26 Dec

Posted at 10:15h in Observations

Marriage is like a corporate partnership wherein one mate or the other assumes different department roles: Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, Director of Human Resources, etc. However, at times conflicts arise when there is confusion over who heads which department. For example, a wife might complain to her husband because she is unhappy about something he said or did. Her husband in turn might be taken aback by her complaints as he views himself head of the Rewards Department, not the Complaint Department. He then needs assign his wife to take charge of the Complaint Department as she has the most experience in complaining. Alternatively, when a wife is complaining, best to keep silent but for agreeing ("yes, you're right") with her gripes, letting her vent until she calms down. A mistake would be addressing her issues rationally or trying to help her perceive what irks her in a different light. Doing so tends to agitate her further and invariably results in her saying: "You don't understand me." Well, now you know she is right. If you understood her, you would have little to do with her....

22 Dec

Posted at 10:15h in Observations

Sometimes we take our circumstances and ourselves very seriously. This can be stressful. If we compartmentalize our predicament, we can put it in perspective and not let it affect other aspects of our life which otherwise are pleasing and from which we can take solace. However, compartmentalization is not easy. Alternatively, we can find relief through the meditation of death, looking at our current situation from the perspective of the end of days. From that perspective we can look back at our lives and realize that much we once took seriously now seems ridiculous....

20 Dec

Posted at 10:10h in Observations

"You get love, that's enough." Today my five year old grandson, Penn, was defiant, unwilling to take his feet off our living room couch when I told him to do so. I said: "You have no respect for your grandfather." He said: "You get love, that's enough." I laughed; The Beatles were right, all you need is love....

19 Dec

Posted at 10:15h in Observations

"History has to be fluid; if it were not fluid, why do we get periodic new biographies of Lincoln or Jesus? Stats are a funny thing. The deeper you go, the more impressed you are with the fact that these are symbols. They are not solid things."...

15 Dec

Posted at 10:15h in Observations

“People are strange: they are constantly angered by trivial things, but on a major matter like totally wasting their lives, they hardly seem to notice."...

14 Dec

Posted at 00:35h in Observations

The second law of thermodynamics states that entropy always increases with time. As such, it is easier to predict the near-future but less predictable is the distant-future. However, over time, as the distant-future becomes the near-future, it is more predictable. As well, the past becomes increasingly less certain over time; yet we often convince ourselves otherwise....

07 Dec

Posted at 10:15h in Observations

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” Life is an experiment. Whether a success or a failure is of little matter. What counts is whether it merits a writeup. If not, we haven't lived....

30 Nov

Posted at 10:15h in Observations

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”...