January 2010
41 posts
Meet the Man Who Lives on Zero Dollars →
Daniel Suelo lives in a cave. Unlike the average American—wallowing in credit-card debt, clinging to a mortgage, terrified of the next downsizing at the office—he isn’t worried about the economic crisis. That’s because he figured out that the best way to stay solvent is to never be solvent in the first place. Nine years ago, in the autumn of 2000, Suelo decided to stop using money. He just quit...
WatchThe Third & The Seventh
Wonderful, gorgeous short film by Alex Roman. Hard to believe, but it’s almost entirely CG.
(via daringfireball.net)
More ridiculous border crossings
To cross a border in one step, there’s the Netherlands-Belgium border crossing:
Or, if you prefer crossing three borders in two steps, there’s this:
(each color represents a country)
“I was never in combat. But I did jump out of planes.” He [Brand] was a “weekend...”
– Stewart Brand, Financial Times (via christmasgorilla)
“The search for hard to vary explanations is the origin of all progress....”
– David Deutsch, from “A New Way To Explain Explanation” (TED talk)
Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates... →
“The Sumerian people must have found God’s making of heaven and earth in the middle of their well-established society to be more of an annoyance than anything else,” said Paul Helund, ancient history professor at Cornell University. “If what the pictographs indicate are true, His loud voice interrupted their ancient prayer rituals for an entire week.”
“The hope of a psychological science became indistinguishable from the fact of...”
– Sigmund Koch
Article: The Silver Thief →
The Story of a Burglar Who Was Too Good for His Own Good
Abruzzini had interviewed Nordahl extensively after the arrest for the Greenwich burglaries. The silver thief, I learned, was thought to have stolen at least ten million dollars’ worth of silver in more than fifteen states. Though Abruzzini is not the sort of policeman who thinks it fitting to compliment a criminal, he eventually allowed...
“Maybe in order to understand mankind we have to look at that word itself....”
– Jack Handey
Why Derren Brown could be a criminal profiler →
Is criminal profiling an useful tool for catching criminals? According to Malcolm Gladwell, it’s not. Comparing the techniques used by psychics and astrologers (such as cold reading) with those of criminal profilers, he argues that it’s anything but a scientifically sound tool to catch bad guys.
They had been at it for almost six hours. The best minds in the F.B.I. had given the...
Travis D’arby: I Was Homeless … And I Liked It →
Homelessness is like homosexuality: it’s not for everyone. But for that ten percent of us who are wired just a little bit differently, the freedom of living without a home can be just another lifestyle choice.
“I just realized I made a $200 million chick flick where everyone dies. What the...”
– James Cameron, on his unexpected blockbuster hit Titanic
(via: wired.com)
New Yorker: The Fountain House →
A short story by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya.
There once lived a girl who was killed, then brought back to life.
“You’re asking me will my love grow
I don’t know
I don’t know”
– George Harrison, expressing his lack of faith in Viagra.
New Yorker: Getting In →
Why Ivy League and their admission policies are the way they are, and what the effects of this have been.
Once, I attended a wedding of a Harvard alum in his fifties, at which the best man spoke of his college days with the groom as if neither could have accomplished anything of greater importance in the intervening thirty years. By the end, I half expected him to take off his shirt and...
“And the world’s got me dizzy again,
you’d think after 22 years...”
– Bright Eyes - Landlocked Blues
Why Miles Davis' Kind of Blue is so great →
Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, which was released 50 years ago today, is a nearly unique thing in music or any other creative realm: a huge hit—the best-selling jazz album of all time—and the spearhead of an artistic revolution. Everyone, even people who say they don’t like jazz, likes Kind of Blue. It’s cool, romantic, melancholic, and gorgeously melodic. But why do critics...
“If you don’t eat yer meat, you can’t have any pudding. How can you...”
– Pink Floyd
Article: Saving Lives Just Part of the Job →
If you’re an ironworker on the Golden Gate Bridge and your home phone rings at 3 a.m., you know it’s trouble.
You know someone is threatening to jump off your bridge. Your stuff is always ready; you’re out the door in minutes.
If you aren’t too late, if you climb out onto the cold steel and sweet-talk some poor lost soul off the beam or tower or manage to wrestle him or her to safety,...
“And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
And racing...”
– Pink Floyd
Article: Faux Friendship →
Great article that describes how the concept of ‘friendship’ has developed through the ages. It’s predictably negative about recent developments (Facebook, etc.), and while the arguments aren’t entirely convincing, it offers an interesting view.
We live at a time when friendship has become both all and nothing at all. Already the characteristically modern relationship,...
“Follow your bliss. The heroic life is living the individual adventure. There is...”
– Joseph Campbell
