Lapidarium

" “All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:10:19 +0200

“” “All opinions are not equal. Some are a very great deal more robust, sophisticated and well supported in logic and argument than others.” “”

- Douglas Adams, English writer and dramatist (1952-2001), The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time (2002)

" “There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:10:00 +0200

“” “There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.” “”

- Douglas Adams, English writer and dramatist (1952-2001), in a Speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge, UK, (1998)

" “For Children: You will need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg...."

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:09:46 +0200

“” “For Children: You will need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It’s quite a simple difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week, whereas a fried egg comes out of a chicken. Like most things, of course, it isn’t quite that simple. The fried egg isn’t properly a fried egg until it’s been put in a frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn’t do to a Friday, of course, though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a Thursday, if you like, or on a cooker. It’s all rather complicated, but it makes a kind of sense if you think about it for a while.” “”

- Douglas Adams, English writer and dramatist (1952-2001), The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time (2002)

"Silence“Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?”—..."

Thu, 02 May 2013 01:05:00 +0200

“

Silence

“Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?”
— Lawrence Durrell, Justine (The Alexandria Quartet)

“Through past experience I had become familiar with many different types and levels of silence.

There is a silence within, a silence that descends from without; a silence that stills existence and a silence that engulfs the entire universe. There is a silence of the self and its faculties of will, thought, memory, and emotions. There is a silence in which there is nothing, a silence in which there is something; and finally, there is the silence of no-self (…).

If there was any path on which I could chart my contemplative experiences, it would be this ever-expanding and deepening path of silence.”

— Bernadette Roberts, from The Experience of No-Self posted in the TAT Forum Newsletter, May 2013 (via Markings) Photo source

John Cage about silence

— John Cage was an American composer, music theorist and artist (1912-1992)”

" “Today’s news consists of aggregates of fragments. Anyone who has taken part in any event..."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:37:34 +0200

“” “Today’s news consists of aggregates of fragments. Anyone who has taken part in any event that has subsequently appeared in the news is aware of the gross disparity between the actual and the reported events. We also learn frequently of prefabricated and prevaricated evens of a complex nature purportedly undertaken for the purposes wither of suppressing or rigging the news, which in turn perverts humanity’s tactical information resources. All history becomes suspect. Probably our most polluted resource is the tactical information to which humanity spontaneously reflexes.” “”

- Buckminster Fuller, an American engineer, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist (1895-1983), Synergetics, Macmillan, 1975.

" “A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself.” "

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:37:13 +0200

“” “A physicist is an attempt by an atom to understand itself.” “”

- Michio Kaku, an American theoretical physicist, a futurist, and popularizer of science, Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos, Doubleday, 2004.

Nature Boy There was a boy A very strange, enchanted boy They...

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:37:00 +0200

Nature Boy

There was a boy
A very strange, enchanted boy
They say he wandered very far
Very far, over land and sea
A little shy and sad of eye
But very wise was he

And then one day,
One magic day he passed my way
While we spoke of many things
Fools and Kings
This he said to me

The greatest thing you’ll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return.

— Eden Ahbez, was an American songwriter and recording artist of the 1940s–1960s, whose lifestyle in California was influential on the hippie movement (1908-1995), Nature Boy (1947) performed by Nat King Cole.

" “A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the..."

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 23:38:40 +0200

“
“A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish - but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.” “”

- Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist (1899-1977), Laughter in the Dark, Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1932
Photo: Vladimir Nabokov looking out of car window. He likes to work in the car, writing on index cards. - LIFE (Ithaca State, NY, 1958)

" “We think not in words but in shadows of words.” "

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 23:38:28 +0200

“” “We think not in words but in shadows of words.” “”

- Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist (1899-1977), Strong Opinions, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Feb 16, 2011.

" Colored Plates - Synergetics - R. Buckminster Fuller. Written by Robert W. Gray, Summer..."

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:32:03 +0200

“ Colored Plates - Synergetics - R. Buckminster Fuller. Written by Robert W. Gray, Summer 1997

“Up to the Twentieth Century, reality was everything humans could touch, smell, see, and hear. Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality. Ninety-nine percent of all that is going to affect our tomorrows is being developed by humans using instruments and working in ranges of reality that are nonhumanly sensible.” “”

- Buckminster Fuller, an American engineer, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist (1895-1983), R. Buckminster Fuller on Education, University of Massachusetts Press, 1979, p. 130.

