Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
David Foster Wallace Quote
"Dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that's dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there," namely the existential knowledge "that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we've lost one more day that will never come back."
from the 'The Pale King" book review by M. Kakutani.
from the 'The Pale King" book review by M. Kakutani.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Freeman Dyson Quotation
"The public has a distorted view of science, because children are taught in school that science is a collection of firmly established truths. In fact, science is not a collection of truths. It is a continuing exploration of mysteries. Wherever we go exploring in the world around us, we find mysteries. Our planet is covered by continents and oceans whose origin we cannot explain. Our atmosphere is constantly stirred by poorly understood disturbances that we call weather and climate. The visible matter in the universe is outweighed by a much larger quantity of dark invisible matter that we do not understand at all. The origin of life is a total mystery, and so is the existence of human consciousness. We have no clear idea how the electrical discharges occurring in nerve cells in our brains are connected with our feelings and desires and actions."
(via Boingboing.net)
Friday, February 25, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
RSA Animate: Smile or Die
Interesting, provocative, and slightly contratrian talk by Barbara Ehrenreich
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
"So there you have it. Illegal immigrants: 393,000. Lying moms: one. Bankers: zero. The math makes sense only because the politics are so obvious. You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You build prisons and fill them with people for selling dime bags and stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It's not a crime. Prison is too harsh. Get them to say they're sorry, and move on. Oh, wait — let's not even make them say they're sorry. That's too mean; let's just give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine instead. But don't make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don't ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in pay and benefits last year."
from Matt Taibi's article in Rolling Stone.
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