February 2012
7 posts
“In Arabic, the word “bayt” translates literally as house, but its connotations...”
– An excerpt from Anthony Shadid’s House of Stone, his forthcoming memoir excerpted on the New York Times. Beautiful, beautiful writing. (via thepoliticalnotebook)
“Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one...”
– Claude Monet (via twotonmantaray)
“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to...”
– Aaron Freeman “You Want A Physicist To Speak at your Funeral”
(source: npr)
So funny. It’d be good to have priests with physics background. I just wonder if any would want to be a priest.
January 2012
13 posts
“Elephants have been known to die of broken hearts if a mate dies. They refuse to...”
– Unknown (via cosive) This is really tragic if it is true. There will be no elephants left sooner than we think.
“You is kind. You is smart. You is important.” ― Kathryn Stockett, The Help
Francis Fukuyama on the Financial Crisis
There is also this problem that both you and Jeff Sachs have written on, that if you’re constantly critical of government, and say you don’t like government, the government you get is going to be of lower quality because it gets deprived of talent and resources. This, in turn, confirms your view of government as incompetent and it becomes a vicious circle.
It’s what’s an economist would call a...
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. It is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead
And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt. The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear disguises. The snow dissolved and showed last...
“Do you ever wonder if—well, if there are people living on the third planet?’ ‘The third planet is incapable of supporting life,’ stated the husband patiently. ‘Our scientists have said there’s far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.” ― Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
“Here’s what I think, Mr. Wind-Up Bird,” said May Kasahara. “Everybody’s born with some different thing at the core of their existence. And that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. I have one too, of course. Like everybody else. But sometimes it gets out of hand. It swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. What...
“with short hair you begin to crave pearl necklaces, long earrings, and a variety of sunglasses. and you brush your teeth more often. short hair removes obvious femininity and replaces it with style. when it starts growing out a little and losing its style, you have to wear sunglasses until you can get it to the hairdresser. that’s why you need a variety. short hair makes you aware of...
“Create (something dangerous). Mediocrity isn’t a quest to be pursued — but...”
– Mastering The Art of Living Meaningfully Well - Umair Haque
December 2011
12 posts
“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope...”
– Neil Gaiman (via twotonmantaray)
“Political scientists have long recognized that Americans are much more...”
– Below the Surface, Surprising Trust in Government (via ryking)
“The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.” - Dante
Can’t decide if he was right on this.
“People smoke, Dichter explained, because it is both a sign of virility and a...”
– In America in the 1930s a Viennese psychologist named Ernest Dichter implored advertisers to explore consumers’ unconscious desires. His insights revolutionised marketing and brought sex to advertising. (via theeconomist)
“We’re becoming the men we wanted to marry”
– Gloria Steinem (via sinnumero)
It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen - 99% by Behance
November 2011
0 posts
October 2011
6 posts
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” - The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus, 1883
Innovation Starvation →
youmightfindyourself:
By: Neal Stephenson
My lifespan encompasses the era when the United States of America was capable of launching human beings into space. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting on a braided rug before a hulking black-and-white television, watching the early Gemini missions. This summer, at the age of 51—not even old—I watched on a flatscreen as the last Space Shuttle...
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be...”
– Steve Jobs (rest in peace)
Stay hungry, stay foolish - Steward Brand from Whole Earth Catalog
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to...
September 2011
4 posts
[T]raveling and writing fiction may be a similar experience. You first start by visiting near by places, convenient places, places everyone knows about, and then gradually, you start traveling to more distant, deeper and darker places — even more dangerous places. Just like a surfer goes farther away from the shore to find bigger waves. -Haruki Murakami
3 tags
3 tags
June 2011
2 posts
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in...
Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer ...
Voltaire's Micromegas: A philosophical history:
One alien to another, on approaching the Earth, “Truly, that which makes me believe that there is no inhabitant on this sphere, is that it seems to me that no sensible being would be willing to live here.” “Well, then!” said Micromegas, “perhaps the beings that inhabit it do not possess good sense.”