DAILY PHOTO: Changdeokgung Secret Garden
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White Space [Free Verse]
I read the space
Around the poem.
It has no meaning,
But says so much.
It betrays a little secret
That no reader ever learned
Who was too concerned
With what was written,
While wholly inattentive
To
What
Was
Not.
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“The Crocodile” by Lewis Carroll [w/ Audio]
How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
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PROMPT: Foods
I’ve never baked a bread. That sounds satisfying.
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Immortal’s Limerick
There once was a wise Daoist Immortal,
Asked the secret to long life, he'd chortle:
"If you can stand masses
Who behave like asses
You're enlightened --
but better off mortal."
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Patter [Haiku]
sparse patter
on leaves outside the window:
half-hour after rain.
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DAILY PHOTO: Songwol-dong Fairy Tale Village
Wen Fu 10 “Originality” [文赋十] by Lu Ji [陆机] [w/Audio]
Splendid thoughts arise from joined words --
Lucidity is awakened:
Luminous like adorned brocade,
Doleful as a string serenade.
But if crib suspicions aren't killed,
It'll be just one more pulp piece.
Though you may be these word's weaver--
Some ancestor, the prime conceiver.
You must be just and rise above,
Though it kills words you've grown to love.
The original lines in Simplified Chinese:
或藻思绮合，清丽千眠。
炳若缛绣，凄若繁弦。
必所拟之不殊，乃暗合乎曩篇。
虽杼轴于予怀，怵佗人之我先。
苟伤廉而愆义，亦虽爱而必捐。
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PROMPT: Dogs or Cats?
Who would win in an interspecies death match? That’s a tough one. Dogs obviously have size and pack-fighting coordination, but cats are duplicitous, excel at the sneak attack, and are not constrained by moral conventions. (They’ll push things off the counter just to see them fall.) So, I doubt we’ll ever know.
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BOOK: “Gut Feelings” by Gerd Gigerenzer
Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd GigerenzerMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher Website – Penguin
Like Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink, Gut Feelings explores the circumstances under which intuitive decision-making has been shown to outperform rigorous and systematic reasoning. Gigerenzer is a psychologist and the Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.
The central idea of this book is that our brains have evolved to engage in intuitive decision making, and that sometimes what looks like sloppy thinking has underlying benefits. Take – for example – the fact that many times people are asked a question that they don’t know the answer to, but they exploit their selective ignorance in a way that allows them to not only outperform those more ignorant than they, but also those less ignorant. Gigerenzer uses the example of students asked whether Milwaukee or Detroit has a bigger population. Often those who’ve only heard of one of the cities will guess that the one they know is bigger, and this tends to be right more often than not. Students familiar with both cities (but not knowing the precise answer) are more likely to stumble.
The book suggests that we tend to decide based on one key factor rather than the full “pros and cons” list for which many teachers and leaders advocate. The book has a fascinating chapter on how this all applies to healthcare decision-making. It provides insight into why the American healthcare system is so screwed up (high cost, low health outcomes.)
If you are interested in decision-making and the divergence between what we are taught to do and what most of us actually do most of the time (and why,) I’d highly recommend this book.
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Tiger Riding for Beginners 