Thought du jour - 19 October 2011

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." - Abraham Lincoln 

Thought du jour - 18 October 2011

"He watched a bus pass, oval windows cataract-blank. He found a gutted telephone booth and dialed up the girl's address on his watch. He was surprised how close he was, and how far he had come, simply by wandering, committing himself to the anarchy of the pavement." - Mac Tonnies

From a story fragment he posted at his blog on January 26, 2009.

Paul Kimball

Thought du jour - 17 October 2011

"One must never look for happiness; one meets it by the way." - Isabelle Eberhardt

Thought du jour - 16 October 2011

"Ultimately, I wonder if we really want free will. Is it worth the effort? Considering how accustomed we’ve become to a numbed, automated existence, the phenomenon of consciousness could be on the brink of fading out." - Mac Tonnies

Thought du jour - 15 October 2011

"Intelligence is not a phenomenon. It's an information-impregnated pattern, as reproducible in its own way as a photocopy or the unruly lines that divide a shag carpeting. There is no reason my self-pattern cannot be synthesized, reconstituted, modified, relayed through space in the form of modulated radio waves or laser pulses, hacked, distributed as freeware to denizens of some future Internet, or uploaded to artificial bodies that may or may not resemble my present meatware incarnation. Electronic communications activists proclaim that 'information wants to be free.' So do I." - Mac Tonnies

Thought du jour - 14 October 2011

"We are the universe's means by which to realize its own genesis and undoing." - Mac Tonnies

Thought du jour - 13 October 2011

"Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

Thought du jour - 12 October 2011

"Time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life." - William Faulkner

Thought du jour - 11 October 2011

"The individual who ultimately survives is the one who allows an open (but good-naturedly skeptical) mind and sense of humour to buoy them up. Those who can't or won't tune into the 'and / or' brainwave will be left in uneasy confusion not just on anomalies, but also the unsure path humanity seems to be hurtling down faster every year." - Greg Bishop

Thought du jour - 8 October, 2011

"You're no longer surfing the Web; the Web is surfing you, scouring your mind for new and better footholds." - Mac Tonnies

Thought du jour - 6 October, 2011

"Without wonder and insight, acting is just a trade. With it, it becomes creation." - Bette Davis

Thought du jour - 5 October, 2011

"I want to keep gazing into the void, even if doing so invites the void to gaze back." - Mac Tonnies

Thought du jour - 30 September, 2011

"The survival of democracy as we know it hinges increasingly on the inherently decentralized nature of the Internet. So I'm annoyed by Netizens who remain forever anonymous behind "clever" usernames and handles in a vainglorious attempt to keep their "real" lives and online lives discreet. If you have something important to contribute to the datasphere, speak out! Use your real name! The Net is not one big chatroom; it's one of the central forces keeping our world from dissolution at the hands of mega-corporations, chomping-at-the-bit neo-fascists and "protective" watchdog government agencies out to fulfill the usual list of Big Brother power fantasies." - Mac Tonnies

As anyone who has read or heard one of my rants against Internet anonymity is aware, I couldn't agree more. People need to take ownership of what they say, and write, or else it's worthless. How can I respect someone's opinion when they don't have the courage to put their name to it?

The answer is that I can't, and I don't.

After all, John Hancock didn't sign the Declaration of Independence "IHateGeorgie47".

Paul Kimball

Thought du jour - 28 September 2011

"All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life." - John Cheever

Thought du jour - 27 September 2011

"The world we've created for ourselves is a shadow of our reproductive imperative, and our institutions are symptomatic of our devotion to our short-lived physical selves. The activities of a typical day betray our dedication to maintaining reproductive viability. But the chemical phenomenon that gives the single-celled amoeba its raison d'etre seems somehow less-than-noble for a species that has evolved the singular and promising faculties of foresight and imagination. I think the human species is approaching a point where the need to create (in the biological sense) will be superseded by the sheer pleasure of thought itself. We will continue to be creators. But our slavish attachment to the physical world and all of its superficial excess will be left behind as we plunge forward, breaking down the perceived barriers between mind and brain, thought and flesh, sentience and circuitry." - Mac Tonnies

Note: The quote above is taken from Mac's short but thought-provoking essay, Sentience and Circuitry: Meat is Memory.

Paul Kimball

Thought du jour - 26 September 2011

“Existence, well what does it matter? I exist on the best terms I can.” - Ian Curtis

Thought du jour - 25 September 2011

"Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second." - Robert Frost

Thought du jour - 24 September 2011

"Film is one of the three universal languages - the other two: mathematics and music." - Frank Capra

Thought du jour - 23 September 2011

"American culture is the manic combination of exultant hubris and profound gloom." - George Friedman

Friedman is one of the world's "big thinkers", an Alfred Thayer Mahan for the 21st century. His book, The Next 100 Years, is a thought-provoking, must-read analysis for anyone interested in geopolitics, and where the world is going in the century to come.

Here he is talking about what he sees happening in the next ten years or so.



Is Friedman going to get all of the details right?

Of course not.

But on his prediction for the big picture - that the 21st century is going to be the American century - I think he's spot on.

Paul Kimball

Thought du jour - 22 September 2011

"Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realize 'The stars are words' and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words, and so is this world too. And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it's all in my mind." - Jack Kerouac