Not that I ever had I consistent posting schedule here, but this blog is going dark for some days. Perhaps for a week or two. I’m in the process of moving and won’t be having internet access until I settle at the new place. So don’t drop me from your feed reader just yet. Links and musings will be back shortly.
“I don’t do this for the money or the recognition. I do this because I was born to do it. Because I’m passionate about it. Because I feel it in my bones”.
There’s no way to prove whether or not people are born to do something. The only thing you can do is whether to believe it or not. You either believe that you are free to make choices or that your life was previously determined.
In my experience, most people that say something like the above quote, are musicians, writers, bloggers, puppeteers, and other creative types. I can’t prove whether they believe it, but it seems that some use it as crutch. Something that they’re trying to convince themselves to believe. I’m sure that artists that have been successful (recognition as well as financially) don’t need those kind of external motivations to keep doing what they do. But the successful ones don’t say it as much as the unsuccessful ones.
I have yet to find someone that says that they were born to be an accountant. I’ve never heard a real estate agent saying that he will keep selling houses even if he doesn’t get paid. “Oh, but those are just jobs”, you might say. That’s one of the problems right there with the idea that “creative jobs” are callings from God and the “non-creative” ones are a choice to pay the rent.
If you have to justify what you do with trascendental feelings of passion and destiny, your raising the bar to impossible heights. Without getting into a philosophical debate, I’m sure most people are rational and believe in free will. So if you try to convince yourself everyday that you don’t have a choice, then you don’t have a choice, and that’s not a good thing.
When you truly like doing something, you just do it. I’m sorry. It’s really that simple. It’s like breathing and bowel movements. You don’t need to think about it or justify it. But unlike bowel movements if you choose to be a writer that’s one choice out of the many choices you could have made. Sure, you have to commit to it in order to get good at it, but being committed is one thing and feeling that it’s something that you were born to do is another.
If you’re not being successful at something, no matter how much you believe that it’s something that you’ll keep on doing no matter what, that doesn’t change the fact that you’re not successful at it. You just have to work. Like an accountant or a real state agent.
He emails, his iPhone is an extension of himself [insert Borg joke here], is amazed he can find weather info in 15 seconds, is a hardcore gamer, and generally loves the internet. No Twitter though. He finds it too simplistic.
via Clusterflock
People sometimes forget that U.F.O. stands for Unidentified Flying Object and there are way more possible things that an unidentified flying object could be other than an alien spaceship. The above link has extensive explanations. Here are some:
HOAXES
That some UFO cases are simply invented by witnesses is readily proven by documented research and confessions, but it is very difficult to argue more broadly for such an explanation. Indeed, studies show that less than one in 100 cases is hoaxed – although with alien contact reports and photographic cases that percentage rises sharply. The greater the kudos and attention, the more likely a case is to be a hoax.
IFOs
After investigation, analysts agree that between 90 and 95 per cent of all UFO sightings prove to be Identified Flying Objects. Over 300 different things have been misperceived as UFOs – including a bin bag, a shaggy dog and a telegraph pole. The Null Hypotheses proposes that all of the remaining unsolved cases would become IFOs given enough study and sufficient evidence. However, statistical analysis (like that conducted by the Battelle Institute and French aerospace researchers GEPAN) has indicated differences between solved and unsolved cases that challenge this proposal.
JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES
Psychologist Carl Jung wrote an early treatise on UFOs in 1959 and saw hints that the consistent types of sighting being made matched deep-seated mythological archetypes within the human mind. The theory suggests that the disc shape favoured by UFO reports or the tall, blonde aliens and small dwarf-like beings seen by witnesses everywhere match strong subconscious motifs that power our psychosocial needs. UFOs could be a space age guise for the same phenomenon that has fuelled cross-cultural belief in myths and legends for thousands of years.
via the BB
Interesting samples and commentary by Dan Phiffer on second posts of some of the most prolific and coolest bloggers out there.
Now that we’re on the subject, my second post is one of the things -one of the many things- that I thrived to on this blog. When I read the thing I get a tinge of foolish earnestness, but I should try as hard as I did there.
via DF
If you’ve always been embarrassed about how bad you are with numbers, do yourself a favor and add this series to you’re feed reader or bookmarks. Steven Strogatz takes you through the elements of math.
I’ll be writing about the elements of mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, for anyone out there who’d like to have a second chance at the subject — but this time from an adult perspective. It’s not intended to be remedial. The goal is to give you a better feeling for what math is all about and why it’s so enthralling to those who get it.
Movies
I saw Inglorious Basterds the other day. I thought it was ok. Christoph Woltz played an absolute brilliant son of a bitch as Col Hans Landa(The Jew Hunter). Not Tarantino’s best film though. Being that Tarantino films are pop culture spit balls of movies within a movie, I missed most references in this one. Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen as much World War II movies as I’ve seen Kung Fu or crime movies.
Books
I’m reading 2666 by Roberto Bolano and following people’s impression over here and here. I’m reading the original Spanish version and it’s a little bit longer, but surprisingly I’m ahead of schedule and finished with the first part. So far so good. It has a very Lynchian ambience.
I’m also reading Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. This book could either make you insecure about your feelings about past, present, or future events or can turn you into meditation.
Music
I’ve been listening to Vampire Weekend’s Contra, though not as much as I listened to their debut. Still spiffy and quirky, but whoever produced this album didn’t give too much thought to track sequencing. It’s a slow starter.
The other one is Spoon’s Transference which makes sense because people who bought Contra bought this one. I haven’t listened to it much, but my first impression was “where are the tunes man?”. Spoon has always been kind of minimalist with their song structures, but is more monochromatic. It kind of teases you with a great chorus soon to come, but it never comes.
Other
I’m probably buying an iPhone. I’ve been in a serious need of a new phone for a while. People who sometimes call me know what I’m talking about. Let’s see what all this hoopla about mobile computing is all about.
A side by side comparison of Lost’s pilot episode and Lost season six premiere “re-pilot”.
via Fuck Yeah Lost
Nicholas Carr over at Rough Type points to a recent Pew Study that found that most bloggers today are in their 30’s and very few of them are teens or young-adults.
I remember when it was kind of cool to be a blogger. You’d walk around with a swagger in your step, a twinkle in your eye. Now it’s just humiliating. Blogging has become like mahjong or needlepoint or clipping coupons out of Walgreens circulars: something old folks do while waiting to croak.
