October quotes: “In the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you.” – Hindu saying

Alright Jack Donaghy, follow your heart: Hard Equations and Rational Thinking – Alec Baldwin as Jack Donaghy in 30 Rock

No rigid rules or systems for figuring out “what to do when” can work effectively for more than a few weeks before becoming obsolete – Cal Newport

“Pooh!” he whispered.
“Yes, Piglet?”
“Nothing,” said Piglet, taking Pooh’s paw. “I just wanted to be sure of you.”

If you would like to know how to recognize a prophet, look to him who gives you the knowledge of your own heart. – Persian saying

In the first 30 years of your life, you make your habits. For the last 30 years of your life, your habits make you. — Hindu saying that Steve Jobs was fond of (as read in Appletopia)

Old pond…
A frog leaps in
Water’s sound
-Matsuo Basho

Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
—John Donne

I’m like my mother: I stereotype, it’s faster. — George Clooney, Up in the Air

Knowledge is limitless. Therefore, there is a minuscule difference between those who know a lot and those who know very little. — Leo Tolstoy

It is time to leave our comfortable rooms, every corner of which we know, and venture forth into eternity — Rilke

when you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create. — Why the lucky stiff

Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. ― Rainer Maria Rilke.

Make the body capable of doing many things. This will help you to perfect the mind and so to come to the intellectual love of God. – Spinoza, paraphrased by Huxley in The Island

As Balzac says, there goes another novel — Woody Allen in Annie Hall

…to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. — Victor Frankl

We have one party with two wings which represents 4% of the population — Gore Vidal

For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann. — Vladimir Nabokov

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. — George Orwell

Here is an ongoing collection of my favorite quotes.

Success requires no apologies, the tech founders edition

It ought to be admitted that some performances are considered so essentially noble as to justify the sacrifice of everything else on their behalf. The man who loses his life in the defence of his country is not blamed if thereby his wife and children are left penniless. The man who is engaged in experiments with a view to some great scientific discovery or invention is not blamed afterwards for the poverty that he has made his family endure, provided that his efforts are crowned with ultimate success. If, however, he never succeeds in making the discovery or the invention that he was attempting, public opinion condemns him as a crank, which seems unfair, since no one in such an enterprise can be sure of success in advance. – Bertrand Russell

From The Conquest of Happiness.

TED notes: Kevin Kelly on the internet and Tom Chatfield on video games

Kevin Kelly, the next 5000 days of the web

  • the internet is only 5000 days old, what will the next 5000 days look like?
  • “it’s amazing, and we’re not amazed”
  • we’re basically creating one giant machine, and it’s the strongest/most reliable machine we’ve ever built
  • all our machines are portals into the one machine (every smartphone, every laptop, every IoT)
  • 3 changes: embodiment, re-structuring, co-dependence
    • copies have no value
    • attention is currency
  • humans are the machine’s extended senses
  • we’re linking data; first the connections were machine to machine, then page to page, now data to data
  • we shouldn’t need to port our friends to each social network, the web should just know
  • “to share will be to gain”
  • no bits will live outside the web — early version of software eating the world

* * * * *

Tom Chatfield: 7 ways video games engage the brain

  • it’s amazing that people spend $8B on virtual goods
  • Farmville has 70M players (talk is from 2010)
  • games provide rewards, both individual and collective
  • all about ambition + delight
  • in video games you can measure everything — big data
  • there’s always a “reward schedule”
  • 7 ways to use game lessons in real world
    1. have experience bars to measure progress
    2. set multiple long and short-term aims
    3. they reward effort — get credit for every bit of work/effort
    4. provide rapid, frequent, clear feedback
    5. have element of uncertainty — variable rewards, dopamine
    6. offer windows of enhanced attention
    7. add other people! social, cooperation

Here’s a running list of TED talks and notes (it’s a long page so it could take a few seconds to load).

12 magical descriptions of Love in the Time of Cholera

love-in-the-time-of-cholera

What a book, what a writer, what a story. A good story is one that ends just a little too soon. And at 350 pages this one still had so much more to say.

At nightfall, at the oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes rose out of the swamps…

His natural gallantry and languid manner were immediately charming, but they were also considered suspect virtues in a confirmed bachelor.

