Friday 30 November 2007

Marriage - Minimalist, Female

Cute minimalist take on marriage from a female perspective: http://www.chloroformity.com/archives/000037.html

Bardo

http://www.poems.com/poem.php?date=13848


Bardo

Dangerously frail is what his hand was like
when he showed up at our house,
three or four days after his death,
and stood at the foot of our bed.

Though we had expected him to appear
in some form, it was odd, the clarity
and precise decrepitude of his condition,
and how his hand, frail as it was,

lifted me from behind my head, up from the pillow,
so that no longer could I claim it was a dream,
nor deny that what your father wanted,
even with you sleeping next to me,

was to kiss me on the lips.
There was no refusing his anointing me
with what I was meant to bear of him
from where he was, present in the world,

a document loose from the archives
of form—not spectral, not corporeal—
in transit, though not between lives or bodies:
those lips on mine, then mine on yours.


Michael Collier

Dark Wild Realm
Mariner Books



Dedicated to the memory of Ben Branch.


Wednesday 28 November 2007

Emotional Job Committment

Even though there have been heaps of issues about what has happened in the business, you are still rather emotionally committed to the job that you first got there.  Do you think that it is something that is universal, or just peculiar to you, or just peculiar to the situation that you find yourself in now, for this particular circumstance?  Are there some people born or generated (it is probably way more environmental than it is biological/genetic) that really invest emotional energy in what they are doing and whether they do well or not (achieve or succeed or not), as opposed to other people who really couldn't care less (in Australia, we say "Couldn't give a rat's arse").

 

Or maybe it is just varying threshold levels for this type of commitment and attachment, to differing situations.

If you were a true Buddhist, you would simply acknowledge that the ultimate goal is non-attachment, and that one would let go all the mental accoutrements of the job, the people, the circumstance and simply move through life.

Still interested to see how a Buddhist monk would run your job.

 

Tuesday 27 November 2007

Stupidity and intelligence

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

  - Bertrand Russell

Blogging

The post below may indicate the actual raison d'etre of blogs.

They may never have been "money making" exercises, but rather, different forms of communication which have some relationship to what constitutes income (for a person or an organisation), but, yet, more importantly, are a type of general communication satisfying a human need ("I need to express myself" - some how, some way).  It is probably the circumstance that blogs were never designed to be "monetized" (as the crass terminology goes) and that Scott is just being aware that he was pushing against the "natural order" of what blogs were/are about.

It appears, from what has been indicated at the end of the blog, that Scott is planning to "revert" to the "I need to express myself freely" model for his blog.

And, maybe not so coincidentally, spend some more time on real life!!


From Scott Adams' DIlbert Blog on 26 November 2007:

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/11/going-forward.html

Going Forward


I've decided to blog less. I posted daily (mostly) for two years, with the theory that my efforts would be compensated in four ways.

1. Advertising dollars
2. Compiling the best posts into a book.
3. Growing the audience for Dilbert
4. Artistic satisfaction.

Readership of The Dilbert Blog is growing rapidly, but at about the same rate people figure out how to use RSS feeds to get the content without the ads. So there's no longer a correlation between how hard I work and the ad income I earn. It topped out at "trivial," even while the audience grew to substantial.

My book based on the blog posts, STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN! got great reviews for content, but angry reactions in people who feel that other people, who didn't read the content on the Internet, and never will, should not buy the book, to protect the rights of the people who already read it on the Internet, and might want to read it again for free sometime. You win.

I hoped that people who loved the blog would spill over to people who read Dilbert, and make my flagship product stronger. Instead, I found that if I wrote nine highly popular posts, and one that a reader disagreed with, the reaction was inevitably "I can never read Dilbert again because of what you wrote in that one post." Every blog post reduced my income, even if 90% of the readers loved it. And a startling number of readers couldn't tell when I was serious or kidding, so most of the negative reactions were based on misperceptions.

Lastly, the blog has been a source of tremendous artistic satisfaction. I enjoyed being relatively uncensored, and interacting with the readers on fun topics. That's why I will continue blogging, albeit less controversially. I'll just do it less often, especially over the holidays. It's hard to tell the family I can't spend time with them because I need to create free content on the Internet that will lower our income.

Try www.reader.google.com to see blog posts without the ads.

