Friday, March 13, 2009

John Stewart

I don't watch the Daily Show on a regular basis, but things like this make me think that John Stewart and his team deserve a Pulitzer Prize for journalism.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

Blaise Pascal

We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state.

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Horace Walpole

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

Elizabeth Taylor

The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues.

Marquis de la Grange

When we ask for advice, we are usually looking for an accomplice.

John Gaule

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.

Who was really being tested by the Binding of Isaac

In The Fall of Hyperion (a space opera science fiction novel that I am currently listening to) the author, Dan Simmons, makes an interesting claim.  In the story of the Binding of Isaac, it was not Abraham, but God who was being tested. In the classic interpretation of the bible verse it is the faith of Abraham which God wished to plumb by commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Simmons, in the novel, claims something different. He says it is God who was being tested, by Abraham, to see if he was worthy to be the god of Abraham. 

The Cult of Done Manifesto

I ran across this today and thought it was relevant to my current state of mind. Maybe it will be relevant to you...

The Cult of Done Manifesto
  1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
  2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
  3. There is no editing stage.
  4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it.
  5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
  6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
  7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
  8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
  9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
  10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
  11. Destruction is a variant of done.
  12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
  13. Done is the engine of more.

Link

I am jealous of Bre's job if not his name.