tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-323634482024-03-05T01:36:59.214-05:00brainstorms [next bit]notes and images found scattered across the ocean of bits.ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.comBlogger261125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-64586234450604304982024-01-09T16:21:00.000-05:002024-01-09T16:21:00.242-05:00notes and quotes from various sources<p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x1f6kntn xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: Roboto;">“rulers
divide the world into worthy and unworthy victims, those we are allowed
to pity, such as Ukrainians enduring the hell of modern warfare, and
those whose suffering is minimized, dismissed or ignored.” — chris
hedges [“the greatest evil is war”]</span></p><p><span data-offset-key="2nep8-0-0" style="font-family: Roboto;"><span data-text="true">"familiarity may breed contempt in some areas of human behaviour, but in the field of social ideas it is the touchstone of acceptability." -- john kenneth galbraith</span></span></p><p><span data-offset-key="2nep8-0-0" style="font-family: Roboto;"><span data-text="true">“The problem with aging is not that it's one damn thing after another—it's every damn thing, all at once, all the time.” -- john scalzi ["old man's war"]<br /></span></span></p><p><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;">"we live in capitalism. its power seems inescapable. so did the divine right of kings. any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings." -- ursula k. le guin</span></p><p><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;">“… NIST databases foreshadow the emergence of a logic that that has now thoroughly pervaded the tech sector: the unswerving belief that everything is data and is there for the taking.” — kate crawford [“atlas of AI”]</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi1bEPEpUqAFXxfMB6gkpw5-j3ySzi4vTSPd_mz0RDSQeyMVhokK1ZaCGT8n102LmfNH0N85KLJDezCHHME0A1VioqMCv8He-jNjMdN1i0yhQZcUQ7KcofnRzIzQCDzm0dXLmMNv4rb_diCgyoAFdW4SNbafaPn9BeKoEOY0DLoaT-D0bux2HngQ/s4032/FullSizeRender.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2688" data-original-width="4032" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi1bEPEpUqAFXxfMB6gkpw5-j3ySzi4vTSPd_mz0RDSQeyMVhokK1ZaCGT8n102LmfNH0N85KLJDezCHHME0A1VioqMCv8He-jNjMdN1i0yhQZcUQ7KcofnRzIzQCDzm0dXLmMNv4rb_diCgyoAFdW4SNbafaPn9BeKoEOY0DLoaT-D0bux2HngQ/s320/FullSizeRender.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;"><br /></span><p></p><p><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;">"As</span><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;"> someone raised to respect self-education, I find it sad that I now shudder when people tell me they have done their “own research,” a sure sign they’ve been sucked through a conspiratorial pipeline and come out the other side covered in hogwash.” — Astra Taylor</span></p><p><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;"> </span><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;">"Gender marketing reinforces limitations.” — terry o’reilly [“under the influence“]</span><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;"> </span><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;"> </span></p><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x1f6kntn xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: Roboto;">"That
little bit of a thing that you read through and say "I know all that"
and throw on a shelf. It's the thing that the visiting sensei refers to
when he says "have you read the book?" about two minutes into the
seminar. Don't read it, study it." -- <span><a class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x6umtig x1b1mbwd xaqea5y xav7gou x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz xt0b8zv x1qq9wsj xo1l8bm" href="https://www.facebook.com/kim.taylor.1422?__cft__[0]=AZUBoiAD3i5t1CeARVcUSy9TVCXMOoKgwrA5zgAN-grsjDnRaj0IyIwHh-GqlH3wvr8eijRKNQZyqe7Ng0wGVgLCnBpXBw3miFc5qFEYhkBdSO_HWT5d0dz3QXA0a3LZGG-38sxhdHaqBAAr77B3ez5p&__tn__=-]K-R" role="link" tabindex="0"><span class="xt0psk2"><span>Kim Taylor</span></span></a></span> Sensei</span><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;"> </span></p><p><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x1f6kntn xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto" style="font-family: Roboto;">"Error,
the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan said, is the site of truth far more
than correctness. We are never closer to the real than when we are
making mistakes, sometimes especially when we realize we are making
them." -- Mark Kingwell</span><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;"> </span></p><p><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="font-family: Roboto; text-overflow: unset;"></span><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x10flsy6 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x41vudc x1f6kntn xvq8zen xo1l8bm xzsf02u x1yc453h" dir="auto"></span></p><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: Roboto;">"All you had to do was pull a book from the shelf and open it and suddenly the darkness was not so dark </span>anymore."</div><div dir="auto" style="text-align: start;">—Ray Bradbury</div><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="text-overflow: unset;"> </span><span class="css-1qaijid r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0 r-poiln3" style="text-overflow: unset;"> </span><p></p>ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-43055483637537137702021-07-15T09:00:00.004-04:002021-07-15T09:04:09.488-04:00assorted notes and quotes from various sources<p><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span> <span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">"What goes too long unchanged destroys itself." -- Ursula K. Le Guin</span></span></span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgabnGC_I6j8oMVCuuSK81sNYKpURPaOnbRVePnrdPzBus252NN4VWa2v10qhoEc-K5K5I1mFTAaiArtzxq9-6tftRXls8EZGYnYVcKo6Y8Bp2h-q8zyoabxbWa4tm2Fhc8l2Vb0g/s1200/doors%252Bstairs.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="801" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgabnGC_I6j8oMVCuuSK81sNYKpURPaOnbRVePnrdPzBus252NN4VWa2v10qhoEc-K5K5I1mFTAaiArtzxq9-6tftRXls8EZGYnYVcKo6Y8Bp2h-q8zyoabxbWa4tm2Fhc8l2Vb0g/s320/doors%252Bstairs.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">They said, "You have a blue guitar, <br />You do not play things as they are."
<br />The man replied, "Things as they are
<br />are changed upon the blue guitar."
<br />— “The Blue Guitar” by Wallace Stevens<br /></span></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><br /></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">"dependency hell" is such a lame phrase for what should be minimally described as "unspeakable life destroying dependency chainsaw horror fiesta"</span></span></span></span><p></p><div class="css-1dbjc4n"><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">if P. T. Barnum was alive today and encountered </span><span class="r-18u37iz">cryptocurrencies</span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">, he would have chortled, created his own currency, and would probably have said that suckers are born even faster than he imagined.</span></span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span data-offset-key="7moci-0-0"><span data-text="true">"Don't assume the worst thing's going to happen, because on the off chance it does, you'll have lived through it twice." -- michael j fox</span></span> </span></span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><br /></span></span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">“there is no limit to the ways a falsehood, by worming its way in among the holistic system of our beliefs, can bring us into sharp collusion with the world.” — simon blackburn</span></span></span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></span></span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></span></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">“truth does not triumph. it’s opponents just die out.” -- max planck</span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><br /></span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span></span></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">“Fox News, at this point, is a fantasy factory, churning out historical mythologies in real time.” — megan garber [“tucker carlson’s manufactured america”]</span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">“some people are saying” is usually code for “i made up some inane story to cover up my inability to comprehend real world information and learn from, reason with.”</span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">right wing could not care less about indigenous peoples, churches, justice, law, family and all the other bumper sticker apple pie things. their facades have fallen off a long time ago. if you’re still seeing the facade, you’re probably not paying attention. </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">“vaccine hesitant” is really a sad euphemism for “anti vaccination light”.</span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">in the wind</span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">a shower of blossoms - </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">sudden sword
[oz/21]</span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">The shifting goalposts of </span><span class="r-18u37iz"><a class="css-4rbku5 css-18t94o4 css-901oao css-16my406 r-1n1174f r-1loqt21 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" dir="ltr" href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cdnmedia?src=hashtag_click" role="link">#cdnmedia</a></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">: </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">1. "We need vaccines sooner." </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">2. "We need more vaccines." </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">3. "We don't like the brand of vaccines we have, we need more of Brand A " </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">4. "Why aren't we giving more vaccines away." </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">5. "We told you so." </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0">-- Neil Waytowich (neilbeforezod)</span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"></span><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span style="font-family: Ubuntu;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> when we think about learning from history per santayana, we often think about the large scale. learning from our own micro-history is just as important...</span></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> <br /></span></div><div class="css-901oao r-18jsvk2 r-1qd0xha r-a023e6 r-16dba41 r-rjixqe r-bcqeeo r-bnwqim r-qvutc0" dir="auto" id="tweet-text" lang="en"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0"> </span></div></div>ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-52064450081412081352019-02-25T12:54:00.000-05:002019-03-11T20:45:06.745-04:00good observations from the surface of the net<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; text-align: center;">"How do you get people to say, “I don’t know”? I don’t know." -- david dunning</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: #f5f8fa; color: #14171a; white-space: pre-wrap;">“As artists, our job is to look where others don’t. This responsibility becomes even more important at times when we are told to look away.” -- Alfonso Cuarón</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">"A subject is scientifically controversial when actively debated by legions of scientists, not when actively debated by the public, the press, or by politicians." -- Neil deGrasse Tyson</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Americans: "everything in Australia can kill you."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Australians: "probably not an ar-15."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;">“Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others.” -- ta-nehisi coates</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"This might be a good time to note that “Judeo-Christian” is not a thing and we Jews would like you to stop conflating our tradition with your American Christianity." -- rabbi Danya Ruttenberg</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #1d2129;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“History has had its ways of teaching once-dominant "exceptionalist" nations harsh lessons, but as this involves a span of generations, citizens of those "empires" often haven't been able to perceive it happening.” — william gibson</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #1d2129;"><br /></span><span data-offset-key="95gqf-0-0">body lets down the mind,</span><br /><span data-offset-key="bjf3q-0-0">mind lets down the body.</span><br /><span data-offset-key="3k1ga-0-0">it comes to us all.</span><br /><span data-offset-key="5vsl3-0-0">— jocelyn knight [“broadchurch”]</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"Fundamentalism is authoritarian by definition–it accepts a vision of “the Truth” that is sacrosanct, unquestionable, and, when found to be incompatible with reality, protected through the generation of “alternative facts,” which themselves become unassailable truths within the enclave community that is built up to sustain the fundamentalism in question." -- christopher stroop ["Educated Evangelicals, Academic Achievement, and Trumpism: On the Tensions in Valuing Education in an Anti-Intellectual Subculture"]</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“The main thing we learn from studying history is that nobody ever learns anything from studying history. Not long-term, I mean, not longer than people who are in a position to do things can remember the previous round. Or, the lessons of WW2 are gone, gone, gone. Let alone Rome.” — Harry Turtledove</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"if it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well." -- donald hebb</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"Someone tweeted to me that my father “didn’t offend people.” At the time Daddy was killed, a poll reflected that he was the most hated man in America. Most hated. Many who quote him now & use him to deter justice would likely hate him too if they truly studied <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"type":104,"tn":"*N"}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/mlk?source=feed_text&epa=HASHTAG" style="color: #365899; cursor: pointer; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="_5afx" style="direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: isolate;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl _5afz" style="unicode-bidi: isolate;">#</span><span class="_58cm">MLK</span></span></a>" -- Bernice King</span></span>ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-79958020520851563422018-10-11T22:18:00.000-04:002018-10-11T22:18:00.954-04:00john cleese on creativity [transcript]<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">[Grosvenor House Hotel, London. 23rd January 1991]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You know, when Video Arts asked me<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> </span>if I'd like to talk about creativity I said "no problem!" No problem! Because telling people how to be creative is easy, it's only being it that's difficult.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">I knew it would be particularly easy for me because I've spent the last 25 years watching how </span>various creative people produce their stuff,<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> and being fascinating to see if I could figure out what makes folk, including me, more creative.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">What is more, a couple of years ago I got very excited because a friend of mine who runs the psychology department at Sussex University, Brian Bates, showed me </span>some research on creativity done at Berkley in the 70s by a brilliant psychologist called Donald MacKinnon<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> which seemed to confirm in the most impressively scientific way all the vague observations and intuitions that I'd had over the years.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The prospect of settling down for quite serious study of creativity for the purpose of tonight's gossip was delightful. Having spent several weeks on it, I can state categorically that what I have to tell you tonight about how you can all become more creative is a complete waste of time.