“The error is very simple and basic: it is to suppose that ‘what anything is’ is identical with ‘what it is made of’.”
—brain wave
January 2008
“What is amazing about this idea is that the people are the value—and they also pay for the value they provide instead of being paid for it. For instance, when you buy something that is advertized, part of the price goes to the ads—but in the new online world, you yourself were the bait for the ad you saw. The whole cycle is remarkably efficient and concentrates giant fortunes faster than any other business scheme in history.”
—jaron lanier, smarty
“
What an amazing opportunity Robert [Scoble] has been given: the opportunity to engage some of the top minds and most influential people on the planet in brief conversations to share with us, the people who can’t be there.
After watching those two Qik-ies, how would you grade him?
” —a leading question if ever there was one
“Clinton also noted that, if elected, the timing would be perfect for his family, as his wife has recently expressed a desire to move back to the D.C. area.”
—ditto
“My fellow Americans, I am sick and tired of not being president … For seven agonizing years, I have sat idly by as others experienced the joys of campaigning, debating, and interacting with the people of this great nation, and I simply cannot take it anymore. I have to be president again. I have to.”
—bill clinton: “screw it, i’m running”
“… and then there is a quiet settling down, once the cars have backed out of the driveways and the neighborhoods have been drained of their breadwinners. This is a delicate moment for any mother who spends her days home with children: on the one hand, the number of household residents who feel they own a piece of her has just diminished; on the other hand, she’s been left behind with the babies and the pets.”
—caitlin flanagan, can she write!
“… or else we’d be nowhere (a location once known as “here”) doing nothing (an activity formerly labeled “living”).”
—autumn of the multitaskers
“I think Americans from every community know what [Bill’s] life’s work has been,” Clinton told reporters.”
—maybe not the very best choice of words, hil
“Augustine, in the fifth century, pointed out that the world was made with time, not in time”
—smarty pants
“Amid the flurry of Buddhist-inflected inquiry, however, there’s a risk that researchers’ beliefs and desires will influence the results of their experiments.”
—hell-o?
“Buddhists believe that mental and physical realms have an equal claim on reality. That is, mental constructs that science considers imaginary are, to Buddhists, objectively real and perceptible. In contrast, neuroscientists are materialists. The mind can’t be separated from the physical circumstances that give rise to it. In this regard, Davidson’s views hew to the scientific mainstream. “I believe mind is an emergent property of brain,” he says. “Mind depends upon brain.” The Dalai Lama has agreed to set this point aside for the time being.”
—like His Holiness might have bitched and whined instead?
“But I think there is good reason to at least take that possibility seriously, that the inner experience of distress shifts according to the story that we live in.”
—anne harrington, medical historian
“At a time when the world is divided by an iron curtain—a fact unheard-of in human history—we might expect all sorts of funny things, since when such a thing happens in an individual it means complete dissociation, which is instantly compensated by symbols of wholeness and unity. The phenomenon of the saucers might even be both, rumor as well as fact. In this case it would be what I call a synchronicity.” —Carl Jung, 1951”
—via cary tennis
“But more important, is America really this sadistic, or has Fox crafted a solid business plan from pandering to our worst impulses? While each person’s “individual spontaneity is entitled to free exercise,” as John Stuart Mill argues, don’t human beings also “owe to each other help to distinguish the better from the worse, and encouragement to choose the former and avoid the latter”?”
—heather, part two
“It’s amazing to me that Microsoft doesn’t make live.com search any easier.”
—doc searls | not really. ms = extend foot, shoot.
“As for the “lack of features” complaint, all I can say is you should have seen the machine I wanted to build. There were zero USB ports. Zero anything on the outside, actually. Also zero storage. The screen was virtual, and the keyboard was a hologram that floated in the air. All you had was a microprocessor and some RAM and a copy of OS X stuffed into a gorgeous little brushed aluminum case the size of a matchbox with a tiny projector to shoot out the virtual screen. Weight: One ounce. Our engineers said it couldn’t be done. Needless to say those guys are now gone, and a new team is working on it. We’ll get it done. Trust me.”
—oh i do. implicitly.
“Clearly, Apple has set its phasers to “niche”.”
—also the antlered one. yeah? so steve’s gonna fill my niche is he?
“
Course I been saying that for years.
… the Macalope hates to tell his good friends Leo Laporte and Merlin Mann this when they were just pining anew on Thursday afternoon, but the wait for a 12-inch MacBook is going to be awfully long. Like cosmically long. Like forever.
The good news is you’re going to love the tablet.
” —like starting when? love dies if not fulfilled pretty damn soonCourse I been saying that for years.
“Well, pardon the Macalope for saying so, but dur-hey.”
—how does he do it. (i bring you only the best in writing.)
“Stop calling everything ‘content.’ It’s a bullshit word that the dot-commers started using back in the ’90s as a wrapper for everything that could be digitized and put online. It’s handy, but it masks and insults the true nature of writing, journalism, photography, and the rest of what we still, blessedly (if adjectivally) call ‘editorial.’ Your job is journalism, not container cargo.”
—the doctor is in
