Clippings
Passages stored here are used elsewhere, often at random. Here's a list
- Leaving Home
- "Leaving home is a kind of forgiveness..."
- Digitally Thin
- "There’s a feeling of thinness that I believe many of us grapple with working digitally. It's a product of the ethereality inherent to computer work."
- Doing a Second Edit
- "... we miss images on our first edit... A little distance, like a few months or years, can help bring some objectivity. Or a broader perspective to our subjectivity."
- Concentrated Space Intensifies Everything
- "A small, concentrated domestic space intensifies everything... It is almost more myself than I am."
- A Voyage and a Harbor
- "As geographer Yi-Fu Tuan says, we require both shelter and venture. We need freedom and support, silence and cacophony, the vast and distant but also the warm and near, a voyage and a harbor, the great adventure and the hobbit hole. Much of the iconography of our times gives little sense of this."
- The Value of Time
- "Don’t squander a single second. Perhaps, even more importantly, don’t waste time regretting the time you squander or lose."
- Writing Forces Thinking
- "writing something that other people will read forces you to think well."
- Finding a Balance in Execution, Reflection and Articulation
- On building tools, finding a balance in execution, reflection and articulation — and teaching others to find that balance, too.
- Frustration Between People in Creative and Non-creative Universes
- "This I think is true, not just of writers, but of anyone who is in a creative space, that you have to reverse the normal human tendency, which is to edit. People in non-creative universes have exactly the opposite relationship to information ... They’ll see something and they’ll say "Is it relevant to what I'm doing?" And if it’s not they should push it aside and focus on what they’re kind of task is."
- It's No Use Arguing Tastes with a Cow
- "Especially at night, the cows would come wandering in among our tents, like the party who goes about seeking what he may devour, and on getting hold of some such choice morsel as a sock, shirt, or blanket, Mrs. Bossie would chew and chew..."
- A Call to Nature
- "There were sardine cans and cracker boxes and one thing and another. Then I found where one of them had had a call to nature. I told one of my men to put it in a can."
- Or So I Feel
- "To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
- Beware of Hypnotic Media
- "Wake up, wake up — before you sign that seven-year contract, buy that house you don’t really want, marry that girl you secretly despise. Don’t reach for the whiskey, that won’t help you. You’ve got to think, to discriminate, to exercise your own free will and judgment."
- A Siberian dog signal-howl
- "Suddenly there rose upon the still night air a long, faint, wailing cry like that of a human being in the last extremity of suffering."
- Interior of a Settled Korak Yurt
- "The interior of a Korak _yurt_--that is, of one of the wooden _yurts_ of the _settled_ Koraks--presents a strange and not very inviting appearance to one who has never become accustomed by long habit to its dirt, smoke, and frigid atmosphere."
- The Bottom Line
- The bottom line is, do I have shelter and enough to eat. Everything else is optional. EVERYTHING! John Farr
- Haunted Until his Humanity Awakens
- Each man is haunted until his humanity awakens. Blake
- A Good Christion Lion
- A missionary was walking in Africa when he heard the ominous padding of a lion behind him. Cleveland Amory
- I Tremble for my Species
- I tremble for my species when I reflect / that god is just. Thomas Jefferson
- Norden Bombsight training at Deming NM
- During the Second World War Army Air Corp bombardiers were trained in the use of the Norden Bombsight at the Deming Army Airbase making practice runs on large simulated ground targets in the desert.
- The Heliograph in the Apache Wars
- The mountains and the sun...were made his allies, the eyes of his command, and the carriers of swift messages.
- An Apache Defilade in the Florida Mountains
- Back in the day when the Apaches and the American Buffalo Soldiers were getting it on the Apaches had a view point in the Florida Mountains across from Rockhound State Park where they could get a few hours warning when an Army party left their Cook's Spring encampment.
- Heliograph routes of the 1890 Practice
- On May 15th, 1890, and the Army's Department of Arizona had just completed a major heliograph practice, the largest the world had ever seen.
- Heliograph route between Fort Cummings NM and Tubac, AZ
- "A message was recently sent by the government heliograph (signalling by sunlight flashes) from Fort Cummings, N.M. to Tubac, Ariz., a distance of 400 miles, and an answer received in four hours."
- Transcript of Barack Obama's Speech on Race and Politics
- The following is a full transcript of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's speech on race and politics delivered in Philadelphia PA on March 18, 2008.
- God made mud. God got lonesome.
- The Last Rites of the Bokononist Faith from Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
- We Are Clearly a Species Worth Saving
- Lifestyle's Supports and the Difficulty of Understanding
- Crayfish Chimney
- ... intelligence has entered the development of man, and because of it, his arms and fingers can be used to play a violin, paint a picture, remove a damaged fragment from a human brain, and fondle a woman. These things the claws of the crayfish cannot do.
- Five Trillion Spiders
- Sweet, Rich Hickory Milk
- "Despite the unsanitary presentation, the milk was ambrosial - fragrantly nutty, delightfully heavy on the tongue,"
- Teosinte and the Improbability of Maize
- "No one eats teosinte, because it produces too little grain to be worth harvesting. In creating modern maize from this unpromising plant, Indians performed a feat so improbable that archaeologists and biologists have argued for decades over how it was achieved. "
- I Ain't What I Was
- Our Past is Written Deep
- Fire Protection in Early Hudson NY
- "It was enjoined upon all the citizens, in case of a fire in the night, to place lighted candles in their windows, in order that the inhabitants might pass through the streets in safety, and to throw their buckets into the street, that there might not be delay in obtaining them."
