• This Is Your Brain on Silence.  Contrary to popular belief, peace and quiet is all about the noise in your head. 

• We are Here:  A call for peace from singer Alicia Keys.  

• Multitask Masters by Maria Konnikova, New Yorker Magazine. University of Utah professor David Strayer has found a very small group of people who can actually multitask at a high level.

• 10 Things That Will Surprise You If You Put Kids In Charge of their Own Learning.  A great example of radical experiments going on across the country in changing our industrial k-12 education system.

• How Much Do Our Genes Influence Our Political Beliefs? -NYT Times -  In "Obedience to Traditional Authority: A heritable factor underlying authoritarianism, conservatism and religiousness," published by the journal Personality and Individual Differences in 2013, three psychologists write that "authoritarianism, religiousness and conservatism," which they call the "traditional moral values triad," are "substantially influenced by genetic factors." 

• Can a robot learn right from wrong?  Researchers are working on robots that can make ethical choices and then explain why.

• How to make good decisions: don't decide anything important after 4 p.m., use intuition, and wait until the last minute.

• The Not so Obvious Benefits of Staying Hydrated: This list of 10 benefits is beyond anything I have seen on how water creates the foundation for the human body and how not getting enough of it results in a myriad of physical complications.   

• The Startup That Lowers Your Energy Bills by Paying for Upgrades 

• Asking for Advice Makes You Seem More Competent, Not Less - NY Magazine

• Business and the Buddha: Doing Well by Doing Good, by Lloyd Field (2007). Mr. Field is the real deal.  He was formerly VP of HR at Johnson & Johnson and decided that the time had come to help companies do things differently. The Dalai Lama himself has endorsed this book, and for good reason.  Mr. Field is a seasoned Buddhist practitioner and he is able to fuse that knowledge with his real world experience at one of the most successful corporations in the world.  Making the world of work a more saner place is a noble calling and the book does a good job of staying practical in its recommendations.  If you're new to Buddhism, Field does an excellent job of explaining the basics so that you get a good overview.  The Buddha said there are three great hindrances of humanity - Greed, Hatred, and Delusion. The world of capitalism unfortunately gets caught up in those hindrances too often.  Fortunately, Mr. Field shows that the desire for profit needn't necessarily trample the better parts of our nature.  We do however, need to revisit some of our basic assumptions of how things should work (sorry Adam Smith fans...).  The recommended readings are great and so if you are actively engaged in the modern work place, want to see how to make it a more sane place, and learn about Buddhism in the process, this is a wonderful book to read.

• The Amount of Food Humans Waste is Mind-blowing, But Here's How We Can Stop It! 

• Science Beyond the Superstitions of Materialism: Biologist Rupert Sheldrake and Deepak Chopra.  In the skeptical spirit of true science, Sheldrake turns the ten fundamental dogmas of materialism into exciting questions, and shows how all of them open up startling new possibilities for discovery.

• Inon Barnatan - Schubert: Piano Sonatas -(2013)  The 35 year old Israeli-born pianist is considered by many to be the next in line to Murray Perahia and Emmanuel Ax as he resonates their thoughtfulness and sensitivity while at the keyboard.   Wonderful disc with A-grade sonics.

• Steven Halpern - Paradigm Shift - this is a 2010 album by new age pioneer Steven Halpern.  He started recording over 40 years ago, and his style was subsequently copied widely.  Though he was originally a jazz guitarist and trumpeter, "he began creating music which did not adhere to traditional Western tonality, but which instead consisted of static, minimalist pieces for electric piano inspired by Eastern music."  He did his PhD research on exploring the connections between sound, consciousness and healing and his work was the first to employ the more subtle and sophisticated new technologies of brainwave biofeedback and Kirlian (aura) photography. He subsequently published two books, Tuning the Human Instrument (1977) and Sound Health 1985. From his website: "Based on his own spiritual and health-related experiences, Steven discovered secrets of combining ancient sound healing traditions with quantum biology and energy medicine to produce recordings that support relaxation, stress management, yoga, meditation, massage, sleep, accelerated learning and pure listening pleasure."

• Leif Ove Andsnes - Beethoven: Piano Concertos No.2 & 4 (2014) - You can never have enough Leif Ove...

• Isabelle Faust - Weber: Sonatas for piano & violin - Piano Quartet (2013) - If the instructor at your local spin cycle class played classical during the workout, this would be it...

• Chad Hoopes - Mendelssohn, Adams : Violin concertos (2014)  Mr. Hoopes is in the next crop of rising stars attempting to follow in the footsteps of Joshua Bell.  So far, so good.

• Jim Bradley and Michael Ruse - The Evolution of the Science - Religion debate.  On Being Podcast.  

• Stuttgart Chamber Choir - Mendelssohn, Felix: Church Music, Vol. 10 - Symphony No. 2, "Lobgesang" - Play this regal recording on a late Sunday morning...

• Preston Reed - Handwritten Notes - (2014) A very nice acoustic recording from the guitar virtuoso Reed who plays with a percussive 2 handed approach.  See his technique in action on this youtube clip.

• "Just 'cause you feel it, doesn't mean it's there" - alt-rock band Radiohead

• "To only live for some future goal is shallow.  It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top." - author Robert Pirsig

• "Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love. This is the eternal rule."- Buddha

• "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

• "The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said." Peter F. Drucker

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