24 July 2014
DARPA, the darpa robot challenge and Google
http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/meet-darpas-new-generation-of-humanoid-robots/
Living Off the Grid: The Mesa in Colorado
http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together/why-i-gave-up-living-in-an-off-grid-commune/
25 June 2014
Happiness in Business: a maid and a king
http://www.ted.com/talks/chip_conley_measuring_what_makes_life_worthwhile
"if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail" -Maslow
"if all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail" -Maslow
20 June 2014
Leadership is a choice. It is not a rank.
http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_why_good_leaders_make_you_feel_safe
The closest analogy I can give to what a great leader is, is like being a parent. If you think about what being a great parent is, what do you want? What makes a great parent? We want to give our child opportunities, education, discipline them when necessary, all so that they can grow up and achieve more than we could for ourselves. Great leaders want exactly the same thing. They want to provide their people opportunity, education, discipline when necessary, build their self-confidence, give them the opportunity to try and fail, all so that they could achieve more than we could ever imagine for ourselves.
This is the reason so many people have such a visceral hatred, anger, at some of these banking CEOswith their disproportionate salaries and bonus structures. It's not the numbers. It's that they have violated the very definition of leadership. They have violated this deep-seated social contract. We know that they allowed their people to be sacrificed so they could protect their own interests, or worse, they sacrificed their people to protect their own interests. This is what so offends us, not the numbers. Would anybody be offended if we gave a $150 million bonus to Gandhi? How about a $250 million bonus to Mother Teresa? Do we have an issue with that? None at all. None at all. Great leaders would never sacrifice the people to save the numbers. They would sooner sacrifice the numbers to save the people.
Leadership is a choice. It is not a rank. I know many people at the seniormost levels of organizationswho are absolutely not leaders. They are authorities, and we do what they say because they have authority over us, but we would not follow them. And I know many people who are at the bottoms of organizations who have no authority and they are absolutely leaders, and this is because they have chosen to look after the person to the left of them, and they have chosen to look after the person to the right of them. This is what a leader is.
I heard a story of some Marines who were out in theater, and as is the Marine custom, the officer ate last, and he let his men eat first, and when they were done, there was no food left for him. And when they went back out in the field, his men brought him some of their food so that he may eat, because that's what happens. We call them leaders because they go first. We call them leaders because they take the risk before anybody else does. We call them leaders because they will choose to sacrifice so that their people may be safe and protected and so their people may gain, and when we do, the natural response is that our people will sacrifice for us. They will give us their blood and sweat and tears to see that their leader's vision comes to life, and when we ask them, "Why would you do that? Why would you give your blood and sweat and tears for that person?" they all say the same thing: "Because they would have done it for me." And isn't that the organization we would all like to work in?
The closest analogy I can give to what a great leader is, is like being a parent. If you think about what being a great parent is, what do you want? What makes a great parent? We want to give our child opportunities, education, discipline them when necessary, all so that they can grow up and achieve more than we could for ourselves. Great leaders want exactly the same thing. They want to provide their people opportunity, education, discipline when necessary, build their self-confidence, give them the opportunity to try and fail, all so that they could achieve more than we could ever imagine for ourselves.
This is the reason so many people have such a visceral hatred, anger, at some of these banking CEOswith their disproportionate salaries and bonus structures. It's not the numbers. It's that they have violated the very definition of leadership. They have violated this deep-seated social contract. We know that they allowed their people to be sacrificed so they could protect their own interests, or worse, they sacrificed their people to protect their own interests. This is what so offends us, not the numbers. Would anybody be offended if we gave a $150 million bonus to Gandhi? How about a $250 million bonus to Mother Teresa? Do we have an issue with that? None at all. None at all. Great leaders would never sacrifice the people to save the numbers. They would sooner sacrifice the numbers to save the people.
Leadership is a choice. It is not a rank. I know many people at the seniormost levels of organizationswho are absolutely not leaders. They are authorities, and we do what they say because they have authority over us, but we would not follow them. And I know many people who are at the bottoms of organizations who have no authority and they are absolutely leaders, and this is because they have chosen to look after the person to the left of them, and they have chosen to look after the person to the right of them. This is what a leader is.
