When I consider the solar system as our working neighborhood, I am reminded not of “the final frontier,” but of Antarctica. Our Antarctic stations are a bit like moon bases that we can reach with airplanes. We staff them with rotating crews, and carry out interesting and useful research, but fully inhabiting the ice is [...]
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“Science is the outcome of being prepared to live without certainty and therefore a mark of maturity. It embraces doubt and loose ends.” That’s one of many entertaining quotes from AC Grayling’s appearance in the Guardian’s “This much I know” series.
(0 Comments)Better to have a good story than a good time. Bad life experiences often end up great material for stories. Good times are often forgotten.
—Jonathan Carroll
Posted in Smart Things | 2 Comments »
A parade is a group, and I’m not a group animal. I think a mob, no matter what it happens to be doing, is the lowest form of living thing, always steaming with potential murder. Several things I could write on my placard and then carry it all by myself down empty streets.
UP WITH [...]
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I will have more to say about this when I’m not about to start a 24-hour flight around more than half the world, but I just want to nail down this quote from Clay Shirky talking about Iran/Twitter/etc:
Absolutely. I’ve been saying this for a while — as a medium gets faster, it gets more emotional. [...]
Posted in Head-Explodes | 1 Comment »
Organizations breed both bureaucracy and incompetence. I’m tempted to ask Trish to tell me why this is–I’m sure it’s something well known in her field, but it sure seems to be empirical fact: you create an organization and certain institutional pressures necessarily lead to behaviours that are rational at the individual level, but which result [...]
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A good romance is defined by a passionate desire. A want of something so near, but unattainable. It’s longing of the future or of the past and the possibilities that could never be. It’s the futility and foolishness of making oneself vulnerable, no matter what disasters may occur.
A good romance rarely ends happily, and if [...]
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“One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, ‘Wait – you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the f**k made that [...]
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“Man, that's like seeing a stake put through the heart of the 20th century. Watching banks fail is a picnic compared to this.”
—Bruce Sterling in “You know newspapers are screwed when even the CARTOONISTS catch it“.
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Does the word postcapitalism look odd to you? It should, because you hardly ever see it. We have a blank spot in our vision of the future. Perhaps we think that history has somehow gone away. In fact, history is with us now more than ever, because we are at a crux in the human [...]
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The one-armed man walks into a flower shop
And says: What flower expresses
Days go by
And they just keep going by endlessly
Pulling you Into the future
Days go by
Endlessly
Endlessly pulling you
Into the future?
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Spotted on Jonathan Carroll’s blog today:
“The secret of life,” said sculptor Henry Moore to poet Donald Hall, “is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is—it must be something you cannot possibly [...]
Posted in Smart Things | 1 Comment »
One of many.
Posted in Smart Things | 1 Comment »
I’ve never mistaken my hobbies for real life. I’ve always craved real life, even when I didn’t have one. I’ve sought out life, even when I didn’t know how. I’ve always tried to live real life, even when I didn’t have a clue.
I travel a lot. I talk to strangers. I eat their candy.
—Walter [...]
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A couple of quotations from my web reading recently:
“I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture.” –U.S. Attorney General nominee Eric Holder (via)
“Watch half a film. Ring someone up, ask them about their dreams. Make your life as patchy a discourse as possible.” –M. John Harrison, explaining something about writing
“If only it were all [...]
Posted in One-and-done | 3 Comments »
Mr. McLaren
Lachlan O’Dea
Someone with a VoiceMr. McLaren
TrishMr. McLarenMr. McLarenMr. McLarenMr. McLaren
Richard B.
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