One thing I actively work on, and have been actively working on for sometime, is maintaining a non-reactive mode of working. Fortunately, or unfortunately, as technology continues its steady advance promising “convenience”, I believe it’s not really a convenience which it delivers. Rather, it’s a shortening of a distance between thought and action. If I’m not careful, this can lead to a more reactive way of working - checking email, twitter, and the like reflexively. People have grown through a period of time where thought had more opportunity to gestate, merge, form, crystallize, and otherwise before it would eventually manifest as intention. Now, as that distance has shortened, we are delivered a new problem in that we have to devise new methods of holding onto our thoughts, working through them, and eventually delivering them in ways that require holding off the natural inclination of acting upon opportunity. Just because I can search for an answer to a question instantly, doesn’t mean I should. Simply resting my mind on a question and letting thoughts meander can deliver some pretty cool ideas. But when I instantly search for an answer, I can actually deprive myself of those new concepts that can only come from a period of thought.
(via Instapaper)
Yes, I still have photos I haven't uploaded from our trip to Paris.
On the News by Mandy Brown Meanwhile, I’ve grown more particular about the kind of news I want. I want a reading experience that defends the news from the circus that online advertising creates. I want good storytelling and analysis, not naked facts. I want news that admits and defends its point of view (and acknowledges that there is a truth to be uncovered), not news that parrots the party line while making claims to objectivity. I want long essays on the events at Fukushima and the consequences for nuclear power going forward, not shrieking dispatches of each new fire or setback. I want a history of American engagement in Libya, putting the events of the past few weeks in context. I want twenty thousand words on the recession and its effects on the middle class, not another lone statistic about the unemployment rate. I want thoughtful, investigative journalism that exposes the ways in which our government is failing us, so that we can make it better. And I am willing to pay for it.
I am willing to pay for it too. In fact, I am already via Readability and Read & Trust.
The Brooks Review Karl Fogel via John D. Cook: His purpose was strategic: to show up at the meeting with something so substantive that everyone else would have to fall into the role of simply proposing modifications to it, so that the overall shape, and therefore schedule, of the project would be roughly as he wanted.”
Now that is a clever plan. ∞ Permalink  Sent with Reeder
I just kept repeating to myself "whatever you do, don't hit it."
I went to a great sushi place tonight in LA and had the Omakase (where you let the sushi chef choose for you). It was amazing. Here is a list of the 10 courses and some pictures of them. Hairy crab kegani
Japanese taira scallop
Spanish mackerel sashimi salad
Toro tartare with caviar
Sweet shrimp, uni and truffles with tempura shrimp head
Grilled ama-dai snapper
Beef short ribs "ronan"
Duck miso soup
5 pieces sushi
Coffee jelly with vanilla ice cream, fruit and black sugar honey
http://www.takaobrentwood.com/
‘I, Reader’
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/personal_essays/i_reader.php By presenting us with a limitless number of nonstopped stories, the narratives that the media relate—the consumption of which has so dramatically cut into the time the educated public once devoted to reading—offer a lesson in amorality and detachment that is antithetical to the one embodied by the enterprise of the novel. In storytelling as practiced by the novelist, there is always—as I have argued—an ethical component. This ethical component is not the truth, as opposed to the falsity of the chronicle. It is the model of completeness, of felt intensity, of enlightenment supplied by the story, and its resolution—which is the opposite of the model of obtuseness, of non-understanding, of passive dismay, and the consequent numbing of feeling, offered by our media-disseminated glut of unending stories…. (“Time exists in order that it doesn’t happen all at once … space exists so that it doesn’t all happen to you.”) To tell a story is to say: this is the important story. It is to reduce the spread and simultaneity of everything to something linear, a path. To be a moral human being is to pay, be obliged to pay, certain kinds of attentio
(via Instapaper)
|
