Betterment

A review of E.D. Hirsch's controversial bestseller. Is education undermined by focusing on useless trivia? Or is that its greatest strength?

Roy Baumiester, has written about the four needs for meaning that all humans have and I find that a useful framework. He believes, and I concur, that all four needs need to be satisfied to a reason…

It’s become the height of oh-so-relatable humor to observe just how good it feels to have one’s plans unexpectedly canceled. As tiresome as this trope has become, it does feel good, doesn’t it? It feels good because you got back some personal time, sure. But it also feels good, because the cancellation extinguished expectations — […]

Could you hack it as a WWII soldier? Take the fitness test to find out.

It’s not high school. But some of the advice that people are embracing reminds us of those days… Things that everyone tells you that aren’t true: It’s possible to get rich quickly…

You might not get it. But as you pursue this wish, you’ll change what you do, what you see, who you connect with and the sacrifices you make along the way. Our wishes change us.

The OODA Loop — the OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act — is a strategic tool designed to help people make better decisions when facing any kind of competitor or opponent. My guest today says that when that opponent is a seasoned criminal, the Orient component of OODA — a person’s mindset — is […]

ACRLog welcomes a guest post from Candice Benjes-Small, Head of Information Literacy and Outreach, and Alyssa Archer, Instruction Librarian at Radford University. “If I have to sit through YET ANOTHER freaking ‘professional development’ session based on these cockamamie theories, I am going to pl

Gather 'round kiddos, Uncle Lubos wants to tell another crazy but true story. This one is about an innocent kid, an abused model—and if you stick around till the end—a wholesome apple.

In 1981, Coevolution Quarterly published a 20 question quiz written by Leonard Charles, Jim Dodge, Lynn Milliman, and Victoria S

To become an all-around stronger man, you have to practice strength.

It’s easy to accept the limits that are implied when someone asks us for advice and feedback. Fix the typos, sure. That’s important. But perhaps you have something bigger to add. A frie…

TLDR; Use Agile in organizing your life

It’s a funny thing about the irruption of bad news into your life. You figure it’ll be preceded by a sense of foreboding — an ominous, overcast sky; a pit in the stomach that won’t go away. Instead, tragedy arrives amidst balmy, sunshine-soaked weather, after a pleasurable run, right before stepping into the couldn’t-be-more-routine shower. […]

Not having enough time, enough people, or enough money is actually a good thing! Embrace it!

Today's Full Stack Journey podcast explores an IT career journey with guest Tracy Holmes. Tracy shares lessons she's learned on an IT voyage that includes engineering, data centers, and developer advocacy. Lessons include how to protect your time, why it's useful to say no sometimes, and the importance of learning how to learn.

Here’s what’s easy to find: Multiple choice plus effort plus persistence. We’ve been trained since birth to look for small, do-able tasks with boundaries. It seems as though our e…

A deeper look at one of the most comprehensive and research-backed theories of how we learn complicated skills.

You live in the big here. Wherever you live, your tiny spot is deeply intertwined within a larger place, imbedded fractal-like into a whole system called a watershed, which is itself integrated with other watersheds into a tightly interdependent biome.

Sometimes all you need to make peace with your partner is some helpful tech and a collaborative approach.

It’s not the “gold.” It’s the “rush” that changes the way people behave. When consumed by a gold rush, people make decisions that they would never make on ordina…

It doesn’t have to last all day–it could be for an hour or even a month. How would you celebrate it? Who else needs to be part of it? It’s a symbol, a marker, a chance for convers…

According to the Hebrew Bible, when the Israelites got to complaining about their wilderness wanderings, God sent fiery serpents among them as punishment. Expiring from the serpents’ venomous bites, the people repented, and beseeched Moses to pray for a remedy to the plague. In response, God told the prophet to put a bronze serpent on […]

I’m writing this in the evening, on a laptop resting on a work board my kid bought me for Xmas. The board is actually intended for tablets, and has a long slot so you can prop the tablet up, …

The customer service from the freight shipping company that came to my home a few months ago was truly terrible. Not simply a lack of care, but an aggressive embrace of uncaring. Every interaction …

Women are increasingly playing the role of best friend, lover, and on-call therapist to their male partners.

Groups rarely say this. They often (and loudly) state “we are right,” but when the future arrives, and it always does, it’s not surprising that it turns out that many projections …