Healthy minds, flourishing lives

  

 

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 on in his lecture. And also about going outside to walk the dog :) ...Also, Tom stood up for cat culture as personal therapy, balancing out Phil very nicely. (My husband is an Epictetus guy. I myself brought Epictetus home from both Phil and Tom.)"

Cat culture? Well, whatever works. 

 

MTSU Honors Lecture Series Spring 2024, here are the links to videos from each lecture; some videos are better than others depending on who was there to be the videographer!, but much was, happily, captured:

1/22 M. Evins, Honors Intro

1/29 Michelle Stevens, MTSU Center for Fairness, Justice, and Equity

2/5 Mary Kaye Anderson, MTSU Counseling Services

2/12 Rudy Dunlap, MTSU Health and Human Performance

2/26 Seth Marshall, MTSU Psychology

3/4 Spring Break – No Classes

3/11 Sarah Harris, MTSU Nutrition and Food Science

3/18 Kent Syler, MTSU Political Science

3/25 Rev. Susan Pendleton Jones, Belmont University

4/1 Bill Dobbins, NAMI-TN

4/8 Phil Oliver, MTSU Philosophy

4/15 Honors Student Presentations: Emilie Conners, Eli Ward, Madalyn Dye

4/22 Tom Brinthaupt, MTSU Psychology

Peter Attia’s Quest to Live Long and Prosper

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

Keep your health

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

Haidt: end phone-centric childhood

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

“deliberately exposed to radiation”

'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 Americans were deliberately exposed to radiation, to see what the blast and its aftermath would do to them...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/opinion/oppenheimer-secret-lives.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Pandemic lessons not learned

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

‘Fantastic Voyage’-ish A.I.

A.I. Is Learning What It Means to Be Alive

Given troves of data about genes and cells, A.I. models have made some surprising discoveries. What could they teach us someday?

...“I think these models are going to help us get some really fundamental understanding of the cell, which is going to provide some insight into what life really is,” Dr. Quake said.

Having a map of what’s possible and impossible to sustain life might also mean that scientists could actually create new cells that don’t yet exist in nature. The foundation model might be able to concoct chemical recipes that transform ordinary cells into new, extraordinary ones. Those new cells might devour plaque in blood vessels or explore a diseased organ to report back on its condition.

“It’s very ‘Fantastic Voyage’-ish,” Dr. Quake admitted. “But who knows what the future is going to hold?”

..."Professors should be very, very nervous."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/science/ai-learning-biology.html?smid=em-share

Portals

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/