January 2012
6 posts
“Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God
Till they stand stark and strange as do...”
– G.K. Chesterton
“Emerson has said, ‘When half-gods go, the gods arrive.’ This is a...”
– C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves — where he precedes it with, “When God rules in a human heart, though he may sometimes have to remove certain of its native authorities altogether, he often continues others in their offices and, by subjecting their authority to his, gives it for the first time...
“Christ’s isolation is not that of a prodigy but of a pioneer. He is the...”
– C. S. Lewis
The Dangerous Effect of Reading →
On Sunday I wrote that, “I want to look back on 2012 and say, ‘I produced X’, not ‘I envisioned X.’” Along comes this post describing exactly what I’m talking about. Let 2012 be the year where we set aside our wide-mouthed reading funnels and focus on producing. Let’s face it, we read enough stuff last year to inspire us for the next decade.
December 2011
14 posts
How to Learn About Everything →
First item on the list:
Read and skim journals and textbooks that (at the moment) you only half understand.
I’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember, due mostly to something I can’t help, a voracious reading appetite. But it works. Read things you don’t completely understand. Don’t demand full context. Every discrete part that you do understand is a...
2 tags
Jillette's Wipeout Test
There is no god and that’s the simple truth. If every trace of any single religion died out and nothing were passed on, it would never be created exactly that way again. There might be some other nonsense in its place, but not that exact nonsense. If all of science were wiped out, it would still be true and someone would find a way to figure it all out again.
— Penn Jillette, in...
1 tag
“It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself but to move in an...”
– Gustav Flaubert
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Changing Hands, An Untitled Concept
This is an idea for an art installation. Dozens of volunteers hold their arms up through holes in the floor of the room. You cannot see any part of the volunteers except their arms, which appear to be growing out of the floor. Each arm is painted a different, random colour.
If not otherwise occupied, the arms sway gently from side to side, gently feeling around them.
A hundred-dollar bill is...
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to...”
– Thomas Jefferson (via hipsterlibertarian)
How to Pay for What We Need →
Historian Richard Striner believes the solution to our economic woes is for Congress to begin printing money for use in public works projects.
If the Federal Reserve can create new money, couldn’t Congress do the very same thing? The answer is yes, and here’s the precedent: the Legal Tender Act of 1862, in which the Republican-controlled Congress authorized creation of “United States Notes,”...
What Do People Do With Old Journals?
When I die, I’ll leave behind a lot of journals and notebooks. These will, of course, be of interest to my immediate family, but they won’t exactly be great leisure reading; they probably won’t even make for good “inspirational” reading either (not without heavy editing, at least). The only obvious choice is to either keep them in a box in the attic, or eventually...
November 2011
5 posts
Antique Stradivarius violin replicated by... →
“A startup is like a mosquito. A bear can absorb a hit and a crab is armored...”
– Paul Graham, How to Make Wealth
October 2011
3 posts
Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of... →
Future-proofing is a big deal for me, whether I’m selecting a blogging service/CMS or a smartphone. It means investing your money and usage in platforms that, in whatever ways applicable,
have a history of taking care of previous customers
have a history of providing quality tools and interfaces to developers (the people who make things for customers)
preserve data long term, and allow...
1 tag
Newer houses are better-built
Allison Arief’s article in the NYT, Shifting the Suburban Paradigm is a good one, but this particular statement needs addressing:
These continue to be built the same way they have for over a century, and usually not as well.
Walls and windows are thin, materials cheap, design (and I use the term loosely) not
well-considered.
I would say that each part of this statement is false,...
September 2011
4 posts
How to be Permanently Beloved as an Artist of Any...
Produce writing, music, or artwork targeted at young children. Indulge in an atmosphere of optimism, playfulness and innocent wonder, and quietly inject adult sensibilities where appropriate.
Be sure to make friends with children who enjoy your work. Respond to their letters, pose for their photographs, do them nice favours.
Spend an intermediate period of time out of the limelight while your...
“A great problem for the mad in the mid-20th century was that the sane were...”
– Jenny Diski, Diary, a story of a psychiatrist’s investigation of three men who each believed they were Jesus.
“After watching television I have many ideas, but am unable to realize them.”
– Yunnan, Luo Zheng Chui, 30 years old, farmer.
August 2011
17 posts
“Before I make a purchase (even for a cup of coffee) I say to myself, ‘is...”
– Joshua Millburn
Robert called and left me a message.
“One of the really amazing things about New York City is the extent to which the...”
– Living near Highway 100, which started as a WPA project in 1934, I think our highway/freeway system can be described the same way. I guess I kind of built my house this way too.
1 tag
“Yes, really. In 1950s, when marginal tax rates in America were as high as 90%,...”
– It’s true, the mean unemployment rate in the 1950s was 4.5%. This idea that higher taxes mean fewer jobs is holding less and less water for me.
“The ‘Illusion of Asymmetric Insight’ is a cognitive bias that...”
– The key word here is Illusion. Recognizing that this tendency is simply a built-in bias is a step towards humility.
4 tags
“In transportation, we are shying away from major new projects like high-speed...”
– Yonah Freemark, “A Note on the Future of American Transportation”
Think about that: “nothing natural about that process.” Americans are mostly brought up to think the automobile is the natural end-all-be-all of transportation, and that trying to direct transportation policy in a...
1 tag
1 tag
“Once I dropped my student’s metronome and it broke. We all pretended to be...”
– Tim Collins
This quote from Dave Ramsey has been floating around:
“If the US Gov’t was a family, they would be making $58,000 a year, they spend $75,000 a year, & are $327,000 in credit card debt. They are currently proposing BIG spending cuts to reduce their spending to $72,000 a year. These are the actual proportions of the federal budget & debt, reduced to a level that we can...
WatchPeter (tumblr, twitter) filmed this a couple days ago, at the large commune/boarding house of which we are fellow residents. It’s nice to be reminded how much poetry is in our surroundings and I think that’s one thing good film/art does for us.
July 2011
6 posts
Podcasts: Who still listens to them? →
The title is a bit misleading as to the article’s contents — it’s about how podcasting has lost the attention of the news media, despite having grown in popularity and become a mainstream technology. As an aspiring (albeit spare-time) podcaster, it’s an encouraging read.