OTBT | MM | TT | WW

INTROVERTDEAR.COM -- No matter what your preferred solo activity is, it turns out downtime isn't a waste of time--it's actually really good for your mental health, your productivity, and even your relationships.... It's nearly impossible to have nuanced, rich thoughts when you're engaging with others.... As the famous deep-thinking poet Rumi noted, "A little while alone in your room will prove more valuable than anything else that could ever be given you."

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- WIRED.COM -- "The scientists had these elaborate theories about what was supposed to happen," Dunbar says. "But the results kept contradicting their theories...." Perhaps they hoped to see a specific protein but it wasn't there. Or maybe their DNA sample showed the presence of an aberrant gene. The details always changed, but the story remained the same: The ...

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EDWARDFESER.BLOGSPOT.COM -- EDWARD FESER -- [ISMAILI DIGEST ED: Relativism asserts there are no absolute truths, or no universal ethics or morals. In 2006, Hazar Imam called relativism "unprincipled." Though long, we strongly recommend this article.] ARTICLE: Someone says something like "Well, it's a matter of opinion" or "Who's to say?", this may not be intended to imply that there is no objective fact of the matter about which view is correct. ...

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INTROVERTDEAR.COM -- "You should talk more." This is a phrase uttered by extroverts to introverts more times than there are grains of sand on a beach. It's said as if the speaker is trying to conjure up feelings of courage yet unknown in his introverted subject. The intention here, as far as I can tell, is that the extroverted party sees introversion as a disease, something broken in a person that should be fixed....

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[H/T ISMAILI INSTITUTIONS FOR CANADA] -- RABBISACKS.ORG -- From four years of research, Putnam discovered that if you are a regular church or synagogue attendee, you ... are also more likely to do voluntary work for a charity, give money to a homeless person ... frequent worshippers are also more active citizens ... They turn up, they get involved, they lead. And the margin of difference between them and secular Americans is large. ...

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INDEPENDENT.CO.UK -- Richard Smith, who edited the British Medical Journal for more than a decade, said there was no evidence that peer review was a good method of detecting errors and claimed that "most of what is published in journals is just plain wrong or nonsense".... Dr Richard Horton, Editor of The Lancet, wrote in an editorial that "much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue" ...

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THEATLANTIC.COM -- The former Yale English professor William Deresiewicz stirred up quite a storm earlier this month with his New Republic essay "Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League" -- a damning critique of the nation's most revered and wealthy educational institutions, and the flawed meritocracy they represent. He takes these arguments even further in his upcoming book, Excellent Sheep: The ...

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[H/T MOHIB EBRAHIM] -- NYTIMES.COM -- Solitude is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses ...

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THOUGHTCATALOG.COM -- Very few of us sit down to create art or work they hope will disappear. Whether you're an entrepreneur, a writer, a designer, a journalist, a producer, a filmmaker, a comedian, a blogger, an actor, a whatever, the whole point is to make something meaningful, something that lasts. To make something "imperishable," to achieve, as a translator once said of ...

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NYTIMES.COM -- Every summer for many years now, my family has kept to our ritual. All 20 of us -- my siblings, my dad, our better halves, my nieces and nephews -- find a beach house big enough to fit the whole unruly clan. We journey to it from our different states and time zones. We tensely divvy up the bedrooms, trying ...

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