Social. Science/tech/future. Ethics. Religion. Hilbert's Infinite Hotel - 60-Second Adventures in Thought (4/6) Doodling in Math Class: Connecting Dots. Cuil Theory. Marek Kohn – Us and them. Western Philosophy. Salman Rushdie's PEN World Voices Lecture on Censorship. No writer ever really wants to talk about censorship. Writers want to talk about creation, and censorship is anti-creation, negative energy, uncreation, the bringing into being of non-being, or, to use Tom Stoppard’s description of death, “the absence of presence.”
Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk about is what they do, not what stops them doing it. And writers want to talk about how much they get paid, and they want to gossip about other writers and how much they get paid, and they want to complain about critics and publishers, and gripe about politicians, and they want to talk about what they love, the writers they love, the stories and even sentences that have meant something to them, and, finally, they want to talk about their own ideas and their own stories. Their things. Consider, if you will, the air. The creative act requires not only freedom but also this assumption of freedom. Illustration by Matthew Hollister. Oliver Burkeman | Journalist and Author | How to be interesting – and why the best bits of life are more than 'interesting'
Do you long to become a "thought leader", thinkfluencing your way from TED talk to tech conference, lauded for your insights? I hope not. But if so, you could do worse than consult a paper published in 1971 by the maverick sociologist Murray Davis, entitled "That's Interesting! " (I found it via Adam Grant.) What is it, Davis asks, that makes certain thinkers – Marx, Freud, Nietzsche – legendary? Forty-three years on, this feels truer than ever. Clearly, this could be helpful information if you're looking to intrigue friends, fascinate a potential lover, or keep your students engaged.
Perhaps it should. My first reaction to that was, "How interesting! The 48 Laws of Power. Background[edit] Greene initially formulated some of the ideas in The 48 Laws of Power while working as a writer in Hollywood and concluding that today's power elite shared similar traits with powerful figures throughout history.[5] In 1995, Greene worked as a writer at Fabrica, an art and media school, and met a book packager named Joost Elffers.[4][8] Greene pitched a book about power to Elffers and six months later, Elffers requested that Greene write a treatment.[4] Although Greene was unhappy in his current job, he was comfortable and saw the time needed to write a proper book proposal as too risky.[10] However, at the time Greene was rereading his favorite biography about Julius Caesar and took inspiration from Caesar's decision to cross the Rubicon River and fight Pompey, thus inciting the Great Roman Civil War.[10] Greene would follow Caesar's example and write the treatment, which later became The 48 Laws of Power.[10] He would note this as the turning point of his life.[10]
The Science and Philosophy of Friendship: Lessons from Aristotle on the Art of Connecting. By Maria Popova “Friends hold a mirror up to each other; through that mirror they can see each other in ways that would not otherwise be accessible to them, and it is this mirroring that helps them improve themselves as persons.” “A principal fruit of friendship,” Francis Bacon wrote in his timeless meditation on the subject, “is the ease and discharge of the fulness and swellings of the heart, which passions of all kinds do cause and induce.” For Thoreau, friendship was one of life’s great rewards.
But in today’s cultural landscape of muddled relationships scattered across various platforms for connecting, amidst constant debates about whether our Facebook “friendships” are making us more or less happy, it pays to consider what friendship actually is. Philosophers and cognitive scientists agree that friendship is an essential ingredient of human happiness. Maurice Sendak illustration from 'I'll Be You and You Be Me,' a vintage ode to friendship by Ruth Krauss. Donating = Loving. Big Think Interview With Stephen Fry. Time Time is what clocks measure, Albert Einstein once said.
Information about time tells the durations of events, and when they occur, and which events happen before which others, so time plays a very significant role in the universe’s structure, including the structure of our personal lives. But there are many unresolved issues, both philosophical and scientific. Consider this issue upon which philosophers are deeply divided: What sort of ontological differences are there among the present, the past and the future? There are three competing philosophical theories. Presentism implies that necessarily only present objects and present events are real, and we conscious beings can recognize this in the special vividness of our present experiences compared to our relatively dim memories of past experiences and dim expectations of future experiences.
In no particular order, here is a list of other issues about time that are discussed in this article: Table of Contents 1. 2. 3. “What is time?” 4. The Untold Genius of Einstein. “What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow-creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.” So begins Albert Einstein’s The World As I See It, a collection of essays, articles and letters written between 1922 and 1934 focusing on the humane aspect of this scientific genius and revealing him as a man of compassion and wisdom all too aware of the pressing need for science to serve the well-being of humanity.
There are countless documentaries and books discussing Einstein’s enduring legacy to modern science – few are unaware of his contributions to the field of theoretical physics: the general theory of relativity and the E = mc2 formula for mass-energy equivalence are perhaps universally known (if not necessarily understood).
May 05th to May 12th, 2012 "Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle..." - Buddha. May 05th to May 12th, 2012 "Once you become knowledgeable..." - Ron Paul.