I heard a story of some Marines who were out in theater, and as is the Marine custom, the officer ate last, and he let his men eat first, and when they were done, there was no food left for him. And when they went back out in the field, his men brought him some of their food so that he may eat, because that's what happens. We call them leaders because they go first. We call them leaders because they take the risk before anybody else does. We call them leaders because they will choose to sacrifice so that their people may be safe and protected and so their people may gain, and when we do, the natural response is that our people will sacrifice for us. They will give us their blood and sweat and tears to see that their leader's vision comes to life, and when we ask them, "Why would you do that? Why would you give your blood and sweat and tears for that person?" they all say the same thing: "Because they would have done it for me." And isn't that the organization we would all like to work in?
19 June 2014
Life Without Sleep
http://aeon.co/magazine/being-human/jessa-gamble-life-without-sleep/
Somneo Sleep Trainer
Should technologies such as tDCS prove safe and become widely available, they would represent an alternate route to human longevity, extending our conscious lifespan by as much as 50 per cent. Many of us cherish the time we spend in bed, but we don’t consciously experience most of our sleeping hours — if they were reduced without extra fatigue, we might scarcely notice a difference except for all those open, new hours in our night time existence. Lifespan statistics often adjust for time spent disabled by illness, but they rarely account for the ultimate debilitation: lack of consciousness. Now a life lived at 150 per cent might be within our grasp. Are we brave enough to choose it?
Somneo Sleep Trainer
Should technologies such as tDCS prove safe and become widely available, they would represent an alternate route to human longevity, extending our conscious lifespan by as much as 50 per cent. Many of us cherish the time we spend in bed, but we don’t consciously experience most of our sleeping hours — if they were reduced without extra fatigue, we might scarcely notice a difference except for all those open, new hours in our night time existence. Lifespan statistics often adjust for time spent disabled by illness, but they rarely account for the ultimate debilitation: lack of consciousness. Now a life lived at 150 per cent might be within our grasp. Are we brave enough to choose it?
28 May 2014
27 May 2014
20 May 2014
Fake it Until you Become it
http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are?awesm=on.ted.com_ps3A&utm_medium=on.ted.com-facebook-share&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=&utm_content=awesm-publisher#t-475933
18 May 2014
17 May 2014
Models of Climate Change
http://www.ted.com/talks/gavin_schmidt_the_emergent_patterns_of_climate_change
Faster, Better, Stronger
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_epstein_are_athletes_really_getting_faster_better_stronger
11 May 2014
30 April 2014
Frank Underwood Ruthlessness
Frank Underwood Ruthlessness
- “A great man once said, everything is about sex. Except sex. Sex is about power.”
- “I’ve always loathed the necessity of sleep. Like death, it puts even the most powerful men on their backs.”
- “The best thing about human beings is that they stack so neatly.”
- "Every kitten grows up to be a cat. They seem so harmless at first–small, quiet, lapping up their saucer of milk. But once their claws get long enough, they draw blood, sometimes from the hand that feeds them. For those of us climbing to the top fo the food chain, there can be no mercy. There is but one rule: hunt or be hunted."
- "Cry 'Havoc!' said he who fought chaos with chaos, and let slip the dogs of war"
- “There are two kinds of pain. The sort of pain that makes you strong, or useless pain. The sort of pain that’s only suffering. I have no patience for useless things.”
- “There’s no better way to overpower a trickle of doubt than with a flood of naked truth.”
- “The road to power is paved with hypocrisy, and casualties. Never regret."
25 March 2014
There is a complex sort of joy in sadness
"
I wanted the happiness, but in a retrospective way (because then it’s done and dusted and safe); and I wanted the melancholy because it just seemed so grown-up and sophisticated and suave. I wanted, as an old joke has it, to skip the marriage and go straight to the divorce. After all – and I am hardly the first person to point this out – there is a complex sort of joy in sadness.
Sometimes we are sad because we have cause, and sometimes we are sad because – consciously or unconsciously – we want to be. Perhaps there’s a sense in which emotional variety is better than monotony, even if the monotone is a happy one. But there’s more to it than that, I think. We value sadness in ways that make happiness look a bit simple-minded.
Melancholy, Coleridge is arguing, is more dignified than happiness. I suspect this is a sense that most people have – that joy is, at root, a kind of idiot pleasure, the idiom of the lobotomy, a balloon just waiting to be popped. Sorrow is somehow more grown-up, because less illusioned. It feels more sincere, more authentic.
Why on earth should melancholy be elegant – or attractive in any other way? On the face of it, it ought to be precisely the sort of thing that evolution breeds out of the race, a prime target for sexual deselection. What female would want to mate with a miserable partner when she could have a happy, smiling one instead?
