Trust the Computer
Trust the computer, the computer is your fiend.
— Unknown
Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.
— Clay Shirky
The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.
You know I’ve always been a dreamer
(spent my life running ’round)
And it’s so hard to change
(Can’t seem to settle down)
But the dreams I’ve seen lately
Keep on turning out and burning out
And turning out the same
So put me on a highway
And show me a sign
And take it to the limit one more time
From Take It To The Limit
I had the good fortune of seeing The Eagles in concert on Friday night on their History of the Eagles tour. Nostalgia ruled the night. Everyone from the original band was was there, and everyone was a few years older than their prime days in the late ’70s. But the music was a s good as it ever was (which is to say, ‘good but not great’). Joe Walsh, however, brought the house down with great stage energy and fantastics renditions of Rocky Mountain High, and Life’s Been Good.
Both destiny’s kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person’s basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can’t even hear because you’re in such a rush to or from something important you’ve tried to engineer.
— David Foster Wallace
Listen to that still, quite voice in the back of the mind. It might be your destiny trying to get your attention.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Yesterday I quoted Martin Luther King, Jr. who said, “A man can’t ride your back unless it is bent.” In today’s quote, Eleanor Roosevelt conveys the same concept in a different voice.
The worst of states is when you experience neither relaxation nor productivity. Be focused on work or focused on something else, never in-betweeen. Time without attention is worthless, so value attention over time.
— Timothy Ferriss, 4-Hour Work Week.
I am on the final chapters of 4-Hour Work Week. As hard as it is for me to imagine enjoying his company, Ferriss is nailing it.