Two excellent TED talks

Steven Pinker on the myth of violence:
Steven Pinker: A brief history of violence

Robert Wright on (cynical) optimism:
Robert Wright: How cooperation (eventually) trumps conflict

I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind
Got my paper and I was free

- Closer to Fine, by Indigo Girls

If evolution is the response, what is the stimulus?

Evolution and natural selection are the best descriptors of the process that results when a certain set of conditions are established and maintained in the physical world. This raises the question: how were these conditions established and maintained?

Untitled

What are the pieces
and how do they run?
Who put them together
and made them all one?

Stare at the beautiful
pieces that run.
Admire the web
He has lovingly spun.

The future

Five thousand years ago, the Egyptians built a civilization whose greatest art and science survives to this day, inspiring us with beauty and awe, a testatment to the capacities of the human spirit. If they could produce such marvelous works that have withstood the test of time, how much more should we, who are the inheritors of the entire world’s cultural, artistic, scientific and spiritual heritage, contribute our share of beauty and creativity to posterity. Today, in spite of our technological advancement, we are far from accomplishing anything even remotely as wonderful as what the ancient Egyptians have created.

The eradication of poverty and preventable diseases, the provision of employment and sufficient and nourishing food for all, the end of war and conflict, these are easy problems to fix. These are the easy questions. These are but the beginning of the rest of our collective life. What we do next is the real challenge.

Our duty is to work for the unification of the human race so that we can set ourselves to the more serious task of building a civilization whose works will bear testament to our capacity to work as a unified humanity and survive into the furthest reaches of time.

Amazon.com: The Last Lecture: Randy Pausch,Jeffrey Zaslow: Books

Amazon.com: The Last Lecture: Randy Pausch
"I think the most important thing I learned as I grew older was that you can't get anywhere without help. That means people have to want to help you, and that begs the question: What kind of person do other people seem to want to help? That strikes me as a pretty good operational answer to the existential question: 'What kind of person should you try to be?'"

My Purpose in Life

My purpose in life is to investigate reality and share what I discover with others.

Sounds vague, right? Well, it so happens it perfectly captures and explains my all-embracing curiosity and love of knowledge, whether it's art, literature, physics, math, medicine, cosmology, theology, meditation, dance, technology and the list goes on.

And it explains why I listen so intently and why I'm not afraid to appear in public, why I'll try almost anything at least once, why I love to travel and need constant novelty in my life.