Money, Genius, and Pilgrimage

Blogger hasn't let me post pictures for two days. This isn't the first time. I am thinking about finding a new host. Besides reliability, two nice features would be the ability to sort by category, and to schedule uploads for posting later. Now I can only post in real time. If anyone has a suggestion, leave a comment.

If you want to see a visual, you can go to Krsna.com and watch the video of when the ISKCON Youth Tour visited New Vrindavan in 2005 and took a tour of ISCOWP.

If you are of a more contemplative mood, check out the last link, assuming you have already figured this one out:

Does Money Buy Happiness?

"A Princeton University study has confirmed that the link between money and happiness is exaggerated and an illusion.

The researchers, which included Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, examined a range of data and found that the effect of money on mood was greatly exaggerated (i.e. bucketloads of cash won't make you happier) and was only weakly correlated with moment to moment happiness.

Which, as the study claims, raises the question of why people are so focused on getting rich and whether we have our priorities around the wrong way..."

Okay, if it isn't money, what it is? Feel like you haven't made a real contribution yet? There is always hope you may yet pull something off:

What Kind of Genius Are You?

"A new theory suggests that creativity comes in two distinct types – quick and dramatic, or careful and quiet...

"In the fall of 1972, when David Galenson was a senior economics major at Harvard, he took what he describes as a “gut” course in 17th-century Dutch art. On the first day of class, the professor displayed a stunning image of a Renaissance Madonna and child. “Pablo Picasso did this copy of a Raphael drawing when he was 17 years old,” the professor told the students. “What have you people done lately?” It’s a question we all ask ourselves...

"What he has found is that genius – whether in art or architecture or even business – is not the sole province of 17-year-old Picassos and 22-year-old Andreessens. Instead, it comes in two very different forms, embodied by two very different types of people. “Conceptual innovators,” as Galenson calls them, make bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines. They do their breakthrough work when they are young. Think Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles. They make the rest of us feel like also-rans. Then there’s a second character type, someone who’s just as significant but trudging by comparison. Galenson calls this group “experimental innovators.” Geniuses like Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock proceed by a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers. Galenson maintains that this duality – conceptualists are from Mars, experimentalists are from Venus – is the core of the creative process. And it applies to virtually every field of intellectual endeavor, from painters and poets to economists..."