“From now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon. It wasn’t a miracle; we just decided to go.”
—Jim Lovell, NASA Astronaut, Apollo 13
August 2011
19 posts
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“One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.”
—T.S. Eliot, 1920, The Sacred Wood /via austinkleon
“I hope there’s a golden age. This is not like the brochure: flying cars and sex machines. We’re all so compliant, ‘cause everything is what it seems.”
—“Heart and I”, Robbie Williams
How LinkedIn used Node.js and HTML5 to build a better, faster app — VentureBeat →
venturebeat.com
The app is two to 10 times faster on the client side than its predecessor, and on the server side, it’s using a fraction of the resources, thanks to a switch from Ruby on Rails to Node.js
The improvements the team saw were staggering. They went from running 15 servers with 15 instances (virtual servers) on each physical machine, to just four instances that can handle double the traffic.
Massachusetts Police Want To Track All Cars On The Road — Singularity Hub →
singularityhub.com
Police states do not create a more safer, educated, and more prosperous society. This is bullshit.
/via @FishMark
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The Broken Arc of History →
nytimes.com
NYT Op-ed asks the question that has haunted me for a while now:
As I watched the president deliver his inaugural address, I had a feeling of unease. It wasn’t just that the man who could be so eloquent had seemingly chosen not to be on this auspicious occasion, although that turned out to be a troubling harbinger of things to come.
It was that there was a story the American people were waiting to hear — and needed to hear — but he didn’t tell it. And in the ensuing months he continued not to tell it, no matter how outrageous the slings and arrows his opponents threw at him.
The writer goes on to offer several hypotheses, writ large with sadness and disappointment:
A final explanation is that he ran for president on two contradictory platforms: as a reformer who would clean up the system, and as a unity candidate who would transcend the lines of red and blue.
He has pursued the one with which he is most comfortable given the constraints of his character, consistently choosing the message of bipartisanship over the message of confrontation.
And, the final denouement:
But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise.
It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans.
It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically.
It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates.
It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation.
And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate.
The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks.
Will nostalgia destroy pop culture? — Salon →
salon.com
As I’ve said before: the appeal of shit like Instagram filters is our post-post-modern multicultural society’s desire for more-real-than-real cultural identity / meaning / purpose combined with a reality that’s seemingly less interesting than our previous generations. A media of endless niche distractions has also removed the singular cultural force that previously provided some form of capturing our collective imagination and thought. Global communication has given place no meaning. Pristine documentation of every moment has removed the possibility of a rose colored view of the past.
I can’t wait to read this book.
Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work? — Time →
time.com
Yes. /via @linklog
Eddie Izzard and I felt the same way about turning 24
- Eddie Izzard: I thought, "There's a street performers' festival in the summer and we've got to aim for that." We worked out routines and were getting laughs... and we didn't even win our own comedy section. [...] And thought, this is just not my millennia.
- Friend: On his 24th birthday, he was sort of pissed off and I thought, "What? What is it? You're 24. What's wrong?"
- Eddie: Ah well, by the time he was 24, Orson Welles had directed Citizen Kane.
- Friend: And you sit back and you're like, "Oh right, you're pissed off because you haven't directed the best movie that's probably ever been made before you're 24," and I secretly think that's an accurate portrayal.
“
You’ve got to believe you can be a standup before you can be a standup.
You have to believe you can act before you can act.
You have to believe you can be an astronaut before you can be an astronaut.
You’ve got to believe.
” —Eddie Izzard, Believe
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kiva.org
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“I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.”
—Warren Buffett, interview with CNBC
