Eyes Wide Open

George MacDonald, Lilith:

Whose work is it but your own to open your eyes? But indeed the business of the universe is to make such a fool out of you that you will know yourself for one, and begin to be wise.

A Teleological Notion

Communication over distances has advanced from writing letters, through the development of the telegraph and telephone, to now simply speaking a text message into the ubiquitous smartphone.

Entertainment once involved traveling to a theater for a play or a movie, still later traveling to the local video store, whereas now streaming video is available wherever one happens to be.

It seems that the inexorable end of this technological society is to do everything possible without requiring any movement.

Iron Law of Bureaucracy

Jerry Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. In all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

My Writing Process

I get in close, I spit and shine
   I agonize on every word
I never take that one step back
   To see I’m polishing a turd

Sehnsucht

In the shallows
   I stand

The slight current of the river
   a subtle reminder of a place I have never been

Where the flow is swift and wild
   and I long to be caught up

In the deepness
   of you

The Last Minute

If it wasn't for the last minute, I wouldn't even know that there was something that needed to be done.

Vita Brevis

Piet Hein, Grooks:

A lifetime
   is more
   than
   sufficiently long
for people to get what there is of it
   wrong.

What Do You Care What Other People Think?

For some people, it would be instructive to know what others think of them, because they think too much of themselves; for another set of people, because they think too little of themselves.

(For my sort of people, knowing what others think would likely paralyze us into absolute inaction.)

Parting Words of the Sage

The following quote is from an fantasy novel written in the late nineteenth century by William Morris, an author who inspired both J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. This is something that I hope to be able to say at the end of my life to the people that I love.

William Morris, The Well at the World's End:

Here then is the end of my journey with you;
and ye wot all that I can tell you,
and I can say no word more save to bid you
cast all fear aside and thrive.

ye wot = you know

Automaton (1999)

This is the sort of doggerel that results from a cold evening curled up in a comfy throw, with a cup of tea and an artificial intelligence textbook.

The very best and brightest minds
    With care they study our behavior
Searching out each taste and whim
    Eager, plotting every flavor

Uncovering what makes us tick
    The minute gears that rub and grind
Inching ever closer to
    Idealized, artificial minds

Intelligent, to serve our needs
    Mass-produced, because we can
Machine, now soul, created by
    The hand of soulless man

Urgent

Max Barry, Company:

[Her] main job is to transform routine tasks into urgent ones by concealing their existence until the last possible moment.

There seem to be a lot of these people around.

The Cage

Our modern lives bring to mind a pacing tiger in a cage:  Potential power—and beauty—in carefully proscribed movement, going nowhere. But we hold the key to the cage. What would happen if we decided not to live our lives in captivity?

Secret to Long Life

Should I reach advanced age, I feel that it is my principal duty to, when asked the secret of my longevity, attribute it to my worst habit.

All Things to All Men

Jacques Ellul, The Ethics of Freedom:

Modern protestants are in the main prepared to be all things to all men, like St. Paul, but unfortunately this is not in order that they may save some but in order that they may be like all men.

In the inspired words of Terry Scott Taylor, from Dr. Edward Daniel Taylor's Miracle Faith Prickly Heat Telethon of Love:

And now here they are, the all Christian female mud-wrestling missionaries, Prickly Heat International's own Sister Sludge and the Mudhoneys, to perform interpretative mud-wrestling accompanied by a Prickly University Racially Integrated Singers and Orchestras, to perform one of the great hymns of the faith, Big Guns.

The Natural Environs of the Useless

There's no place like
   bureaucracy
to hide a
   mediocrity.

A Word To The Wise

Piet Hein, Grooks:

Let the world pass in its time-ridden race;
   never get caught in its snare.
Remember, the only acceptable case
for being in any particular place
   is having no business there.

Loneliness

Loneliness is at its most intense in crowded places.

On Learning

Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition:

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learnéd usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

So many people behave as if learning ought to be confined to a carefully circumscribed period of life, including many highly-credentialed and otherwise intelligent people. This has always seemed very odd to me (except perhaps during finals).

Memorandum

Our operating policy
   (borne out in practice too):
Never use a whole ass
   when half-an-ass will do.

Dedicated to artificial deadlines and the automatic responses they engender in project managers.

A Good Day

Rosemary Sutcliff, Sword at Sunset:

The day that followed was a good day; one of those days that do not greatly matter in the pattern of things, but linger, comely-shaped and clear-colored in the memory when the days of splendor and disaster have become confused.