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" />So I think it would be much better if I just told jokes instead.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">You know the lightbulb jokes? How many Poles does it take to screw in a lightbulb? One to hold the bulb, four to turn the table. How many folksingers does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: five, one to change the bulb and four to sing about how much better the old one was. How many socialists does it take to change a </span>lightbulb<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">? Answer: We're not going to change it, we think it works. How many creative art--</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The reason why it is futile for me to talk about creativity is that it simply cannot be explained, it's like Mozart's music or Van Gogh's painting or </span>Saddam Hussein's propaganda<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">. It is literally inexplicable.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Freud, who analyzed practically everything else, </span>repeatedly denied that psychoanalysis could shed any light whatsoever on the mysteries of creativity.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And Brian Bates wrote to me recently "Most of the best research on creativity was done in the 60s and 70s with a </span>quite dramatic drop-off in quantity after then,"<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> largely, I suspect because researchers began to feel that they had reached the limits of what science could discover about it.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">In fact, the only thing from the research that I could tell you about how to be creative is the sort of childhood that you should have had, </span>which is of limited help to you at this point in your lives.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">However there is one negative thing that I can say, and it's "negative" because it is easier to say what creativity isn't.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">A bit like the sculptor who when asked how he had sculpted a very fine elephant, explained that he'd taken a big block of marble and then knocked away all the bits that didn't look like an elephant.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now here's the negative thing: Creativity is not a talent. It is not a talent, it is a way of operating.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span avoid-selection="" class="u-noselect" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: none;"><dfp-ad ad-classes="{'dfp_unit--in_read': $height > 1, 'u-xx_large_top_margin': $height > 0}" class="u-display_block" instance-id="in_read_ad" name="desktop_song_inread" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"></dfp-ad></span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So how many actors does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: thousands. Only one to do it but thousands to say "I could have done that." How many Jewish mothers does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: Don't mind me, I'll just sit here in the dark, nobody cares about… {mumble} How many surgeons --</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">You see when I say "a way of operating" what I mean is this: creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" />It is, for example, (and this may surprise you) absolutely unrelated to IQ<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> </span>(provided that you are intelligent above a certain minimal level that is)<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> but MacKinnon showed in investigating scientists, architects, engineers, and writers that those regarded by their peers as "most creative" were in no way whatsoever different in IQ from their less creative colleagues.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So in what way were they different?</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">MacKinnon showed that the most creative had simply acquired a facility for getting themselves into </span>a particular mood -- "a way of operating" -- which allowed their natural creativity to function.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">In fact, MacKinnon described this particular facility as an ability to play.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Indeed he described the most creative (when in this mood) as being childlike. For they were able to play with ideas… to explore them… not for any immediate practical purpose but just for enjoyment. Play for its own sake.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now, about this mood.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" />I'm working at the moment with Dr. Robin Skynner3 on a successor<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">to </span>our psychiatry book Families and How To Survive Them<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> we're comparing the ways in which psychologically healthy families function (the ways in which such families function) with the ways in which the most successful corporations and organizations function.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">We've become fascinated by the fact that we can usually describe the way in which people function at work in terms of two modes: open and closed.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So what i can just add now is that creativity is not possible in the closed mode.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Ok, so how many American network TV executives does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: Does it have to be a lightbulb? How many doorke--</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Let me explain a little. By the "closed mode" I mean the mode that we are in most of the time when {we are} at work.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">We have inside us a feeling that there's lots to be done and we have to get on with it if we're going to get through it all.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span avoid-selection="" class="u-noselect" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: none;"><dfp-ad ad-classes="{'dfp_unit--in_read': $height > 1, 'u-xx_large_top_margin': $height > 0}" class="u-display_block" instance-id="in_read_ad" name="desktop_song_inread2" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"></dfp-ad></span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">It's an active (probably slightly anxious) mode, although the anxiety can be exciting and pleasurable.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">It's a mode which we're probably a little impatient, if only with ourselves.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">It has a little tension in it, not much humor.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">It's a mode in which we're very purposeful, and it's a mode in which we can get very stressed and even a bit manic, but not creative.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">By contrast, the open mode, is relaxed… expansive… less purposeful mode… in which we're probably more contemplative, </span>more inclined to humor (which always accompanies a wider perspective)<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> and, consequently, more playful.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">It's a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we're not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. We can play, and that is what allows our natural creativity to surface.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Let me give you and example of what I mean.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" />When Alexander Fleming had the thought that led to the discovery of penicillin, he must have been in the open mode.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The previous day, he'd arranged a number of dishes so that culture would grow upon them.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">On the day in question, he glanced at the dishes, and he discovered that on one of them no culture had appeared.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now, if he'd been in the closed mode he would have been so focused upon his need for </span>"dishes with cultures grown upon them"<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">that when he saw that one dish was of no use to him for that purpose he would quite simply have thrown it away.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Thank goodness, he was in the open mode so he became curious about why the culture had not grown on this particular dish. And that curiosity, as the world knows, led him to the lightbulb --- I'm sorry, to penicillin.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now in the closed mode an uncultured dish is an irrelevance. In the open mode, it's a clue.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span avoid-selection="" class="u-noselect" style="background-color: white; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; user-select: none;"><dfp-ad ad-classes="{'dfp_unit--in_read': $height > 1, 'u-xx_large_top_margin': $height > 0}" class="u-display_block" instance-id="in_read_ad" name="desktop_song_inread3" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block;"></dfp-ad></span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now, one more example: one of </span>Alfred Hitchcock<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">'s regular co-writers has described working with him on screenplays.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" />He says, "When we came up against a block and our discussions became very heated and intense, Hitchcock would suddenly stop and tell a story that had nothing to do with the work at hand. At first, I was almost outraged, and then I discovered that he did this intentionally. He mistrusted working under pressure. He would say "We're pressing, we're pressing, we're working too hard. Relax, it will come."<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> And, says the writer, of course it finally always did. We need both modes.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">But let me make one thing quite clear: we need to be in the open mode when we're pondering a problem but once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it. Because once we've made a decision, we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively, undistracted by doubts about its correctness.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">For example, if you decide to leap a ravine, the moment just before take-off is a bad time to start reviewing alternative strategies. When you're attacking a machine-gun post you should not make a particular effort to see the funny side of what you are doing.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Humor is a natural concomitant in the open mode, but it's a luxury in the closed {mode}.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">No, once we've taken a decision we should narrow our focus while we're implementing it, and then after it's been carried out we should once again switch back to the open mode to review the feedback rising from our action, in order to decide whether the course that we have taken is successful, or whether we should continue with the next stage of our plan. Whether we should create an alternative plan to correct any error we perceive.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And then back into the closed mode to implement that next stage, and so on.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">In other words, to be at our most efficient we need to be able to switch backwards and forwards between the two modes.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">We often get stuck in one mode.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">But here's the problem: we too often get stuck in the closed mode.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Under the pressures which are all too familiar to us we tend to maintain tunnel vision at times when we really need to step back and contemplate the wider view.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">This is particularly true, for example, of politicians. The main complaint about them from their non-political colleagues is that they become so addicted to the adrenaline that they get from reacting to events on an hour-by-hour basis that they almost completely lose the desire or the ability to ponder problems in the open mode.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So, as I say, creativity is not possible in the closed mode.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And that's it. Well… 20 minutes to go… So, how many women's libbers does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: 37, one to screw it in, and 36 to make a documentary about it. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? The answer: only one, but the lightbulb has really got to want to change.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Oh, there is one, just one, other thing that I can say about creativity.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">There are certain conditions which do make it more likely that you'll get into the open mode, and that something creative will occur.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">More likely… you can't guarantee anything will occur. You might sit around for hours as I did last Tuesday, and nothing.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" />Zilch.<br style="box-sizing: border-box;" /><br style="box-sizing: border-box;" />Bupkis.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" />Not a sausage.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Nevertheless I can at least tell you how to get yourselves into the open mode. You need five things:</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Space</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Time</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Time</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Confidence</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">A 22 inch waist</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" />Sorry, my mind was wandering. I'm getting into the open mode too quickly. Instead of a 22 inch waist, you need humor. I do beg your pardon.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Let's take space first: you can't become playful and therefore creative if you're under your usual pressures, because to cope with them you've got to be in the closed mode.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So you have to create some space for yourself away from those demands. And that means sealing yourself off.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">You must make a quiet space for yourself where you will be undisturbed.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Next: Time. It's not enough to create space, you have to create your space for a specific period of time. You have to know that your space will last until exactly (say) 3:30, and that at that moment your normal life will start again.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And it's only by having a specific moment when your space starts and an equally specific moment when your space stops that you can seal yourself off from the every day closed mode in which we all habitually operate.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And I'd never realized how vital this was until I read </span>a historical study of play by a Dutch historian called Johan Huizinga and in it he says "Play is distinct from ordinary life, both as to locality and duration. This is its main characteristic: its secludedness, its limitedness. Play begins and then (at a certain moment) it is over. Otherwise, it's not play."<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So combining the first two factors we create an "oasis of quiet" for ourselves by setting the boundaries of space and of time.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now creativity can happen, because play is possible when we are separate from everyday life.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So, you've arranged to take no calls, you've closed your door, you've sat down somewhere comfortable, take a couple of deep breaths and if you're anything like me, after you've pondered some problem that you want to turn into an opportunity for about 90 seconds, you find yourself thinking "Oh I forgot I've got to call Jim… oh, and I must tell Tina that I need the report on Wednesday and not Thursday which means I must move my lunch with Joe and Damn! I haven't called St. Paul's about getting Joe's daughter an interview and I must pop out this afternoon to get Will's birthday present and those plants need watering and none of my pencils are sharpened and Right! I've got too much to do, so I'm going to start by sorting out my paper clips and then I shall make 27 phone calls and I'll do some thinking tomorrow when I've got everything out of the way."