It’s the insight of Vergil’s Aeneas, as he looks back over his troubled life and forward to troubles yet to some: sunt lacrimae rerum; there are tears in everything, said not mournfully nor hopelessly but as a paradoxical statement about the beauty of the world (Aeneid 1:462).
Saying so invokes what evolutionary scientists call ‘the handicap principle’, a hypothesis first framed by the Israeli evolutionary biologist Amotz Zahavi in 1975. The idea is that extravagant traits such as the highland deer’s massive antlers or the peacock’s tail are useful because they are so ostentatiously expensive, manifestly inconveniencing the owner. They are a way of saying: I’m so strong, my genes are so desirable, that I can afford to schlep about with this manifest – and, by the way, beautiful – disadvantage attached to my body.
I wanted the happiness, but in a retrospective way (because then it’s done and dusted and safe); and I wanted the melancholy because it just seemed so grown-up and sophisticated and suave. I wanted, as an old joke has it, to skip the marriage and go straight to the divorce. After all – and I am hardly the first person to point this out – there is a complex sort of joy in sadness.
Sometimes we are sad because we have cause, and sometimes we are sad because – consciously or unconsciously – we want to be. Perhaps there’s a sense in which emotional variety is better than monotony, even if the monotone is a happy one. But there’s more to it than that, I think. We value sadness in ways that make happiness look a bit simple-minded.
Melancholy, Coleridge is arguing, is more dignified than happiness. I suspect this is a sense that most people have – that joy is, at root, a kind of idiot pleasure, the idiom of the lobotomy, a balloon just waiting to be popped. Sorrow is somehow more grown-up, because less illusioned. It feels more sincere, more authentic.
Why on earth should melancholy be elegant – or attractive in any other way? On the face of it, it ought to be precisely the sort of thing that evolution breeds out of the race, a prime target for sexual deselection. What female would want to mate with a miserable partner when she could have a happy, smiling one instead?
It’s the insight of Vergil’s Aeneas, as he looks back over his troubled life and forward to troubles yet to some: sunt lacrimae rerum; there are tears in everything, said not mournfully nor hopelessly but as a paradoxical statement about the beauty of the world (Aeneid 1:462).
Saying so invokes what evolutionary scientists call ‘the handicap principle’, a hypothesis first framed by the Israeli evolutionary biologist Amotz Zahavi in 1975. The idea is that extravagant traits such as the highland deer’s massive antlers or the peacock’s tail are useful because they are so ostentatiously expensive, manifestly inconveniencing the owner. They are a way of saying: I’m so strong, my genes are so desirable, that I can afford to schlep about with this manifest – and, by the way, beautiful – disadvantage attached to my body.
Sadness, according to this model, is a kind of conspicuous consumption. It takes more muscles to frown than smile, and maybe that’s the point. It signals ones capacity to squander a resource precisely by squandering it. Any fool can live and be happy. It takes greater strength to live and be sad.
All the same, this analysis loses the most important aspect of this emotion; not that it costs, but that it is beautiful. Happy can be pretty, but some species of sad have access to beauties that happy can never know.
"
http://aeon.co/magazine/altered-states/any-fool-can-be-happy-sadness-takes-strengt/
09 March 2014
A Life Well Lived
http://aeon.co/film/life-well-lived-a-short-film-about-the-first-american-to-summit-everest/
“It is in the wild places, from the damp clean air of an ancient forest, on a heaving ocean in unpredictable winds, on a snowy summit at the top of the world that I enter my own personal cathedral and know where I fit in the vastness of creation.”
“It is in the wild places, from the damp clean air of an ancient forest, on a heaving ocean in unpredictable winds, on a snowy summit at the top of the world that I enter my own personal cathedral and know where I fit in the vastness of creation.”
A Life Well Lived
Jim Whittaker was the first American to reach the summit of Everest. He made it to the top despite having run out of oxygen, a testament not only to his will but to his world view, epitomised in his simple but forceful observation that ‘risk is really important to life’. A Life Well Lived: Jim Whittaker and 50 Years of Everestincorporates remarkable archive footage from Whittaker’s Everest expeditions as he reflects on how
Jim Whittaker was the first American to reach the summit of Everest. He made it to the top despite having run out of oxygen, a testament not only to his will but to his world view, epitomised in his simple but forceful observation that ‘risk is really important to life’. A Life Well Lived: Jim Whittaker and 50 Years of Everestincorporates remarkable archive footage from Whittaker’s Everest expeditions as he reflects on how
climbing has shaped his life and how the sport has changed in the 50 years since his remarkable achievement.
