Montag, 11. April 2011 7:42
It must be old news for some, because the comic is actually from 2008, but I laughed very hard and at the same time felt it says a lot about our world in many ways. Oh well, here it is, thanks to XKCD:
Sonntag, 10. April 2011 22:13
I sometimes have free time at my hands right now to read things that have been slumbering in the depths of my computer for a long time. And I rediscovered „The Devil’s Dictionary“, composed around 1900 by Ambrose Bierce and available for free in a horrible text format on Project Gutenberg. As one of my early ventures into search and replace with regular expressions and into LaTeX, I created a nicely typeset version of that, hereby to be put into the public domain. And some of my favorite definitions from it right here:
Sonntag, 10. April 2011 21:52
I just came across a book with the promising title „Street-Fighting Mathematics — The Art of Educated Guessing and Opportunistic Problem Solving“ by Sanjoy Mahajan (2010), which is actually licensed under Creative Commons, so it can be found for free online. The basic premise is to provide some mathematical tools or heuristics to sufficiently approximate solutions to everyday problems (and maybe also provide a more general framework for that kind of reasoning). And it starts teasingly with a topic called „Dimensions“ and „The power of multinational corporations“. Here’s the problem:
In Nigeria, a relatively economically strong country, the GDP [gross domestic product] is $99 billion. The net worth of Exxon is $119 billion. “When multinationals have a net worth higher than the GDP of the country in which they operate, what kind of power relationship are we talking about?” asks Laura Morosini.
What is the most egregious fault in the comparison between Exxon and Nigeria?
Sonntag, 10. April 2011 7:59
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Sonntag, 3. April 2011 7:59
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Sonntag, 27. März 2011 7:59
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Dienstag, 22. März 2011 17:22
I stumbled upon a text that seems to be written for my thoughts right now — I read a little and thought a bunch about existentialism recently, but of course my perspective was influenced by what I’ve done before, and I think in terms of my philosophical foundation there is a lot of a person-centered counselor in me. So here comes an article „The Person-centered Approach from an Existential Perspective“ in that same volume of Existenzanalyse 2008–1 quoted in an earlier post, that points out the many areas of overlap as well as the substantial differences, and helps me to locate myself in between. I highly recommend the whole read, but here are some of my key points, on notable differences and additions of an existential approach to the person-centered stance:
Dienstag, 22. März 2011 10:21
In his „Comments on the State of Psychotherapy Research (As I See It)“ David Orlinsky points to some old wounds in psychotherapy research (and in many ways research in psychology in general). I think it is worth re-reading every now and then while you are active in the field. Right now I discovered some stimulating words on the „Placebo Effect“, something I feel will be important to really understand and utilize in practice in the next decade. Unless we want to leave it to modern shamans of good and bad intentions.
Sonntag, 20. März 2011 7:59
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Samstag, 19. März 2011 18:55
Doing some research for my 10 days of travel in India between Auroville and flying from Mumbai to Nairobi, I was very pleased to find Wikipedia has a category for „Caves around Mumbai“. And then I had to smile reading in the description of the Mahakali Caves a wonderful example of how English sounds over here:
Thema: Weltreise 2011 | Kommentare deaktiviert | Autor: Christoph