News & Notes
Genese
I already have the pleasure of teaching at one of the most spectacular university campuses in the world: Aix-Marseille Université, Luminy, which is nestled among the limestone cliffs of the Calanques. If the natural splendor isn’t enough, a brilliant fountain sculpture is about to be installed at the heart of the campus … and it’s by my friend Pierre Luu ! You can see a video of its creation after the jump.
Grit is Good
My latest piece for Ode Magazine (now The Intelligent Optimist) is about the role persistence plays in our lives. Did you know that persistence is a better indicator of success than IQ? And that you can build your neural persistence pathways to make it easier to persist in the future? Seriously, this is heady and uplifting stuff. Continue reading →
Craig Walzer TEDxs it up
A joyful, engaging, funny, rambling, heartfelt tribute to the world’s most beautiful bookstore and the art and lies of bookselling. Continue reading →
Life With Dog
One of the greater sadnesses of my life is that I never had a dog. As a child, there were cats in my family, first Orange then Dusty and Cleo. At the time I didn’t really know I wanted a dog because none of my friends had dogs so there was no first hand evidence of how remarkably better dogs were than cats. My doglessness was an absence barely felt. Continue reading →
Alice of Nepal
Now here’s a curious story. A few months ago, Sparkle Hayter went on a writing retreat to India. During a trip to Nepal to renew her visa, a bedraggled, half-starved puppy crossed her path. Sparkle tried to find a decent home for it, but the puppy refused to be with anyone else. So, despite the fact that Sparkle is a poor, wayward writer with no fixed address – and a cat person to boot – she adopted the dog and named her Alice. Continue reading →
Unconscious Triggers
One of the most interesting subjects I’ve researched over the past year has been the power and possibility of the human unconscious. Every moment of our lives, we are bombarded by far more sensations—sights, sounds, odors, tastes, textures—than our conscious brains can process. This means the vast majority of these stimuli are acted on by our unconscious brains and alter our behavior without our awareness. Continue reading →