05 March 2014
Do What You Love
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/01/do_what_you_love_love_what_you_do_an_omnipresent_mantra_that_s_bad_for_work.html
Lupita Nyong'o Speech on Beauty
"And my mother again would say to me, you can't eat beauty, it doesn't feed you. And these words played and bothered me, I didn't really understand them until finally I realized that beauty was not a thing that I could acquire or consume. It was something that I just had to BE. And what my mother meant when she said you can't eat beauty was that you can't rely on how to look to sustain you. What actually sustains us, what is fundamentally beautiful, is compassion, for yourself and for those around you. That kind of beauty inflames the heart and enchants the soul..."
01 January 2014
How advertising turned anti-consumerism into a secret weapon
Companies try to convince you that they are part of your family. They want to create a sense of connection or even intimacy between the viewer and the advertiser. An ad that says: “Yes, I know you know that I’m an ad, and I know that you know that I’m annoying you” is a statement of empathy, and thus a statement of connection. And as any salesperson will tell you, connection is key to the sales
So what would a deeper look tell us? Perhaps it is that the ‘cynical distance’ inherent in knowing, self-immolating, empathetic adverts not only perpetuates brands, but is at the foundation of advertising itself. By ‘factoring in’ dissent, the ad neutralises it in advance, like the stock market inoculating itself against future shocks by including their likelihood in share prices. The advertising industry anticipates and then absorbs its own opposition, like a politician cracking jokes at his own expense to disarm a hostile media.
Chipotle recently tried this through a brilliant animated short
These ads want to be our friends — to empathise with us against the tyranny of the corporate world they inhabit. Just when we thought we’d cottoned on to subliminal advertising, personalised sidebars on web pages, advertorials and infomercials, products started echoing our contempt for them. ‘Shut up!’ we shout at the TV, and the TV gets behind the sofa and shouts along with us.
So what would a deeper look tell us? Perhaps it is that the ‘cynical distance’ inherent in knowing, self-immolating, empathetic adverts not only perpetuates brands, but is at the foundation of advertising itself. By ‘factoring in’ dissent, the ad neutralises it in advance, like the stock market inoculating itself against future shocks by including their likelihood in share prices. The advertising industry anticipates and then absorbs its own opposition, like a politician cracking jokes at his own expense to disarm a hostile media.
And the industry’s seemingly endless capacity to perpetuate itself matters. Marketing is not simply a mirror of our prevailing aspirations. It systematically promotes and presents a specific cluster of values that undermine pro-social and pro-environmental attitudes and behaviour. In other words, the more that we’re encouraged to obsess about the latest phone upgrade, the less likely we are to concern ourselves with society’s more pressing problems.
Satire has long been acknowledged as a paradoxical crutch for a society’s existing power structures: we laugh at political jibes, and that same laughter displaces the desire for change. As such as Chipotle's — which express our concerns about the failings of globalisation in a safe space before packing them away — are surely an equivalent safety valve for any subversive rumblings.
Full essay here:
http://aeon.co/magazine/living-together/how-advertising-turned-anti-consumerism-into-a-secret-weapon/
Polymaths
Specialize, specialize, specialize... From Adam Smith to today's socially-awkward PhDs
How about striving to be a polymath?
http://aeon.co/magazine/world-views/anyone-can-learn-to-be-a-polymath/
Heinlein: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects".
How about striving to be a polymath?
http://aeon.co/magazine/world-views/anyone-can-learn-to-be-a-polymath/
Heinlein: "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects".
Best Mad Men Mottos
It means that a man is many things to many people, including himself.
He has a relationship with wife, children, parents, police, co-workers, fellow travellers on the road or other swimmers at the beach etc, and he acts appropriately according to the circumstances and association.
He also has of internalised relationships at every given moment of his life which are dependent not only on the other person but also on how he is emotionally and physically within himself.
Indeed, man continually makes and remakes himself according to the space he finds himself.
He has a relationship with wife, children, parents, police, co-workers, fellow travellers on the road or other swimmers at the beach etc, and he acts appropriately according to the circumstances and association.
He also has of internalised relationships at every given moment of his life which are dependent not only on the other person but also on how he is emotionally and physically within himself.
Indeed, man continually makes and remakes himself according to the space he finds himself.
05 July 2013
Optimists and Pessimists
Optimists and pessimists die the same way. They just live differently. I prefer to live as anoptimist.
04 June 2013
22 May 2013
Bill Maher's Religulous
Final Monologue
The irony of religion is that because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world could actually come to an end. The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having in key decisions made by religious people. By irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken.
