Author: Shaun

Interest

4. When have you felt an intense pull to explore and learn more, to fully immerse yourself in your new discoveries and take in a feast of new ideas?

I am deeply interested in how people make decisions and what motivates them. Like my study of neuroscience this often means reading.

The Paradox of Choice

Dan Arielly on being predictably irrational.

Nudge–all about Choice Architecture

 

A great playlist here.

Interest: Technology

When I was a kid I desperately wanted to buy the Timex 100 Home Computer kid, but I could just not afford it. The first time I actually used a computer I sensed the magic. I was not sure what that magic was, but I knew it was there.

The first computer I bought was a used mac clone from a student. It had an orange screen. I think I used mostly for word processing. A few years alter I bought a used laptop. It had two hard floppy disk drives. I became quite good at using wordperfect as a result.

Then I graduated and bought myself a mac laptop: A powerbook 170. This was state of the art computer that cost more than my car. No kidding.

And I disocvered the internet in the form of freenet.

Fast forward a few years. I have created some fairly widely read blogs and websites.

I continue to read about technology most days, especially mac products. Perhaps I am a apple fanboy

 

Interest portfolio: Neuroscience

1. When have you felt fully alert and curious, deeply interested in the mysteries or possibilities unfolding before you?

I have simply adored reading many new books about the brain. It not only utterly captivates me, but causes me to want to share it. I have been reading books for several years now, but one that especially intrigues me is The Brain that Changes itself:

There are so many other like Jill Bolten, Author of My Stroke of Insight:

Or Dan Gilbert

Here is a great list (not of all of which I have watched)

 

 

Love = Romance

When one hears love I suspect romantic love is the first one that pops into people’s head. It certainly did for me. But how to capture the profoundness and deepness of the connection I feel? I don’t know about soulmates (although I like the idea), and I think it causes a lot more problems for committment. Listen to Joe Cocker’s words, his emotional declaration, and he has caught how I feel.

Love Songs

How many great love longs are there out there, ones that mean something to me personally? 

While this one is not so much a song for someone as it is a treatise on love offering hope.

Some say love, it is a river
That drowns the tender reed.
Some say love, it is a razor
That leaves your soul to bleed.
Some say love, it is a hunger,
An endless aching need.
I say love, it is a flower,
And you its only seed.

It’s the heart afraid of breaking
That never learns to dance.
It’s the dream afraid of waking
That never takes the chance.
It’s the one who won’t be taken,
Who cannot seem to give,
And the soul afraid of dyin’
That never learns to live.

When the night has been too lonely
And the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only
For the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snows
Lies the seed that with the sun’s love
In the spring becomes the rose.