MGT

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

—

There is something about holding an organized pile of wood pulp and dried ink that gives the reader a shared stake in the author’s experience, some small part-ownership of a piece of information. “This is mine, and although the words in it are not, the experience is purely personal.”

Where will this take us with e-books? I am a huge fan of their accessibility and their rich creative potential, but will the magic persist?

(via Brain Pickings)

1117 ♥

Being a geek is all about your own personal level of enthusiasm, not how your level of enthusiasm measures up to others. If you like something so much that a casual mention of it makes your whole being light up like a halogen lamp, if hearing a stranger fondly mention your favorite book or game is instant grounds for friendship, if you have ever found yourself bouncing out of your chair because something you learned blew your mind so hard that you physically could not contain yourself — you are a geek.

I’m incredibly biased, of course, but based on that last paragraph, I think we geeks sound like pretty awesome people to be around. So why, then, the lingering social stigma?

—

What It Means To Be A Geek - The Mary Sue

Great little analysis on the changing social stigma of “geekhood” … the detail-oriented passionate pursuit of very specific knowledge. I think networks like Tumblr and Facebook let people find that social connection that used to be missing from their once-lonely passions.

In this connected age geeks aren’t outcasts, because their allies don’t have to be right next to them. They can be thousands of miles away, never meet, and know each other completely.

(via jtotheizzoe)

670 ♥

Many adults are put off when youngsters pose scientific questions. Children ask why the sun is yellow, or what a dream is, or how deep you can dig a hole, or when is the world’s birthday, or why we have toes. Too many teachers and parents answer with irritation or ridicule, or quickly move on to something else. Why adults should pretend to omniscience before a five-year-old, I can’t for the life of me understand. What’s wrong with admitting that you don’t know? Children soon recognize that somehow this kind of question annoys many adults. A few more experiences like this, and another child has been lost to science.

There are many better responses. If we have an idea of the answer, we could try to explain. If we don’t, we could go to the encyclopedia or the library. Or we might say to the child: “I don’t know the answer. Maybe no one knows. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll be the first to find out.”

— Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as the Candle in The Dark (via skaterboytae)

14616 ♥

Children are born true scientists. They spontaneously experiment and experience and reexperience again. They select, combine, and test, seeking to find order in their experiences - “which is the mostest? which is the leastest?” They smell, taste, bite, and touch-test for hardness, softness, springiness, roughness, smoothness, coldness, warmness: they heft, shake, punch, squeeze, push, crush, rub, and try to pull things apart.

—

R. Buckminster Fuller, American engineer, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, futurist and second president of Mensa International (1895-1983)

550 ♥

Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules and brush the edge of acceptability in the search for solutions. Mathematicians are more like classical composers, typically working within a much tighter framework, reluctant to go to the next step until all previous ones have been established with due rigor. Each approach has its advantages as well as drawbacks; each provides a unique outlet for creative discovery. Like modern and classical music, it’s not that one approach is right and the other wrong – the methods one chooses to use are largely a matter of taste and training.

— Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe (2000)

138 ♥

[Science] is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised.

— Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: Chapter XIII - Who Speaks for Earth?

4 ♥

The design instinct, above all, is about viewing the world around you as a place filled with opportunities to add more thoughtfulness and care.

— Sahil Lavingia, Pinterest’s founding designer shares his dead-simple design philosophy (via jockohomo)

7 ♥

Wealth without work.

Pleasure without conscience.

Knowledge without character.

Commerce without morality.

Science without humanity.

Worship without sacrifice.

Politics without principles.

—

In October of 1947, Mohandas Gandhi gave a piece of paper to his visiting grandson, Arun Gandhi, upon which was written the following list — a list he said contained “the seven blunders that human society commits, and that cause all the violence.” The next day, Arun returned home to South Africa, never to see his grandfather again. Gandhi was assassinated three months later. Note: The same list was originally published by Gandhi in his journal, Young India, in 1925. It was titled, “Seven Social Sins.”

(via)

0 ♥

2093 ♥

I do not think a young fellow should be too serious, he should be full of the Dickens some times to create a balance

A 1928 letter from LeRoy Pollock to his 16-year old son Jackson Pollock (via)

Dear Son Jack,

Well it has been some time since I received your fine letter. It makes me a bit proud and swelled up to get letters from five young fellows by the names of Charles, Mart, Frank, Sande, and Jack. The letters are so full of life, interest, ambition, and good fellowship. It fills my old heart with gladness and makes me feel “Bully.” Well Jack I was glad to learn how you felt about your summer’s work & your coming school year. The secret of success is concentrating interest in life, interest in sports and good times, interest in your studies, interest in your fellow students, interest in the small things of nature, insects, birds, flowers, leaves, etc. In other words to be fully awake to everything about you & the more you learn the more you can appreciate & get a full measure of joy & happiness out of life. I do not think a young fellow should be too serious, he should be full of the Dickens some times to create a balance.

I think your philosophy on religion is okay. I think every person should think, act & believe according to the dictates of his own conscience without too much pressure from the outside. I too think there is a higher power, a supreme force, a governor, a something that controls the universe. What it is & in what form I do not know. It may be that our intellect or spirit exists in space in some other form after it parts from this body. Nothing is impossible and we know that nothing is destroyed, it only changes chemically. We burn up a house and its contents, we change the form but the same elements exist; gas, vapor, ashes. They are all there just the same.

I had a couple of letters from mother the other day, one written the twelfth and one the fifteenth. Am always glad to get letters from your mother, she is a Dear isn’t she? Your mother and I have been a complete failure financially but if the boys turn out to be good and useful citizens nothing else matters and we know this is happening so why not be jubilant?

The weather up here couldn’t be beat, but I suppose it won’t last always, in fact we are looking forward to some snowstorms and an excuse to come back to the orange belt. I do not know anything about what I will do or if I will have a job when I leave here, but I am not worrying about it because it is no use to worry about what you can’t help, or what you can help, moral “don’t worry.”

Write and tell me all about your schoolwork and yourself in general. I will appreciate your confidence.

You no doubt had some hard days on your job at Crestline this summer. I can imagine the steep climbing, the hot weather, etc. But those hard things are what builds character and physic. Well Jack I presume by the time you have read all this you will be mentally fatigued and will need to relax. So goodnight, pleasant dreams and God bless you.

Your affectionate Dad

1 ♥

Cartography is fast becoming the most practical comparative basis for integrating and reducing the vast reaches of modern information. If the geographer seeks to define a domain in terms of space in order to discover regions, and if the historian seeks to define a domain in terms of space and time in order to discover civilizations, the cartographer can be said to use space in order to inform us about all conceivable domains.

— Jacques Bertin, The Semiology of Graphics (via lyzidiamond)

19 ♥

31520 ♥

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres

— Pythagoras (via philosophyistheloveofwisdom)

9 ♥

77 ♥

southeastern-belle:

“Gamelan is able to express every shade of meaning, even unmentionable shades.”

-Claude Debussy, 1895

25 ♥

The design instinct, above all, is about viewing the world around you as a place filled with opportunities to add more thoughtfulness and care.

Wealth without work. Pleasure without conscience. Knowledge without character. Commerce without morality. Science without humanity. Worship without sacrifice. Politics without principles.

I do not think a young fellow should be too serious, he should be full of the Dickens some times to create a balance

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres

Wealth without work.

Pleasure without conscience.

Knowledge without character.

Commerce without morality.

Science without humanity.

Worship without sacrifice.

Politics without principles.