The other day, a friend stopped by my office with some surprising news. She had been a staunch New England Patriots fan for as long as I could remember. In fact, we usually talked football regardless of the initial context of our conversations. She always spoke admiringly of Tom Brady. Now, standing at the door of my office, the first thing she told me was that she had decided to
You can read and interpret these words because of electrical brain activity triggered by your eyes. You’re responding to sensory input in order to create meaning from this interaction with my words. I mention this because IBM and DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) have created neuromorphic silicon chips, or silicon neurons, that do something similar by mimicking activity in the cortex of the human brain. In other words, the birth
Following is some advice for professors everywhere that should serve as a useful reminder. I offer it with respect and good intentions, knowing full well that we don’t always live up to these standards. Still, it never hurts to try. Check your ego at the door. Earning an advanced degree and securing part- or full-time employment in Academia is a respectable accomplishment, but your focus should be on teaching, not
An arsenal of fears has shaped my behavior. I’ve been abused and abandoned so many times in my life that I always feel betrayed, powerless, and vulnerable. I can’t shake the belief that I’ve been deprived of true love along the way, so when I do manage relationships, I see myself as flawed and unwanted. This means I prefer to live in a state of self-imposed ignorance. I can’t take
My visit to the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya in the Colorado mountains was, by design, an unresearched event. I wanted to experience the visit with no preconceived notions. So, on the way from Walden to Ft. Collins, I turned left at a little roadside community called Rustic and drove up a steep, windy washboard road for five miles until I reached the parking lot for the Shambhala Mountain Center. A
