Ze Frank is back with a new show. It’s very nice to see, and so far I’d say I’ll remember it in five years as fondly as I recall The Show. I think this is the best episode he’s posted so far.

Very interesting story of the peculiar kind of intelligence we’re still learning to perceive in octopi. For example:

One octopus Mather was watching had just returned home and was cleaning the front of the den with its arms. Then, suddenly, it left the den, crawled a meter away, picked up one particular rock and placed the rock in front of the den. Two minutes later, the octopus ventured forth to select a second rock. Then it chose a third. Attaching suckers to all the rocks, the octopus carried the load home, slid through the den opening, and carefully arranged the three objects in front. Then it went to sleep. What the octopus was thinking seemed obvious: “Three rocks are enough. Good night!”

(via Kottke)

I’ve told you how much I love deep-dives from the LRB and NYRB, this “Letter from Guatemala” is almost as good as similar things in those magazines. A few more things like this come across my lap and I might have to start closely following the LARB. If they focus on Latin America and the Pacific I’m already sold.

Before you go telling me that I clearly don’t know fun, I should be clear about that part too. It’s tautologically true that nothing can be more fun than fun, but it’s undeniable that we mean a rather specific subset of things when we typically say “fun.” When your wife, friend, or boss commands you “to go have some fun,” they obviously don’t mean spend time entering data into spreadsheets, even that’s your favorite thing in the whole world. Things that the culture at large considers fun are generally hedonic pleasures that fall into the general categories of social activities and light amusements. TV is fun, video games are fun, watching and playing sports is fun, “partying” is fun, gossiping is fun, (social) eating is fun.

Programming, writing, editing, compiling, even cooking, these things are all generally considered to be outside the category of fun. But they can be. These tasks, which we generally categorize as “work” can be deeply immensely satisfying in a way that almost no activity considered above in the category “fun” are. When you think your work matters, or even if you just regard it as a worthy thing to spend time on, the sense of satisfaction that’s available in accomplishing your work in a way you regard as “well” is a supreme pleasure.

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s seminal work on “flow” is essentially about this very point. The Wikipedia article on the topic has this to say about flow:

It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task.

It is not “work” per se, as the generalized category, that constitutes the type that is “more fun than fun”. Your dull and disappointing job which neither challenges nor can challenge you is probably never going to give you the sense of egoless immersion and accomplishment that really leaves one feeling deeply satisfied and contented with the activity they have just completed. But it’s also undeniable that because work gives you access to the achievement of things far beyond yourself, the possibility for a sense of lasting accomplishment is far greater than even the most successful and flowing “fun” activity.

I don’t believe that work-is-fun flow state is a state itself worthy of pursuit, but I fervently believe that it can be a useful tool in getting done work you care about. That is, unlike deep meditative awareness, I don’t regard flow states as inherently beneficial outside of themselves, but I think they clearly constitute a useful tool if you’re pursuing ends you know to be good and valuable. (See my thoughts on Flow Traps, for why I’m pressing so hard on that.)

The reason to share and explain this rather popular quotation is simply this: too frequently people just ignore the very real possibility it explains. We go around living our lives for the weekends, the whistle, the bell, the time when we’re free to have fun. But doing that is itself to confine yourself to prison during your working hours. You don’t need to be doing activities we define as “fun” to enjoy the way you’re spending your time. If you do your work well, achieve a degree of both mastery and learning, you can make every moment of your life, even the dullest ones, “more fun than fun.”

John Terborgh’s piece about the moral question of “uncontacted tribes” and the history of that answer in Brazil is a great read. As someone who’d mused at the thought a little, but never done much else, I learned quite a lot.

This McSweeney’s piece, whether or not it knows it, is about the Buddhist idea that dukkha (“suffering”) in an inherent characteristic of samsara (the flow of life). In English, it’s about how our constant seeking after passions, objects, and experiences causes us a great deal of confusion, frustration, and pain. And finally, to paraphrase Daniel Gilbert, it’s about how the things we think will make us happy rarely do.

(via Kottke)

Oliver Burkeman’s latest features a very interesting, underrated, and useful observation about the way we think.

Faced with a cognitively demanding question, involving uncertainty – “Will this person do the job well if hired?” – interviewers unconsciously substitute an easier question, and answer that one instead: “Did this person impress me in the interview?” We all do it, all the time.

David Cain hit the ball out of the park on this one. I literally finished it and said to myself (with a giggle), “That was both novel and enlivening.” If there’s a better standard to aspire to, I don’t know what it is. If you’re really too lazy to read it, the central thesis:

It’s an interesting quirk of Mother Nature — that she insists on taking us down to the ground like that, every day, no matter who we are. For all of us, the act of leaving consciousness is the same, it’s just our settings and situations — which bookend that unconsciousness — where we differ.

Diane Ravitch’s review of a few books about the state of American education is interesting, if only because she’s one of the few people I’ve seen standing athwart the consensus on the topic yelling “Stop!”. (To appropriate W.F. Buckley.) Whether or not you agree with her, I found this point salient:

If we were to improve the teaching profession, then perhaps more of the talented young people who now apply to Teach for America would choose to enter teaching as a career, not as a stepping stone to graduate school or another more remunerative line of work.

With Mitt Romney’s possibly certain status as the Republican presidential candidate, Mormonism is in the air. But the details of Mormon history aren’t. I had no knowledge of the Mountain Meadows massacre — explained here by Gilbert King on the Smithsonian’s Past Imperfect blog — which is a pretty horrific reflection on the actions of the young Mormon church.