the best things in life aren't things
Archive for February, 2009
A word a day..
mindfuck – Thoughts so divine and perfect, they could almost be described as carnal. They excite you, they turn you on, they make you think beyond your present beliefs, they make you change your panties.
If you want to get mindfucked, here is a nice list of books that will induce just that:
- Adams, Douglas
- Richard Adams
- Alighieri, Dante
- Allende, Isobel
- Asimov, Isaac
- Atwood, Margaret
- Ayliffe, John Stephen
- Banks, Iain or Banks, Iain M.
- Bantok, Nick
- Barth, John
- Bear, Greg
- Bester, Alfred
- Bey, Hakim
- Block, Francesca Lia
- Dangerous Angels – the Weetzie Bat books
- Boethius
- Borges, Jorge Luis
- Ficciones (Fictions)
- The Cirular Ruins
- Bradbury, Ray
- Bryant, Dorothy
- Bulgakov, Mikhail
- Burgess, Anthony
- Burroughs, William S.
- Camus, Albert
- Capote, Truman
- Card, Orson Scott
- Carpenter, Edmund Snow
- Carroll, Lewis
- Carroll, Peter
- Casares, Adolfo Bioy
- Castaneda, Carlos
- Cervantes, Miguel de
- Chase, Truddi
- Chayefsky, Paddy
- Chuang Chou
- Clark, Arthur C.
- Cortázar, Julio
- End of the Game and Other Stories
- Rayuela (Hopscotch)
- Coupland, Douglas
- Danielewski, Mark
- Dawkins, Richard
- DeLillo, Don
- Dick, Philip K.
- Dickens, Charles
- Dostoevsky, Fyodor
- Eco, Umberto
- Efsandiary, F.M.
- Egan, Greg
- Eliot, T.S.
- Ellis, Bret Easton
- Ellis, Edward Robb
- Ende, Michael
- Euclid
- Farmer, Philip Jose
- Faulkner, William
- Feinberg, Leslie
- Foucault, Michel
- Fowles, John
- Freud, Sigmund
- Gaarder, Jostein
- Gardner, Laurence
- Gaiman, Neil
- Genet, Jean
- Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
- Gibson, William
- Gleick, James
- Gray, Alasdair
- Gogol, Nikolai
- Golding, William
- Grimwood, Ken
- Gurdjieff, G. I.
- Halperin, James L.
- Hand, Elizabeth
- Heinlein, Robert A.
- Heller, Joseph
- Herbert, Frank
- Hermans, W.F.
- Herr, Michael
- Hesse, Herman
- Hofstadter, Douglas
- Hugo, Victor
- Huxley, Aldous
- Ibsen, Henrik
- Irving, John
- Jotce, Graham
- Joyce, James
- Kafka, Franz
- Kaku, Michio
- Kerouac, Jack
- Kesey, Ken}
- Keyes, J. Gregory
- Kidder, Tracy
- King, Stephen
- The Dark Tower series
- The Tommyknockers
- The Stand
- Kingston, Maxine Hong
- Knowles, John
- Land, Jon
- The Jared Kimberlain series
- Kosinski, Jerry
- Lawrence, D. H.
- Leary, Timothy
- Lee, Tanith
- Lem, Stanislaw
- Lewis, C.S.
- Leyner, Mark
- Lilly, John C.
- Llewellyn, Grace
- Longyear, Barry B.
- Mailer, Norman
- Mandela, Nelson
- Marquez, Gabriel Garcia
- Mayle, Peter
- McKenna, Terence
- Miller, Arthur
- Miller, Henry
- Milton, John
- More, Thomas
- Morrison, Tony
- Murakami, Haruki
- Musashi, Miyamoto
- Musil, Robert
- The Man Without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften)
- Nabokov, Vladimir
- Neville, Katherine
- Nietzsche, Friedrich
- Noon, Jeff
- Nørretranders, Tor
- Oates, Joyce Carol
- O’Brien, Flann
- O’Brien, Timothy
- Orwell, George
- Paglia, Camille
- Palahniuk, Chuck
- Perec, Georges
- Plath, Sylvia
- Pirsig, Robert
- Poe, Edgar Allan
- Pynchon, Thomas
- Quinn, Daniel
- Rand, Ayn
- Rhinehart, Luke
- Rooney, Andy
- Rosen, Robert
- Ross, John
- Roy, Arundhati
- Rucker, Rudy
- Rushkoff, David
- Sacks, Oliver
- Sagan, Carl
- Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de
- Salinger, J. D.
