Taoism
-
The Tao of Personal Genomics
When I saw the cover story in the Sunday Times Magazine by Steven Pinker, "My Genome, My Self," I was ready to pounce. I thought: here comes a biological determinist trying to assert that we can understand personal identity and… Continue reading
-
John Travolta’s Agony: Taoist and Confucian Views
John Travolta's son died. Apparently he had a seizure disorder and was killed by a seizure – that is what the death certificate says, at least. The parents must be devastated. My heart goes out to them. It seems that… Continue reading
-
The Real and the Fake
China is famous for the knock-off product, the locally made copy of a famous, often international, brand commodity. There is even a neologism, shanzhai, that is used to denote fake products. But now, it seems, fakery is expanding culturally beyond… Continue reading
-
The Tao of Benjamin Button
A couple of days ago we went to see the movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Its premise is, at once, unusual yet obvious: it traces the life of a man born old and who, as he ages, gets… Continue reading
-
John Maynard Keynes: Taoist?
OK, not really. But these lines from a recent NYT Magazine article caught my eye: …Then, as now, economists believed that all uncertainty could be reduced to measurable risk. So asset prices always reflected fundamentals, and unregulated markets would in… Continue reading
-
Tao in the Net
The NYT Magazine today had its year-end edition, The Year in Ideas 2008, in which ideas from the last twelve months are briefly described. One item caught my eye, because my daughter plays goalie on her lacrosse team: "Goalkeeper Science."… Continue reading
-
Religious Taoism Today
When I invoke Taoism, I almost always mean philosophical Taoism. I tend to avoid the other side of the tradition, religious Taoism, not because I disrespect it (I don't) but because I have not studied it sufficiently to feel comfortable… Continue reading
-
It’s Called Way…
An article in Discover magazine (hat tip: Sullivan) reports on physicists thinking big thoughts. Really big thoughts. Like this: …Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. Most of those universes are… Continue reading
-
The Tao of Rachel Carson
Time slips away….but I'm back now… On Friday I saw a one-woman play, a story based on the life of Rachel Carson, the great scientist-writer who is now seen by many as one of the founders of the modern environmentalist… Continue reading
-
Herb Score and Chuang Tzu
An obituary today brought to mind the uncertainty of Way, how, in a moment, the trajectory of our lives can change. Herb Score was a pitcher for the Cleveland Indians in the 1950's. He was strong and promising and destined,… Continue reading
The Useless Tree 