Quote

We call them hobbies, avocations, callings, passions. These are the noninstrumental activities that help to define us. They reward us with character because they involve an encounter with meaningful resistance — with nature’s laws, with the limits of our own bodies — as in carving wood, melding raw ingredients, fixing a broken appliance, writing code, timing waves or facing the point when the runner’s legs and lungs begin to rebel against him. […] Such activities take time, but they also give us time back. They expose us to the risk of frustration and failure, but they also can teach us something about the world and our place in it. […] We must never forget the joy of doing something slow and something difficult, the satisfaction of not doing what is easiest.

[Read More]

Who reads poetry anyway? Only other poets.

(Blake Andrews, during an interview with Bryan Formhals)

It is a strange place to be, this one where I am now. My passion and love for photographs (taking them, editing and discussing and commenting) is something in between two sides that I see.

On one side there are all those photographs that most people would judge beautiful, the kind of photographs that appear on glossy magazines, large exhibitions and contests of relevance; think Avedon, McCurry, Leibovitz and the winners of awards like Wildlife Photographer.

Months ago I asked the OTP community about their online reading habits. I mentioned my favourite blogs and briefly discussed my main concern which is: is online reading just a filler, sort of reading your twitter feed when you’re bored¹?

Anyway, my idea is that yes, books give you something else, something that takes you away for longer times, requiring a committment to the act of reading and comprehension that is essential if you really want to go deep into a subject.

In other words: good reasons to avoid using “Ph.D” and other titles appended to your email.

From an article on the New York Times about the latest Spider-Man movie (the one filmed by Marc Webb):

Gwen Stacy asks Peter Parker if he likes branzino: you know, “Like, the fish?”.
Then she invites him to dinner, where everyone is saying “branzino”: Denis Leary (playing Gwen’s dad), Peter, Gwen again. We see a full branzino at the dinner table, neatly plated.
Why branzino? The film never says — it just offers up this delightful serving of unexpected weirdness.

[Read More]

Lately I’ve been reading quite a lof of articles about parenting. Most of them are book reviews but I did not read any of these books though¹, which could mean: (A) I’m a bit shallow, (B) stressed out New Yorkers, overproductive Chinese immigrants, rich Californians are not people that I feel entitled to give me directions on how to raise my kid (even though I acknowledge their superior education and intelligence and that their sons and daughters will surely rule the world).

Emphasis is mine:

Shoot from the hip and sort it out later in Photoshop; this is a slippery slope plunging inevitably towards the depths of despair and devastating loss of self-esteem that comes with shooting on program mode with a high ISO, no tripod and a reversed lens hood. The latter is the photographic equivalent of wearing socks with sandals; clearly a fate worse than death.

David Noton, “The Difference Between the Taking and the Making of a Photograph”.

A comment on Italians’ ability to manage confusion:

the Italians broke the laws of physics and created instant order out of utter disorder and chaos. We were waved and whistled by the police, straight through to the start area.

About cyclists (especially roadies) shaving their legs:

In fact, it was based on sound principles of physics and human anatomy, where the hairs help in a small way to allow the evaporation of sweat, which takes energy from the surrounding skin to do so. I was always hit by arguments like about how unhygienic it was and how much better a shaved leg would be. But I had read that shaved skin was more likely to suffer infection, which just left the questions about aerodynamics, aesthetics and conforming to my peer group.

[Read More]

This is so good it’s a shame it lies forgotten in an old issue of DirtRag.

Source: DirtRag issue 145, october 2009.

A 1945 video on Raleigh bicycles, worth watching for historical reasons but also for something that the speaker says towards the end of the movie (around the 16'45" mark):

[…] There are bicycles for all purposes, suitable for men, women boys and girls. A bycicle is a comfortable and cheap way of getting about, a great boon to men, ideal for shopping, easy to park […] A faithful friend ever ready to take tired workers back home and after work to bring relaxation, health and happiness.

[Read More]

So true:

Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

Ann Patchett, from yesterday’s New York Times.

“Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted “present” (instead of “yea” or “nay”) 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues.”

“The codex is built for nonlinear reading — not the way a Web surfer does it, aimlessly questing from document to document, but the way a deep reader does it, navigating the network of internal connections that exists within a single rich document like a novel.”

– The Mechanic Muse — From Scroll to Screen - NYTimes.com

“I was out running errands today, walking through the city. I remembered, a mile away from home, that a screw had fallen out of my wife’s favorite eyeglasses over the weekend, and that she was waiting for me to fix them. Walking down a city street, I said, “Remind me to fix Amy’s glasses when I get home.” Half an hour later, within a few doors of our house, the reminder went off.”

“Excuse me, sir, would you mind taking our photo?”

– http://blog.pluckytree.org/2011/10/last-time-i-saw-steve-jobs.html

From a review of a soft-science book appeared recently on the New York Times:

Though the authors occasionally lapse into jargon (their barnacles cling to “substrate” until the animals die and their six-plate shells “become disarticulated”)

Substrate and disarticulated jargon? Maybe I’ve been away too long, but it seems to me that substrate and disarticulated are normal words that even a non-scientist can understand (or at least, grasp their meaning).