George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn't learn a lot about it. Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.
Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it's wonderful when someone says, "I'm willing, Lord! I'll do whatever you want me to do!" Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas.
And anyone who tells you they know, they just know what happens when you die, I promise you, you don't. How can I be so sure? Because I don't know, and you do not possess mental powers that I do not.
The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble, and that's what man needs to be, considering that human history is just a litany of getting shit dead wrong. This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price. If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife, for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers.
If the world does come to an end here, or wherever, or if it limps into the future, decimated by the effects of religion-inspired nuclear terrorism, let's remember what the real problem was that we learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it.
That's it. Grow up or die.
The irony of religion is that because of its power to divert man to destructive courses, the world could actually come to an end. The plain fact is, religion must die for mankind to live. The hour is getting very late to be able to indulge in having in key decisions made by religious people. By irrationalists, by those who would steer the ship of state not by a compass, but by the equivalent of reading the entrails of a chicken.
George Bush prayed a lot about Iraq, but he didn't learn a lot about it. Faith means making a virtue out of not thinking. It's nothing to brag about. And those who preach faith, and enable and elevate it are intellectual slaveholders, keeping mankind in a bondage to fantasy and nonsense that has spawned and justified so much lunacy and destruction.
Religion is dangerous because it allows human beings who don't have all the answers to think that they do. Most people would think it's wonderful when someone says, "I'm willing, Lord! I'll do whatever you want me to do!" Except that since there are no gods actually talking to us, that void is filled in by people with their own corruptions and limitations and agendas.
And anyone who tells you they know, they just know what happens when you die, I promise you, you don't. How can I be so sure? Because I don't know, and you do not possess mental powers that I do not.
The only appropriate attitude for man to have about the big questions is not the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of religion, but doubt. Doubt is humble, and that's what man needs to be, considering that human history is just a litany of getting shit dead wrong. This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price. If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife, for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers.
If the world does come to an end here, or wherever, or if it limps into the future, decimated by the effects of religion-inspired nuclear terrorism, let's remember what the real problem was that we learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it.
That's it. Grow up or die.
Angela Lee Duckworth: The key to success? Grit
http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit.html
"Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint."
"Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere when they fail, because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition."
"Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint."
"Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere when they fail, because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition."
11 May 2013
08 May 2013
As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields
Earthlings
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
Henry Beston
(more at http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/182465.Henry_Beston)
“We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”
Henry Beston
(more at http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/182465.Henry_Beston)
02 May 2013
Electronic Tattoos
http://www.ted.com/talks/juan_enriquez_how_to_think_about_digital_tattoos.html?qshb=1&utm_expid=166907-23&utm_referrer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ted.com%2F
Some interesting lessons
Face.com sold to Facebook (take a picture in a bar and download data on person)
Lessons from Greek Mythology
How else can one threaten, other than with death? The interesting, the original thing, would be to threaten someone with immortality.
Some interesting lessons
Face.com sold to Facebook (take a picture in a bar and download data on person)
Lessons from Greek Mythology
How else can one threaten, other than with death? The interesting, the original thing, would be to threaten someone with immortality.
28 April 2013
http://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_prager_in_search_for_the_man_who_broke_my_neck.html
• Yeats looks towards nature for inspiration, admiring the grand chestnut tree, giving forth blossoms even after old age with a continual spring of vital energy:
• However, Yeats acknowledges that mankind in old age is not looked upon with such veneration as is the old, stately tree.
• In asking his final question as to the use of a long life, he looks to the dancer – a dancer who creates his or her own choreography to the constraints of the pace of musical accompaniment.
• To Yeats, life is a series of fluid and self-invented steps, not governed by time but rather invented against time.
VIII• Yeats looks for a solution to the pain of unrequited passion. In this poems original ending, Yeats conjures the nostalgia of the spring of youth and reciprocated sexuality.
Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul.
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut-tree, great-rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
• Yeats looks towards nature for inspiration, admiring the grand chestnut tree, giving forth blossoms even after old age with a continual spring of vital energy:
• However, Yeats acknowledges that mankind in old age is not looked upon with such veneration as is the old, stately tree.
• In asking his final question as to the use of a long life, he looks to the dancer – a dancer who creates his or her own choreography to the constraints of the pace of musical accompaniment.
• To Yeats, life is a series of fluid and self-invented steps, not governed by time but rather invented against time.
“truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.”
