| Straight Dope | 29. Dec 2011 @ 16:11 |
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It's just that, to paraphrase musical philosopher Dan Hicks, you can't miss it if it won't go away. Nostalgia, like Rice Chex, antacid tablets, and Dan Rather, is a product of modern urban industrial society, which is continually assaulted by change (AKA progress, for the optimists among us) and where most people have lost their sense of connection to the land. In a traditional agricultural society there's nothing to get nostalgic about, since you're still living on the land and yesterday was pretty much the same as today.
// http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2630/we-get-nostalgic-for-victorian-christmases-what-did-victorians-get-nostalgic-for
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| a sobering thought | 11. Dec 2011 @ 10:18 |
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Because there is so little opportunity for intimacy in daily life, and because some forms of intimacy (especially if intense) are psychologycally impossible for most people, the bulk of the time in serious social life is taken up with playing games.
Hence games are both necessary and desirable, and the only problem at issue is whether the games played by an individual offer the best yield for him.
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| Drusku ārpus intervijas kopējā konteksta, bet tāpēc jo jaukāk | 8. Sep 2011 @ 19:33 |
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Man nepatīk Augusts Strindbergs. To es saku gadu pirms viņa nāves simtgades, un es droši vien esmu vienīgais zviedrs, kas to saka, bet man liekas, ka viņš nav pieaudzis cilvēks. Strindbergs nemitīgi norāda uz to, ka dzīve ir briesmīga. Bet mēs to jau zinām. Jautājums ir — ko tu taisies šai sakarā darīt, August?
// No "Ir" intervijas ar zviedru diplomātu Larsu Fredēnu, "pirmo Rietumu diplomātu Rīgā pēc 1940.gada".
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Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense. The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write.
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| talk about averages | 31. Maijs 2011 @ 21:00 |
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The average human being isn't flexible enough to fellate themselves. That's why we have personality tests.
// via cracked
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| » irregulārie verbi |
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I need you, thought Smiley, watching him gyrate. I love you, I hate you, I need you. Such apocalyptic statements reminded him of Ann [...]. The heart of the sentence is the subject, he thought. It is not the verb, least of all the object. It is the ego, demanding its feed.
28. Maijs 2011 @ 16:33
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| » The God Conspiracy |
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Izskatās, ka cilvēkiem piemīt vispārīga psiholoģiska tendence uzskatīt, ka nozīmīgam milzu notikumam par iemeslu arī jābūt kaut kam tikpat lielam, nozīmīgam vai spēcīgam. Taču bieži vien piedāvātie izskaidrojumi nesaskan ar priekšstatu par kaut ko "nozīmīgu" — piemēram, publiskas figūras nāve vientuļa vājprātīga šāvēja vai traģiska negadījuma dēļ. Līdz ar to cilvēki bieži izvēlas ticēt sazvērestības teorijām, kuras sniedz nozīmīgu iemeslu. // http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8HsoiYypJY
1. Maijs 2011 @ 21:30
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| » Meow! |
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I lay with my stomach on the windowsill in a trance-like state, watching the unfortunate tomcat Basil wandering about the oak, now to the left and then to the right, muttering, coughing, meowing and mooing, standing on all fours in his efforts — in a word, suffering endlessly. The range of his knowledge was truly grandiose. He did not know a single tale or song more than halfway, but to make up for this, his repertoire included Russian, Ukrainian, West Slavic, German, English — I think even Japanese, Chinese, and African — fairy tales, legends, sermons, ballads, songs, romances, ditties and refrains.
The misfunction drove him into such rage that several times he flung himself at the oak, ripping its bark with his claws, hissing and spitting while his eyes glowed with an infernal gleam and his furry tail, thick as a log, would now point at the zenith, then twitch spasmodically, then lash his sides. But the only song he carried to the end was "Chizhik Pizhik," and the only fairy tale he recounted coherently to the end was "The House that Jack Built" in Marshak translation, and even that with several excisions.
