I read the works of psychologist Erich Fromm (1900-1980) voraciously when I was younger. His wrote about how humans suffered from a sense of alienation due to their estrangement with nature and with other people, and that this was a source of many mental problems and destructive behavior because they sought to fill that need by various means that did not address the fundamental problem of alienation. In his writings he suggested alternative ways of achieving fulfillment by connecting people with one another in deep and meaningful ways. [Read more…]

I am currently attending a conference and so blogging will be a bit more erratic than usual.

When I travel on work, I often eat alone at restaurants. I don’t mind it in the least and, being somewhat introverted, even welcome the chance to be alone after mingling with people all day. I usually take a book with me as a companion, the main problem being that the lighting in restaurants is usually very dim and I have to specifically ask to be seated at a table near a light. The backlighted iPad comes in useful here. [Read more…]

A girl walking along while talking on her phone falls into sinkhole that suddenly opens up. A taxi driver sees it happen and climbs down into the hole to try and get her out. Fortunately she survives and is seemingly unhurt by her experience.

It is really nice the way people take risks to help total strangers in distress. (Via Gawker.)

An article by someone who works in the restaurant business points out that rich people seem to have no qualms about taking stuff from restaurants. [Read more…]

An Indonesian performance artist Melati Suryodarmo does a routine where she wears a tight black dress and heels and then dances on top of 15 blocks of butter, accompanied by rhythmic drumming. As you can imagine, she slips and falls heavily, picks herself up and resumes dancing, slips and falls again, picks herself up, and so on. Each time she crashed to the ground I cringed, because it looked like it must really hurt. [Read more…]

From NPR, I heard this highly disturbing story about a luxury cruise ship that seemed to have deliberately ignored a drifting fishing boat that had three people in it and which had sought help. Although passengers noticed the boat and brought it to the attention of the ship’s crew, the fishermen were not picked up. Two of the fisherman later died but the third survived and was eventually rescued by the Ecuadorean coast guard.

If it is true that the ship’s crew deliberately ignored people in distress, it would not only be a violation of international maritime law, it would be an act of shocking callousness.

How could anyone do that?

Teller (the silent partner of the Penn & Teller magic duo) has long had a magic trick called ‘Shadows’ which is really beautiful and no one had seemingly figured out how he did it or if they had did not reveal it. I discussed it a couple of months ago but here it is again. [Read more…]

So, for whatever reason, you want to leak information gleaned in your work to others? Wired gives you some tips on how lower your chances of getting caught.

Remember Snackman, the guy who calmed down a fight in the New York City subway by simply standing between the combatants and calmly eating some potato chips? Well, the New York Times tracked him down and has a profile of him and how the whole episode unfolded. He now has adoring fans and is even receiving marriage proposals.