EZ Reads, 4/3

A few nice reads to head into Shabbos with: {excerpts on expand}

• Excellent post by JACP on freedom and letting go of resentment (with many other applications)

  You know, each of us have people in our lives who have hurt us and caused us some miserable times. They're hard to forgive and let go of. I know. I've had plenty of hurts myself.
  
  But twenty years, or even twenty minutes after the event, when you're still smarting at what this person may have done to you, do you think they're thinking about you too? Do you think that all the years you wasted hating them and wishing things would have worked out differently are being hated and wished away by that other person as well?
  
  I doubt it.

• Adventures in Chinuch with a good vort (as usual) on Shabbos HaGadol

It is incumbent upon us to understand that not everyone thinks the same way, and that some are affected more by uncertainty, and some less. If none of us can be completely sure, how can we expect that of others?

• ParshaBlog questions whether the MO community should say Birchas HaChama

  This is a problem for Modern Orthodox people for three reasons:
  Do we believe in a Young Earth or an Old Earth? This is all predicated on it being the time the earth was created, thus on it being a Tuesday going into Wednesday, as Rashi explains Abaye's statement. But what if we do not understand Bereishit to be literal in this manner?

• Interesting piece in the WSJ on Birchas HaChama
• I could have told Freakonomics this one (though of course there's a balance):

  The increase is startling; workers who spend as much as 20 percent of their office time leisure browsing actually get more work done than workers who don’t.

• Via Freakonomics, Penn Jillette on CNN discussing counter-intuitiveness - and its limits.

  Handling fire seems like a superpower. There are whole seminars and self-help jive centered on fire-walking, which is hustled as "mind over matter," or "empowerment" but is really just counterintuitive physics. As long as the fire walk is set up right and you keep moving, you can even hope and pray to be burned, while yelling counter-self-help slogans such as "I do not have any power to do this" and "universe, please burn my little piggies," and you'll be fine.

Have a wonderful Shabbos!