not just random

A store clerk, as we were browsing for shoes:

And remember: Buy two pairs and you get 20% off on each pair, for a total of 40% off your purchase!

Time to leave.

Letter to a Christian Nation is Sam Harris‘ followup to his first book The End of Faith.

In it, he formulates an open response to feedback he received by readers of the first book. Written as a letter to a Christian (but you can to some degree substitute other forms of dogma or faith), he once more takes away the taboo of voicing critical questions against religious beliefs.

Once more, he asks strong questions.

I wonder if he is predominantly preaching to the choir here though. To some degree, probably. No doubt, there will be other readers, who will once again take offense. Some of them will likely once again let him know how much or little they appreciate his attitude.

The greater potential lies somewhere else though. People discovering new and important questions for themselves. Deeper looks at behavioral patterns. Increased awareness of intellectual honesty. Maybe a new openness for discussion.

The willingness to discussing or even just listening to opposing opinion is an absolute requirement for a religious person reading this book. You might find this offensive, comparable to The End of Faith or Dawkins’ The God Delusion.

I recently finished Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness.

Much less about giving answers on how to be happy and more about understanding our methods of making decisions and predicting how we will enjoy today’s decisions in the future, this really is as much popular psychology as it shows applications of critical thinking.

Happiness is likely something that most people strive for, consciously or not. It appears then that understanding of oneself and understanding (and actively questioning) how to achieve happiness (or really other goals, for that matter) should be high on people’s agenda.

Surely, everyone will sit down in introspection at some point to think about what it is that they need to provide them with happiness. More often than not, of course this pursuit of happiness happens much more on the fly, too. This books presents interesting thoughts on how we make our decisions in this regard - and how we tend to be wrong about them.

Highly recommended.

A geek mecca, according to Wired’s 10 Top Tech Town:

SEATTLE
The charms of the Emerald City go way beyond late-night cafés, plentiful microbreweries, and the world’s premier science fiction museum. Catch the local Weird Science Salon, where monthly meetings promise “cryogenic marshmallow liquid nitrogen shenanigans” and “blowing stuff up.”

= 9

= 7

= 6

I am entirely unclear of their methodology in this piece, as they conveniently don’t explain much of it at all. There are a lot of comic book stores though. Well, if you know where to look for them anyway.