Love is Fallacy is an exceptional short story by Maximilian “Max” Shulman Cool was I and logical. Keen, calculating, perspicacious, acute and astute—I was all of these. My brain was as powerful as a dynamo, precise as a chemist’s scales, as penetrating as a scalpel. And—think of it!—I only eighteen. It is not often that one so young has such a giant intellect. Take, for example, Petey Bellows, my roommate at the university. Same age, same background, but dumb as an ox. A nice enough fellow, you understand, but nothing upstairs. Emotional type. Unstable. Impressionable. Worst of all, a faddist. Fads, I submit, are the very negation of reason. To be swept up in every new craze that comes along, to surrender oneself to idiocy just because everybody else is doing it—this, to me, is the acme of mindlessness. Not, however, to Petey. ...

Excerpt from the excellent book The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships by Neil Strauss In the beginning . . . You were born. And like all infants, you were completely vulnerable and dependent, with a new developing brain and no understanding of the world. In a perfect world . . . Your parents would be perfect. They would be dedicated full-time to taking care of your physical and psychological needs, always making the right decisions, setting the healthiest boundaries, and protecting you from all harm, while preparing you to eventually take care of your needs without them. ...

Excerpt from the excellent book Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams “Music and Fractal Landscapes” by Richard MacDuff Mathematical analysis and computer modelling are revealing to us that the shapes and processes we encounter in nature – the way that plants grow, the way that mountains erode or rivers flow, the way that snowflakes or islands achieve their shapes, the way that light plays on a surface, the way the milk folds and spins into your coffee as you stir it, the way that laughter sweeps through a crowd of people – all these things in their seemingly magical complexity can be described by the interaction of mathematical processes that are, if anything, even more magical in their simplicity. ...

Excerpt from the excellent book The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships by Neil Strauss Bonding Parent They say here that there are three ways of raising children. The first is functional bonding, in which the parents or primary caregivers love, nurture, affirm, set healthy limits with, and take care of the needs of the child. I turn over my timeline and sketch it for her: This creates a child who has healthy, secure self-esteem and relationships. ...

There is a common theme to the start of virtually all self-help and self-improvement books. The baseline that is established before you find your particular purpose or passion is always centered around four areas. The more you control these fundamental four the better. They are listed here in order of “Return On Investment” with respect to your time, so working on them in this order will give you the most bang for your buck. ...