the specific answers you give each time will tell you a lot, you'll probably learn even more about yourself as you look back at your earlier answers and see how they've changed over time, so don't look at any of your earlier answers until after several iterations.
Also, if there's someone you want to understand better (and are prepared for differences of opinion), have them do the same, and both guess what the other's answers will be, then discuss any surprises.

"It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

If you observe a moment of silence today in honor of the 3000 Americans who died in the 9/11 attacks, I hope you do the same for the 3000 Iraqis who died last month in the war, and the 3000 who are dying this month, and the 3000 who will die next month… By valuing all human life equally, rather than thinking of American lives as being worth more than other lives, we could eliminate one of the primary reasons why the world hates America.

Some random cool stuff I think you'll enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyzStoxnTKs
http://www.folj.com/folj.com/
http://www.goodmagazine.com/issue001/Political_NASCAR
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7070932331929984683&q=break+dancing
http://www.worth1000.com/cache/contest/contestcache.asp?contest_id=11478&display=photoshop#entries

I don’t agree with a lot of what Bill Maher says, but I respect the fact that he's willing to say what he believes and he's trying to encourage people to think for themselves. Agree or disagree with him, either way is fine as long as you make the decision on your own. A few of his more thought-provoking quotes:
- Men are only as loyal as their options.
- Women cannot complain about men anymore until they start getting better taste in them.
- New rule: If churches don't have to pay taxes, they also can't call the fire department when they catch fire. Sorry reverend, that's one of those services that goes along with paying in. I'll use the fire department I pay for. You can pray for rain.
- Flying planes into a building was a faith-based initiative.
- We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.
- Nothing hurts more than putting your faith in fairy tales.
- Don’t get so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance.

Most people who experience severe trauma (such as the death of a spouse or child) change their worldviews in somewhat predictable ways:
- focusing more on the now than the later
- worrying less about small things
- being more tolerant of others
- devoting more effort on interpersonal relationships
- changing careers, working less, and focusing less on money
- realizing that life is a gift
Should those of us who haven't experienced such trauma try to learn from their lessons? This approach only makes sense if we think that the trauma has enabled them to see reality more clearly. If we think such reprioritization is a coping mechanism, or if we think such reprioritization is only appropriate for those who have actually experienced trauma, then their lessons wouldn't apply to us. But one clue leads me to believe that this isn't the case, and that their lessons apply to everyone. If you ask older people what they most regret about how they lived their lives, what they would now like to change about how they had lived before, the most frequent responses are surprisingly similar to the list above. They'll say they spent far too much time on unimportant things, worried too much about things that weren't worth worrying about, were too driven by money, and didn't experience life deeply enough as it was passing them by. So I think in many cases the trauma has removed (rather than created) perceptual biases, and people who have undergone trauma can teach lessons that the rest of us can benefit from.

Is the unexamined life not worth living, as Socrates claimed? Here's what Robert Noggle has said:“Philosophers who advocate requiring critical self-reflection for autonomy claim, then, that to be autonomous, a person must live an examined, self-critical life; she must not only know herself, but she must continually subject her own values, convictions, and commitments to critical appraisal. She must not only know what she wants and believes, but she must continually question whether she wants and believes the right things. Critical self-reflection is, in short, a kind of epistemic requirement to avoid taking any questions about knowledge and value as completely and permanently settled. But there are perfectly coherent conceptions of human existence in which critical self-reflection plays a comparatively small role. Many people constitute their selves by becoming embedded in a community or tradition, one which they may pay unquestioning allegiance to. Consider your own most important values, convictions, and connections with others--family, spouse, child, best friend. How much critical reflection is appropriate here? Are we prepared to require--as a condition for taking a person's choices seriously--that people subject these things to critical scrutiny? This is not to say whether such scrutiny is a good or bad thing. Clearly there are cases in which such self-critical scrutiny is warranted: one is surely well-advised to engage in critical reflection about one's devotion to an abusive spouse, for instance. But in other cases such a critical questioning of one's relationships seems out of place, even destructive. After all, how would you feel if you periodically came up for "post marriage review" and had to submit a file for the critical inspection of your spouse before she could autonomously continue the marriage? We may, of course, question the wisdom of such blind faith, but we cannot deny that a self so constituted either does not rule or is not really even a self, simply because we do not like the way it was constituted or the tradition in which it is embedded. Thus it is morally problematic and politically dangerous to require a complete rational overhaul of all of one's deeply held religious, philosophical, and moral commitments as a condition for us to take a person's desires, decisions, and choices seriously. These things, after all, are likely to be key components of the very identity of the person and the meaningfulness of her life. How much questioning should one do? How much time and energy should we devote to reflecting on our own beliefs and values? For some this may raise issues of mortality: how much of my limited existence should I devote to puzzling over mysteries I'll probably never solve anyway? For others it may hold a theological dimension: how much questioning is compatible with my faith in God? For some it raises questions about human existence and the meaning and purpose of life: are we essentially questioners for whom the highest pursuit is truth, or are we social beings whose primary purpose is to unite with others in a community defined by shared practices and values? Maybe the unexamined life really isn't worth living. But saying so invokes a certain view of the good that not all share. Even it if is the right view, we still should not refuse to take people's desires and choices seriously simply because they disagree about the content of the best life. We are free to point out how a lack of epistemic sophistication leaves one vulnerable to manipulation and ideology. We are free to try to convert them, and to do this, we might invoke a rich character ideal of autonomy. But we are not free to marginalize their decisions, choices, and desires simply because they do not subscribe to our character ideal, to our vision of the good.”

A few of my favorite quotes. (By the way, I won't be able to post again until Tuesday. Enjoy the long weekend!)
- "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shaw
- "What is the good of having a nice house without a decent planet to put it on?" - Henry David Thoreau
- "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
-"Those who love peace must learn to organize as well as those who love war." - Martin Luther King