- Saramago, Jose
- Sartre, Jean-Paul
- Shakespeare, William
- Shelley, Mary
- Shem, Samuel
- Shepard, Lucius
- Simmons, Dan
- St. Augustine
- Stapledon, Olaf
- Stein, Gertrude
- Stephenson, Neal
- Süskind, Patrick
- Tan, Amy
- Thich Nhat Hanh
- Thompson, Hunter S.
- Thurber, James
- Tolstoy, Leo
- Twain, Mark
- Ullman, Ellen
- Various
- Vian, Boris
- Vinge, Vernor
- Vonnegut, Kurt
- Wallace, David Foster
- Irvine Welsh
- Walsh, Lawrence E.
- Watts, Alan
- Wilbur, Ken
- Wilde, Oscar
- Wilder, Thornton
- Wilson, Robert Anton
- The Illuminatus! Trilogy (with Robert Shea)
- Prometheus Rising
- Cosmic Trigger
- Schrödinger’s Cat Trilogy (note: originally published as three volumes: The Universe Next Door, The Trick Top Hat, and The Homing Pigeons. Thanks to Wobbly Tech)
- Wolfe, Gene
- Woolf, Virginia
- Wright, Robert
- Yogananda, Paramahansa
- Yourcenar, Marguerite
- Yevgeny Zamyatin, Zamyatin, Yevgeny
- Zinn, Howard
- Zukav, Gary
(via Everything2.com)
Love vs. Infatuation
Infatuation is instant desire, one set of glands calling to another.
Love is friendship that has caught fire. It takes root and grows,one day at a time.
Infatuation is marked by a feeling of insecurity. You are excited and eager, but not genuinely happy. There are nagging doubts, unanswered questions, little bits pieces about your beloved that you would just as soon examine too closely. It might spoil the dream.
Love is the quiet understanding and mature acceptance of imperfection. It is real.It gives you strength and grows beyond you,to bolster your beloved. You are warmed by his presence,even when he is away. Miles do not separate you. You want him near. But near or far, you know he is yours and you can wait.
Infatuation says,”We must get married right away. I can’t risk losing him.”
Love says, “Be patient. He is yours. Plan your future with confidence.”
Infatuation has an element of sexual excitement. Whenever you are in one another’s company you are hoping it will end in intimacy.
Love is the maturation of friendship. You must be friends before you can be lovers.
Infatuation lacks confidence. When he’s away, you wonder if he’s cheating. Sometimes you check.
Love means trust. You are calm, secure, and unthreatened. He feels your trust and it makes him even more trustworthy.
Infatuation might lead you to do things you’ll regret later, but love never will.
Love lifts you up. It makes you look up. It makes you think up. It makes you a better person than you were before.
The 8 Monkeys
(This is reportedly based on an actual experiment conducted in the U.K.)
Put eight monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder, leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook on the ceiling.
Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water, which makes them miserable. Soon enough, whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed, set upon him and beat him up. Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder.
One of the original monkeys is then removed, and a new monkey is put in the room. Seeing the bananas and the ladder, he wonders why none of the other monkeys are doing the obvious. But undaunted, he immediately begins to climb the ladder.
All the other monkeys fall upon him and beat him silly. He has no idea why.
However, he no longer attempts to climb the ladder.
A second original monkey is removed and replaced. The newcomer again attempts to climb the ladder, but all the other monkeys hammer the crap out of him.
This includes the previous new monkey, who, grateful that he’s not on the receiving end this time, participates in the beating because all the other monkeys are doing it. However, he has no idea why he’s attacking the new monkey.
One by one, all the original monkeys are replaced. Eight new monkeys are now in the room. None of them have ever been sprayed by ice water. None of them attempt to climb the ladder. All of them will enthusiastically beat up any new monkey who tries, without having any idea why.
And that is how most companies’ policies get established.
Abolish the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
Jim Rogers talks to Sir David about the current economic crisis and Barack Obama’s rescue package. Jim’s theory is basically simple: if you make a mistake, you go broke. That’s it, that’s that.
Time travel hypothesis
Source: Wikipedia.com
I saw the movie Outlander last night, which is quite OK if you are into Norse and viking movies. The character Kainan (played by James Caviezel) reminded me of He-Man, but this is besides the point. The movie triggered an interesting discussion between me and my friend Horea – the subject being:
What if you could somehow solve the problem of general relativity and time dilation and travel back into 900 AD, the time of vikings?
Can you somehow manage to survive into such a primitive society? What would your tricks be? Can you teach them something from the future if your life depended on it? Any survival tips? We reached the conclusion that without our means of production and the sharing of information, we are pretty useless in that time and we cannot survive for long. Unless you’re skilled at wilderness survival, finding edible food, shelter, and potable water in a time when those things were much more scarce than now will prove difficult.
Any opinions?