</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Because, as we all know, </span>it's easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And it's also easier to do little things we know we can do, than to start on big things that we're not so sure about.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So when I say create an oasis of quiet know that when you have, your mind will pretty soon start racing again. But you're not going to take that very seriously, you just sit there (for a bit) tolerating the racing and the slight anxiety that comes with that, and after a time your mind will quiet down again.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now, because it takes some time for your mind to quiet down it's absolutely no use arranging a "space/time oasis" lasting 30 minutes, because just as you're getting quieter and getting into the open mode you have to stop and that is very deeply frustrating. So you must allow yourself a good chunk of time. I'd suggest about an hour and a half. Then after you've gotten to the open mode, you'll have about an hour left for something to happen, if you're lucky.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">But don't put a whole morning aside. My experience is that after about an hour-and-a-half you need a break. So it's far better to do an hour-and-a-half now and then an hour-and-a-half next Thursday and maybe an hour-and-a-half the week after that, than to fix one four-and-a-half hour session now.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">There's another reason for that, and that's factor number three: time.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Yes, I know we've just done time, but that was half of creating our oasis.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now I'm going to tell you about how to use the oasis that you've created.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Why do you still need time?</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Well, let me tell you a story. I was always intrigued that </span>one of my Monty Python colleagues who seemed to be (to me) more talented than I was {but} did never produce scripts as original as mine.<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> And I watched for some time and then I began to see why. If he was faced with a problem, and fairly soon saw a solution, he was inclined to take it. Even though (I think) he knew the solution was not very original.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Whereas if I was in the same situation, although I was sorely tempted to take the easy way out, and finish by 5 o'clock, I just couldn't. I'd sit there with the problem for another hour-and-a-quarter, and by sticking at it would, in the end, almost always come up with something more original.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">It was that simple.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" />My work was more creative than his simply because I was prepared to stick with the problem longer.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So imagine my excitement when I found that this was exactly what MacKinnon found in his research. He discovered that the most creative professionals always played with a problem for much longer before they tried to resolve it, because they were prepared to tolerate that slight discomfort and anxiety that we all experience when we haven't solved a problem.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">You know I mean, if we have a problem and we need to solve it, until we do, we feel (inside us) a kind of internal agitation, a tension, or an uncertainty that makes us just plain uncomfortable. And we want to get rid of that discomfort. So, in order to do so, we take a decision. Not because we're sure it's the best decision, but because taking it will make us feel better.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Well, the most creative people have learned to tolerate that discomfort for much longer. And so, just because they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now the people I find it hardest to be creative with are people who need all the time to project an image of themselves as decisive.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And who feel that to create this image they need to decide everything very quickly and with a great show of confidence.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Well, this behavior I suggest sincerely, is the most effective way of strangling creativity at birth.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">But please note I'm not arguing against real decisiveness. I'm 100% in favor of taking a decision when it has to be taken and then sticking to it while it is being implemented.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">What I am suggesting to you is that before you take a decision, you should always ask yourself the question, "When does this decision have to be taken?" And having answered that, you defer the decision until then, in order to give yourself maximum pondering time, which will lead you to the most creative solution.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And if, while you're pondering, somebody accuses you of indecision say, "Look, Babycakes, I don't have to decide 'til Tuesday, and I'm not chickening out of my creative discomfort by taking a snap decision before then, that's too easy."</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" />So, to summarize: the third factor that facilitates creativity is time, giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now the next factor, number 4, is confidence.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">When you are in your space/time oasis, getting into the open mode, nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now if you think about play, you'll see why. To play is experiment: "What happens if I do this? What would happen if we did that? What if…?"</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">The very essence of playfulness is an openness to anything that may happen. The feeling that whatever happens, it's ok. So you cannot be playful if you're frightened that moving in some direction will be "wrong" -- something you "shouldn't have done."</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Well, </span>you're<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> either free to play, or you're not.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">As Alan Watts puts it, you can't be spontaneous within reason.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So you've got to risk saying things that are silly and illogical and wrong, and the best way to get the confidence to do that is to know that while you're being creative, nothing is wrong. There's no such thing as a mistake, and any drivel may lead to the break-through.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And now, the last factor, the fifth: humor.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Well, I happen to think the main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">I think we all know that laughter brings relaxation, and that humor makes us playful, yet how many times important discussions been held where really original and creative ideas were desperately needed to solve important problems, but where humor was taboo because the subject being discussed was {air quotes} "so serious"?</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">This attitude seems to me to stem from a very basic misunderstanding of the difference between 'serious' and 'solemn'.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now I suggest to you that a group of us could be sitting around after dinner, discussing matters that were extremely serious like the education of our children, or our marriages, or </span>the meaning of life (and I'm not talking about the film),<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> and we could be laughing, and that would not make what we were discussing one bit less serious.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Solemnity, on the other hand… I don't know what it's for. I mean, what is the point of it? </span>The two most beautiful memorial services that I've ever attended both had a lot of humor, and it somehow freed us all, and made the services inspiring and cathartic.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">But solemnity? It serves pomposity, and the self-important always know with some level of their consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor -- that's why they see it as a threat. And so {they} dishonestly pretend that their deficiency makes their views more substantial, when it only makes them feel bigger.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">{John blows "raspberries" with his tongue.}</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">No, humor is an essential part of spontaneity, an essential part of playfulness, an essential part of the creativity that we need to solve problems, no matter how 'serious' they may be.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So when you set up a space/time oasis, giggle all you want.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And there, ladies and gentlemen, are the five factors which you can arrange to make your lives more creative:</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Space, time, time, confidence, and </span>Lord Jeffrey Archer<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So, now you know how to get into the open mode, the only other requirement is that you keep mind gently 'round the subject you're pondering.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">You'll daydream, of course, but you just keep bringing your mind back, just like with meditation. Because, and this is the extraordinary thing about creativity, if you just keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious, probably in the shower later. Or at breakfast the next morning, but suddenly you are rewarded, out of the blue a new thought mysteriously appears.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">If you've put in the pondering time first.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So, how many Cecil Parkinsons does it take to change a lightbulb? Answer: two, one to screw it in, one to screw it up. How many account executives does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Answer: Can I get back to you on that? How many Norwei--- Oh, sorry, how many Yugoslav--- how many Malt-- how many Dutch--- I'm out of jokes.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" />Oh! One thing! Looking at you all reminds me, I think it's easy to be creative if you've got other people to play with.<br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">I always find that if two (or more) of us throw ideas backwards and forwards I get to more interesting and original places than I could have ever have gotten to on my own. But there is a danger, a real danger, if there's one person around you who makes you feel defensive, you lose the confidence to play, and it's goodbye creativity.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So always make sure your play friends are people that you like and trust.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And never say anything to squash them either, never say "no" or "wrong" or "I don't like that."</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Always be positive, and build on what is being said:</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">"Would it be even better if…"</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">"I don't quite understand that, can you just explain it again?"</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">"Go on…"</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">"What if…?"</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">"Let's pretend…"</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Try to establish as free an atmosphere as possible.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Sometimes I wonder if </span>the success of the Japanese<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"> isn't partly due to their instinctive understanding of how to use groups creatively.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Westerners are often amazed at the unstructured nature of Japanese meetings but maybe it's just that very lack of structure, that absence of time pressure, that frees them to solve problems so creatively. And how clever of the Japanese sometimes to plan that un-structured-ness by, for example, insisting that the first people to give their views are the most junior, so that they can speak freely without the possibility of contradicting what's already been said by somebody more important. (29:00)</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Four minutes left… How many Irish-- sorry, sorry</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Creativity is when two frameworks come together to create new meaning</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Well, look, the very last thing that I can say about creativity is this: it's like humor. In a joke, the laugh comes at a moment when you connect two different frameworks of reference in a new way.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Example: there's the old story about a woman doing a survey into sexual attitudes who stops an airline pilot and asks him, amongst other things, when he last had sexual intercourse. He replies "Nineteen fifty eight." Now, knowing airline pilots, the researcher is surprised, and queries this. "Well," says the pilot, "it's only twenty-one ten now."</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">We laugh, eventually, at the moment of contact between two frameworks of reference: the way we express what year it is and the 24-hour clock.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now, having an idea, a new idea, is exactly the same thing. It's connecting two hitherto separate ideas in a way that generates new meaning.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Now, connecting different ideas isn't difficult, you can connect cheese with motorcycles or </span>moral courage with light green<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">, or bananas with international cooperation. You can get any computer to make a billion random connection for you, but these new connections or juxtapositions are significant only if they generate new meaning.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So as you play you can deliberately try inventing these random juxtapositions, and then use your intuition to tell you whether any of them seem to have significance for you. That's the bit the computer can't do. It can produce millions of new connections, but it can't tell which one smells interesting.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And, of course, you'll produce some juxtapositions which are absolutely ridiculous, absurd. Good for you!</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Because Edward de Bono7 (who invented the notion of lateral thinking) specifically suggests in his book PO: Beyond Yes and No that you can try loosening up your assumptions by playing with deliberately crazy connections. He calls such absurd ideas "Intermediate Impossibles."</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And he points out the use of an Intermediate Impossible is completely contrary to ordinary logical thinking in which you have to be right at each stage.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">It doesn't matter if the Intermediate Impossible is right or absurd, it can nevertheless be used as a stepping stone to another idea that is right. Another example of how, when you're playing, nothing is wrong.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So, to summarize: if you really don't know how to start, or if you got stuck, start generating random connections, and allow your intuition to tell you if one might lead somewhere interesting.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Well, that really is all I can tell you that won't help you to be creative. Everything.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">And now, in the two minutes left, I can come to the important part, and that is, how to stop your subordinates {from} becoming creative too, which is the real threat.