13 April 2013
Blow
Quotes
Sometimes you're flush and sometimes you're bust, and when you're up, it's never as good as it seems, and when you're down, you never think you'll be up again, but life goes on, remember that. Money isn't real, George. It doesn't matter. It only seems like it does.
So in the end, was it worth it? Jesus Christ. How irreparably changed my life has become. It's always the last days of summer and I've been left out in the cold with no door to get back in. I'll grant you I've had more than my share of poignant moments. Life passes most people by when they're busy making grand plans for it. Throughout my lifetime I've left pieces of my heart here and there. And now, there's almost barely enough to stay alive. But I force a smile, knowing that my ambition far exceeded my talent. There are no more white horses or pretty ladies at my door.
This is 100% pure Colombian cocaine, ladies and gentleman. Disco Shit. Pure as the driven snow.
Sometimes you're flush and sometimes you're bust, and when you're up, it's never as good as it seems, and when you're down, you never think you'll be up again, but life goes on, remember that. Money isn't real, George. It doesn't matter. It only seems like it does.
So in the end, was it worth it? Jesus Christ. How irreparably changed my life has become. It's always the last days of summer and I've been left out in the cold with no door to get back in. I'll grant you I've had more than my share of poignant moments. Life passes most people by when they're busy making grand plans for it. Throughout my lifetime I've left pieces of my heart here and there. And now, there's almost barely enough to stay alive. But I force a smile, knowing that my ambition far exceeded my talent. There are no more white horses or pretty ladies at my door.
This is 100% pure Colombian cocaine, ladies and gentleman. Disco Shit. Pure as the driven snow.
05 April 2013
21 March 2013
Super Human - Kílian Jornet Burgada
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/magazine/creating-the-all-terrain-human.html?adxnnl=1&ref=general&src=me&adxnnlx=1363892449-bergpIHU91VbSTL9ZhVbTQ
30 January 2013
Roberto Benigni Oscar Speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cTR6fk8frs
by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars."
...L'amor che move il sole e l'altre stelle
"But already my desire and my will
were being turned like a wheel, all at one speed,by the Love which moves the sun and the other stars."
29 January 2013
27 January 2013
20 amazing facts about the human body
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2013/jan/27/20-human-body-facts-science
25 January 2013
Shut Up and Listen
http://www.ted.com/talks/ernesto_sirolli_want_to_help_someone_shut_up_and_listen.html
Book: Dead Aid
Book: Small is Beautiful (A Study of Economics as if People Mattered)
Peter Drucker - management consultant
Richard Branson - autobiography
Book: Dead Aid
Book: Small is Beautiful (A Study of Economics as if People Mattered)
Peter Drucker - management consultant
Richard Branson - autobiography
7-unfortunate-habits-of-unhappy-people
http://www.marcandangel.com/2013/01/23/7-unfortunate-habits-of-unhappy-people/
Cameron Russell "Genetic Lottery"
http://www.ted.com/talks/cameron_russell_looks_aren_t_everything_believe_me_i_m_a_model.html
25 December 2012
19 December 2012
18 December 2012
What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_saunders_why_bother_leaving_the_house.html
22 September 2012
11 May 2012
10 May 2012
05 May 2012
13 April 2012
12 April 2012
10 April 2012
Homo homini lupus
Homo homini lupus est is a Latin phrase meaning "man is a wolf to [his fellow] man." First attested in Plautus' Asinaria (495, "lupus est homo homini"), the phrase is sometimes translated as "man is man's wolf", which can be interpreted to mean that man preys upon man. It is widely referenced when discussing the horrors of which humans are capable.
As an opposition, Seneca wrote that "man is something sacred for man."[1] Both aphorisms were drawn on by Thomas Hobbes in the dedication of his work De Cive (1651): "To speak impartially, both sayings are very true; That Man to Man is a kind of God; and that Man to Man is an arrant Wolfe. The first is true, if we compare Citizens amongst themselves; and the second, if we compare Cities." Hobbes's observation in turn echoes a line from Plautus claiming that man is inherently selfish.
09 April 2012
A Time Comes When Silence Is Betrayal
what a powerful voice!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlM87dwYPjg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlM87dwYPjg
03 April 2012
30 March 2012
17 March 2012
"After me, the flood" -Lovely Phrase?
