Roger McNamee's talk regarding tech investing

Elevation Partners Director and Co-Founder Roger McNamee from The Paley Center For Media on FORA.tv

Gender differences in cancer risks

In this bbc report on cancer risks, women and men are put in different category:



I consider this a progress. Next level of differences are in different ethnic groups. And once we have all our genomes sequences, we shall know our risks by genome types.

However, everything is a leap of faith. So take the report as true if you are willing to believe in today's statistical method. Otherwise, disregard it and go on living your way of life, whatever it might be.

Idler's Quotes

There are two days in the week about which and upon which I never worry ... Yesterday and Tomorrow.   - Robert Jones Burdette

Once awhile I become motivated and energetic. I usually just sit down and watch them pass by. - Author Unknown

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.  - Mark Twain

Rule number one is, don't sweat the small stuff.  Rule number two is, it's all small stuff.  - Robert Eliot

Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. - Hans Christian Anderson

Truth vs. Usefulness

I love this essay "The Truth Wears Off" by Jonah Lehrer published by New Yorker.

People often equate truth with usefulness, perhaps because we are in America. If we take the view of William James' Pragmatic theory of truth, then perhaps usefulness is the truth.

We often apply ideas we commonly agree as useful, but we do not know for certain what the reason is. For example, "we feel better and are more energized when we spend time outdoors." Is this truth or merely usefulness?

"The truth of an idea is not a permanent property and it does not lie in it. The truth happens to an idea" (William James).

We are in an era of ideas (truths) overload. Some ideas are very true to some people (such as Seth Roberts "Effect of One-Legged Standing on Sleep"), but may seem ridiculous to others. I do not doubt that Seth Roberts one legged standing works for him to achieve better sleep, but many other methods may work just as well.

Focus was important for productivity in the past. It is perhaps essential today, otherwise we will all get lost in the piles of "truths" google search provide us.

Quotes from Lin Yutang

Lin Yutang was a Chinese writer and philosopher (here is his wiki page), who wrote mostly in English. A few of Lin Yutang quotes:

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

The wise man reads both books and life itself.

Good life consists of a Chinese cook, a Japanese wife and a French lover.

A speech is like a woman’s skirt, the shorter the better.

cross published on instead-of-wishing.

Garden Dwellers

I am a garden dweller. We have a very small city garden, which is good enough to do some gardening. The river front city park is 5 minutes walk from my home. We consider that a big garden to walk in.

It is known that we feel better and are more energized when we spend time outdoors.

Recent Science Daily News reports:

In recent years, numerous experimental psychology studies have linked exposure to nature with increased energy and heightened sense of well-being. For example, research has shown that people on wilderness excursions report feeling more alive and that just recalling outdoor experiences increases feelings of happiness and health. Other studies suggest that the very presence of nature helps to ward off feelings of exhaustion and that 90 percent of people report increased energy when placed in outdoor activities.

To read the article, click the link here.

I myself experience that gardening is by far the best way to lower blood pressure naturally. Whenever I have reading of bp 135/85, after spending one hour in the garden weeding or dead heading, the reading is almost guaranteed to go below 120/80. Hot and sunny days are the best.

Why do we feel better spending time outdoors? I think the sun, green plants and physical activity are the reasons.

Most people equate the sun to Vitamin D level in our body, but I think it is more than that. On a grey day, regardless how much Vitamin D we take, my mood always goes down.

Germaine Greer in her book "The Change" writes that a garden is the best alternative therapy for women going through change. "Though low back pain and gardening go together, gardeners feel much better for gardening, back pain and all. The effect is so like the "mental tonic" effect of HRT that we may be justified in suspecting that there are volatile estrogens in living plants that do not survive in treated plant material."

To improve the mood, walking outdoors is just as good.

Unfortunately, Montreal gets cold fast. By November I feel too cold to go out walking.  Creating an indoor garden with grow lights is to experiment whether we can experience some of the aliveness we feel outdoors.