The magnetism of language
It’s one of the great wonders of our universe that certain chemicals make electricity, and electricity makes magnetism, and magnetism makes things move. One of the classic experiments is to run an electric current through a wire to see the needle on a nearby compass swing around: I remember doing this experiment as a child, […]
What we can’t spend
Some things, like money, time, and effort, are scarce resources that need careful budgeting to be used optimally. Some of those, like effort and attention, can return stronger after resting from difficult use, as if they’ve been built up like a muscle through exercise, which makes the calculus of optimizing how much and when to […]
What we spend
Ever since I learned that the Dutch word for “to spend” (besteden) is used not just with time and money, as in English, but also with attention, I’ve started to wonder what else we have that we spend, and could be spending more wisely. Here is an incomplete list I’ve compiled: Money (of course). Time. […]
When Morals Collide
Monday night is chore night at the Biesel household, and that usually means a rush hour trip to the grocery store to pick up the week’s supply of ingredients. It often happens, as I’m waiting in line at the checkout, that the person behind me is purchasing a smaller load of groceries than I am. […]
Goals for Winter Break
Hello there! As of this writing, I have officially finished my first term as a visiting assistant professor at Carleton College, and our unusually long winter break is essentially the whole month of December. I’m tired and looking forward to a bit of a rest, but I also don’t want to waste the opportunity to […]
Sigmoid Perception: Lateness
Clara and I were running late a few times in the last couple days, and we noticed that the difference between arriving on time and arriving five minutes late feels much bigger than the difference between arriving 10 minutes late and 15 minutes late, or between an hour late and an hour and five minutes […]
Break the wool at the knot
Elizabeth Zimmerman, titan of modern knitting, remarks on the fact that knitters who would never join two strands of yarn with a knot often accept the knots that come in the skein: …But one thing is certain—never knit a knot. No matter how careful you are to keep it on the wrong side, it usually […]
That which cannot be pursued
I’m fascinated by cases where, in order to achieve something, it’s better to focus on something else instead. Here’s Viktor Frankl’s take on success and happiness: “Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; […]
It’s on the tip of my tongue…
I like to write a short Goodreads review for each book I read, if only to remind myself what I liked or found interesting later. I was recently reviewing the children’s fantasy novel A Face Like Glass, and I wanted to say how much I enjoyed the way all the small mysteries related to one overarching […]
Sigmoid perception
Sometimes my mental vocabulary isn’t very rich for extreme situations. Rather than thinking of temperature like this: I have different mental “buckets” for various temperature ranges, depending on what I would need to feel comfortable: Notice how the intervals between different experiences get wider the farther you get from the middle, all the way to […]