Author Archives: Carl
Where I blog
It should be obvious to any friends or family who check out this site, that I hardly ever write anything new here. Partly, it’s because I’m busy. It’s also because I have other sites where I blog. These are: CarlThoren.com: [...]
Liberals are smarter. I knew it!
Okay, don’t get upset. I take all those “studies” with a healthy grain of salt, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a conservatives are smarter study is out there too. And god knows, there are plenty of conservatives who are [...]
Posted in Politics
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Are you a hunter or a farmer?
Really liked this post by Seth Godin about people being either hunters or farmers. Farmers spend time sweating the details, worrying about the weather, making smart choices about seeds and breeding and working hard to avoid a bad crop. Hunters, [...]
Posted in Psychology
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My father-in-law has gout
Note: Hazen, this is for you. CL and I went over to her parent’s apartment last night for dinner and I found my father-in-law hobbling around, obviously in pain. It turns out he has gout. His right foot is swollen [...]
Posted in Beijing, China, health
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I am billions
One of the most fascinating insights of both modern science and Buddhism, is that what we call “I” doesn’t really exist. Sure, we always feel like one single, solid individual — but we are far from it. There’s just a [...]
Happiness is an activity
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Aristotle and The Buddha, it’s that happiness is an activity, a continual process. It’s like health. You don’t just become fit and then never have to work at it again. No, you have [...]
The Menu Stealer
ChinesePod now has a really fun video series about Chinese food: The Menu Stealer. The Menu Stealer – episode one from tofubrain on Vimeo.
Posted in ChinesePod, Learning Chinese, Ordering food, take-out
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Eating habits
In response to a post by Leo Babuta on his blog Zen Habits, I wrote this reply which sums up my thoughts on the healthiness of Chinese eating habits: I’m living in China now, and I can say that it’s [...]
Posted in health, Uncategorized, vegetables
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Food from China’s wild, wild west
Xinjiang (the “x” is pronounced “sh”) is China’s large, western-most province. It’s a muslim area, and like Tibet, it’s populated by a non-Han Chinese people who would like more autonomy from the central government. But I don’t want to get [...]
Posted in noodles, Sichuan pepper, take-out, Xinjiang
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Rainmaking works, apparently.
From The Beijinger magazine’s blog: On the heels of its successful rainmaking venture earlier in the week, the Beijing Weather Modification Command Center has shot an additional “500 cigarette-size sticks of silver iodide” from “28 weather rocket-launch bases” into the [...]
Posted in Beijing, rainmaking, snow
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