23. Feb 2011 @ 16:22
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| » Annals of Psychology |
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There’s a debate in our culture about what really makes us happy, which is summarized by, on the one hand, the book “On the Road” and, on the other, the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The former celebrates the life of freedom and adventure. The latter celebrates roots and connections. Research over the past thirty years makes it clear that what the inner mind really wants is connection. “It’s a Wonderful Life” was right. Joining a group that meets just once a month produces the same increase in happiness as doubling your income. According to research by Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, and others, the daily activities most closely associated with happiness are social—having sex, socializing after work, and having dinner with friends. Many of the professions that correlate most closely with happiness are also social—a corporate manager, a hairdresser.
// Social Animal, D.Brooks, "New Yorker".
16. Jan 2011 @ 12:59
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| » qotd |
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Glenda enjoyed her job. She didn't have a career; they were for people who couldn't hold down jobs.
// TP, Unseen Academicals
7. Jan 2011 @ 09:06
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| » I'll never say the word again |
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Surowiecki’s thoughtful summation: “[I]t might be useful to think about two kinds of procrastination: the kind that is genuinely akratic and the kind that’s telling you that what you’re supposed to be doing has, deep down, no real point. The procrastinator’s challenge, and perhaps the philosopher’s, too, is to figure out which is which.”
11. Okt 2010 @ 01:45
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| » (No Subject) |
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Kā ikviens rakstnieks, viņš gan vērtēja citus pēc to paveiktā, taču vēlējās, lai viņu pašu novērtē atbilstoši viņa iecerēm un plāniem.
// Borhess, Apslēptais brīnums.
2. Sep 2010 @ 23:33
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| » Ideālais veikals |
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// via ![[info]](http://klab.lv/img/userinfo.gif) khehe
19. Aug 2010 @ 09:49
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| » * * * |
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//via New Yorker
20. Jul 2010 @ 12:39
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| » qotd |
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Ja tie cilvēki, kas uz ielām vāc ziedojumus, tā vietā strādātu algotu darbu, gluži iespējams, ka viņi no savas nopelnītās naudas katru dienu varētu paši ziedot vairāk, nekā spēj savākt no citiem. // by src
Bet, redz, TAS atkal diez vai kādam ietu pie sirds.
27. Maijs 2010 @ 21:44
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| » Che che |
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20. Maijs 2010 @ 10:38
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| » qotd |
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Gudri izrunājas, bet pašam baļķis acī tik liels, ka brilles krīt nost! // © jim
8. Maijs 2010 @ 18:22
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| » Visions of Future |
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When light hits our retina, what our brains would like to do is instantaneously generate a perception of what the world looks like. Alas, our brain can’t do this instantaneously. Our brains are slow. It takes around a tenth of a second for your perception to be built, and that’s a long time when you’re moving about. If you perceived the world the way it was when light hit your eye, you’d be having a tenth-of-a-second old view of the world.
Because of this, visual systems have evolved mechanisms to try to generate a perception not of the way the world was when light hit the eye, but generate a perception of the way the world will be by the time the perception occurs in a tenth of a second. By the time the perception is elicited, the anticipated future will have arisen, and the perception will be of the present. That is, in order to perceive the present (have perceptions at time t that are of the world at time t), our visual systems must anticipate the near-future.
// Neuronarrative
6. Maijs 2010 @ 08:15
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| » Esi vienā vecumā ar valsti? |
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To vajadzētu novērtēt kādam antropologam, bet, manuprāt, tas skaidrojams ar Latvijas sabiedrības brieduma pakāpi. Divdesmit gados ir sasniegta valstiska mēroga pubertāte, un šobrīd stilīgi skaitās žēlošanās par dzīvi, kas totāli iesūkā, naids pret jebkāda veida varu un autoritātēm, vēlēšanās mainīt pasauli un nemitīgi sevis identifikācijas meklējumi.
// http://www.satori.lv/blogs/12/Nils_Sakss/6051
5. Maijs 2010 @ 22:28
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