POSTSCRIPT. It was pleasing to receive a group email from Dr. Evins of the Honors College, at semester's end, thanking all the faculty participants for their contributions to the Mental Health semester series. These remarks in particular gratified:  "...It was a really really really good series, thanks to all the wonderful presenters. Truly excellent... Phil touched on so much. He brought the classics and the wisdom of the ages directly to the students in one meta Philosophy lecture. It was powerful. The students will have much to say about the many points he touched ..read more

The point isn't longevity, it's to feel good today and plan to feel good again tomorrow. And to know you'll be ready, whenever the time comes, to rejoin Russell's great ocean of "universal life" (which really you're already doing). The point is to "live long and prosper" right now. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/22/how-to-die-in-good-health?_gl=1*gdig7f*_up*MQ..&gclid=05dc19316ca81fce994f7f12f1af4029&gclsrc=3p.ds ..read more

https://www.threads.net/@_stoicteacher/post/C5er_xorptn/?xmt=AQGzjCrNjlYq7WlLHO06gD7-8q3Xauo3l97QmcHxz5elew ..read more

https://www.instagram.com/p/C4vG6gzMscs/?igsh=aTNvMHM5bzkxZTE ..read more

'Oppenheimer,' My Uncle and the Secrets America Still Doesn't Like to Tell …"Oppenheimer" is a movie about a singular genius, an extraordinary collaboration and a turning point in history. But it's also a lesson in applied physics: the way a lone catalyst may trigger a chain reaction whose impact cannot be predicted or controlled. J. Robert Oppenheimer's greatest triumph set into motion forces that brought about his downfall. An innovation designed to make the world safer in the long term made it manifestly more dangerous. And in subsequent atomic tests through the postwar years, many Am ..read more

It has been four years since the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. In 2022 Ed Yong wrote that the U.S. "made none of the broad changes that would protect its population against future pathogens, such as better ventilation or universal paid sick leave." He predicted that America will "continue to struggle against infectious diseases in part because some of its most deeply held values are antithetical to the task of besting a virus." https://www.threads.net/@theatlantic/post/C4YzdRnRMYY/?xmt=AQGzVL8uXjPeUw92cc_xOhRNVYs1mCOg0E7vTYMC4LycRg ..read more

But don't underrate the value of being healthy. Things did not end well for Virginia. "Virginia Woolf on being ill as a portal to self-understanding and a way of breaking through our ordinary waking-state perception" https://www.themarginalian.org/2019/05/06/virginia-woolf-on-being-ill/ https://www.threads.net/@mariapopova/post/C2GY6ohxDni ..read more

Today, and for the next few weeks, my wife is chronologically older than me. She might need to hear what Maria  Popova and Simone de Beauvoir say about time's arrow… (And happy birthday to WJ, 182 today.) …to grow old at all is a tremendous privilege — one withheld from the vast majority of humans populating the history of our young species (to say nothing of the infinite potential humans who never chanced into existing). "…There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning — devoti ..read more

When asked about living with [ALS, Lou Gehrig's ] disease, he told an interviewer that he was "happier now" than before he became ill. "Before, I was very bored with life. I drank a fair bit, I guess; I didn't do any work . . .When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything that one does have." https://open.substack.com/pub/thewritersalmanac/p/the-writers-almanac-from-monday-january-645?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post ..read more

I'm reading Daniel Dennett's memoir "I've Been Thinking", which begins with the near-death experience that generated my favorite written testimonial of natural gratitude. "ON OCTOBER 24, 2006, I WAS RUSHED BY AMBULANCE from my office at Tufts University to the emergency room at Lahey Clinic, where doctors discovered the problem: the inner and outer layers of my aorta had come apart—an aortic dissection—and I could die at any moment if the blood from my heart burst out into my chest cavity. The day before I had been in Mackerel Cove on Swan’s Island in Maine on my sailboat, Xanthippe. This was ..read more