Parables about Parabolas
I'm Noah Tye, and this is where I share the things I encounter that stick out to me. Think of it as a collection of newspaper clippings from the web. You can take a look at my own work here.
-
They that shall oppose thee in thy right courses, as it is not in their power to divert thee from thy good action, so neither let it be to divert thee from thy good affection towards them.— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
-
Two simultaneous trends in gaming: towards mobile games (Angry Birds, Triple Town) and towards art games (Fez, Braid). But the mobile games are often casual. Casual and art feel opposed to one another, because it seems hard for anything deeply meaningful to happen casually. (I use “casual” in the context of “casual gaming”, which often means games that are played for short durations and have no continuity from session to session.)
-
The discovery startled me. Joe had grown up! He had become a business executive, facing things in a mature business way. While I, carried along on the easy tide of routine and pleasantries, had remained, in a sense, a boy.
-
希望本是无所谓有，无所谓无的。这正如地上的路；其实地上本没有路，走的人多了，也便成了路。
Hope cannot be said to exist, nor can it be said to not to exist. It is just like roads across the earth. For actually the earth had no roads to begin with, but when many people pass one way, a road is made.
— 鲁迅 Lu Xun -
both seem wrong
On one hand:
- App.net
- Please Don’t Kill FeedBurner
- “I don’t understand why everybody uses Facebook.”
- Richard Stallman
- Maker Faire
- “I have personal, niche interests, and I demand that they be met.”
On the other hand:
- Twitter’s API
- Facebook’s redesigns
- Google’s Spring Cleanings
- Apple Design
- “We looked at the numbers and nobody uses it anyways.”
- “It’s okay if not everyone is satisfied, 100% satisfaction is not worth our time.”
I don’t know how the tension here will be resolved in the future.
-
“One can trace, running through many of Qianlong’s pronouncements and actions, an undercurrent—faint yet disturbing. lt is that of a man who has been praised too much and has thought too little, of someone who has played to the gallery in public life, mistaken grandeur for substance, sought confirmation and support for even routine actions, and is not really equipped to make difficult or unpopular decisions. In the midst of Qianlong’s many glories, signs of decay and even collapse were becoming apparent.”
-
-
First, we want to establish the idea that a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. Second, we believe that the essential material to be addressed by a subject at this level is not the syntax of particular programming-language constructs, nor clever algorithms for computing particular functions efficiently, nor even the mathematical analysis of algorithms and the foundations of computing, but rather the techniques used to control the intellectual complexity of large software systems.— Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
-
Standing by the lake on a jump-or-think basis, the very first spontaneous question coming to mind was, “If you put aside everything you’ve ever been asked to believe and have recourse only to your own experiences do you have any conviction arising from those experiences which either discards or must assume an a priori greater intellect than the intellect of man?” The answer was swift and positive. Experience had clearly demonstrated an a priori anticipatory and only intellectually apprehendable orderliness of interactive principles operating in the universe into which we are born. These principles are discovered but are never invented by man. I said to myself, “I have faith in the integrity of the anticipatory intellectual wisdom which we may call ‘God.’” My next question was, “Do I know best or does God know best whether I may be of any value to the integrity of universe?” The answer was, “You don’t know and no man knows, but the faith you have just established out of experience imposes recognition of the a priori wisdom of the fact of your being.” Apparently addressing myself, I said, “You do not have the right to eliminate yourself, you do not belong to you. You belong to the universe. The signifi cance of you will forever remain obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your significance if you apply yourself to converting all your experience to highest advantage of others. You and all men are here for the sake of other men.— R Buckminster Fuller, Ideas and Integrities
-
Electronics are our talismans that ward off the spiritual vacuum of modernity; gilt in Gorilla Glass and cadmium. And in them we find entertainment in lieu of happiness, and exchanges in lieu of actual connections.
