I have been somewhat absent from online activities over the last few weeks for a couple reasons, one of which is oodles of research into brains, nervous systems, and how us silly humans operate. We’re a curious lot, we humans. If we were as intelligent, sensitive and articulate as we think we are, we wouldn’t put up with a lot of the things we’ve done to each other over the last few thousand years.
The following quotes are a few of the things that struck me as particularly interesting, insightful, and invigorating. Admittedly, removed from the context from which they were sourced they seem less potent, but the beautiful thing about the internet is that you can click the links provided (and a few more) and create your own context.
I’ll have an idea, stare into space for an hour assembling its bits and testing it for legs enough to get to the end, and then open Notepad and put things down very roughly, just to get it out of my head and down on the screen so I can see it. Sometimes it’s all dialogue with a quick stage note, sometimes it’s all descriptive work. The point is getting it all down, even if it’s crap or incomprehensible to anyone but you, so you can see it outside your own head.
Michael Stackpole (via i09.com)
Cars did not kill off horses. Digital publishing will not kill off books. It will change the way they are written and retailed.
If all news and all culture has to be sensational, then we’re fucked.
Alfred Korzybski ( Science and Sanity, p.71)
But it seems never to have occurred to the ‘behaviourists’ that that mathematics and ‘insanity’ are very characteristic forms of human behaviour.
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