Here’s some of the things I’ve Saved in my RSS reader over the last few days. If you have a few minutes to kill, these links should fit the bill.
- The Online Photographer – A Gift Waiting at Every Corner: Notes from a Life in Photography
A great article about a career photographer’s life, and how they approach photography.I have embraced photojournalism as a means to communicate, provoke, and inspire, as well as to document history. I have employed the camera as a voice with which I can shout out about injustice while affirming what is beautiful and good. My body and soul have been exposed to many dimensions of the human condition, from its most glorious to its most wretched.
- A Basic Introduction to Singularity Skepticism
An article linked to by Brian Lamb in del.icio.us. A great overview of singularity hype/counterhype, and how to lie with selective data in graphs. - How to open your mind? (via David Gillespie)
Aside from drugs and sex what activities would you recommend for a girl in her twenties with an interest in mind-expansion?
Get a passport. Use it as often as possible. Read. Books, that is. Ones without pictures. Surround yourself with brilliant and fascinating people. Say yes whenever you can, except to religion and authority. Create things. Fall in and out of love. Never forget that you will die one day. - Someone’s stalled again.
Brian Lamb’s thoughts on the depressing state of government and national pride in Canada. - xkcd: mourning a server admin
- Bruce Schneier on newsworthiness and fear (via Marco Arment)
I tell people that if it’s in the news, don’t worry about it. The very definition of ‘news’ is ‘something that hardly ever happens.’ It’s when something isn’t in the news, when it’s so common that it’s no longer news — car crashes, domestic violence — that you should start worrying.
— Bruce Schneier (via charliepark) - Our true north strong and free. Canada is awesome. Via BoingBoing.
Last month, homeless people started showing up in droves in towns 100 miles or so outside of Vancouver. They had been given one-way bus tickets and were forced onto the busses. Local shelters in those communities have been completely overloaded. All so that the world can see a shiny and clean (and totally false) version of our city.
- The mayor of New York City on September 11, 2001 seems to have forgotten something. via BoingBoing
We have had no domestic attacks under Bush; we’ve had one under Obama.
- Rudy Giuliani - FlickrBlog points to some awesome photos taken in Korea after WWII
- How to enjoy winter biking. Because it’s awesome, when it’s not -30˚C and buried under a couple feet of snow.
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My thoughts to stuff that interests you:
- Photography is awesome and so is every other sort of art one can create, it is in many ways eternal and meaningful to create — more so than anything else one can do with their time.
- Political grief is only remedied through action, when everything is on the table. But more importantly, one must spend many, many hours of “free” time and even take risks in order to accomplish the smallest political goals, the smallest goals aggregate to the larger ones. There is no efficient way of accomplishing political goals.
- If society in itself is seen as an artistic expression, then it is a picture that we all must paint. If we take our brushes off of the canvas, then other people (people in power) will paint our reality for us… that’s one of the main reasons that religion is not necessarily a good thing and the society we live in looks so ugly. However, also note that if one controls the canvas, then one can control what can be painted. Making the process of painting more efficient will not change the picture (talking to Lessig here).
- Hypocrisy is endemic in our society at all levels, especially in us when we criticize while at the same time failing to act — so either get involved or stop criticizing?
- The Olympics are a business.
- An open and a curious mind is a troubling thing, at least initially… so beware of what you seek…
- Human beings don’t have the drives necessary to thrive in the singularity.
- I hope one day we learn what it means to be concious. Our society has made us unconscious… and as our society itself is quickly becoming humanity as a whole.
great summary! more carefully constructed than the summary I had in my head (esp. wrt. the olympics-as-business and hypocrisy stuff). Maybe I’ll just focus on photography…