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 perfect circles freehand
Than with a compass.

His fingers brought forth
Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind
Was meanwhile free and without concern
With what he was doing.

No application was needed
His mind was perfectly simple
And knew no obstacle.

So, when the shoe fits
The foot is forgotten,
When the belt fits
The belly is forgotten,
When the heart is right
“For” and “against” are forgotten.

No drives, no compulsions,
No needs, no attractions:
Then your affairs
Are under control.
You are a free man.

Easy is right. Begin right
And you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right.
The right way to go easy
Is to forget the right way
And forget that the going is easy.

(Chuang Tzu [source])

Not from whiskey river:

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil — he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He continued, “The other is good — he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you — and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

(Tim Johnson [source])

…and:

Letter Home

I love you forever
my father’s letter tells her
for forty-nine pages,
from the troopship crossing the Atlantic
before they’d ever heard of Anzio.

He misses her, the letter says,
counting out days of boredom, seasickness,
and changing weather,
poker games played for matches
when cash and cigarettes ran out,
a Red Cross package — soap,
cards, a mystery book he traded away
for The Rubaiyyat a bunkmate didn’t want.
He stood night watch and thought
of her. Don’t forget the payment
for insurance, he says.

My mother waits at home with me,
waits for the letter he writes day by day
moving farther across the ravenous ocean.
She will get it in three months and
her fingers will smooth the Army stationery
to suede.

He will come home, stand
beside her in the photograph, leaning
on crutches, holding
me against the rough wool
of his jacket. He will sit
alone and listen to Aïda

and they will pick up their
interrupted lives. Years later,
she will show her grandchildren
a yellow envelope with
forty-nine wilted pages telling her

of shimmering sequins on the water,
the moonlight catching sudden phosphorescence,
the churned wake that stretched a silver trail.

(Ellen Steinbaum [source])

…and:

Attempts to formalize commonsense knowledge have all encountered versions of [a difficult] problem — that in order to teach a robot to imitate even a limited range of human behavior, you would have to, in a sense, teach it everything about the world. Short of that, the endless subtle distinctions between the things that matter, the things that are supposed to matter but don’t, and the things that may or may not matter depending on other things, would always eventually trip up even the most sophisticated robot. As soon as it encountered a situation that was slightly different from those you had programmed it to handle, it would have no idea how to behave. It would stick out like a sore thumb. It would always be screwing up.

People who lack common sense are a bit like the hapless robot in that they never seem to understand what it is that they should be paying attention to, and they never seem to understand what it is that they don’t understand.

(Duncan J. Watts, from Everything Is Obvious (Once You Know the Answer) [source])

…and:

1. Movie you love with a passion
2. Movie you vow to never watch
3. Movie that literally left you speechless.
4. Movie you always recommend
5. Actor/actress you always watch, no matter how crappy the movie
6. Actor/actress you don’t get the appeal for
7. Actor/actress, living or dead, you’d love to meet
8. Sexiest actor/actress you’ve seen
9. Dream cast
10. Favorite actor pairing
11. Favorite movie setting
12. Favorite decade for movies
13. Chick flick or action movie?
14. Hero, villain or anti-hero?
15. Black and white or color?

(“Fifteen Movies Meme” found at Anomalous Material, originally from Defiant Success [source])

Composer Stephen Sondheim can be one cynical bastard, especially on the (admittedly thorny) subject of relationships. The thing is, he’s just so cleverly cynical that it’s hard not to grin. His 1970 musical Company centers on an approaching-35 bachelor, Robert, and all his married friends. At one point, as one of the women demonstrates her recent karate lessons upon her hapless husband, the group joins in on a litany of the great things about being married — led by the cynical Joanne (played by Elaine Stritch in the original cast recording):

[Below, click Play button to begin The Little Things You Do Together. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:07 long.]

[Lyrics]

Stinging little barb there at the end, huh? But then the women leave, and Robert (Dean Jones) asks the guys one of the most obvious questions: given that you are married, do you ever wish otherwise? And Sondheim’s easy sneer softens a bit — just a bit, but it’ll do:

[Below, click Play button to begin Sorry-Grateful. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left — a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:30 long.]

[Lyrics]

Gets me every time.