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Because, believe me no one appreciates better than I do what trouble creative people are. And how they stop decisive, hard-nosed bastards like us from running businesses efficiently.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">I mean, we all know, {if} we encourage someone to be creative, the next thing is they're rocking the boat, coming up with ideas, and asking us questions. Now if we don't nip this kind of thing in the bud, we'll have to start justifying our decisions by reasoned argument. And sharing information -- the concealment of which gives us considerable advantages in our power struggles.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So, here's how to stamp out creativity in the rest of the organization and get a bit of respect going.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">One: Allow subordinates no humor, it threatens your self-importance and especially your omniscience. Treat all humor as frivolous or subversive.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Because subversive is, of course, what humor will be in your setup, as it's the only way that people can express their opposition, since (if they express it openly) you're down on them like a ton of bricks.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So let's get this clear: blame humor for the resistance that your way of working creates. Then you don't have to blame your way of working. This is important. And I mean that solemnly. Your dignity is no laughing matter.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Second: keeping ourselves feeling irreplaceable involves cutting everybody else down to size, so don't miss an opportunity to undermine your employees' confidence.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">A perfect opportunity comes when you're reviewing work that they've done. Use your authority to zero in immediately on all the things you can find wrong. Never never balance the negatives with positives, only criticize, just as your school teachers did.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Always remember: praise makes people uppity.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Third: Demand that people should always be actively doing things. If you catch anyone pondering, accuse them of laziness and/or indecision. This is to starve employees of thinking time because that leads to creativity and insurrection. So demand urgency at all times, use lots of fighting talk and war analogies, and establish a permanent atmosphere of stress, of breathless anxiety, and crisis.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">In a phrase: keep that mode closed.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">In this way we no-nonsense types can be sure that the tiny, tiny, microscopic quantity of creativity in our organization will all be ours!</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">But! Let your vigilance slip for one moment, and you could find yourself surrounded by happy, enthusiastic, and creative people whom you might never be able to completely control ever again!</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">So be careful.</span><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Thank you, and good night. Thank you.</span></span>ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-91176136627855376532018-02-13T15:51:00.002-05:002018-02-27T14:45:44.787-05:00recently noted observations, including some of mine<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"this has caused me the greatest trouble, and still causes me the
greatest trouble: to realize that what things are called is unspeakably
more important than what they are." -- Friedrich Nietzsche</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">there has not been a *single* good thing that followed the phrase “the
trump administration” in any sentence. it’s like the world political
equivalent of the black plague.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">phrase of the day: “high velocity minimalism”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"<i>In
my office today I discussed smoking cessation, weight loss, exercise,
and nutrition with various patients. I guess that makes me an
integrative holistic trauma surgeon*.</i>" -- doc bastard</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">*conscientious physician</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">considering how much damage an <i>illiterate megalomaniacal sociopath
dumbass</i> already inflicted on american institutions, one should have
nightmares about accidentally electing an evil genius...</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW2o5tso_uSu2QSWLTDIgEabPz57qAR1kq6a3hmWqp2s3u6Li2KeBQvgU79fODL6J67pEycsQwIttMcUCoh6BCgXcrHLMkVQws3tAx7dmUKW3XNKtM1rKy3HOLqL8HGDMYTMH29g/s1600/37f2a56e-7607-4dec-9991-ed7c7206c1ef" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1034" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW2o5tso_uSu2QSWLTDIgEabPz57qAR1kq6a3hmWqp2s3u6Li2KeBQvgU79fODL6J67pEycsQwIttMcUCoh6BCgXcrHLMkVQws3tAx7dmUKW3XNKtM1rKy3HOLqL8HGDMYTMH29g/s320/37f2a56e-7607-4dec-9991-ed7c7206c1ef" width="206" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"the american abolitionist Wendell Phillips did in fact say that
"eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." he added that "the manna of
popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten." -- <a class="profileLink" data-hovercard-prefer-more-content-show="1" data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=127656831296798&extragetparams=%7B%22fref%22%3A%22mentions%22%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Timothy-D-Snyder/127656831296798?fref=mentions">Timothy D. Snyder</a> ["on tyranny"]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">phrase of the day: "vanguard of unreality" -- esquire</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">kid came up with a new word: *retroflection*</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[upon googling, we find it is not a new word. means "<span class="st" data-hveid="124" data-ved="0ahUKEwi-ifGeqKPZAhUPbKwKHamEAIEQ4EUIfDAN">a turning or tilting backward of an organ or body part"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“<i>There have been really few science fiction movies. They have mostly been fantasies, with spaceships.</i>” -- ursula le guin</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"<i>The notion of affirmative consent did not fall from space in October
2017 to confound well-meaning but bumbling men; it was built, loudly and
painstakingly and in public, at great personal cost to its proponents,
over decades</i>." -- lindy west</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“<i>An unspecified time after the impostor syndrome goes away,
over-the-hill syndrome moves in: the irrational conviction that you're a
burned-out has-been, phoning it in, best days behind you, a broken-down
hack whose audience is losing interest rapidly.</i>” — charlie stross </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">i really look forward to a day where instagram and facebook are just quaint memories...</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"Many oriental cultures make a distinction between two ways of looking – ‘hard eyes’ and ‘soft eyes’. When we look with hard eyes, we see specific details with sharp focus, but we don’t see the relationships between different details as well. When we look with soft eyes we see the relationships between everything in our field of vision, but with this softer focus, we don’t see all the details as clearly. It’s possible to look in two ways at once.”</i> – John Paul Caponigro </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">History doesn't repeat. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But sometimes it echoes.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Loudly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">--- joanne freeman [historian] </span></div>
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ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-35715556534840333212018-02-13T11:25:00.005-05:002018-02-13T11:25:54.312-05:00seeing<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">a good time to repost this quote from my good friend.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Seeing, in the finest and broadest sense, means using your senses, your
intellect, and your emotions. It means encountering your subject matter
with your whole being. It means looking beyond the labels of things and
discovering the remarkable world around you." -- Freeman Patterson</span>ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-61230644608258197072017-06-12T14:32:00.002-04:002017-06-12T14:38:12.524-04:00searching for a lost aha moment...<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I once had a powerful <i>AHA moment</i> about clarity, accuracy and availability of technical communication in development/it environments. I often thought about this issue because I passionately hate the multiplicity and sloppiness of technical communication that ends up in emails, issue tickets and sometimes in a corporate-wide wiki, in multiple forms, cut-and-pasted-edited from each other. if you're really lucky, wiki is often the slightly more authoritative location, but usually subject to unexpected edits: "we had a meeting on that, and but looks like we neglected to update the wiki from the meeting minutes." [you know you are really lucky, because there were <i>meeting minutes</i>.]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">unfortunately I have <i>no idea</i> where i made a note of this insight. i know some pieces were locked into place with a big clunk, and I'm sure I made a note of the details. as I go through collected papers, folders and notebooks, I still look for it. clearly I should have thought about availability of my communication to my future self.<br /><br />pro tip: all epiphanies should go into dedicated notebooks, and kept in someplace safe.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8jZUGamTb0MasaKMykiHZS4UQ06GIKQZr0v96eccm5pFAsxm7FisEmKfQwocce6sbwWA8raJy1cO8wtUTTzkhuqYYWw9LOQAGL6iHIA-02p_sQmowCY-hEJVZhuYT7ds1DZ6NKA/s1600/encounter.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1069" data-original-width="1600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8jZUGamTb0MasaKMykiHZS4UQ06GIKQZr0v96eccm5pFAsxm7FisEmKfQwocce6sbwWA8raJy1cO8wtUTTzkhuqYYWw9LOQAGL6iHIA-02p_sQmowCY-hEJVZhuYT7ds1DZ6NKA/s320/encounter.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-86808321152443327452017-01-25T11:23:00.004-05:002024-02-25T08:15:30.328-05:00recently found pieces of wisdom<div data-contents="true">
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<span style="font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span><span><br />“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without
courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.” ― Maya
Angelou</span></span></span></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1otis-0-0"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i> </i></span></span></div><div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1otis-0-0"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><i><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></i></span></span></span>"You don’t need to be brilliant to be a danger to democracy; quite literally, an idiot could do it." -- yonatan zunger ["when villains aren't super"]<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><i> </i></span></span></span><br /><br /><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><i>"it took a day and night of hard drinking to do some hard thinking about the implications."</i> [from greg benford's "reasons not to publish"]</span></span></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><br />"Vote because you can. Speak because you can. March because you can.
Rights not exercised are quickly forgotten and lost." -- garry kasparov</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif">"Dystopia and utopia are both *literary categories*. To the relatively
rich, naturalistic description of the lives of the poor seem dystopian."
-- william gibson</span></span></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif">'And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of
someone who wears his underpants on his head.' -- terry pratchett
["Maskerade"]</span></span></span><br />
<br /></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_o59CJHyZOC6nQpv1v61XX2Wp11KLHdVW6i88gJtqIio6OZ-Ncl-u_IyqiDHOkIAV8lrDperN9LH3737yY4mBn2JbPZNgQpxzzEw9dFicg0DLVUjJ7KsV8X0NpIYx-wU3OKkNlwy2cMYQ_mlXvzuMlpmctKgXjo_B5vnFH2eImh0shcaCHmC8VA/s1000/45899.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="1000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_o59CJHyZOC6nQpv1v61XX2Wp11KLHdVW6i88gJtqIio6OZ-Ncl-u_IyqiDHOkIAV8lrDperN9LH3737yY4mBn2JbPZNgQpxzzEw9dFicg0DLVUjJ7KsV8X0NpIYx-wU3OKkNlwy2cMYQ_mlXvzuMlpmctKgXjo_B5vnFH2eImh0shcaCHmC8VA/s320/45899.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgibTagStVl4fyqdg2GDrrUXfqmkrWrB6pXz20MAMfsTM1FWzM0vwVQPaSkOvtLA2wjPq2mGPjASIUuL2PXUe07qB_kcnmu9Wp7zNLMJUUznnC6DUvosnlxR69WhnJziD-F16i3QA/s1600/3179252481.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif">"I can see this is going to be an Extra-Strength Monday
The block button, it's the Excedrin of Twitter" -- stonekettle</span></span></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="7cld4-0-0">
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif">"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" - Christopher Hitchens (Hitchens's Razor)</span></span></span><br />
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><br /></span></span>
<div class="_1mf _1mj" data-offset-key="1otis-0-0"> <span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><i><span data-offset-key="1otis-0-0"><span data-text="true"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"></span></span></span>"Any leader who justifies an action by invoking 'the will of the people' is about to do something very nasty to their people."</i> -- alain de botton</span></span></span></div>
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<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif">“Zen pretty much comes down to three things -- everything changes; everything is connected; pay attention.” <span face=""verdana", sans-serif">-- </span>Jane Hirshfield<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><br /></span></span>
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif">"Ever
wonder what it'd be like to go back in time and help fight nazis?
Support Civil Rights Era? Resist Native genocide? Now's your chance" <span face=""verdana", sans-serif">-- </span>xeni ja<span face=""verdana", sans-serif">rdin</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><br /></span>
<span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif">"</span></span></span></span></span><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif"><span face=""verdana", sans-serif">Am feeling very grateful to all the people who took their time to
explain to me what communism is really like. Truly appreciate it:)<span face=""verdana", sans-serif">" -- martina navratilo<span face=""verdana", sans-serif">va</span></span> </span></span></span></span> </span></div>
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ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-3558411867904097182017-01-10T10:39:00.002-05:002017-01-10T10:56:46.657-05:00recently noted thoughts<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #1d2129;">"The supposedly dystopian aspect of my work has never been that, but
rather the application of literary naturalism to imagined futures." --
william gibson</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="color: #1d2129;">"</span>make visible, what without you, might perhaps never have been seen." -- robert bresson</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
"Duality can breed insight but it can also breed delusions." -- Tressie McMillan Cottom<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">"The math of time is simple: you have less than you think and need more than you know." -- kevin ashton ["how to fly a horse"]</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> "where egotism is not made the measure of reality and value, we are citizens of this vast world beyond ourselves, and any intense realization of its presence with and in us brings a particularly satisfying sense of unity in itself and with ourselves" -- john dewey [art and experience]</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> "Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out
what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world.
Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do
the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to
do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society
doesn't stop you from doing anything at all." ~Richard Feynman</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="_5afx"><span class="_58cm">it is truly horrifying how little we learn from history and how quickly we throw away what little we had learned. </span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="_5afx"><span class="_58cm">"To a man devoid of blinders, there is no finer sight than that of the
intelligence at grips with a reality that transcends it."<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> -- </span>Albert Camus </span></span></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz7UnCnJKxs0fDmsbM8asptsxixJ9WjYdn1zJszUqeqcT7wdfrZPo_NC0IRSJ03-twTKPEpmBRtnD1ouqhxp-ix9BMdwfd75Pi-1HiCRddE6p8Exfcmwah5wTwbkFxkoV3hytZSQ/s1600/petalsky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz7UnCnJKxs0fDmsbM8asptsxixJ9WjYdn1zJszUqeqcT7wdfrZPo_NC0IRSJ03-twTKPEpmBRtnD1ouqhxp-ix9BMdwfd75Pi-1HiCRddE6p8Exfcmwah5wTwbkFxkoV3hytZSQ/s320/petalsky.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"most peasants want nothing more than the illusion of a voice. father
says that's what democracies are for." -- from "the capture of benedict
arnold" episode, Timeless.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">facebook: <span style="color: #333333; line-height: 25.6px;">where <span class="_5afx"><span class="_58cl _5afz">news </span></span>comes to die a horrible death of a thousand fake links. </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />FUN FACT: "Internet of Things" is the colloquial short form of the
longer term "Internet of Things that should not be on the Internet".<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>-- fabian giesen</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"you're a giant chunk of spinach in the teeth of the universe." -- the good place</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> “be-careful for what you wish for it may be seeking you as well...”<br /> ― Master Golden Wizard "Luxas Aureaum"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"Only when the past ceases to trouble and the anticipations of the future
are not perturbing is a being wholly united with his environment and
therefore fully alive. Art celebrates with particular intensity the
moments in which the past reinforces the present and in which the future
is a quickening of what now is." -- john dewey ["art as experience"]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the
victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes
we must interfere." -- Elie Wiesel [1986 Nobel peace prize speech]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>all that you touch<br />you change<br /><br />all that you change<br />changes you.</i><br />-- octavia e butler</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"My newest horror story: Once upon a time there was a man named Donald
Trump, and he ran for president. Some people wanted him to win."</i> -- stephen king</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"Oh! Suspense! Democracy's going to end with cliffhanger! I guess
we're all just gonna have to wait until November 9th to find out if we
still have a country! If Donald J. Trump is in the mood for a peaceful
transfer of power.</i><br /><i>Or if he's just going to wipe his fat ass with the Constitution."" </i><i></i>-- stephen colbert</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><i>"Counter to the internet isn't censorship, it's misinformation &
information glut. Counter to dissident politics is destruction of
privacy."</i> -- zeynep tufekci</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"My
favorite English professor was primarily concerned with the mass
psychology of fascism. Wish I weren't finding that all so handy now"</i> --william gibson</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"a word of advice: stop searching. forget vision, forget personal
style, forget unique voice; these are not goals, they are byproducts.
the most meaningful art you can make is not about a particular look,
subject matter or visual effect, but about the way you respond to and
interpret the world."</i> -- guy tal </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"working under a deadline is endlessly rich in opportunities for self-discovery."</i> — andré kukla</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"humor is a far more potent crowbar than statistics for wrenching people from their preconceptions."</i> -- p z myers ["happy atheist"]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"you're over 40? you don't even remember what your dreams were..."</i> -- anonymous comic ["whitney cummins' bleep show"]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"i'm 18! ...<br />la la la la la la<br />I don't hear you!!!" -- the kid</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"some things you teach yourself to remember to forget."</i> -- william gibson ["count zero"]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>To those who wish to become better artists, and better people, my
best advice can be summed up in one word: read. And to those who wish
for their work to make a difference to others, my best advice can also
be summed up in one word: write."</i> -- guy tal</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><br />"If you are talking about humans and you use terms like 'half breed' seriously you're racist, an idiot, or a racist idiot."</i> -- peter da silva</span></span> <br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><br />sake for the body, haiku for the heart;</i><br /><i>sake is the haiku of the body,</i><br /><i>haiku is the sake of the heart.</i><br />-- santōka taneda</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">"Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell." -- carrie fisher<i> </i>[wishful drinking]</span>ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-12803931995447827572016-07-21T14:00:00.000-04:002016-07-21T14:04:03.898-04:00blue shuttersrevisiting an old favorite for a touch of color and dynamic range. this one is from new orleans french quarter, february 1999. i'm out very early, sun just coming up. walked quickly to ursulines and chartres to visit the old french colonial ursulines convent. it is closed, and there is not much to photograph from the outside. i turn around to leave, and see this across the street. [fuji velvia at iso 40] i should rescan and re-process this slide, but this original scan made for a limited edition print is workable with modern image processing tools.<br />
<br />
google street view of the corner of ursulines and chartres shows that (as is the case with everything in the french quarter) the colors are the same, and the tree is still there.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1YeeVQk3nvPkKnigd2CAW8sX6Olqd2zmFSd9kIyY093ZJ0N-FnMIjDLZtcJlyys9jWwafl5aVzCx1_Qx36bOaYDAXUQYLWeUo_CwrNvuTM3N__4mxg4-9MJd6-vGP_h3SnHQ7tg/s1600/IMG_7517.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1YeeVQk3nvPkKnigd2CAW8sX6Olqd2zmFSd9kIyY093ZJ0N-FnMIjDLZtcJlyys9jWwafl5aVzCx1_Qx36bOaYDAXUQYLWeUo_CwrNvuTM3N__4mxg4-9MJd6-vGP_h3SnHQ7tg/s400/IMG_7517.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-49577130048621449742016-06-16T10:17:00.000-04:002016-07-21T13:58:55.606-04:00overturned<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
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<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">head full<br />
of light and<br />
white water</span></i><br />
<i style="line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />eyes</span></i><i style="line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">gleaming stones</span></span></i></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; line-height: 19.32px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
<i style="line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></i>
<i style="line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I have become</span></i></div>
<div class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; line-height: 19.32px;">
<div style="margin-bottom: 6px;">
<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">a river running<br />to you</span></i><br />
<i style="line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />and time</span></i><br />
<i style="line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the canoe</span></i><br />
<i style="line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />overturned</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 19.32px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 19.32px;">george swede </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 19.32px;">[from "I want to lasso time"]</span></div>
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ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-22217307972577771842016-06-08T15:42:00.001-04:002016-06-08T16:39:15.815-04:00recently noted thoughts<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but continuous flattery, however sincere, is extremely irritating. -- me</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"People are very protective about the "things they know" especially if they've had to fight hard to get that information. The greater the effort, the harder it is to let it go.</i>" -- Kim Taylor</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"><i>"If we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be almost all friendships would be dissolved; the second effect, however, might be excellent, for a world without any friends would be felt to be intolerable, and we should learn to like each other without needing a veil of illusion to conceal from ourselves that we did not think each other absolutely perfect.”</i> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 19.32px;">― Bertrand Russell, ["The Conquest of Happiness"]</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 19.32px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl"><i></i></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"><i>"There is a vast gulf between impossible, and impossible to imagine"</i> -- sherlock ["elementary"]</span></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisPZB4_oy-0WLYrpPCjhOfRS7vg71ByuPDgbIJucufDOWQAumDP4cBjuSMuc3l9h_msyvieGWge4b8o801Yzdh7CLDtFQNUlJ1AiymPBU7GxjVPWSRb4Q-RtiZtgg5k3PSzP6O-g/s1600/IMG_5445.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisPZB4_oy-0WLYrpPCjhOfRS7vg71ByuPDgbIJucufDOWQAumDP4cBjuSMuc3l9h_msyvieGWge4b8o801Yzdh7CLDtFQNUlJ1AiymPBU7GxjVPWSRb4Q-RtiZtgg5k3PSzP6O-g/s320/IMG_5445.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."</i> -- bertrand russell</span></span><br />
<span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl" style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"Each closure is an awakening, and every awakening settles something. This state of affairs defines organization of energy."</i> -- John Dewey ["art as experience"]</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"To come to a place with preconceived notions and expectations of what you will get from it, is a very dangerous thing. Because you might actually succeed in accomplishing exactly what you came there to find."</i> -- guy tal</span></span></span><br />
<span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"Form follows function doesn't mean all objects have to look the same."</i> -- Tonfisk [Finnish design company web page]</span></span></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
</i><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"There are at least six or seven individual apps all buried inside the guts of iTunes whimpering to get out. It is a perfect example of how not to write an application, and if someone were to release an app like this today, we’d laugh at it and it’d die of shame."</i> -- chuq von rospach</span></span></span><br />
<i><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span>
</i><span aria-label="hashtag" class="_58cl"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"You live a life, Sherlock. if you're not a fool, it changes you."</i> -- morland holmes ["elementary"]</span></span></span>ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-51627061678544474482016-04-27T23:33:00.005-04:002016-04-27T23:36:40.577-04:00scalzi's tweets on Hugo puppy mess<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[from @scalzi on twitter]</span><br />
<br style="color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif;" />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">Going to do a series of tweets relating to the Hugos, but I'll be quick and there will be a kitten pic at the end. Okay? Okay.</span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">1. Reading commentary on my reaction to the Puppy bullshit this year and some folks are upset I'm not reacting the way they think I should.</span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">2. Specifically, they seem to be upset that I'm suggesting the Pup slating stuff that would be nominated anyway isn't a genius strategy...</span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">3. ... and that essentially in cases like that the attempted puppy co-op should be entirely ignored. This is apparently AGAINST THE RULES.</span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">4. So, basically, it's <i>"Waaaaaah! You're not playing this game like you're supposed too! Why can't you see this is the end of days!"</i></span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">5. My response to this is, a) who made you the boss of me, b) who cares what you think, c) I'm not obliged to follow anyone's playbook.</span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">6. It's doesn't take genius to stuff a ballot box. Nor does co-opting people for your scheme mean people have to respond the way you want.</span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">7. And this really isn't a crisis or a clash of worldviews. It's, simply, having to deal with opportunistic assholes. Again.</span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">8. How do you deal with opportunistic assholes? In this case, by shrugging about their MASTER PLAN and do what you, not they, want.</span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">9. The most exasperating thing of all this Hugo shit is people pretending this is about anything other than jerks and trolls being jerks...</span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">10. ... or opportunists being opportunistic. I'm not inclined to give them any more importance than that. And that bugs them. Good!</span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">11. So, yeah. If you're upset because I'm NOT DOING HUGO OUTRAGE RIGHT, or whatever, well, just suck on that. It's not your call.</span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">12. Rant done. Compensatory kitten picture coming up in just a second.</span><br style="color: #404040;" /><br style="color: #404040;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040;">As promised: Kittens!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[photo by john scalzi]</span></div>
