lightning strikes twice

An interesting essay by Paul Graham on “What You’ll Wish You’d Known”, directed at high school students.

It says probably the most important thing to cultivate in your person is curiosity and that discipline is actually not all that necessary to do great things.

You know I love basketball, so this was sure to cross my radar: Dog Relieves Himself, Delays Magic Game

Weltschmerz – Sadness over the evils of the world, especially as an expression of romantic pessimism.

Arghghgh, the new JBs are HOT!

The new Mac mini will retail for $799 in Australia, but doesn’t that seem like a slightly excessive markup considering the US price is $499? Couldn’t they have done it for $699 or $749 instead?

from Dave Pollard

“with its powerful visual appeal in the broadcast media, the tsunami that killed 150,000 has been enormous news for weeks, yet the fact that 4,500,000 children die every year from obsolete diseases due to lack of access to inexpensive medicines that could prevent and treat them, has received almost no attention in the broadcast media.”

via jwz

Reading a book on meditation recently (‘Happy To Burn’ – Roger Wells), a particular viewpoint struck me as insightful. Wells advises: “resist the urge to talk too much about meditation” and “it is best not to talk about meditation … Just do it.”

This appears the opposite of what the evangelical styles of religion are all about, which lead me to think about what affect evangelism has had on western society. Can we say the ancestor of modern marketing and by extension consumerism is religious evangelism? It’s an amusing thought that part of the current “moral decay” of western society could be caused by the religious fervor that promotes the same morals.

Deckard – a ‘Blade Runner’ – is forced from retirement to track down rogue replicants who have returned from Off World. At the same time he finds himself falling in love with a replicant who has only just learned her true nature.

Replicants are humanoid robots created by the Tyrell Corporation, and they are ‘more human than humans’. They have a limited life span, which is where the tension in the film originates. The replicants want to live, but the humans cannot allow them to.

The world created in this film is fantastic. Highlights include the Tyrell Corporation building, and the attention to the dark, bleak feeling of the sets, locations and characterisations.

And the dialogue and soundtrack are also excellent. There is a lot of ’space’ in this film, particularly in the Director’s Cut, and this feeling is heightened by the often restrained interactions and synthetic tones of the score. No surprises that many techno music heavyweights namecheck this movie as inspiration.

10/10 – masterpiece. My preferred version is the Director’s Cut.

Never confuse discipline for organisation. Both are vital skills, but are manifested in completely different ways.

Discipline refers to a pattern of controlled behaviour.

Organisation refers to systems of order, function and structure.

Organisation often requires discipline, but discipline is required in many more areas than just organisation. Thus one can be organised but lack the necessary discipline in other areas.