August 2010
“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
—Kurt Vonnegut (via leda-swanson) (via devilduck, anotherword)
“
“We condition the masses to hate the country,” concluded the Director. “But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence those electric shocks.”
“I see,” said the student, and was silent, lost in admiration.
” —Brave New World, Chapter Two by Aldous Huxley.
“Forever is composed of nows.”
—Emily Dickinson (via quote-book)
“Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.”
—
Roman Jakobson
Does Your Language Shape How You Think? - NYTimes.com
(via wildcat2030)- Gibarian: You think you're dreaming me.
- Chris Kelvin: You're not Gibarian.
- Gibarian: No? Who am I then?
- Chris Kelvin: A puppet.
- Gibarian: And you're not? Or maybe you're my puppet. But like all puppets you think you're actually human. It's the puppets' dream, being human.
“When the time came a few years ago to find an Inuktitut term for the word “Internet,” Nunavut’s former Official Languages Commissioner, Eva Aariak, chose ikiaqqivik, or “traveling through layers” (Minogue, 2005, n.p.). The word comes from the concept describing what a shaman does when asked to find out about living or deceased relatives or where animals have disappeared to: travel across time and space to find answers.”
—Travelling Through Layers: Inuit Artists Appropriate New Technologies (via iamdanw) (via wildcat2030)
Anything Can Happen
Listen to the Mustn’ts, child,
Listen to the Don’ts
Listen to the Shouldn’ts
The Impossibles, the Won’ts
Listen to the Never Haves,
Then listen close to me —
Anything can happen, child,
Anything can be.
~ Shel Silverstein(from: Love is a Place)
There is something in me that refuses to grow up.
It’s not about gullibility (although sometimes, probably, it is). It’s more about believing that the reality given to us in sensation is the only and ultimate truth about the world, and should be taken seriously. It’s wrong on so many levels that it doesn’t even seem to be worth arguing against. And it’s also infinitely boring.
Some people look old when they are not yet 30.
I hope to die looking for wonders.
Green View: A taste of things to come
May be we have to start learning how to quickly adapt to the unpredictable. Hopefully the humanity is fit enough for that.
Amplify’d from www.economist.com
See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/8lqh
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There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day, [The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy] suggests, and try it.
The first part is easy. All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt.
That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard.
Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It’s no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won’t. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else when you’re halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss it.
It is notoriously difficult to prize your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people’s failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.
If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or personal inclination) or a bomb going off in your vicinty, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above it in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.
” —Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker Guide to The Galaxy.