<br />ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-39434618286638963112016-03-01T15:22:00.002-05:002016-03-02T15:54:05.669-05:00recently noted thoughts<div class="tG QF" style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.2px; position: absolute; width: 0px;">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i style="color: #404040; line-height: 18.2px;">"Originalism is philosophically incoherent (the old texts bear the same multivalent marks of dispute and argument that persist now) and in practice ridiculous."</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18.2px;">-- adam gopnik</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18.2px;">"When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches."</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18.2px;"> ~Edward Weston</span></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl1GJvT3GMEIQx5A74aOSo11ObFJ1SqYvo8mbZ0SkbFnPZUfBbmFVWHWVCtCHNenhb-QFExZXDsYWNLcBLaxuoz_XQelQW6HDZZ6Z4HGtjX-bQsPRhgXnLvDUMPQJn3DMjyznQ5A/s1600/wet-hosta-212.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl1GJvT3GMEIQx5A74aOSo11ObFJ1SqYvo8mbZ0SkbFnPZUfBbmFVWHWVCtCHNenhb-QFExZXDsYWNLcBLaxuoz_XQelQW6HDZZ6Z4HGtjX-bQsPRhgXnLvDUMPQJn3DMjyznQ5A/s320/wet-hosta-212.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 19.32px;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #141823; line-height: 19.32px;"><i>"donald trump views the truth like this lemur views the supreme court vacancy. i don't care about that in any way, please f***off, i have a banana." </i>-- john oliver</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>"Democracy embodies justice, free discussion embodies rationality, and it is only<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>through justice and rationality that an issue can be found from the dangers with which modern war is threatening the human race"</i> -- bertrand russell ["a scientist's plea for democracy", 1947]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>"trump personifies everything the rest of the world despises about America: casual racism, crass materialism, relentless self-aggrandizement, vulgarity on an epic scale. the fact that so many Republicans are comfortable with the thought of this monumentally unqualified man in the Oval Office shows how warped the party has become."</i> -- paul thomas [the new zealand herald]</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>"One cannot express something compelling, interesting or inspiring
without first having something compelling, interesting or inspiring to
express. And so, in pursuit of expressive work, one also becomes
motivated to seek those things that are worth expressing: meaningful
experiences, complex thoughts, powerful emotions, and useful or
interesting knowledge." </i>-- guy tal</span></span><br />
<i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></i>
<i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">"In a world with boundless opportunities for amusement, it's detestable that anyone would choose to get thrills from killing others who ask for nothing from life but the chance to remain alive."</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> -- sir roger moore</span><br />
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></i>
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18px;">"Let’s be honest; blazing skies at sunrise and sunset, wide-angle near-far compositions, etc., while often spectacularly beautiful, have become the photographic equivalent of fast food: momentarily satisfying, requiring little creative effort, and lacking any characteristics to distinguish the sensibilities and expressive powers of their creator from those of a million others."</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"> -- guy tal</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><i style="line-height: 18.2px;">"</i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i style="line-height: 18.2px;">there is a very big difference between styling and design. design is about being perceptive of the contemporary culture and creating the future. styling is about borrowing from history."</i><span style="line-height: 18.2px;"> -- karim rashid</span></span></span></span></span><br />
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></i>
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18.2px;">“I've always thought tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune.”</i><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="line-height: 18.2px;">[Lois McMaster Bujold, </span><i style="line-height: 18.2px;">"Shards of Honour"</i><span style="line-height: 18.2px;">]</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="line-height: 18.2px;">"we owe nearly everything to others. generations are also generators. the point of the fruit is the tree, and the point of the tree is the fruit." -- kevin ashton ["how to fly a horse"]</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; line-height: 18px;"><br style="line-height: 18.2px;" /><i style="line-height: 18.2px;">"METAPHOR STEW: Trump is a karma tsunami, the long-imagined chickens of decades of race-baiting and rich-worshiping coming home to roost."</i><span style="line-height: 18.2px;"> -- lolgop [twitter]</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><i style="line-height: 18.2px;">after exhausting both</i><br style="line-height: 18.2px;" /><i style="line-height: 18.2px;">principle and reason</i><br style="line-height: 18.2px;" /><i style="line-height: 18.2px;">the ancient "not one thing"</i><br style="line-height: 18.2px;" /><i style="line-height: 18.2px;">that knows not</i><br style="line-height: 18.2px;" /><i style="line-height: 18.2px;">the bright moonlight.</i><br style="line-height: 18.2px;" /><span style="line-height: 18.2px;">-- musashi [at nagoya]</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><i style="line-height: 18.2px;">lovecraft!? h.p. lovecraft?</i><br style="line-height: 18.2px;" /><i style="line-height: 18.2px;">lovely lyrical name, isn't it, for such a troubled mind.</i><br style="line-height: 18.2px;" /><span style="line-height: 18.2px;">-- the librarians</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><i style="line-height: 18.2px;">"As an astronaut I spacewalked 220 miles above the Earth. Floating alongside the International Space Station, I watched hurricanes cartwheel across oceans, the Amazon snake its way to the sea through a brilliant green carpet of forest, and gigantic nighttime thunderstorms flash and flare for hundreds of miles along the Equator."</i><span style="line-height: 18.2px;"> -- piers j sellers</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.2px;"><i>haskell: Primarily a CV decoration language. Code is typically written to be admired rather than compiled; this is technically known as the "lazy execution model."</i> -- verity stob</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></span>
<i style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.2px;">the ordinary reader -- the ordinary audience -- is a barren conceit.</i></span><br />
<i style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.2px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">it guarantees a shared mediocrity.</span></i><br />
<i style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.2px;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">don't preconceive the reader's limitations.</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.2px;">they'll become your own. </i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.2px;">-- verlyn klinkenborg ["several short sentences about writing"]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></span>
<i style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.2px;">"has there ever been a critic of sam harris who is not been accused of misrepresenting him? this is a literal question!"</i><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.2px;">-- cenk uygur</span></span><br />
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></i>
<i style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18.2px;">"I happen to be, at this very moment, purposefully misunderstanding Richard Dawkins as a way to generate clicks on some bloggers’ page[s], and so are all of the other mindless hivemind sockpuppets controlled by the aforementioned nameless bloggers."</i><span style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 18.2px;"> -- consciousness razor</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.2px;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="line-height: 18.2px;"><br /></span></span></span></span>ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-79312368909987560922016-01-20T11:14:00.001-05:002016-01-20T11:14:52.469-05:00three cranes tsuba (sketch)<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />following is a partial illustrator/inkscape rendering of a sukashi
tsuba design, based on existing japanese designs. [i happen to own
edo-era examples of this design, with three and four cranes] if you are
interested in piercing your own tsuba, or would like three cranes in a
circular formation for some other purpose, here it is. Unlike some of
the tsubas I have seen, the cranes here are perfectly organized.
[triangles and lines are there to let me understand the placement of the
components] I left it incomplete but with sufficient detail. you still
need to organize the lines as they merge into each other, compete the
design of kozuka hitsu-ana, nakago hitsu-ana and kogai hitsu-ana and so
on. exercise for the serious designer.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">copyright, cc attribution, share-alike.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8nsOBQnaZejd0tELXA5ajBkTlU/view?usp=sharing">three cranes tsuba</a> </span>ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-79740519026751298182015-08-14T09:57:00.003-04:002015-08-14T10:05:35.350-04:00recently noted thoughts<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>"selling out is usually more a matter of buying in."</i> -- bill watterson</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>“the main function of the human brain, the primary instinct, is
storytelling. Memory is storyelling. If we all remembered everything, we
would be Rain Man, and would not be socially active at all. We learn to
forget and to distort, but we [also] learn to tell a story about
ourselves.”</i> -- joss whedon </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>"It's fairly clear that one of the defining characteristics of the
21st century so far has been the creeping installation of a system
optimized to exclude public opinion from the levers of power despite
continuing to pay lip service to principles of democratic
accountability: is this another (and big) step in ensuring that
democracy can't actually threaten the interests of the global financial
sector?"</i> -- charlie stross [on <i> TransAtlantic Trade and Investment Partnership</i>]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>"the ability to change anything was the change that changed everything.</i>" -- kevin ashton ["how to fly a horse"]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /><i>"while you cannot force ideas into existence, you can coax them into
view. When you first notice some exciting fragment, your impulse may be
to brush it aside. It looks so ... so small, so slight. Don't be
deceived. What matters is not the idea's size but its resonance."</i> -- stephen koch ["modern library writer's workshop: a guide to craft of fiction"]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>"The 'draw a line' philosophy offers a substantial political
advantage to people with hidden agendas. The method for getting what you
want is first to draw the line somewhere that nobody would object to,
and then gradually move it to where you really want it, arguing
continuity all the way."</i> -- terry pratchett, ian stewart & jack cohen ["the science of discworld"]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>"To merely act as a conduit of inspiration from naturally-occurring
phenomena to an audience is a great and important task, but it is the
task of the journalist, not of the artist. The artist’s role is not in
being a passive messenger, but in creating new configurations, symbols
and metaphors – aesthetic experiences – that one would not be able to
experience on their own, even if afforded the same access to the same
subject."</i> -- <span class="proflinkWrapper"><span class="proflinkPrefix">guy tal</span><a class="proflink aaTEdf" href="https://plus.google.com/116369071500456395369"></a></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="proflinkWrapper"><i>"Hold on, an author can wait 55 years between books and people will still be interested?</i><i> Man, this changes </i><b><i>everything</i></b><i>..."</i> -- patrick rothfuss </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="proflinkWrapper"><i>"I know self-care is important. As Morpheus said, there’s a
difference between knowing the path and walking the path. But here comes
Red Riding Hood to remind you that walking the path is all well and
good, but it’s even harder to stay on that path once you’ve started."</i> -- <span class="proflinkWrapper"><span class="proflinkPrefix">jim hines</span><a class="proflink aaTEdf" href="https://plus.google.com/114820416823559451404"></a></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="proflinkWrapper"><span class="proflinkWrapper"><i>"Practicing isn’t always hard. At times, practice is joyous. When you
are working at the edge of your abilities, acquiring mastery of
something difficult that you value, practice is the best feeling. But if
you only practice when it brings you joy, you won’t practice much.
Logging the requisite hours inevitably involves some slogging."</i> -- cory doctorow</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="proflinkWrapper"><span class="proflinkWrapper"><i>"The Confederate flag is directly tied to the Confederate cause, and
the Confederate cause was white supremacy. This claim is not the result
of revisionism. It does not require reading between the lines. It is the
plain meaning of the words of those who bore the Confederate flag
across history."</i> -- ta-nehisi coates </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>"Debating
creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play
chess with a pigeon -- it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board,
and flies back to its flock to claim victory.</i>" -- scott d. weitzenhoffer</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="proflinkWrapper"><span class="proflinkWrapper"></span></span></span> ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-9698848496261150632015-05-15T15:39:00.000-04:002015-06-10T15:01:06.940-04:00extracting my notes from drafts app database<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfn9f2w_eA2UhSiHFZiZLKGbKsypQFmmA-P7CV8DJVHebqcj9fOavmwyCf0Fk1wMTAp2TLgwt5kNbVfZ5ea1jk5WrYUPSGOF16XDmgaupKrzkDVFuKPLGe6ZLT5A49mEL6YMSh1w/s1600/Screenshot+from+2015-05-15+12:58:31.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="117" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfn9f2w_eA2UhSiHFZiZLKGbKsypQFmmA-P7CV8DJVHebqcj9fOavmwyCf0Fk1wMTAp2TLgwt5kNbVfZ5ea1jk5WrYUPSGOF16XDmgaupKrzkDVFuKPLGe6ZLT5A49mEL6YMSh1w/s320/Screenshot+from+2015-05-15+12:58:31.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">well now. while digging into the content stored in my iphone, i found out the drafts app which I'm slowly abandoning by removing my content uses a sqlite3 database. previously I had no way to bulk-extract my notes.</span><br />
<blockquote>
<pre><span style="font-size: x-small;"># sqlite3 Drafts.sqlite
SQLite version 3.8.2 2013-12-06 14:53:30
...
sqlite> .tables
ZSPMANAGEDOBJECT Z_METADATA Z_PRIMARYKEY
sqlite> .schema zspmanagedobject
...
CREATE TABLE ZSPMANAGEDOBJECT (
Z_PK INTEGER PRIMARY KEY,
Z_ENT INTEGER,
Z_OPT INTEGER,
ZARCHIVED INTEGER,
ZHIDDEN INTEGER,
ZPINNED INTEGER,
ZCREATED_AT TIMESTAMP,
ZLAST_ACTION_AT TIMESTAMP,
ZMODIFIED_AT TIMESTAMP,
ZUPDATED_AT TIMESTAMP,
ZGHOSTDATA VARCHAR,
ZSIMPERIUMKEY VARCHAR,
ZCOMPLETED_ACTIONS VARCHAR,
ZCONTENT VARCHAR,
ZLAST_ACTION VARCHAR,
ZTAGS VARCHAR,
ZUUID VARCHAR );
...
</span></pre>
</blockquote>
<pre><span style="font-size: x-small;">select z_created_at, z_content from zspmanagedobject;</span></pre>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">produces the time-stamped draft notes, including notes that were deleted.</span><br />
<blockquote>
<pre><span style="font-size: x-small;">451329756.316168|supermarket notes, 2015: I find the selection of shaped,
filled, fried, baked, toasted, flavored, seasoned corn products entirely
inadequate for a healthy diet.
