exceeding our materials
After tearing through Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide, I decided to give his debut book a try. I haven't even got past the prelude, and I'm already taking notes. He ends this prelude with this lovely paean to art and science:
It is ironic, but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness.

The moral of this book is that we are made of art and science. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, but we are also just stuff. We now know enough about the brain to realize that its mystery will always remain. Like a work of art, we exceed our materials.

...The experiment and poem complete each other. The mind is made whole.
He's got a nice touch with verbage--thoughtful, poetic and heartfelt. I'm doing my best to save this read for the coming Thanksgiving holiday, so I can enjoy it at home in our cozy living room, rather than on a cramped Bart or bus ride home.
Labels: art, books, cool science, eyeshurt, inspiration, reading

:: ewee 12:36:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Monday, August 17, 2009 ::

Beyond my imagination...
Good, productive weekend of bursty work patterns and getting things done. Think I've been overdoing it for a bit, because I'm worn out and honestly a bit sick today (tired, achy, slow). But that's also data, and so I'm resting and getting myself together for the next charge. In the meantime, I got to finish a book of substance (recommended by the general herself): Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.

It's a quick read, but far from easy. It's wrenchingly, quietly, painfully, beautifully difficult in places. And transcendent throughout. She's not my favorite writer (The Namesake gets a nod, but that's it), and at times I disliked her stories intensely. Perhaps the quiet ordinary despair was just too much for a midweek commute read. But she's a good writer, and excellent at her craft--she uses words so well and with such skill, that her prose is transparent, light-weight, and devastating.

If you only have 15 minutes, read the last story in the series. But I'd recommend just reading the entire book, and savoring the last story at the end.
"Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have know, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."

-from Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Labels: books, eyeshurt, inspiration, random, reading, words

:: ewee 5:15:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 ::

"Remember this..."
"Fortunately, power has a shelf life. When the time comes, maybe this mighty empire will, like others before it, overreach itself and implode from within. ...For all the endless empty chatter about democracy, today, the world is run by three of the most secretive institutions in the world: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization, all three of which, in turn, are dominated by the United States. ...A world run by a handful of greedy bankers and CEOs who nobody elected can't possibly last.
...

Corporate globalism--or shall we call it by its name?--Imperialism...
...

What can we do?

We can hone our memory, we can learn from our history. We can continue to build public opinion until it becomes a deafening roar.

...We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different ways. In other words, we can come up with a million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass.

...Our strategy should be not only to confront Empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness--and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe.

The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling--their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them."

- From "War Talk" by Arundhati-kickass-Roy.
Labels: books, change, vote 2008

:: ewee 2:06:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Sunday, September 07, 2008 ::

Book 26!

Just under the wire...
Labels: books, moblog

:: ewee 8:26:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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:: Friday, July 18, 2008 ::

The Big Squeeze

Finally finished it. Great book, I shoulda just bought it (with the fines I've got, I might as well have). Check eyeshurt for a book report soonish (well, I'm behind by three book reports now, and no time, so soonish is a loose idea). All the pieces of paper?...my notes. Yeah, it was good like that.
Labels: books

:: ewee 8:08:00 PM [+] :: 0 comments ::
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