You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside. The enemy of the “best” is often the “good.”
~ Stephen Covey
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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.
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…what’s the belt of venus?
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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
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To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. C.P. Snow talked about two cultures. I really think that those two cultures separate people who have and people who have not had this experience of understanding mathematics well enough to appreciate nature once. […] Physicists cannot make a conversion to any other language. If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in. She offers her information only in one form; we are not so unhumble as to demand that she change before we pay any attention.
~ Richard Feynman
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What is the most effective discipline to learn for absolute beginners?
~ GµårÐïåñ from, What is the Most Effective Discipline to Learn for Absolute Beginners
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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.
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All cruelty springs from weakness.
~ Seneca
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detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball
~ Randall Munroe from, Lethal Neutrinos
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This does not end well.
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