What Florentino Ariza liked best about her was that in order to reach the heights of glory, she had to suck on an infant’s pacifier while they made love. Eventually they had a string of them, in every size, shape, and color they could find in the market, and Sara Noriega hung them on the headboard so she could reach them without looking in her moments of extreme urgency.

For Florentino Ariza, that night was a return to the innocent unruliness of adolescence, when he had not yet been wounded by love.

In the darkness he could barely see the naked woman, her ageless body soaked in hot perspiration, her breathing heavy, who pushed him onto the bunk face up, unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned his trousers, impaled herself on him as if she were riding horseback, and stripped him, without glory, of his virginity.

He said: “It is like a firstborn son: your spend your life working for him, sacrificing everything for him, and at the moment of truth he does just as he pleases.”

In any case, he did not resemble him in the pictures, or in his memories of him, or in the image transfigured by love that his mother painted, or in the one unpainted by his Uncle Leo XII with his cruel wit. Nevertheless, Florentino Ariza discovered the resemblance many years later, as he was combing his hair in front of the mirror, and only then did he understand that a man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.

Every day, at his first swallow of coffee and at his first spoonful of soup, he would break into a heartrending howl that no longer frightened anyone, and then unburden himself: “The day I leave this house, you will know it is because I grew tired of always having a burned mouth.”

A few years later, however, the husbands fell without warning down the precipice of a humiliating aging in body and soul, and then it was their wives who recovered and had to lead them by the arm as if they were blind men on charity, whispering in their ear, in order not to wound their masculine pride, that they should be careful, that there were three steps, not two, that there was a puddle in the middle of the street, that the shape lying across the sidewalk was a dead beggar, and with great difficulty helped them to cross the street as if it were the only ford across the last of life’s rivers.

They finished their second cup in a silence furrowed by presentiments

That is how it always was: he would attempt to move forward, and she would block the way. But on this occasion, despite her ready answer, Florentino Ariza realized that he had hit the mark, because she had to turn her face so that he would not see her blush. A burning, childish blush, with a life of its own and an insolence that turned her vexation on herself. Florentino Ariza was very careful to move to other, less offensive topics, but his courtesy was so obvious that she knew she had been found out, and that increased her anger.

América Vicuña, her pale body dappled by the light coming in through the carelessly drawn blinds, was not of an age to think about death.

10 great podcasts right now

on-being-krista-tippett

Two years ago (wow, already) I wrote about my podcast habit-addiction and ranked them. But like travel destinations and coffee drinks and dive bars, your tastes are always changing.

Here’s my greatful 10; they reflect a growing interest in writing and literature; less tech and science, more spirit and faith.

A tip: treat a new podcast like a collection of short stories; instead of starting with the most recent episode, scan the archives and listen first to the guests and topics that interest you

Hope you like them; please share your favorites as well. Thanks!

1. Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin – intimate interviews of his show-biz friends; liked: Penn Jillette, Rosie O’Donnell, Judd Apatow

2. New Yorker: Out Loud – every episode is witty, fast, current; my favorite staff writer slash recurring guest is Adam Gopnik (for example)

3. The Joe Rogan Experience – raw, unfiltered, and unedited conversations hosted by a podcast pioneer; not for everyone; favorites include Eddie Huang and Randall Park, Russell Peters

4. Ben Greenfield Fitness – a trainer’s trainer, episodes are dense with science and data and he lives what he preaches; each episode covers so many topics that it’s hard to recommend one, but I enjoyed “Why strong people are harder to kill”.

5. On Being with Krista Tippett – soulful, kind, curious conversations; liked: Helen Fisher the dating and love expert.

6. a16z – because VC; techies love to save time, a16z wastes none; liked: Peter Thiel

7. The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith – an industry insider interviews interesting inventors (of films!); liked: Dallas Buyers Club, Nightcrawler

8. Longform podcast – writers talking to writers; liked: Buzz Bissinger, Eli Sanders

9. The Tim Ferriss Show – TimTim talktalk! Liked: Kevin Kelly

10. The New York Times Book Review – great hosts, great guests, great books