Robert Kegan hits the nail on the head

“Successfully functioning in a society with diverse values, traditions and lifestyles requires us to have a relationship to our own reactions rather than be captive of them. To resist our tendencies to make right or true, that which is nearly familiar, and wrong or false, that which is only strange.”
― Robert Kegan

Julian Baggini: Is there a real you?

Nigel Slater is Smug

“I’m not sure my omelette pan is any such thing. A pan worthy of the name should probably be nonstick and have a totally smooth surface and gently curving sides. The pan in which I make mine is black steel, only nonstick because of the years of service it has given, regularly being wiped with kitchen roll rather than taking a ride in the dishwater, being used for not only omelettes and the odd frittata but for frying onions, sautéing the occasional piece of chicken or frying some fingerling-sized strips of bacon to add to a winter salad of chicory, shredded celery and roasted walnut halves.”

—	Nigel Slater, The Observer, Sunday 22 January 2012

Christ.

Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory

About to read Thinking Fast and Slow by this man.  Below is a one of the less ebullient quotes from the cover...

Profound . . . As Copernicus removed the Earth from the centre of the universe and Darwin knocked humans off their biological perch, Mr. Kahneman has shown that we are not the paragons of reason we assume ourselves to be. 
(The Economist )

i'm expecting a lot.

The Zebras - You Look Ready

Amazing that something so obviously great can be so overlooked.

This was posted on YouTube 9 months ago and currently has 361 views. Tragic.

 

Sentimentality

"Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart; and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty."

James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son

Tyler Cowen: Be wary of stories