The Lil' Zet

"Being right is overrated."

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 09:30:43 -0700

“Being right is overrated.”

- Doc Searls (via jayparkinsonmd)

It’s true. And you will never hear this from a politician.

elevenfourty: I VOTE YES! The staff at Tumblr were seriously on...

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:44:45 -0700

elevenfourty:

I VOTE YES!

The staff at Tumblr were seriously on top of their game when they created the handy Mass-Editor feature. I love viewing my posts, past and present, in this compact way. Not to mention, it helps me to keep my blog neat and weed out the “Blast from the Past” posts that just don’t seem to belong anymore. I hope you’ve all experienced this wonderfulness at least once..

I totally agree. It’s a great interface. I hope I get to see what this does the to tumblr medium: will this new curation tool create blogs that converge more tightly on themes? Blogs with shorter histories in general?

"What does it mean to think? Can machines think, or only humans? These questions have obsessed..."

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 07:01:42 -0700

“What does it mean to think? Can machines think, or only humans? These questions have obsessed computer science since the 1950s, and grow more important every day as the internet canopy closes over our heads, leaving us in the pregnant half-light of the cybersphere.”

- David Gelernter in Dream-Logic, The Internet and Artificial Thought

Ratings broken down by age and gender

Wed, 07 Jul 2010 19:37:25 -0700

Ratings broken down by age and gender

Mailorder Wombs: Outsourcing Birth to India

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 12:10:42 -0700

Mailorder Wombs: Outsourcing Birth to India:

As the article puts it:

[…] maybe what makes the global surrogacy market so different [from other business transactions] is that the service providers are women in poor countries who feel compelled to lease their bodies to care for their own families.

"Executives in the spring program also heard that some young people had started leaving college to..."

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 20:27:59 -0700

“

Executives in the spring program also heard that some young people had started leaving college to set up their own synthetic biology labs on the cheap. Such people resemble computer tinkerers from a generation earlier, attendees note, except now they’re fiddling with the genetic code of organisms rather than software.

“Biology is moving outside of the traditional education sphere,” says Andrew Hessel, a former research operations manager at Amgen, during a lecture here. “The students are teaching their professors. This is happening faster than the computer evolved. These students don’t have newsletters. They have Web sites.”

”

- In the Singularity Movement, Humans Are So Yesterday - NYTimes.com

Photo

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:53:11 -0700

"The opposite of “sharing information” isn’t “keeping secrets.” Sometimes, it’s just “knowing when to..."

Fri, 21 May 2010 19:36:47 -0700

“The opposite of “sharing information” isn’t “keeping secrets.” Sometimes, it’s just “knowing when to shut up.””

- the newsweek tumblr

"…distraction is nothing new. Over a century ago, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche described his..."

Thu, 13 May 2010 10:00:00 -0700

“…distraction is nothing new. Over a century ago, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche described his harassed peers. “One thinks with a watch in one’s hand,” he wrote in 1887, “even as one eats one’s midday meal while reading the latest news of the stock market”. Yet Nietzsche didn’t blame clocks or markets. “We labour at our daily work more ardently and thoughtlessly than is necessary to sustain our life,” he wrote in his Untimely Meditations, “because it is even more necessary not to have leisure to stop and think. Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.””

- Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in “The Distraction Society,” posted by Fascinated. Apropos of this. (via mills)

Detroit—Once a 20th century industrial dynamo, now an 18th...

Wed, 12 May 2010 23:13:53 -0700

Detroit—Once a 20th century industrial dynamo, now an 18th century rural society? Pheasants and deer wander among the rusting towers and ruined factories as nature reclaims this mighty American metropolis. Even more shocking: there is not a single supermarket in all of Detroit. In this episode, the remaining citizens of Detroit are turning this industrial wasteland… into a life-giving urban garden.

From Red State Road Trip 2.

"In a mechanistic view of the world, we see all things, even if only for convenience, as machines. A..."

Wed, 12 May 2010 11:30:00 -0700

“

In a mechanistic view of the world, we see all things, even if only for convenience, as machines. A machine is intended to accomplish something. It is, in its essence, goal-oriented. Like machines, then, within a mechanistic view processes are always seen as aimed at certain ends. We think of things by the end-state we want, and then we ask ourselves how to get there.

This mistake was widespread in the 20th century.

”

- Alexander, Christopher. The Nature of Order, an Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe. Book Two: The Process of Creating Life. 1980. Berkeley, California: The Center for Environmental Structure, 2002.

"upon his death, jeremy bentham (1748–1832) (of panopticon fame) asked to be permanently embalmed and..."

Tue, 11 May 2010 23:24:28 -0700

“upon his death, jeremy bentham (1748–1832) (of panopticon fame) asked to be permanently embalmed and kept at the university of london, where his corpse “now fitted with a head made of wax, is regularly wheeled into college meetings, where it is duly recorded in the minutes as ‘present, but not voting’””

- (hijiya, 1983, p. 356)

Thanks, Jed.

"I have had very few heroes in my life—mostly they’re people who’ve been arrested."

Tue, 11 May 2010 23:23:58 -0700

“I have had very few heroes in my life—mostly they’re people who’ve been arrested.”

- George Carlin

"Of all the people in human history who ever reached the age of 65, half are alive now."

Tue, 11 May 2010 07:08:49 -0700

“Of all the people in human history who ever reached the age of 65, half are alive now.”

- The shock of the old: Welcome to the elderly age (via jessicabigarel)

"If you’re someone who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page..."

Mon, 03 May 2010 10:22:12 -0700

“If you’re someone who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in awhile. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not often be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. So too is the practice of engaging in different experiences with different kinds of people… If you grew up in a big city, spend some time with some who grew up in a rural town. If you find yourself only hanging around with people of your race or your ethnicity or your religion, broaden your circle to include people who’ve had different backgrounds and life experiences. You’ll learn what it’s like to walk in someone else’s shoes, and in the process, you’ll help make this democracy work.”

- President Obama (via southpol)

"[A]ll thought processes and thought-constructs appear a priori to be not essentially rationalistic,..."

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:27:58 -0700

“[A]ll thought processes and thought-constructs appear a priori to be not essentially rationalistic, but biological phenomena….Thought is originally only a means in the struggle for existence and to this extent a biological function.”

- Hans Vaihinger, The Philosophy of ‘As If’ (xlvi)

Apple switches to Verdana

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:26:00 -0700

Apple switches to Verdana:

Lady Gaga - Poker Face by Applegirl This video combines all of...

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 21:11:44 -0700

Lady Gaga - Poker Face by Applegirl

This video combines all of my interests.

"Even though life is disgusting sometimes, I’ll get up again."

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:22:52 -0700

“Even though life is disgusting sometimes, I’ll get up again.”

- Carl Berner, New York City’s oldest man and a former toolmaker, toymaker, factory owner and civic activist at 108 years old. [via]

“you can sleep when you are dead, until then...

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:37:00 -0700

“you can sleep when you are dead, until then coffee.”