451357888.003267|"what about the duck?"
"extra crispy!!"
-- looney tunes back in action
</span></pre>
</blockquote>
ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-79839620896948588092015-05-09T11:21:00.004-04:002015-05-09T11:21:38.573-04:00ira glass's actual quote<div class="tG QF" style="color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; position: absolute; width: 0px;">
</div>
<div class="Ct" style="color: #404040; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">never mind the abstract <i>reader's digest</i> quote poster that is going around. this is my transcription of what Ira Glass actually said in [ the first part of] his video. it is wonderful advice, especially about the discipline of producing work on a deadline. [ira glass on storytelling, part 3]:</span><br />
<div style="font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif;">
<br /></div>
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>"Nobody tells people who are beginners. I really wish someone had told this to me. Is that [if you are watching this video, you are somebody who wants o make videos right?] all of us who do creative work, we get into it. we get into it because we have good taste. you know what I mean? like you want to make TV, because you love TV. there is stuff you just like, love. ok so you got really good taste. you get into this thing … that i don’t even know how to describe it, but there is a gap. for the first couple of years you are making stuff, what you are making isn’t so good... ok, its not that great. it's really not that great. its trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but not quite that good. but your taste, the thing get you into the game, your taste is still killer. your taste is good enough that you can tell what you are making is a kind of disappointment to you, you know what i mean? you can tell it is still sort of crappy. a lot of people never get past that phase. a lot of people at that point, they quit. the thing i would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know, who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste, they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. they knew it felt short. [some of us can admit that to ourselves, some of us less able to admit that to ourselves] we knew like, it didn’t have that special thing that we wanted it to have. [...] everybody goes through that. for you to go through it, if you are going through right now, just getting out of that phase, if you are just starting out and entering into that phase, you gotta know it is totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work. do a huge volume of work. put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re gonna finish one story. you know what i mean? whatever its gonna be. you create the deadline. it is best if have somebody who is waiting work from you, expecting work from you. even if not somebody who pays you, but that you are in a situation where you have to turn out the work. because it is only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap and the work you are making will be as good as your ambitions."</i></span></blockquote>
</div>
ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-23820868540287914002015-04-17T10:50:00.002-04:002015-04-17T10:50:19.135-04:00for a recent birthday<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>a period of time</i></span><br />
<div class="Bt Pm">
<div class="Ct">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>a few minutes long</i><br /><i>fifty eight years wide.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i> </i><br />-- Tomas Transtromer ["the sad gondola"]</span></div>
</div>
ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-59969408133198863262015-04-16T13:35:00.000-04:002016-03-01T15:00:25.250-05:00recently found pieces of wisdom<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><i><i><i>"The clock is ticking. Life is fleeting. If you don’t feel alive now, when will you?"</i> -- guy tal</i></i></i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"forget the big picture. look at everything close-up."</i> -- jethro gibbs [ncis]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><i><i>A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP"</i> -- leonard nimoy</i></i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i><i>"escapism isn't good or bad in itself. what is important is what you are escaping from and where you are escaping to."</i> -- terry pratchett </i></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"History tends to change people who think they're changing it."</i> -- terry pratchett</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>“The first time, I usually skim off the outer layer and end up with
photographs that are fairly obvious. The second time, I have to look a
little deeper. The images get more interesting. The third time it is
even more challenging and on each subsequent occasion, the images should
get stronger, but it takes more effort to get them.”</i> – Michael Kenna</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Q</b>: How many Sad Puppies does it take to change a light bulb?<br /><b>A</b>: 100, one to change the bulb and 99 to say, <i>“Gosh, I hope this makes Scalzi’s head explode!”</i> -- john scalzi</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"above all, never lose your enthusiasm."</i> -- ernst haas</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"if history reveals any categorical truth, it is that an unsufficient taste for evidence regularly brings out the worst in us."</i> -- sam harris ["the end of faith"]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"you know you have made a theoretical advance when you can no longer reconstruct why you failed for so long to see the obvious."</i> -- daniel kahneman</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"I'm not dangerous; I just understand the basics of value."</i> -- eren yigit [quipped during a munchkin game]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"frozen margaritas cut through space and time."</i> -- the katering show</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6jhDmgRYSUHIx3R0zPfjD8Tfj2nVy5blaPqb_RHWzRgFYX_QEGmenaAXP1Bos62WFpGti2BaLOSlFkED7FLwK1y6N6CLN9AD31qq-PSjSScjbXkPhu6GVTgxKJQaAS3aMwHrzuw/s1600/1234455_10151880767690874_159558981_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6jhDmgRYSUHIx3R0zPfjD8Tfj2nVy5blaPqb_RHWzRgFYX_QEGmenaAXP1Bos62WFpGti2BaLOSlFkED7FLwK1y6N6CLN9AD31qq-PSjSScjbXkPhu6GVTgxKJQaAS3aMwHrzuw/s1600/1234455_10151880767690874_159558981_n.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"dad, what part of you said "i must watch "pitch perfect""?"</i> -- eren yigit [critiquing my desperate netflix choices - tomatometer says 81% which is twice the netflix average] </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"a picture may be worth a thousand words, but the order of the words matters when constructing meaning."</i> -- dean kessman ["ninety nine pictures"]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="proflinkWrapper"><span class="proflinkPrefix"><i>"Visualization - the ability to see in the "mind's eye" a finished
image before making an exposure (or other technical choices) is very
different from vision. Vision is the passive seeing of light reflected
off objects; visualization is projecting, consciously and deliberately,
the light of our thoughts and feelings onto objects. Vision is about
what there is; visualization is about what could be. Vision happens;
visualization makes happen. Vision is about what things are;
visualization is about what things mean."</i> -- guy tal</span></span> </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"Your sensei didn't hold anything back, you just couldn't hear it. So
it's no wonder when you go back to visit you hear brand new stuff."</i> --kim taylor [mjer iaido, renshi, 7th dan]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>"The one and only sole purpose of today's confederacy is to bring the
plantation lords... I mean oligarchs... back to their rightful place
atop the 6000 year feudal hierarchy."</i> -- <span class="proflinkWrapper"><span class="proflinkPrefix">david brin</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="proflinkWrapper"><span class="proflinkPrefix"><i>The whole vaccine mess, in the United States and abroad, is a story of allowing anecdotes to trump statistical reasoning."</i> -- chris mooney </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="proflinkWrapper"><span class="proflinkPrefix"><i>"Everyone likes to pretend
that he or she is more rational, more responsible, and more immune to
the risks that gun ownership poses relative to the average American.
Yet, we know from gun violence statistics that many are simply
misjudging their own competency. Everyone thinks he or she is above
average, but half are mistaken."</i> -- evan defilippis and devin hughes [slate]</span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="proflinkWrapper"><span class="proflinkPrefix"><i>"It’s hard enough for gondolas to negotiate the inner canals of Venice,
let alone a sub the size of an ocean liner, but no problem; The League
of Extraordinary Gentlemen either knows absolutely nothing about Venice,
or (more likely) trusts that its audience does not."</i> -- roger ebert
[review of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"] </span></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="proflinkWrapper"><span class="proflinkPrefix"><i>"It is not always necessary to take a scissor to a country’s social
fabric — as the Front National so consistently does in France — to rip
it. Pulling at it one loose thread at a time can achieve the same
result." </i>-- Chantal Hébert </span></span></span><i> </i>ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-22938418979338705562015-01-13T12:16:00.002-05:002015-01-30T16:28:05.721-05:00recently found quotes<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;">"be yourself and style will follow" -- </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;">guy tal</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;"><br /> <span class="_58cl"></span></i>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;">"we are who we are - eventually."</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;"> -- constantine</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;">"no-on has truely 'lived by the sword'for at least 300 years. everything since the 17th century is mostly fanciful imagining. This was already mocked in the early 18th century as ka-do, flower arranging."</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;"> -- ford hallam</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;"><br /></i>
<i style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;">"artists try to say things that can't be said. in a fragile net of words, gestures, or colors, we hope to capture a feeling; a taste; a painful longing. but the net is always too porous, and we are left with the sweet frustration of almost knowing, which is teasingly pleasurable."</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;"> -- alan alda</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;"><br /></i>
<i style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;">"creativity, no matter which of its many definitions you favor, requires something new, a different interpretation, a break from the twin opiates of habit and cliche."</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;"> -- denise shekerjian</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
<i style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;">"steer clear of ideology. like jargon, it can be a substitute for thought. the lure of the simple solution can lead to handing over your life to people who make the trains run on time -- but who take away your freedom to go where you want on those trains."</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;"> -- alan alda [kenyon college commencement address]</span></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyp1H2qxm1xkkgVNIPreW8o5zY17K9v_M4E22EKPOJ6Nn_oxaagoptFnIHEs8z0p2hqSRA2CCUeE8PAJUV0yGnJsb1FYcnQehSSrnSbs0FALrlavu_tkfbUZNY7JNLOb8ALqqHrQ/s1600/balance.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyp1H2qxm1xkkgVNIPreW8o5zY17K9v_M4E22EKPOJ6Nn_oxaagoptFnIHEs8z0p2hqSRA2CCUeE8PAJUV0yGnJsb1FYcnQehSSrnSbs0FALrlavu_tkfbUZNY7JNLOb8ALqqHrQ/s1600/balance.png" /></span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
<i>"it is the mark of the dull mind to mistake a conversation opener for its last word."</i> -- julian baggini ["should you judge this book by its cover?"]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
<i>"westerners like to conquer mountains, while easterners like to
contemplate them. as for me, i cannot see a mountain as a thing to be
analyzed; it is a work of art. i like to taste the mountains.</i>" -- santoka teneda [journals, sep 20, 1930] </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;">"you're a bloody psychopath!"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 20.2222232818604px;">"high-functioning sociopath. with your number." [sherlock s3#2]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>"after this year, the only history I want to come in contact with is the one drawn by larry gonnick"</i> -- the kid</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
<i>"if knowledge is power,</i></span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">and if books are knowledge,</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">books are power -</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>an unread book is untapped power."</i> -- eren yigit </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
<i>"my memory of you is better than you"</i> -- lao tzu [according to chuck lorre vanity card #303]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
<i>"the Go way is not to simulate inheritance, but to avoid it altogether."</i> -- mark summerfield ["programming in go"]</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
<i>"My primary interest in trolls is their elimination. Trolls are
not profitable; trolls drive everyone else away. Trolls are
anti-profitable."</i> -- <span class="proflinkWrapper"><span class="proflinkPrefix"></span>Yonatan Zunger</span> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
<i>"irony is a way of having one's cake while appearing to eat it."</i> -- john updike</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
<i>"It wasn’t just a matter of making an inferior or sloppy product;
anybody could have done that. But to create one that reliably failed
after an agreed-upon 1,000 hours took some doing over a number of
years."</i> -- Markus Krajewski ["the great lightbulb conspiracy"]</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> <i>"all literature could be said to originate from sales receipts."</i> -- daniel j. levitin ["the organized mind"]</span><br />
<div style="min-height: 24px;">
<i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></i>
<i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"but one of the things that really irritates me in products is when I'm aware of designers wagging their tails in my face."</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> -- jonathan ive</span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-43263477131450368612015-01-13T10:16:00.000-05:002015-01-13T12:06:49.412-05:00deniers are not sceptics [csi open letter]<blockquote style="background: rgb(238, 238, 238); border: 1px solid rgb(153, 153, 153); font-family: Verdana, 'Helvetica Neue', helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; letter-spacing: 0.389999985694885px; line-height: 19.5px; margin: 15px 30px; padding: 15px;">
<h2 style="font-size: 1.8em; font-weight: 300; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 0px 0px 0.75em; padding: 0px;">
Deniers are not Skeptics</h2>
<div style="margin-bottom: 1em; padding: 0px;">
