Ed Dowding

Category: Being Human

Happiness, Health, and Psychology

Boring doesn’t have to be boring.

I’m so glad to see that the world is increasingly realising things can be fun. I just watched the whole thing and I’m not even on a plane. Which is an odd definition of fun, I grant you. Virgin America Safety Video #VXsafetydance – YouTube.

Call of Duty.

Here’s fun: Open this link in Google: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=define+duty Read the first definition. Click the big grey arrow at the bottom of the box to show more detail, specifically the ‘usage over time’ graph. Reflect on that a moment.

Did Madeliene McCann kill 100,00 Syrians and cover up the IPCC report?

Excuse the contentious headline, but contentious headlines grab attention. At least that’s what the press would have us believe. After 6 years of covering Madeliene McCann, the BBC Today programme is discussing if BuzzFeed is irresponsible for distracting people from ‘real news’.

Embrace Life – always wear your seat belt

httpv://youtu.be/h-8PBx7isoM

What happened to political leadership?

I have no idea what happened to political leadership, and in many ways I don’t much care. What is where are the politicians with vision? It used to be that the greatest minds went into politics with the sole intention of helping the citizens they cared for navigate the future successfully.  Now it would appear ...

Evidence-based policies

Let’s face it, we know a lot of stuff now. Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media ...

There are two kinds of failure.

There are two kinds of failure. The failure of ambitious dreams that maybe we’ll see in China. And the never ending failure of the miserable cynical bastards in the west who never open their mouths but to whine about how terrible everything is. People so fundamentally opposed to a better world tomorrow that the highest ...

The Scale of Genuine Civilisation

Accept what you can not change, change what you can not accept.

By all means, follow the advice of the Desiderata and “accept what you can not change”, but only so that you have energy and sanity left to change what you can not accept.

In historical terms, today is absolutely incredible. In terms of the world we’re going to create in your lifetime, today is rather embarrassing. Get to work.

Petition fatigue: in defence of clicktivism.

Every. Single. Day. Every single day there’s another damned petition to sign. Is it about anything sensible or reasonable? No. It’s about trying to prevent only the most stupid / villainous / malicious / self-serving people from doing the most ludicrous and outrageously stupid things they could ever possibly dream up to do. It makes ...

Pretend that you’re happy

By Jay Foreman.

Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?

Nope, you’ll be shredded by your own insecurities borne of your deluded values framework.

Manifestos for life

Posters in the Hub Westminster with typographical design by Robert Reed. Source: This is Reed

The Quantity Theory of Insanity.

The commuter traffic jam is the peak of man’s unhappiness. It’s a situation outside of your control, probably on the way to a location you don’t want to be at, at a time you didn’t choose. It is noisy, shamefully inefficient, encourages mis-directed frustration at one’s fellows, and you have absolutely zero ability to remove ...

The power of pure imagination

If you want to view paradise Simply look around and view it Anything you want to, do it Wanta change the world? There’s nothing To it From Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Apologising to Wonga

For the ‘personal growth’ diaries: —- Dear xxxx I was having a chat with xxxx today who brought it to my attention that I’d been a little rude to you during the mentors evening, ripping on you as hard as I did about your decision to work with Wonga. I apologise unreservedly for making you ...

Dark Skies

This is cool. I didn’t know this even existed! Exmoor National Park has been designated the first International Dark Sky Reserve in Europe! A view of the stars is a view of our natural heritage and a spectacular quality of Exmoor’s night time landscape. Dark night skies are a declining resource, threatened by development and ...

The Righteous Mind

I’m currently listening to The Righteous Mind by by Jonathan Haidt whilst on a long car journey from Salisbury to La Plagne and back in 4 days. It kept me captivated for 8 solid hours yesterday, which is pretty darned impressive, but also par for the course since his last book, The Happiness Hypothesis did the same, twice. I’ve ...

I hope the Mayans were right. The “end of the world as we know it” seems like a bloody good idea.

PS. I’m not proud of the tone of voice this is written in, and really I should have waited a few days, edited, and posted up a version which speaks to love and beauty and connections. But this blog serves a number of purposes: it’s a place to share thoughts, it’s a personal diary of ...