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What Doesn’t Change
[Video: "Every Day the Same Dream," based on the Flash-based game of the same name] From whiskey river: I do not believe the meaning of life is a puzzle to be solved. Life is. Anything might happen. And I believe I may invest my life with meaning. The uncertainty is a blessing in disguise. If [...]
Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, and Whether to Ask (or Not)
[Image: Many Questions No Answers, by Norwegian artist Trine Meyer Vogsland (acrylic on watercolor paper; 24x32cm)] From whiskey river: LXXII If all rivers are sweet where does the sea get its salt? How do the seasons know they must change their shirt? Why so slowly in winter and later with such a rapid shudder? And how [...]
And Counter-Intuition Replied…
[Video: studio version of "I've Seen All Good People," by Yes] From whiskey river: Not a few, but everyone, makes art. There is no art beyond the sensibility of the people confronting it: art is an interaction between object and beholder. The idea of a human being forced to concede the superiority of a work [...]
Answers in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear
[Image: xkcd #936, on password strength. Click image to enlarge; see xkcd itself for the full six panels and the punchline.] From whiskey river: This accidental meeting of possibilities calls itself I. I ask: what am I doing here? And, at once, this I becomes unreal. (Dag Hammarskjöld [source]) …and: Ch’ui the draftsman Could draw more [...]
Liquid Assets, Compounded
[Image: "Butterfly Splash," by Alex Koloskov. For more information, including an "e-videobook" tutorial on creating this sort of effect, see the photographer's site, which is where I found it.] From whiskey river (italicized portion): Poem Holding Its Heart In One Fist Each pebble in this world keeps its own counsel. Certain words — these, for [...]
The History of English, in Ten(ish) Minutes
When I was a sophomore in high school — this was just a plain old everyday public high school, not a school for high-achieving nerds or anything — our English teacher let us write an end-of-year research paper on any topic we liked. I have no idea why, of all possible subjects, at the age [...]
“The Logic of Irrationality”
[Original image found at the MathWorks site (slogan: "Accelerating the pace of engineering and science"). It seemed too good not to use.] I haven’t read the book in question (Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman), but this book review got it a spot in the queueueueue. Especially this bit: Kahneman’s approach to psychology spurns [...]
Alien You
From whiskey river: One Source of Bad Information There’s a boy in you about three Years old who hasn’t learned a thing for thirty Thousand years. Sometimes it’s a girl. This child has to make up its mind How to save you from death. He said things like: “Stay home. Avoid elevators. Eat only elk.” [...]
Whiplash Misreadings
So I’m in bed last night, reading a little bit (as is customary) before shutting out the light. I finish one article and move to the next. The title of this new article is “Sleeping with the Enemy”; and the subtitle, “What happened between the Netherlands and us?” The Netherlands? I wonder. An enemy? Are we [...]
The Whole Sweet World Is a Garden
[Video: Rowlf and Fozzie collaborate, after a fashion -- and much to their surprise -- on an instrumental version of "In an English Country Garden"] From whiskey river: The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence. And Zen suggests that we [...]
