May 2013
2 posts
1 tag
“In my experience, the greatest successes don’t come from grandiose scenarios of...”
– David Allen
April 2013
5 posts
“If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide that...”
– Sam Harris
1 tag
“Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but...”
– Eric Hoffer
1 tag
“It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work...”
– Wendell Berry
March 2013
2 posts
“You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.”
– Alan Watts
2 tags
“For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But...”
– Alfred Souza
February 2013
4 posts
The Fundamental Ultimate Mystery
“Really, the fundamental ultimate mystery - the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets, is this: that for outside there is an inside, and for inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together. There is in other words a secret conspiracy, between ALL insides and ALL outsides, and the conspiracy is this: to look as different as...
الوهج الأخضر
“انتظر حتى ترى الوهج الأخضر يتراقص …
قطًر كل روائح الكون .. قطًر عبق السراخس في المستنفعات التي خطت فيها الديناصورات منذ ملايين السنين .. قطًر رائحة عبق كليوباترا ودماء يوليوس قيصر .. قطًر البخور الذي أشعله الدراويش في ليالي القاهرة الفاطمية .. قطًر النيران التي التهمت القاهرة فيما حكوا لنا, وقطًر عبق كل غانيات باريس راقصات “الكان كان” .. قطًر كل روائح حيتان العنبر وكل أنفاس النمور...
5 tags
The Optimal Experience
“In sum, optimal experience, and the psychological conditions that make it possible, seem to be the same the world over. As our studies have suggested, the phenomenology of enjoyment has eight major components. When people reflect on how it feels when their experience is most positive, they mention at least one, and often all, of the following. First, the experience usually occurs when we...
1 tag
“Our solar system may be the liveliest thing for trillions of miles, but all the...”
– Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything.
January 2013
1 post
December 2012
3 posts
“It’s pathetic how we can’t live with the things we can’t understand. How we need...”
– Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
“Without books the development of civilization would have been impossible. They...”
– Arthur Schopenhauer
2 tags
November 2012
2 posts
3 tags
185 Billion Bits
At this point in our scientific knowledge we are on the verge of being able to estimate how much information the central nervous system is capable of processing. It seems we can manage at most seven bits of information—such as differentiated sounds, or visual stimuli, or recognizable nuances of emotion or thought—at any one time, and that the shortest time it takes to discriminate between one set...
1 tag
“This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Ya know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that … Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be. Places I...
October 2012
6 posts
1 tag
The Meaning of Life (3)
2 tags
لو كنت في مدريد
لو كنت في مدريد في رأس السنة كنا سهرنا وحدنا في حانة صغيرة ليس بها سوانا تبحث في ظلامها عن بعضها يدانا كنا شربنا الخمر في اوعية الخشب .. كنا اخترعنا - ربما - جزيرة .. أحجارها من الذهب .. أشجارها من الذهب .. تتوجين فيها اميرة لو كنت في مدريد في رأس السنة كنا راينا .. كيف في اسبانيا .. أيتها الصديقة الاثيرة تشتعل الحرائق الكبيرة .. في الأعين الكبيرة .....
إني أحلق
أطير .. أترقرق .. أتساقط .. أرفرف
في أغوار سحيقة
بعيدة المدى .. بطيئة الصدى
أتمازج مع أطياف الأثير
أختفي .. أظهر .. أختفي .. وأعاود الظهور مرة أخرى
إني أحلق
أطير .. أترقرق .. أتساقط .. أرفرف
في أغوار سحيقة
image: optimisto
2 tags
Felix Baumgartner
“If you look at the big picture, in human being we all have to fight against our own fears, we all have to setup a goal, which is hard to accomplish, and as soon as you reach this goal you are so much more alive .. Its like: I never thought I could do it but I did .. This is what makes life interesting; if there is no goal left, what you goona do?” - Felix Baumgartner
4 tags
On Poetry
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, “O me! O life!… of...
3 tags
“The whole universe consists of a cosmic self playing hide-and-seek (Lila),...”
– Alan Watts
September 2012
1 post
2 tags
“If the average is in the middle of the data, how is it possible for everyone to...”
– John Cannell
July 2012
4 posts
2 tags
3 tags
1 tag
May 2012
8 posts
2 tags
“You don’t know how lucky you are being a monkey. Because consciousness is a terrible curse. I think. I feel. I suffer.” - Being John Malkovich, 1999
2 tags
“Self-help movement is existentialism for the masses.”
– i
The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon… I want to know if...
1 tag
“The human condition is nauseating; education kills curiosity, marriage kills...”
– i
1 tag
Why Mysticism Matters
Have you ever had a mystical experience? Wikipedia defines “mysticism” as “the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, or levels of being, or aspects of reality, beyond normal human perception, including experience of and even communion with a supreme being.”
I had my first mystical experience when I was a 16-year-old secular atheist. I was sitting up...
1 tag
“Do you think a hen is ordinary? Well, imagine you were a lone spaceman...”
– Jostein Gaarder, Hello? Is anybody There?
“Memory’s unreliable. Memory’s not perfect. It’s not even that good. Ask the police, eyewitness testimony is unreliable. The cops don’t catch a killer by sitting around remembering stuff. They collect facts, make notes, draw conclusions. Facts, not memories: that’s how you investigate. Memory can change the shape of a room or the color of a car. It’s an...
“إن الصلة غير مقطوعة بين المادة الحية والميتة .. العالم متدامج في وحدة ومنبثق من...”
– مصطفى محمود, لغز الموت
April 2012
3 posts
2 tags
“Weltschmerz. it’s the depression you feel when the world as it is does not...”
– David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson
2 tags
2 tags
“Much is to be gained from eBooks: ease, connivence, and portability. But...”
– Chip Kidd
February 2012
3 posts
3 tags
“There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The...”
– David Eagleman, Sum
1 tag
“Bacon, writing at the down of modern science, argued that experimenters...”
– Timothy Ferris
3 tags
“Sir Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize-winning poet, once said, “I have on my...”
– Robert W. Youngs
January 2012
2 posts
2 tags
“The unexamined self that examines the unexamined life is not worth being.”
– i
3 tags
“The whole point of reading for enlightenment is not the number of books you read...”
– Mortimer Adler
December 2011
1 post
4 tags
Unbalanced Life
“it’s not for lack of love of the language that these films [ Qatsi trilogy ] have no words. It’s because, from my point of view, our language is in a state of vast humiliation. It no longer describes the world in which we live.”
— Godfrey Reggio
November 2011
11 posts
3 tags
“Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful...”
– George Orwell
4 tags
“The final reason that I have identified for the growing recognition of GTD is...”
– Making It All work, David Allen
1 tag
“The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we recognize that we ought...”
– The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin 