On The Shortness of Life: An Introduction to Seneca

Great posting by Tim Ferriss, a great read to start 2010.
iPhone users can download an app / ebook here.

Quote of the day

Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

-- Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and writer (121-180) (via wordsmith.org)

Quote of the day

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Bertrand Russell

Reason

A three-part post about reason:

(1) I'm happy to announce that The Reason Project was launched yesterday. According to their website, "The Reason Project is a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. Drawing on the talents of some of the most prominent and creative thinkers across a wide range of disciplines, The Reason Project seeks to encourage critical thinking and wise public policy through a variety of interrelated projects — all with the purpose of eroding the influence of dogmatism, superstition, and bigotry in our world."

(2) I'm reading Alan Alda's excellent "Things I overheard while talking to myself". In chapter 6 ("A passion for reason"), he quotes Thomas Jefferson:

"I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way."

(3) And since Jefferson is one of my all-time heroes, why not another quote, found on a wall in the underground of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C.:

“Here, we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

Thomas Jefferson, 1820

Can we handle honesty?

It's always bugged me that although most (or all) of us highly value honesty as a desirable moral virtue, we may not be equipped to handle ruthless honesty as we think we are. I know this is a serious issue that can lead to long and deep discussions. I'm choosing to take a more humorous approach, instead, pointing you to this piece by one of my favorite authors, A.J. Jacobs, the author of "The Know-It-All" and "The Year of Living Biblically". Enjoy!

And another "moment of Zen"

... but not in the "Daily Show with Jon Stewart" way... 

Instead, another excerpt from the excellent "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" book, particularly relevant in this pre-election days in the US: 

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.

On wisdom

"The highest rung on the ladder of cognition, above both information and knowledge, is wisdom. This desirable attribute, presumably the result of considered thought and long experience, is remarkably hard to come by. [...] The hallmark of wisdom is to have distilled from one's experience some conception of how the world works that is useful to others."

Gordon Livingston

Teaching Philosophy

This is based on a document I wrote a few years ago, after having been nominated (by students) for the Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award at FAU. I believe it is still current and relevant.

I chose to be a teacher more than 20 years ago, when I accepted an invitation from a former high-school teacher and applied for what would become my first job, teaching Electronics to high-school students in Brazil. Since then, I have had the privilege of interacting with thousands of students, from different levels – from high-school to graduate school – and disciplines – from Electrical Engineering to Computer Science –, in three different countries and languages. I am completely happy with my professional decision of becoming a teacher: I do what I like and I like what I do.

Along the past two decades I have taught a wide range of courses in the fields of Electronics, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Computer Engineering, to high-school, undergraduate and graduate students in three Brazilian institutions and one American university, FAU. I was also a visiting scholar at Universidad de Murcia (Cartagena, Spain). My students have always expressed their recognition of my teaching efforts with very positive evaluations, comments, and tokens of appreciation.

My teaching philosophy is based on the following guidelines:

1. Friendly personal interaction. I make myself available to students, in and out of the classroom, and encourage a friendly relationship based on trust, civility, and mutual respect.
2. Challenges and rewards. I believe students must be challenged and take special care in making sure that there is a good matching between the nature and size of the challenges, the skills required to meet them, and the rewards that await the students once they successfully complete their tasks.
3. Current, engaging, and pragmatic approach to the subject matter. I take pride in using the most current resources (software tools, Web resources, textbooks, etc.) in my courses and constantly work on updating and renewing course materials. I make connections between the course topics and the “real world” as often as appropriate.
4. Promoting and acknowledging progress. I encourage students to appreciate how much they have grown during the course and evaluate their performance with emphasis on the progress they have made rather than looking only at the final result of their exams.

Virtudes

Extraído do preâmbulo do livro "Pequeno Tratado das Grandes Virtudes", de André Comte-Sponville, Tradução de Eduardo Brandão, Ed. Martins Fontes, São Paulo, 1999:

Se a virtude pode ser ensinada, como creio, é mais pelo exemplo do que pelos livros. Então, para que um tratado das virtudes? Para isto, talvez: tentar compreender o que deveríamos fazer, ou ser, ou viver, e medir com isso, pelo menos intelectualmente, o caminho que daí nos separa. Tarefa modesta, tarefa insuficiente, mas necessária. Os filósofos são alunos (só os sábios são mestres), e alunos precisam de livros; é por isso que eles às vezes escrevem livros, quando os que têm à mão não os satisfazem ou sufocam. Ora, que livro é mais urgente, para cada um de nós, do que um tratado de moral? E o que é mais digno de interesse, na moral, do que as virtudes? Assim como Spinoza, não creio haver utilidade em denunciar os vícios, o mal, o pecado. Para que sempre acusar, sempre denunciar? É a moral dos tristes, e uma triste moral. Quanto ao bem, ele só existe na pluralidade irredutível das boas ações, que excedem todos os livros, e das boas disposições, também elas plurais, mas sem dúvida menos numerosas, que a tradição designa pelo nome de virtudes, isto é (este é o sentido em grego da palavra arete, que os latinos traduziram por virtus), de excelências.
[...]
A virtude, repete-se desde Aristóteles, é uma disposição adquirida de fazer o bem. É preciso dizer mais, porém: ela é o próprio bem, em espírito e em verdade. Não o Bem absoluto, não o Bem em si, que bastaria conhecer ou aplicar. O bem não é para se contemplar, é para se fazer (grifo meu). Assim é a virtude: é o esforço para se portar bem, que define o bem nesse próprio esforço.