The phrase “Après moi, le déluge” (“After me, the deluge") is attributed to the King of FranceLouis XV (1710-1774):
Capital that has such good reasons for denying the sufferings of the legions of workers that surround it, is in practice moved as much and as little by the sight of the coming degradation and final depopulation of the human race, as by the probable fall of the earth into the sun. In every stockjobbing swindle every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbour, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety. Après moi le déluge! [After me, the flood] is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation. Hence Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society. [81] To the out-cry as to the physical and mental degradation, the premature death, the torture of over-work, it answers: Ought these to trouble us since they increase our profits?"
According to another interpretation, the phrase may have been coined not by the king himself, but by his most famous lover, Madame de Pompadour (1721-1764)
(Also phrase used in hebrew, "אחרי המבול", which translates similarly to "After me, the storm/flood"
The verb could be understood as a subjunctive concession: After me, let the deluge come (it can come, but it makes no difference to me). In this case, the speaker asserts that nothing that happens after his disappearance matters to him.
It seems that there existed in Greece an expression or proverbial saying which is preserved in verse in a fragment of a tragedy whose author has not been identified (Tragicorum Fragmenta Adespota, 513 Nauck):
ἐμοῦ θανόντος γαῖα μιχθήτω πυρί·
οὐδὲν μέλει μοι· τἀμὰ γὰρ καλῶς ἔχει.
When I die, let earth and fire mix:
οὐδὲν μέλει μοι· τἀμὰ γὰρ καλῶς ἔχει.
When I die, let earth and fire mix:
It matters not to me, for my affairs will be unaffected.
Karl Marx also relates the phrase to Capitalism:
"If you read Karl Marx, the Capital (Vol. 1, Part III, Chapter Ten, Section 5)07 March 2012
Elizabeth Gilbert...
“Because—in the end it’s like this—centuries ago, people used to gather for these moonlight dances of sacred dance and music that would go on for hours and hours, until dawn. And they were always magnificent, because the dancers were professionals and they were terrific, right?
But every once in a while, very rarely, something would happen, and one of these performers would actually become transcendent. And I know you know what I’m talking about, because I know you’ve all seen, at some point in your life, a performance like this. It was like time would stop, and the dancer would sort of step through some kind of portal and he wasn’t doing anything different than he had ever done, 1,000 nights before, but everything would align. And all of a sudden, he would no longer appear to be merely human. He would be lit from within, and lit from below and all lit up on fire with divinity.
“And when this happened, back then, people knew it for what it was, you know, they called it by its name. They would put their hands together and they would start to chant, ‘Allah, Allah, Allah, God, God, God.’ That’s God, you know...
“Because—in the end it’s like this—centuries ago, people used to gather for these moonlight dances of sacred dance and music that would go on for hours and hours, until dawn. And they were always magnificent, because the dancers were professionals and they were terrific, right?
But every once in a while, very rarely, something would happen, and one of these performers would actually become transcendent. And I know you know what I’m talking about, because I know you’ve all seen, at some point in your life, a performance like this. It was like time would stop, and the dancer would sort of step through some kind of portal and he wasn’t doing anything different than he had ever done, 1,000 nights before, but everything would align. And all of a sudden, he would no longer appear to be merely human. He would be lit from within, and lit from below and all lit up on fire with divinity.
“And when this happened, back then, people knew it for what it was, you know, they called it by its name. They would put their hands together and they would start to chant, ‘Allah, Allah, Allah, God, God, God.’ That’s God, you know...
24 February 2012
15 February 2012
Idan Raichel - Mom, Dad and all the Rest - Links and Lyrics
A beautiful Israeli song by the Idan Raichel Project. The song portrays the true and deep pain of soldiers returning home from war. It also questions whether a soldier's family even knows the experience they have been through. It firmly states there is no glamour and pride associated with a soldier's work.
The song was actually written by a fallen soldier of the Yom Kippur War.
The song was actually written by a fallen soldier of the Yom Kippur War.
Lyrics
And when the night is over and the sun shines
Will you know Mom, what our eyes have seen?
Tall tree-tops around, yet with scorched stems
Big houses around, but ruined and matte colored
I walk on ruins, Mom
And believe me, there is no pear and there is no flower
We are not heroes because our labour is dark (black)
The sun will set, the darkness will come
And we will sleep with our clothes in the bed
Yes mother, it's important, it's hard and it's terrible
I swear that it is hard, but I am staying
The ground is gray and the horizon is black
And the blue of the sky lingers and waits
And does not touch, it does not touch the black horizon
A space between them, nothing to do with all the rest
And it is very hard, but I am staying
There is a wired fence, and beyond it a drawn sword
Mom, Dad and all the rest
We are not heroes because our labour is dark (black)
The sun will set, the darkness will come
And we will sleep with our clothes in the bed
Yes mother, it's important, it's hard and it's terrible
And when the night is over and the sun shines
Will you know Mom, what our eyes have seen?
