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
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