<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">December 5, 2014</strong><br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Public discussion of scientific topics such as global warming is confused by misuse of the term “skeptic.” The Nov 10, 2014, New York Times article “Republicans Vow to Fight <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">EPA</span> and Approve Keystone Pipeline” referred to Sen. James Inhofe as “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/us/politics/republicans-vow-to-fight-epa-and-approve-keystone-pipeline.html" style="color: #3399cc; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">a prominent skeptic of climate change</a>.” Two days later Scott Horsley of <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">NPR</span>’s Morning Edition called him “<a href="http://www.npr.org/2014/11/12/363458879/china-u-s-pledge-to-limit-greenhouse-gases" style="color: #3399cc; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">one of the leading climate change deniers in Congress</a>.” These are not equivalent statements.<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
As Fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry, we are concerned that the words “skeptic” and “denier” have been conflated by the popular media. Proper skepticism promotes scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims. It is foundational to the scientific method. Denial, on the other hand, is the a priorirejection of ideas without objective consideration.<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Real skepticism is summed up by a quote popularized by Carl Sagan, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Inhofe’s belief that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” is an extraordinary claim indeed. He has never been able to provide evidence for this vast alleged conspiracy. That alone should disqualify him from using the title “skeptic.”<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
As scientific skeptics, we are well aware of political efforts to undermine climate science by those who deny reality but do not engage in scientific research or consider evidence that their deeply held opinions are wrong. The most appropriate word to describe the behavior of those individuals is “denial.” Not all individuals who call themselves climate change skeptics are deniers. But virtually all deniers have falsely branded themselves as skeptics. By perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry.<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
We are skeptics who have devoted much of our careers to practicing and promoting scientific skepticism. We ask that journalists use more care when reporting on those who reject climate science, and hold to the principles of truth in labeling. Please stop using the word “skeptic” to describe deniers.<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Mark Boslough, Physicist<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
David Morrison, Director of the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe, at the <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">SETI</span> Institute<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Bill Nye, <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">CEO</span> the Planetary Society<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Ann Druyan, Writer/producer; <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">CEO</span>, Cosmos Studios<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Ken Frazier, Editor, Skeptical Inquirer<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Barry Karr, Exec Director, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Amardeo Sarma, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Executive Council, Chairman <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">GWUP</span> (Germany)<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Sir Harold Kroto, Nobel Prize in Chemistry<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Ronald A. Lindsay, President <span class="amp" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">&</span> <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">CEO</span> Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and Center for Inquiry<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Kenneth R. Miller, Professor of Biology, Brown University<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Christopher C. French, Dept of Psychology, Goldsmiths University of London<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Daniel C. Dennett, Center for Cognitive Studies, Tufts University<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Massimo Pigliucci, Professor of Philosophy at <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">CUNY</span>-City College<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Douglas Hofstadter, Director, The Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Stephen Barrett, Co-founder of the National Council Against Health Fraud (<span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">NCAHF</span>), and the webmaster of Quackwatch<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Scott O. Lilienfeld, Professor, Department of Psychology, Emory University<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Terence Hines, Dept of Psychology, Pace University<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
James Randi, President James Randi Educational Foundation<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">SETI</span>Research<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Joe Nickell, Senior Research Fellow, Committee for Skeptical Inquiry<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Henri Broch, Physicist, Emeritus, University Nice Sophia Antipolis, France<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Eugenie C. Scott, Chair, Advisory Council, National Center for Science Education<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Edzard Ernst, Professor of Medicine, Emeritus, University of Exeter, <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">UK</span><br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Indre Viskontas, Cognitive Neuroscientist, Host Inquiring Minds Podcast<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
David J. Helfand, Professor of Astronomy, Columbia University<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Mario Mendez-Acosta, Journalist, Science Writer, Mexico City<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Cornelis de Jager, Astrophysicist, Past President, International Council for Science<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Sanal Edamaruku, President, Rationalist International<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Loren Pankratz, Psychologist, Portland <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">VA</span> Medical Center, Retired<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Sandra Blakeslee, Science Writer<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Benjamin Radford, Deputy Editor of the Skeptical Inquirer Magazine<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
David Thomas, Physicist and Mathematician<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Stuart D. Jordan, <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">NASA</span> Astrophysicist, Emeritus<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
David H. Gorski, Cancer Surgeon, Wayne State University School of Medicine<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Anthony R. Pratkanis, Professor of Psychology, <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">UC</span> @Santa Cruz<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Jan Willem Nienhuys, Mathematician, Waalre, The Netherlands<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Susan Blackmore, Psychologist, Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Ken Feder, Anthropology, Central Connecticut State University<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Jill Tarter, Bernard M. Oliver Chair, <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">SETI</span> Institute<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Richard Saunders, <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">JREF</span> Million Dollar Challenge Committee, Producer - The Skeptic Zone Podcast<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Jay Pasachoff, Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy, Williams College<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Lawrence M. Krauss, Director, The <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">ASU</span> Origins Project, Arizona State University<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Barbara Forrest, Philosophy, Southeastern Louisiana University<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Kimball Atwood, Physician, Newton, <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">MA</span><br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
James Alcock, Psychologist, Glendon College, York University, Toronto, Canada<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Massimo Polidoro, Science writer, author, Executive Director <span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">CICAP</span>, Italy<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
<span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">E.C.</span> Krupp, Director, Griffith Observatory<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Dick Smith, Film Producer, Publisher, Australia<br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span class="caps" style="font-size: 0.9em; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">CSI</span> Consultants</strong><br />
<br style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />
Luis Alfonso Gámez, journalist, the Magonia blog, Spain<br />
Felix Ares de Blas, Professor of Computer Science, Univ. of Basque, Spain</div>
</blockquote>
ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-84996117155840870242014-05-15T16:53:00.002-04:002014-05-15T16:54:26.069-04:00back deck [tanka]<span style="background-color: white; color: #292f33; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>reading at the back
deck with the kid -
Keith's red,
spring breeze,
Magritte clouds,
peace.</i></span><br />
<br />
[oz/14]ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-79516516911921092762014-01-08T16:11:00.002-05:002014-01-09T09:37:03.226-05:00recently noted quotes<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;">"be nice. it's the smart play." -- capt. gregson ["elementary"]</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;">"sometimes the only real difference between crazy people and artists is
that artists write down what they imagine seeing." -- scott adams</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;">"To be sure, not all moments are equally fleeting. Some moments last longer than others. And certain events do reoccur more than once and even recur repeatedly. Sometimes you do get more than one chance. Sometimes you don’t. It helps to know how long a window of opportunity you have and if you’ll get another chance." -- john paul caponigro</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #333333;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span class="rB " style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"><i>"</i>trying to prove formally what is seen intuitively and to see intuitively what is proved formally is an invigorating mental exercise.<i>"</i></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-style: italic; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;">-- g. polya</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;">"strike while the iron is vulnerable" -- the crazy ones </span></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyp1H2qxm1xkkgVNIPreW8o5zY17K9v_M4E22EKPOJ6Nn_oxaagoptFnIHEs8z0p2hqSRA2CCUeE8PAJUV0yGnJsb1FYcnQehSSrnSbs0FALrlavu_tkfbUZNY7JNLOb8ALqqHrQ/s1600/balance.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyp1H2qxm1xkkgVNIPreW8o5zY17K9v_M4E22EKPOJ6Nn_oxaagoptFnIHEs8z0p2hqSRA2CCUeE8PAJUV0yGnJsb1FYcnQehSSrnSbs0FALrlavu_tkfbUZNY7JNLOb8ALqqHrQ/s1600/balance.png" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;">there are some rivers you don't</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="rB " style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-style: italic; line-height: 18px;">ever want to step into</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="rB " style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-style: italic; line-height: 18px;">more than once,</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;">even if it was possible.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;">"the inhabitants refer to themselves optimistically as </span><span class="rB " style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-style: italic; line-height: 18px;">Homo sapiens</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;">, meaning 'wise man' in an appropriately dead language. Their activities seldom fit that description, but there are occasional glorious exceptions. They should really be called </span><span class="rB " style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-style: italic; line-height: 18px;">Pan narrans</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;">, the storytelling ape, because nothing appeals to them more than a rollicking good yarn." -- terry pratchett, ian stewart & jack cohen ["the science of discworld iv: judgement day"]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-style: italic; line-height: 18px;">"Some movies run off the rails. This one is like the train crash in The Fugitive. I watched it in mounting gloom, realizing I was witnessing something historic, a film that for decades to come will be the punch line of jokes about bad movies." -- roger ebert</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-style: italic; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">"we share our lives with the people we have failed to be." -- adam phillips</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">"I believe in patterns and sequences, and this sequence does not end well unless something disrupts the pattern." -- bones</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">"there is no such thing as philosophy-free science." -- dan dennett</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">"religion is to misogyny as disease is to misery - not the sole cause, but a significant contributor" -- pz myers</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">"I can't unclench when there is turbulence. you know I'm an atheist." -- jerry [woody allen, "to Rome with love"]</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">"It's easy to mistake familiarity and the feeling of having something at your fingertips with true comprehension." -- tania lombrozo</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #333333; line-height: 18px; white-space: pre-wrap;">general: "what do you think this star means?"
hawkeye: "you are tinkerbell?"
[mash pilot episode] </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"indeed, the sign that something does matter to us is that we lose our steadiness." -- adam phillips</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">one unspoken thing about a surveillance state is that it's compelled by its nature to bite off the hand that feeds it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">trust is no longer an issue. it is a lost attribute.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"some of the most powerful patterns in life are subtle." -- scott adams</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"I'm confused as to why a poorly designed web site means affordable health care is a bad idea." -- chuck Lorre [431] </span>ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32363448.post-28358073045657371392013-10-31T11:00:00.003-04:002014-01-08T16:06:59.168-05:00much reflection<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8_IK2VeQwC92Aeady_T_aZdvA_7XvnTMxd3RY0gAYFNuwZYtAuZTcklahhfLZrBoPmL9zZ85ZApV7rAHdBRVJFRFxg9ECKUJTDHw6PCJZLlbE5DLvKWteBcb4BpA7R3yOA23qWg/s1600/peter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8_IK2VeQwC92Aeady_T_aZdvA_7XvnTMxd3RY0gAYFNuwZYtAuZTcklahhfLZrBoPmL9zZ85ZApV7rAHdBRVJFRFxg9ECKUJTDHw6PCJZLlbE5DLvKWteBcb4BpA7R3yOA23qWg/s1600/peter.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">autumn days pull</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">much reflection -</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">a flight of swallows.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #404040; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">[Oct 21, 2013 - shortly after this haiku was written, i received a call to inform me that my good friend, teacher and mentor, peter roosen-runge had died. so much more to reflect on now]</span>ozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06062585218369513464noreply@blogger.com0