Monday 26 November 2007

Excerpt from Steve Jobs' Commencement Speech at Stanford

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept. No one wants to die, even people who want to go to Heaven don't want to die to get there, and yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it's quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

 

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stuart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late Sixties, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. it was sort of like Google in paperback form thirty-five years before Google came along. I was idealistic, overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stuart and his team put out several issues of the The Whole Earth Catalogue, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-Seventies and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath were the words, "Stay hungry, stay foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. "Stay hungry, stay foolish." And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

 

http://www.scribd.com/doc/1313/Steve-Jobss-Commencement-Speech-at-Stanford

Just Do It!

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

-- Mark Twain


In bed my real love has always been the sleep that rescued me by allowing me to dream.

-- Luigi Pirandello


Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

-- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
-- T. S. Elliot


All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
-- Buddha


Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson


If you don't go after what you want, you'll never have it. If you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you don't step forward, you're always in the same place.
-- Nora Roberts

Work and Life

"A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened."
-- Albert Camus

"Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route."
-- Albert Camus

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life."
-- Albert Camus


It is neither wealth nor splendor; but tranquillity and occupation which give happiness.
-- Jefferson, Thomas

Be strong and courageous, and do the work.
-- Chronicles 28:20


Time Off

Well, back at work. Had a wonderful time at Rotto - the view was magnificent - and did some writing. All good!

Wednesday 14 November 2007

Passed Like Strangers

For twenty seven years
I've always sought the Way.
Well, this morning we passed
Like strangers on the road.

- Kokuin (10th century)

Tuesday 13 November 2007

The Murderous Haunt of Impermanence

The world is unstable, like a house on fire. This is not a place where you stay long. The murderous haunt of impermanence comes upon you in a flash, no matter whether you are rich or poor, old or young. If you want to be no different from a Zen master or a buddha, just do not seek outwardly.

- Lin Chi (d 867?)

Friday 9 November 2007

Arranging My Beard

Look at how our heads and feet
Are capped and shod without a second thought.
It is like the man who had a long beard,
But did not anguish at its length
Until one day someone asked him
How he arranged it when he went to bed.
First he put it inside, then outside the coverlet,
The whole night he spent looking for the best position.
And tossed and turned until the dawn of day.
In the end he wanted only to chop it off!
Although this fable is light and humorous,
Still it contains a much deeper meaning.
When I asked the dharma master about this,
He gave a smile and nodded his assent.

- Su Shih (1073)

Balanced Enlightenment

Oh, and finally got some of my balanced enlightenment back

Doppelgangers

Yeah, I had seen this in the past - really have wanted to load it up and enjoy but ... all these other things to do - what I really need is a proper Doppelganger (didn't bother with the umlaut) - one that I can give instructions to - broadly speaking - and let it go and experience - and as its experiences happen they are duplicated/replicated into my consciousness as well.

And why just stop at one extra - why not a whole platoon of doppelgangers, all acting independently yet synchronously, with direction.

Interesting to contemplate how one would process the mass of overlapping and interacting thought/consciousness streams - both in real-time and with post-processing (dreams may come into play to assist here).

Needs some excellent sci-fi writer with a serious background in neuroscience and psychology to piece this all together!

Wednesday 7 November 2007

did muenchen munch the big one?

I had a late evening working yesterday - well late for me for this job (6:45pm) - I am making a concerted effort NOT to put in long hours and additional work when:
(1) I won't get paid for it, and
(2) I won't be appreciated for it; and
(3) it really won't make a difference anyway
(there are so many other people around who don't get things done and everything depends on everything and everyone else in a complex web of interaction, so in most instances, everything you do is "diluted" (so to speak) by everything else around you).

The only reason to do the extra work is for personal satisfaction and fulfilling one's own sense of achievement and worth - for whatever that is worth. When I was younger, I had a great belief in the efficacy of my own work, in that if I put in lots of hours and much effort, then good things would come of it.

In a way that is true - good things have come of it - but not in the manner that one would have thought nor dreamt of - and maybe not in the manner of reward commensurate with the perceived effort (at the least from the long vantage of aged distance). Hence, the current attitude. One wonders what that will mean for the "payoff" in the future?

Tuesday 6 November 2007

repeat the same routines for myriad eons

Make no mistake about it; if you do not find it now, you will repeat the same routines for myriad eons, a thousand times over again, following and picking up on objects that attract you.

We are no different from Shakyamuni Buddha.

Today, in your various activities, what do you lack?

The spiritual light coursing through your six senses has never been interrupted. If you can see in this way, you will simply be free of burdens all your life.

- Lin Chi (d 867?)