“There are things we think we want to do, and there are things that we are meant to do.”
Bill Berloni
February 25, 2010
Quoth
January 5, 2010
Enthusiasm
“Enthusiasm is energetic, positive, generous, and social. It’s outward-turning and engaged. It’s kind of goofy.
Enthusiasm is a form of social courage; it’s safer to criticize and scoff than to praise and embrace.
There’s a dark tendency in human nature to mock or attack other people’s enthusiasms. It’s easy to make fun of ping-pong or Barry Manilow or Star Trek or wine-tasting — but why do it?”
Gretchen Rubin
She’s right.
People are more comfortable in the role of sarcastic, biting critic than in the role of open-minded enthusiast. I find the company of the critic tiresome. There is a difference between honest criticism in order to improve something (which is needed and even desired if it comes from a trusted source), and the kind of knee-jerk, cynical negativity that seeks to mock what it doesn’t enjoy. There’s too much of this in the world. Unfortunately, society takes a low view of the enthusiastic person much of the time. I say screw society. There’s nothing wrong or naive or simple about an honest, childlike “WOW!”. I try and consciously cultivate this view of the world, and privately get a kick out of saying it in the presence of people who think it means I’m not sophisticated.
The enthusiastic person draws other enthusiastic people to him or herself. And it’s a much happier place to live.
Related: Cory Doctorow’s excellent post “Too Much Time on His Hands”
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
December 31, 2009
Quoth
“When you make a thing, a thing that is new, it is so complicated making it that it is bound to be ugly. But those that make it after you, they don’t have to worry about making it. And they can make it pretty, and so everybody can like it when others make it after you.”
Pablo Picasso
December 11, 2009
Quoth
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
- Mark Twain
December 10, 2009
Quoth
Someone graduating from college thinks, and is told, that he needs to get a job, as if the important thing were becoming a member of an institution. A more direct way to put it would be: you need to start doing something people want. You don’t need to join a company to do that. All a company is is a group of people working together to do something people want. It’s doing something people want that matters, not joining the group.
December 9, 2009
Quoth
When Bauhaus designers adopted Sullivan’s “form follows function,” what they meant was, form should follow function. And if function is hard enough, form is forced to follow it, because there is no effort to spare for error. Wild animals are beautiful because they have hard lives.
Designing a particularly difficult prop right now (no right angles, very organic) and it’s giving me fits. The design of it isn’t particularly difficult, but the execution is driving me nuts. How to make something with no right angles out of basic, cheap materials that are only right angles? I’m having fun, but the moment of execution (the prop or my own) is drawing nearer. I’ll be able to post more in March when all secrets are out.
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Craftsmanship
“…when Leonardo painted the portrait of Ginevra de Benci in the National Gallery, he put a juniper bush behind her head. In it he carefully painted each individual leaf. Many painters might have thought, this is just something to put in the background to frame her head. No one will look that closely at it.
Relentlessness wins because, in the aggregate, unseen details become visible. When people walk by the portrait of Ginevra de Benci, their attention is often immediately arrested by it, even before they look at the label and notice that it says Leonardo da Vinci. All those unseen details combine to produce something that’s just stunning, like a thousand barely audible voices all singing in tune.”
Paul Graham, paulgraham.com
December 8, 2009
Quoth
“…though there is a lot of language to describe music, there aren’t words for some of it. It’s a case of you know it when you hear it. Or more to the point, you know it when you don’t hear it…That final spark that takes a piece of music from being competent to being inspired, gives it that last boost so that, even from the first bars, you know this is it.”
John Varley, Rolling Thunder, p 96
December 7, 2009
Ex Libris
I may have posted this a while back, but it’s worth a re-post. The ultimate Geek Library.
December 6, 2009
Quoth
“The public has greatly over-estimated the possibilities of the aeroplane, imagining that in another generation they will be able to fly over to London in a day.This is manifestly impossible.”
William Pickering, Harvard University astronomy professor, 1908.
November 24, 2009
Quoth
“There is no limit to what can be accomplished if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
Heh. B.T.S.
November 23, 2009
Quoth
“I’ve been caught, so to speak–like someone who was given something wonderful when he was a child, and he’s always looking for it again. I’m always looking, like a child, for the wonders I know I’m going to find–maybe not every time, but every once in a while.”
Richard Feynman, on his early education.
October 3, 2009
Quoth
“The Yankees, the first mechanics in the world, are engineers — just as the Italians are musicians and the Germans metaphysicians — by right of birth.”
Jules Verne
Quoth
“Look at a day when you are supremely satisfied at the end. It’s not a day when you lounge around doing nothing; it’s when you’ve had everything to do, and you’ve done it.” -Margaret Thatcher
September 25, 2009
Quoth
“A human lifespan is less than a thousand months long. You need to make some time to think how to live it.”
AC Grayling, philosopher
September 3, 2009
Quoth
Our lives are nothing without the relationships that compose us and that composition is a forever changing work of art. No matter what masks we might wear to cover certain things up, try to conceal, or turn us into a conga dancing fool that kisses cops…in the end, the only thing that matters are the relationships. And that isn’t worth throwing away for anything.
R.B.
September 1, 2009
Quoth
“Many people blithely assume that the critical labor-market disctinction is, and will remain, between highly educated (or highly skilled) people and less-educated (or less-skilled) people- doctors versus call center operator, for example. The supposed remedy for the rich countries, accordingly, is more education and a general “upskilling” of the work force. But this view may be mistaken… The critical divide in the future may instead be between those types of work that are easily deliverable through a wire (or via wireless connections) with little or no diminution in quality and those that are not. And this unconventional divide does not correspond well to traditional distinctions between jobs that require high levels of education and jobs that do not.”
Matthew Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft, p. 33
I find this absolutely true, as the most important thing in the current economy is not overall education level or academic degrees, but instead the ability to communicate effectively and develop and keep relationships. These relationships are impossible to maintain over a long distance when you’re dealing with an adequate but impersonal service provider over a cheap Skype connection. Personal services in person almost always trump impersonal but cheaper business relationships done with an eye only toward the bottom line. Which would you rather deal with: a customer service rep who knows your name and the name of your kids, who has a genuine interest in your life and business, or one who is a ‘voice on the phone’ reading a script? Granted, some business models (tech support, for example) don’t require this level of personal involvement, but given a choice, I think most people would rather call a friend who handles your account than some faceless script-reading call center person on the other end of a Skype connection.
August 24, 2009
Quoth
When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel a
little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It
seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to
connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason
they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have
thought more about their experiences than other people have.
Steve Jobs, Wired (March, 1996)
August 21, 2009
Quoth
Pamper a man with pathos and he feels pathetic. Challenge him with obstacles and opportunity, and he rises up to find dignity.
August 11, 2009
Quoth
Maturity is more about responsibility than resignation. While I afford myself a childish and passionate persona, I take care of business when called to.
Ben Lopez