sotto.org

From the “excerpt”:http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/gilbert/excerpts.html :
What would you do right now if you learned that you were going to die in ten minutes? Would you race upstairs and light that Marlboro you’ve been hiding in your sock drawer since the Ford administration? Would you waltz into your boss’s office and present him with a detailed description of [...]

“More support”:http://www.columbia.edu/~ss957/whenchoice.html for the “paradox of choice”:http://sotto.org/2006/11/25/the_other_mores_law/
These findings are striking. Certainly, they appear to challenge a fundamental assumption held by psychologists and economists alike—that having more, rather than fewer, choices is necessarily more desirable and intrinsically motivating. The findings from this study show that an extensive array of options can at first seem highly appealing [...]

Child prodigy Joshua Bell plays the D.C. Metro on a nearly 300-year-old Stradivarius; pockets ~$32 in change. Fascinating piece about the prosaicness of daily life encroaching on our abilities to experience the sublime

Sam Harris (the atheist, not the original Star Search Winner) vs. Rick Warren, a Christian pastor.

Or follow what you think your bliss is [via kottke].

Cf. the O’Reilly Web 2.0 kerfuffle.

Whiny kids tend to become Conservative Stick-In-The-Muds. Confident well-grounded kids tend to be Liberal Non-conformists.

“Not knowing when to quit”:http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=253: It seems a good dose of common sense was severely lacking in the training materials handed out for the Japanese Imperial Army those days. A strange and sad tale nonetheless.
On December 17, 1944, the Japanese army sent a twenty-three year old soldier named Hiroo Onoda to the Philippines to join [...]

It seems the real key to being happy is diametric inconspicuous consumption.

Another nausea inducing optical illusion.

Stanford is conducting a survey on how people are coping with the events and aftermath of September 11. Must remember to take the survey.

How to E-Mail Like a C.E.O. This sto. seems famil. (By the way, to get past the NYTimes login, substitute www with channel)

A chess game under 5k.