Eclectic Living
I had a dream last night that I was keeping dodo birds the way one might keep chickens. They had been resurrected, phoenix-style, through DNA lab work. I was excited to tell my stepmom - this would be a great bird to add to her life list. In the category of birds that have run afoul of man's... Continue Reading →
Is there such a thing as an honest-to-God, real-life asshole? This was the debate my brother Zach and I had after hiking the mountain passes in Colorado. I was on the pro-asshole side, while Zach argued that nobody is truly an asshole. Our debate was a rather sucky one as debates go, and quickly ended at an impasse.... Continue Reading →
Half-assed outcomes can be categorized as tangible or intangible. Tangible half-assedness occurs when the product of work is subpar. Half-assed work can include everything from an insufficiently cleaned room to a shoddy construction job to a poorly written term paper (or blog post*). Half-assed work arises when the project is done too hastily, without focus, or simply... Continue Reading →
The one and only time I tried acid, in my senior year of high school, my fellow trippers and I figured out how the universe works. It's all spheres, everything is spheres. Humans are spheres and we have multiple size spheres that interact with almost infinite other spheres. From atoms to planets to stars, all objects... Continue Reading →
In Part I of this edition of Poppa's Notes, I briefly discussed and then summarized Seneca's "Letters from a Stoic" (aka "Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium"). Seneca wrote these letters to his friend Lucilius. Here's Part II: 78 - Sorry to hear you've been sick, Lucilius. Now buck up, li'l soldier - you can overcome it with your mind. An... Continue Reading →
Are you sick of me talking about dead Mediterranean dudes? Well, I have one more I'd like to hype, because he fits in so well with our discussion, then I'll give it a rest for a while. Seneca was an eclectic and a Stoic. By most accounts, he was an imperfect man who didn't necessarily follow... Continue Reading →
Does your heart beat faster with excitement when you learn new terms like polymath, multipotentialite, Renaissance soul? Maybe that's because you are one - you get excited about learning, new experiences, self-improvement. Your energy level rises when you embark on a new project, a new adventure. You work on multiple projects at a time. My brother... Continue Reading →
When I was about 12, I excitedly told my brother and grandfather, Gramps, that I had figured out what the purpose of life was: to have fun! Gramps said that was fine, but added the caveat that one also has to avoid hurting others while having all this fun. In high school, I changed "fun"... Continue Reading →
I spent much of my childhood in the Willy Street neighborhood in Madison, Wisconsin. This neighborhood boasted a diverse mix of hippies, blue-collar folk, academics, eccentrics, motorcycle gangs, and, in my teenage years, crackheads. Old folks, young folks, white folks, black folks, all along the economic continuum. All of these people were on display at... Continue Reading →
Call me crazy, but I have this theory that being a good person is a big part of what makes people happy. And that's really what this blog is about: abolishing the pusillanimity of a wholly self-serving life and incrementally replacing it with the radiance of magnanimity (or something like that.) Magnanimity is a great... Continue Reading →
Poppa's Cottage 