06 February 2012
Michel Cohen - Links and Lyrics
Young vocal-genius Michel Cohen covers a song which is based on a Psalm from Tehilim, Chapter 71.
"My mouth shall be filled with Thy praise, and with Thy glory all the day. Cast me not off in the time of old age; when my strength faileth, forsake me not"
Lyrics
My mouth shall be filled with Thy praise
And with Thy glory all the day.
Do not cast me off in time of old age;
do not forsake me when my strength fails.
31 December 2011
Shay Hamber - Links and Lyrics
And You
This day, which crashed on me
Which made it too hard
I forgot about myself and that's it
I was, I was not myself
I'll close this door behind me
Again could not touch me
In the depths of my heart
I was wrong, I was not myself
That the emptiness will not struck me again
The reality which awaits
That I will not cry again
That I will find comfort
A little bit
And you
Who are you kidding, when you
Don't hug me, again
You almost raised me for a moment
I would have been different, if I would have known
That you,
Who are you getting closer to?
Who are you falling in love with?
Who are you not leaving?
If only you would stay,
I would have made you happy
And again I walk, the same city, the same faces
I know the smells in the air
I was wrong, I didn't see you
And suddenly they are all the same
Every song reminds me
From every ring my heart stops
I touched, I didn't feel you
And I never again want to fall in love
The love that will rot
The emotions
That will burn
Slowly
And you,
Who are you kidding, when you
Don't hug me yet again
You almost raised me for a moment
I would have been different, if I would have known
That you,
Who are you getting closer to?
Who are you falling in love with?
Who are you not leaving?
If only you would stay,
I would have made you happy
And you,
Who are you touching slowly?
Who are you hurting?
Almost like then, when you wounded me
The whole world you discovered,
And then took with you
Who is it now that is touching you?
I hope that he is happy that he has you
That he doesn't hurt you,
That he doesn't harm you,
I would have been like that, if I would have known
27 December 2011
The Greatest Movie Ever Sold / Exit Through The Gift Shop
 |
| "Corporations are raising our children, McDonalds feeds them. And Disney and Time Warner entertains them." |
23 December 2011
15 November 2011
06 August 2011
Favourite TED Videos - Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty
Denis Dutton: A Darwinian theory of beauty
Educating! Explores a whole new point of view on the subject of beauty and its origins
Favourite Quotes:
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? No! Its deep in our minds, its a gift handed down from the intelligent skills and rich emotional lives of our most ancient ancestors. Our powerful reaction to images, to the expression of emotion in art, to the beauty of music, to the night sky - will be with us and our descendants will be with us for as long as the human race exists
Educating! Explores a whole new point of view on the subject of beauty and its origins
Favourite Quotes:
Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? No! Its deep in our minds, its a gift handed down from the intelligent skills and rich emotional lives of our most ancient ancestors. Our powerful reaction to images, to the expression of emotion in art, to the beauty of music, to the night sky - will be with us and our descendants will be with us for as long as the human race exists
Favourite TED Videos - Paul Bloom: The origins of pleasure
Paul Bloom: The origins of pleasure
Favourite Quotes:
The mind is its own place,
and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell,
a Hell from Heaven
Favourite Quotes:
The mind is its own place,
and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell,
a Hell from Heaven
19 June 2011
Trust Quotes
- "People ask me why it's so hard to trust people, and I ask them, why is it so hard to keep a promise."
- "I'll start letting my guard down when people stop giving me reasons to keep it up. "
- "I've learned the best way to prevent your heart from getting broken, is to act like you don't have one. "
- "“Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” -Golda Meir, 4th Prime Minister of Israel
- "Never trust sheep. " -Ryan Stiles
And my favourite one of all, of course by the great William Shakespeare:
A clever interpretation of the quote:
"It means to first know thyself, who you are, why you behave, act, speak and react in the way you do. Know all that lurks in your subconscious driving your will at times to your destruction. To know your own mind and conquer it with mastery of will is to be true to oneself without compromise or egotism."
- "This above all, to thine own self be true." -Hamlet
A clever interpretation of the quote:
"It means to first know thyself, who you are, why you behave, act, speak and react in the way you do. Know all that lurks in your subconscious driving your will at times to your destruction. To know your own mind and conquer it with mastery of will is to be true to oneself without compromise or egotism."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)