" “Dare to be naïve.” "

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:31:25 +0200

“” “Dare to be naïve.” “”

- Buckminster Fuller, an American engineer, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist (1895-1983), Motto of R. Buckminster Fuller; used in many of his speeches and writings, including Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking 1975

" “Relativity is inherently convergent, though convergent toward a plurality of centers of..."

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 00:31:09 +0200

“ “Relativity is inherently convergent, though convergent toward a plurality of centers of abstract truths. Degrees of accuracy are only degrees of refinement and magnitude in no way affects the fundamental reliability, which refers, as directional or angular sense, toward centralized truths. Truth is a relationship.” “”

- Buckminster Fuller, an American engineer, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist (1895-1983), “The Designers and the Politicians” (1962), later published in Ideas and Integrities : A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure (1969), p. 233, and The The Buckminster Fuller Reader (1970), p. 305.

"We say release, and radiance, and roses, and echo upon everything that’s known; and yet,..."

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 01:31:00 +0200

“We say release, and radiance, and roses,
and echo upon everything that’s known;
and yet, behind the world our names enclose is
the nameless: our true archetype and home.
(…)

We grow up; but the world remains a child.
Star and flower, in silence, watch us go.
And sometimes we appear to be the final
exam they must succeed on. And they do.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke, was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist. Rilke is “widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets,” (1875-1926), Selected Poems, translation by Stephen Mitchell

" “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model..."

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 22:26:00 +0200

“
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” “”

- Buckminster Fuller, an American engineer, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor, and futurist (1895-1983)

"An abstract gets close scrutiny At the San Francisco Museum of Art (taken before 1975, Life..."

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:39:28 +0200

“

An abstract gets close scrutiny

At the San Francisco Museum of Art (taken before 1975, Life Magazine)
“What I think is so interesting about this photograph is the way that the girls are responding to the space of the modern art gallery: they are not merely ignoring the art on the walls, but literally looking beyond those walls. It is not a quick glance or sneaky peek, either. This is intense, curious looking that requires them to physically crouch down and brace themselves against the grate in order to get the closest possible view through the vent. The square grid-like vent seems congruous with the canvasses of the modern art gallery, and the children are inspired to look beyond the surface of lines and shapes. (…)

As Clement Greenberg, that stalwart champion of abstract expressionism, once said: “To hold that one kind of art must invariably be superior or inferior to another kind means to judge before experiencing; and the whole history of art is there to demonstrate the futility of rules of preference laid down beforehand: the impossibility, that is, of anticipating the outcome of aesthetic experience.” (From his Art and Culture (Boston: Beacon, 1961), pp. 133).

So, the girls might not be looking at the abstract art on the gallery walls, but who is to say that their examination of whatever lay beyond that vent is any less of a valid aesthetic experience?” “”

- The Museum of Ridiculously Interesting Things, 22 Dec 2012.

" “Most people aren’t trained to want to face the process of re-understanding a subject they already..."

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 23:34:44 +0200

“” “Most people aren’t trained to want to face the process of re-understanding a subject they already know. One must obtain not just literacy, but deep involvement and re-understanding.” “”

- Charles Eames, American designer, who worked in and made major contributions to modern architecture and furniture (1907–1978), cited in Charles Eames in 15 Quotes for His 105th Birthday

" “That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.” "

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 23:01:15 +0200

“” “That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.” “”

- Haruki Murakami, Japanese writer and translator, 1Q84, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011

" “When man took to his bed the Computer, there was great rejoicing, and great fear too, for..."

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 19:26:23 +0200

“” “When man took to his bed the Computer, there was great rejoicing, and great fear too, for their children were almost like gods. The mainbrains bestrode the galaxy at will, and changed its very face. The Silicon God, The Solid State Entity, Al Squared, Enth Generation - their names are many. And there were the Carked and Symbionts, whose daughters were the Neurosingers, Warrior-Poets, the Neurologicians and the Pilots of the Order of Mystic Mathematicians.” “”

- David Zindell, American author known for science fiction and fantasy epics, The Broken God, Spectra, 1992 (tnx wildcat2030)

— David Macaulay, British-born American illustrator and writer, Baaa, Sandpiper, 1985.

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 01:38:02 +0200

— David Macaulay, British-born American illustrator and writer, Baaa, Sandpiper, 1985.

" “Wrong solitude vinegars the soul, right solitude oils it. How fragile we are, between the..."

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:45:05 +0100

“” “Wrong solitude vinegars the soul,
right solitude oils it.

How fragile we are, between the few good moments.” “”

- Jane Hirshfield is an American poet, Vinegar and Oil