noun : an accumulation of loose stones or rocky debris lying on a slope or at the base of a hill or cliff.
While others accused and attacked, he led by example. While others incited passion, he incited peace. While others were fighting battles, he won the war by teaching us that the entire conflict was based on a lie.
~ Rick Hutchins from, «http://blog.richmond.edu/heroes/2013/10/02/sidney-poitier-quiet-revolutionary/»
I highly recommend Sidney Poitier’s autobiographical, The Measure of a Man.
ɕ
It’s been a long journey, but I’ve enjoyed it. I struggled with feeling bad about my body, feeling insecure about myself, doubting my abilities to make it without an employer, doubting myself as a writer, not believing I had discipline or the ability to change my habits.
And all this led to other problems: I sought happiness and pleasure in food, beer, shopping, distraction, TV. I procrastinated, I let my health get bad, I smoked, I was deeply in debt, unhappy with my work, never exercised, and ate lots of junk food.
~ Leo Babauta from, The Little Book of Contentment
slip:4uzeli3.
The book is a short, and completely free, download.
ɕ
To my mind, the most important guiding star on our journey is integrity. We have to practise what we preach, and this means embodying the principles we aspire to and letting them permeate every aspect of our lives.
These lofty values and principles we aspire to in training; courage, determination, commitment, humility, honesty, quality, consistency, perfection – what good are they if we abandon them when we end the training session and return to our daily life?
~ Dan Edwardes from, «http://www.parkourgenerations.com/blog/way-pathfinder-part-two»
ɕ
I wonder how many Sundays are between June 17th 2012 and today?
WolframAlpha: 79.
Ho. Lee. Crap. That’s awesome.
You do know about WolframAlpha, right? …the “computational knowledge engine”? No? Go there. Ask it things.
Stephen Wolfram is a character. (But anyone whose thesis committee contains Richard Feynman gets a complete pass in my book.) “This math stuff is annoying…” Bam! Mathematica. And if you want to really go “whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!”, try to wrap your brain around, A New Kind of Science.
ɕ
This holiday season, remember: Home is where the wifi connects automatically.
ɕ
The way people most talk about ki these days tends toward the occultish, but I will say that I have never done anything even remotely involving the occult. Much of what Ueshiba Sensei talked about, on the other hand, did sound like the occult.
In any case, I began studying aikido because I saw that Ueshiba Sensei had truly mastered the art of relaxing. It was because he was relaxed, in fact, that he could generate so much power. I became his student with the intention of learning that from him. To be honest, I never really listened to most of the other things he said.
Stories about Ueshiba Sensei moving instantaneously or pulling pine trees from the ground and swinging them around are all just tall tales. I’ve always urged aikido people to avoid writing things like that. Unfortunately, many people don’t seem to listen. Instead, they just decrease the size of the tree in the story from some massive thing to one only about ten centimeters in diameter. In reality, it’s pretty difficult to pull even a single burdock root out of the ground, so how in the world is someone going to extract a ten centimeter pine tree, especially while standing on its root system? Such things are nothing but exaggerations of the kind often used in old-fashioned storytelling.
The stories have gotten rather incredible since Ueshiba Sensei passed away, and now people are having him moving instantaneously or reappearing suddenly from a kilometer away and other nonsense. I was with Ueshiba Sensei for a long time and can tell you that he possessed no supernatural powers.
~ Koichi Tohei from, «http://members.aikidojournal.com/public/interview-with-koichi-tohei-1/»
From, Interview with Koichi Tohei by Stan Pranin.
ɕ
Of course, one way to make sure you never sound like an idiot when discussing politics (or have to suffer someone else who does) is to just avoid discussing politics in polite company. That said, sometimes a spirited discussion on current events is fun and informative, and sometimes you have the opportunity to talk to someone with an opinion or background you’d like to benefit from. In this post, we’ll show you how to approach those political conversations from an informed, civil angle, without a conversation with someone you may disagree with devolving into a mouth-frothing mess like you’d see on Sunday Morning talk shows.
~ Alan Henry from, How to Avoid Sounding Like an Idiot When Discussing Politics
slip:4uliho2.
ɕ
What is the most effective discipline to learn for absolute beginners?
~ GµårÐïåñ from, What is the Most Effective Discipline to Learn for Absolute Beginners
slip:4usaqu2.
ɕ
This magic works via detection of a STATUS control character, Control-T, by the kernel tty driver, which then prints the load line via tty_info() on FreeBSD or ttyinfo_locked() on Mac OS X. It also sends a SIGINFO to the process, so it can run its own routine. See STATUS in the termios(4) man page.
~ Brendan Gregg from, «http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2013/10/05/control-t-for-tenex/»
It is so freakin’ cool when I learn new Unix tricks. It’s like a maze of twisty passages, all alike; Except there’s… oh! A piece of candy! oh! A piece of candy! oh! A piece of candy.
ɕ
detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball
~ Randall Munroe from, Lethal Neutrinos
slip:4uxoaa2.
This does not end well.
ɕ