7 Must-Read Books on the Art & Science of Happiness. By Maria Popova From Plato to Buddha, or what imperfection has to do with the neuroscience of the good life. If you, like me, are fascinated by the human quest to understand the underpinnings of happiness but break out in hives at the mere mention of self-help books, you’re in luck: I’ve sifted through my personal library, a decade’s worth of obsessive reading, to surface seven essential books on the art and science of happiness, rooted in solid science, contemporary philosophy and cross-disciplinary insight.
From psychology and neuroscience to sociology and cultural anthropology to behavioral economics, these essential reads illuminate the most fundamental aspiration of all human existence: How to avoid suffering and foster lasting well-being. The question of what makes us happy is likely as old as human cognition itself and has occupied the minds of philosophers, prophets and scientists for millennia. Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality. Donating = Loving. New Year's Resolution Reading List: 9 Essential Books on Reading and Writing. By Maria Popova Dancing with the absurdity of life, or what symbolism has to do with the osmosis of trash and treasure.
Hardly anything does one’s mental, spiritual, and creative health more good than resolving to read more and write better. Today’s reading list addresses these parallel aspirations. And since the number of books written about reading and writing likely far exceeds the reading capacity of a single human lifetime, this omnibus couldn’t be — shouldn’t be — an exhaustive list. It is, instead, a collection of timeless texts bound to radically improve your relationship with the written word, from whichever side of the equation you approach it.
If anyone can make grammar fun, it’s Maira Kalman — The Elements of Style Illustrated marries Kalman’s signature whimsy with Strunk and White’s indispensable style guide to create an instant classic. On a related unmissable note, let the Elements of Style Rap make your day. On the itch of writing, Lamott banters: On why we read and write: Kurt Vonnegut on the Shapes of Stories and Good News vs. Bad News. “The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.” This season has been ripe with Kurt Vonnegut releases, from the highly anticipated collection of his letters to his first and last works introduced by his daughter, shedding new light on the beloved author both as a complex character and a masterful storyteller.
All the recent excitement reminded me of an old favorite, in which Vonnegut maps out the shapes of stories, with equal parts irreverence and perceptive insight, along the “G-I axis” of Good Fortune and Ill Fortune and the “B-E axis” of Beginning and Entropy. The below footage is an excerpt from a longer talk, the transcript of which was published in its entirety in Vonnegut’s almost-memoir A Man Without a Country (public library) under a section titled “Here is a lesson in creative writing,” featuring Vonnegut’s hand-drawn diagrams. Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter. One Hundred Famous Rejections: Famous Rejection #1: F. Scott Fitzgerald. Black September in Jordan. Background[edit] Palestinians in Jordan[edit] The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine in late 1947 led to civil war, the end of Mandatory Palestine, and the Israeli Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948.
With nationhood, the ongoing civil war was transformed into a state conflict between Israel and the Arab states. Egypt, Jordan and Syria, together with expeditionary forces from Iraq, invaded Palestine. They took control of the Arab areas, and immediately attacked Israeli forces and several Jewish settlements. The fighting was halted with the UN-mediated 1949 Armistice Agreements, but the remaining Palestinian territories came under the control of Egypt and Transjordan. At the time, the area east of the Jordan River contained over 400,000 Palestinian refugees, who made up one-third of the population of the Kingdom; another third of the population was Palestinians living on the West Bank. Battle of Karameh[edit] Seven-point agreement[edit] Ten-point edict[edit] Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day: Pain a l'Ancienne Recipe.
Rustic Fruit Desserts - Apple Crisp with Brandy Soaked Currants Recipe. The Perfect Finish: Special Desserts for Every Occasion. Ottomania: The Romantics and the Myth of the Islamic Orient. Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson - Excerpts. George W. Bush, Dick Cheney Convicted Of War Crimes. In the first verdict of its kind since former President George W. Bush left office, he and several members of his administration have been successfully convicted in absentia of war crimes in Malaysia.
Yes, this is a BFD. This past Friday, a five panel tribunal delivered a unanimous guilty verdict after a week long trial that, unsurprisingly, was not covered by American media. The witnesses included several ex-Guantanamo detainees that gave testimony on the conditions and human rights violations that were systematically carried out under orders of the Bush administration. Former President Bush, Former Vice-President Dick Cheney, Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo that crafted the legal ‘justification’ for torture that basically said, ‘we can if we want to even if it’s illegal’ were the defendants.
سوء فهمنا لسوء فهمنا للإسلام Time Time is what clocks measure, Albert Einstein once said. Information about time tells the durations of events, and when they occur, and which events happen before which others, so time plays a very significant role in the universe’s structure, including the structure of our personal lives. But there are many unresolved issues, both philosophical and scientific. Consider this issue upon which philosophers are deeply divided: What sort of ontological differences are there among the present, the past and the future? There are three competing philosophical theories. Presentism implies that necessarily only present objects and present events are real, and we conscious beings can recognize this in the special vividness of our present experiences compared to our relatively dim memories of past experiences and dim expectations of future experiences.
In no particular order, here is a list of other issues about time that are discussed in this article: Table of Contents 1. 2. 3. “What is time?” 4.