RESIST ENTROPY.
Tag: learned
What I wish I’d known before I had to learn it.
Ol’ Thinkypants: Reality Is What You Get When You’re Not Looking For Reality
“IN THE GOD V. CHANCE debate, some of us are having a long-view chuckle over consciousness’ inability to recognize and appreciate its own inevitability within the Universe it’s trying to understand. Sure, it’s not as dramatic or satisfying as shouting at each other, but it pays the bills.”
Three Word Comfort
“WE’LL GET THERE.”
Pithyism #809
WHEN FACED WITH A NEW Thing, it is often better to pay close attention to the Thing in question than to whether or not it fits your notion of Thingness. (N.B. This is not as obvious as it sounds.)
Scrapheap Waters
THAT’S AN ANAGRAM FOR “EARTH Warps Space,” the latest news out of NASA. Put simply: In our 4th-dimensional universe, gravity runs downhill. Put less simply, http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/04may_epic/. Quoted lede: “Einstein was right again. There is a space-time vortex around Earth, and its shape precisely matches the predictions of Einstein’s theory of gravity.”
Mission
THE WORLD IS FULL OF angry people. Today’s task: Do not become one of them.
(And yes, it’s easier said than done. So?)
Pithyism #-11
RUTHLESSNESS ONLY LOWERS THE CONVERSATION for everyone.
Aristotle’s Pernicious Hand
PEOPLE OF EARTH, HEAR ME: There are more than two ways out of this moment.
(Say it with me: “There are more than two ways out of this moment.”)
Some would have you believe that you can only go this way or that way. In fact, you may also go more ways than you can think. “You’re not going this way” doesn’t imply or mandate “you’re going that way.” As if that way were the only other way to go! Aside from this way, of course. Continue reading “Aristotle’s Pernicious Hand”
Poker Face
WE WERE FIVE MEN PLAYING draw poker.
“Ante up, gentlemen,” said R. “Nickel apiece.”
The cards went round once, twice, thrice.
B coughed. T took a sip of his Cuba Libre.
R sent the cards round again. And again. Continue reading “Poker Face”
All-Natural Selection
ONE REASON WHY CALIFORNIA HAS so many smart people is that, periodically, the lesser-reasoned go down to the seashore to watch the tsunami come in.
Compassionings
IT IS PRECISELY AT THAT moment when compassion seems most remote that it is most greatly needed. This principle is easier spoken than implemented — what isn’t? — but holds true not only for the individual, who is buffeted by a daily stream of bad news, but his or her logical and multiplex counterparts, arrayed in a social complex which seems to crumble by the day despite sincere effort. Some of us feel like we’re propping up a collapsing tent — but prop we must, because it’s what we do. If we are fools, as we even sometimes seem to ourselves, at least we’re getting some exercise. Maybe we’ll even glimpse Someone Else through the enshrouding folds.
Everyone you see is broken. Everyone needs at least a smile; some also need a job, or food, or shelter, or a reason to live. We are seeing heartbreak and pain on a massive and seemingly accelerating scale. We all need acknowledgment that we’re not alone — that our cry in the dark is at least heard, even if we are powerless to do more than cry, or listen.
We need each other, because we are all we have. So be kind to someone today. It may be their last, or yours.
Free Metaphor: “Don’t Poke The Squid”
STUCK FOR AN ANALOGY WHEN your well-intendeds provoke a horrible mess that you should have known better than to bother with? Then “Don’t Poke The Squid.”
Squid are lovely, largely inoffensive creatures who flash and lurk throughout the ocean’s vasty deep. They have eight tentacles and two arms; all appendages have suckers, some jaggedly toothed. They flail something awful when disturbed, and can entwine sperm whales instantly and dance them to death. What chance has an unwary swimmer? Thus, for your own safety and health, “Don’t Poke The Squid.”
(Usage of this metaphor is subject to payment via pizza or other coin-shaped vittles. Thankee sir or madam, and g’blessye.)