Quotations on teacher and teaching

Think Exist is a repository of quotations, including quotes on teachers and teaching, ranging from the sad (but often heard throughout these last 25 years)

"He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.”
(by George Bernard Shaw) 

to the inspiring 

"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” 

(by William Arthur Ward). 

On the right amount of teaching...

Establishing a faculty member's teaching load and responsibilities is a delicate balancing act. During my 25 years as a teacher, I've witnessed scenarios that ranged from one end of the spectrum (making teaching appear as a burden or obstacle on the way to excellence in research and scholarship) to the opposite (where -- for one reason or another -- the teaching load is excessive and leaves very little room for anything else). 

About the latter, here is another quote from chapter 13 in "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance":

The school was what could euphemistically be called a "teaching college." At a teaching college you teach and you teach and you teach with no time for research, no time for contemplation, no time for participation in outside affairs. Just teach and teach and teach until your mind grows dull and your creativity vanishes and you become an automaton saying the same dull things over and over to endless waves of innocent students who cannot understand why you are so dull, lose respect and fan this disrespect out into the community. The reason you teach and you teach and you teach is that this is a very clever way of running a college on the cheap while giving a false appearance of genuine education.

Inspiring books...

I've started a list of some of my all-time favorite books (check the right-most column of this page) with two books that were recommended to me many years ago by my dear friend Bart de Greef:

• "Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life", by Jon Kabat-Zinn
• "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values", by Robert M. Pirsig

I've read "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" twice (so far), in 1988 and again in 1998. I've established a goal to read it at least once every 10 years. It's 2008, which means I'm due for a third tour of this great book, from which I extracted this inspiring (and apropos) piece:

University versus university

The real University is not a material object. It is not a group of buildings that can be defended by police. He explained that when a college lost its accreditation, nobody came and shut down the school. There were no legal penalties, no fines, no jail sentences. Classes did not stop. Everything went on just as before. Students got the same education they would if the school didn't lose its accreditation. All that would happen, Phædrus said, would simply be an official recognition of a condition that already existed. It would be similar to excommunication. What would happen is that the real University, which no legislature can dictate to and which can never be identified by any location of bricks or boards or glass, would simply declare that this place was no longer "holy ground." The real University would vanish from it, and all that would be left was the bricks and the books and the material manifestation.

It must have been a strange concept to all of the students, and I can imagine him waiting for a long time for it to sink in, and perhaps then waiting for the question, What do you think the real University is?

His notes, in response to this question, state the following:

The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind. It is that great heritage of rational thought that has been brought down to us through the centuries and which does not exist at any specific location.

It's a state of mind which is regenerated throughout the centuries by a body of people who traditionally carry the title of professor, but even that title is not part of the real University. The real University is nothing less than the continuing body of reason itself.

In addition to this state of mind, "reason," there's a legal entity which is unfortunately called by the same name but which is quite another thing. This is a nonprofit corporation, a branch of the state with a specific address. It owns property, is capable of paying salaries, of receiving money and of responding to legislative pressures in the process.

But this second university, the legal corporation, cannot teach, does not generate new knowledge or evaluate ideas. It is not the real University at all. It is just a church building, the setting, the location at which conditions have been made favorable for the real church to exist.

Confusion continually occurs in people who fail to see this difference, he said, and think that control of the church buildings implies control of the church.

They see professors as employees of the second university who should abandon reason when told to and take orders with no backtalk, the same way employees do in other corporations.

They see the second university, but fail to see the first.

My business

When I'm asked (a very common question in the USA): "What line of business you're in?", I usually answer: "I'm in the business of helping people."

Helping students succeed (and enjoying their success) is the key motivation that drives me to do what I do (and hope to continue doing for years to come...).

Courses, departments, technologies, programming languages, ..., come and go. The essence of teaching -- reaching out to students, connecting with them, and taking them from point A to point B -- remains unchanged. At the end of the day, whether you're a teacher, social worker, nurse, medical doctor, or play any other role in the lives of others, it's all about people acknowledging their interdependence and helping one another.