May 2010
88 posts
“For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can’t readily accept the God formula, the big answers don’t remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
—Charles Bukowski (via fuckyeahexistentialism, wildcat2030)
“The iPad doesn’t feel like a computer. It feels like a magic book — like the ancestor of the Young Lady’s Primer in Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age. It’s a book with hypertext everywhere, moving pictures and music and an infinity of content visible through its single morphing page. The sum is much weirder than the aggregate of its parts. Criticizing the iPad for not doing Netbook-or laptop-like things is like criticising an early Benz automobile for not having reins and a bale of hay for the horses: it’s a category error. While we’ve had experimental multitouch devices for some years, the iPad is the first true representative of the breed to hit the mass market, just as the original Macintosh 128K was the first computer with a modern graphical user interface to ditto. (If you want to be pedantic you can cite the Xerox Star and the Apple Lisa … then I shall mock you.) The Mac 128K had numerous flaws, but it’s still the direct ancestor of the Macbook Air sitting behind me. It’ll be interesting to see what the iPad gives rise to, 26 years from now …”
—Gadget Patrol: iPad - Charlie’s Diary
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“The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.”
—And now a word from Stanley Kubrick
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“There is no better way to learn something than to write about it.”
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Martin Gardner
“The formula for a successful popular non-fiction book these days is a sandwich: meat between bread slices. The bread is a general thesis that can be explained in a paragraph, with both a normative part to let readers take sides, and a positive part to let readers display sophistication. The meat is 400 pages of entertaining and vaguely-related but mostly unnecessary detail. Most readers would be overwhelmed if all this material were actually required to understand the thesis, but would also be insulted by a 40 page book.”
—Overcoming Bias : Review - Rational Optimist