I often wonder where would I be had I leaned more on the confidence that comes with less introspection. Too much therapy has the risk of undermining the belief in oneself and make questioning of oneself a habit of the mind. The habit of interrogating one’s own motives all the time then brings about timidness,…

Hoy comienza la cuarta década. Tengo unas ganas enormes de hacer cambios en la trayectoria en la que me encuentro. Veo mi futuro por el cañón de una escopeta. Bendito el retorno de Saturno. Es tiempo de escuchar mi voz interior, de no desperdiciar esa tolerancia al riesgo que trae la juventud. Es tiempo de…

The French essayist Alexis de Tocqueville titled his 1835 book “Democracy in America”, not “American Democracy.” I think he was doing something interesting here. As if he knew that democracy is rare and precious, not exceptional or inevitable, much less inherent to a nation or city-state. Boy he has been proven right.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have an interactive tool that allows you to play with visible absorption spectrum curves and see how the geometry and distribution of single or multiple curves affect the resulting color? Can the same color be produced from different combinations of curves? Something similar should be applied for particle size distribution…

David Hume once asserted that “reason is the slave of passions.” I think he is right. Nietschze’s Apollonian and Dionysian dichotomy of intellect and pleasure, of self-restraint and disinhibition, of prudence and folly, is not a binary choice, nor a uni-dimensional spectrum. These may reinforce. Reasoning begins with curiosity, and ends with boring blandness. Curiosity…

I’m reflecting on different ways of instruction. Some of my intellectual heroes have a knack at lecturing. When they are at their best, they teach their students how to arouse their curiosity within a disciplined scaffolding. Among these are Richard Feynman, Timothy Snyder, Vincent Scully, Salman Kahn, and Michael Sandel. I describe their lecturing style…

There is this feeling of digital burnout from having so many calendars (Google, Outlook, Apple) and so many passwords, and data being stored in multiple browsers. I trust Safari more than Chrome, but the browsing data does not transfer to Microsoft’s Edge when working on my work computer. Files are scattered in OneDrive, iCloud, Google…

Today I spent the afternoon cleaning and patching the walls of my bathroom and bedroom in preparation for the primer coat. You learn a hell of a lot about architecture and conservation by doing stuff like fixing your home. Cleaning the walls, one becomes intimate with the apartment’s imperfections : the crooked wall indicating settling…

Today I tried a swimming class with my local chapter of Master Swimming. I find swim training an essential activity, part of who I am. The mood, however, is in the nature to “just get by”, rather than a complimentary activity that adds on to a cumulative ball of successes. Something magical happens when you…

This evening I watched the first episode of the series “Dance Life”: a documentary of dancers competing to make it to the “Jazz 1” cohort at the Brent Street studio in Sydney. At the end of watching the episode, I was full of zest. Watching those dancers express themselves on the screen rejuvenated my evening:…