Sampling the web for interestingness
The host of NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! wrote about the delights of running in our overconnected age and it looks fantastic. “If I don’t leave my headphones behind when I run, I wouldn’t spend a single minute of my waking life free from input. I have a friend who wears headphones on long solo […]
The writer feeds his book, he strengthens the parts of it which are weak, he protects it, but afterwards it is the book that grows, that designates its author’s tomb and defends it against the world’s clamour and for a while against oblivion. Marcel Proust
“In a multi-tasking world where pure focus is harder and harder to come by, paper’s seclusion from the Web is an emerging strength. There’s nothing like holding a sheaf of beautifully designed pages in your hands. The whole world slows down, and your mind with it.” William Powers
We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, […]
“The more we know the less certain we are.” Simon Critchley
“The hippocampus’s main criterion for storage is repetition, so asking that question over and over gives the brain no choice but to pay attention and begin to create answers.” Robert Maurer, One Small Step Can Change Your Life
In her new book East Meets West (Amazon), graphic artist Yang Liu illustrates the differences between Western and Eastern cultures. From the way people confront a problem, deal with the boss, approach a queue, self-perceive, or talk in restaurants, it’s quite obvious that behaviors range between the two hemispheres. As they say, a picture is a […]
“I think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version” Don DeLillo, The Names (Amazon)
Those who derive enjoyment from the act of creating and feel in control of their creative process tend to show greater creativity than those who are focused exclusively on the outcome of their work. Scott Barry Kaufman, Carolyn Gregoire, Wired to Create
“Alive, a man is supple, soft; in death, unbending rigor. All creatures, grass and trees, alive are plastic, but are pliant, too, and [in] death all feeble and dry. Unbending rigor is the mate of death, and yielding softness, [the] company of life. Unbending soldiers get no victories, the stiffest tree is readiest for the […]
A bookstore dream come true 📚
“A library is an arsenal of liberty.” Bob Dylan
“There was once a man named Goldberg who wanted nothing more than to be rich. So each day he went the synagogue and prayed to God to win the lottery. This went on for days, weeks, months, and years, but Goldberg never won. Eventually, Goldberg was at his wit’s end. Praying to God, he said, […]
In 1981, Scottish geologist Douglas Dixon wrote a book about what creatures may evolve to look like 50 million years from now post humans. The book entitled entitled After Man, came with drawings of biomorphs to illustrate his vision. Check out the ‘flunkey’ above, a flying monkey that glides like a squirrel. From Evolution After […]
Let me put this in a simple linguistic formula: Mankind = manikin = mannequin. Like Plato’s demiurge or creator-deity in the Timaeus, the fashion designer takes the old rags of matter and forms them into something sublime. God is the great fashion designer in the sky and the fashion designers here on earth are […]