- Shopping for sensation
- On Food and Freedom
- "The food system, like nature, is a dynamic system. Those of us who wish to eat regularly need to understand food system dynamics within our own bodies, within our households, within our communities, across our nation and around the world."
- When Hope Dies
- A Bump on the Head
- Canning the Blueberries
- "Another wait of more than an hour and he was back in the berry picking business. He found some good patches and was really canning the blueberries."
- Wind on the Gangplank
- Defenestrate
- Do We Really Mean What We Say
- The Credential of the Dominant
- What Horrid Creatures We Men Are
- "that we cannot be virtuous without murdering one another?" John Adams
- The Trespasser's Eyeshine
- Emergent democracy
- "Today, nation states and elected politicians are more creatures of corporations than corporations are creatures of nation states. Unfortunately, while it was democracy and liberty corporations needed to reach their present dominance, in the main, their governance is the antithesis of democratic, free and just. I do not think it bodes well for the future of democracy."
- They do not Intrude on Each Other
- Ms. Turkey Comes Calling
- Ms. Turkey came to call yesterday, while making her rounds on the trail of grubs. With her tolerance I shot this picture through the window while she foraged.
- Was Love Then
- Unnecessary War
- "Great is the guilt" John Adams
- How to Make Bread
- "Mix the water and sugar and, if desired, salt in the big bowl. Add the yeast. Go post a couple of messages to K5. When you come back, the yeast should have grown to form a stinky scum on the water."
- That Ideas Should Freely Spread
- If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.
- Dia:Beacon Opening
- Dia:Beacon, opening May 18, 2003, is a museum for Dia Art Foundation's renowned collection of art from the 1960s to the present.
- Alex Can Spell
- Not very long ago, Dr. Pepperberg began trying to teach Alex and another gray parrot, Griffin, to sound out phonemes, which are the sounds that letters and letter combinations represent...
- Karl Blossfeldt Plant Studies
- Digging Your Toes
- ..., it's about digging your toes into whatever ...
- Silence
- Party Differences
- "everyone takes his side in favor of the many, or of the few, according to his constitution and the circumstances in which he is placed..."
- Privileges
- Sincerity Itself is Bullshit
- Words Get in the Way
- Hobnobbing with Brigham Young
- "I hesitated a little about accepting the invitation because I didn't know how many of the Mrs. Youngs I might be presented to and I wasn't looking as handsome as I always liked to when going into the company of ladies."
- Sell Them Down the River
- "The average Missouri Negro looked upon being sold south as one or two degrees worse than being sent straight to hell." Thomas Henry Tibbles
- Primary and Secondary Emotions
- Your culture and upbringing teach you when to feel shame versus when to feel embarrassment or guilt, but all three start out in the brain as the pain of being isolated.
- Normal Damage
- Messing Up Their Results
- Vision, Novelty and Fear
- Horsetail by Maggie Lake
- Gets Me Into My Boots
- I Like Writing
- "I like finding feelings in words' ..."
- Float Your Ideals
- There is Nothing a Man Will Not Do for Another
- Few genes are required
- Tools for Communicating
- How Do You Know
- What a Real Essay Is
- "In a real essay, you don't take a position and defend it. You notice a door that's ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what's inside."
- A Theory of the State
- Walking the edge, I am. ...
- Give it, Give it All, Give it Now
- "The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now."
- From Knowledge to Wisdom
- That's the Point of Emotions: Survival
- Listening
- How to Prepare Mice
- "... wash them, bread them carefully, and braise them lightly ..."
- Walk Humbly
- Our Peripheral Existence
- Running With the Pack
- The Value of Notebooks
- "I never actually get around to reading them and using what I've written, but I do tend to reproduce the same thoughts later."
- The Speed of Darkness
- The New England Path
- The principal trails of the Indians through the wilderness, unbroken save by patches here and there under crude tillage, were two: one near the river; and the other, following the lines of least resistance, nearly identical with the roadbed of the Boston and Albany Railroad and long known as the "New England Path.
- People are Themselves
- The War Prayer
- "O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; ... help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst" Mark Twain
- The Speed of Wisdom
- The Eat What You Fancy Diet
- "The trick, however, that lets you achieve your natural, correct body weight is to eat only because you are hungry, and stop when you are full. Harder than it sounds, of course, ..."
- More Toward Realism than Fantasy
- Truth and Story
- Disaster and the Failure of Authority
- Rice Toss
- Monopoly Money
- "When the Monopoly play money starts jerking around the real money you're in trouble."
- Freehand Turned Brass Pulls
- Internal Intrigues
- "internal intrigues ... are and will be our ruin." John Adams
- Others Choose the Path of Healing
- Growing up... it never stops
- Stay What You Always Were
- One Forgets
- To Remember Safely
- Life is Strange
- Something Useful Can Be Artful
- Troops Endure Blowing Sands and Mud Rain
- Fit In Better
- Absolute Silence
- I Mourn the World in Which I Live
- Observational Learning
- [Learning by watching] is called observational learning. When it comes to evolutionary fears, as well as to many other areas of learning, animals and people learn by watching what other animals or people do, not by doing something themselves and learning from the consequences. I have the impression this lesson hasn't quite been absorbed by most educators.
- Emptiness
- Playing and Learning and Loving
- Visual Thinkers
- Commitment is the Glue that Binds
- The Only Misfortune Of It
- "...is that Mr. Jefferson's sayings are never well digested, often extravagant, and never consistently pursued." John Adams
- Life is to be Lived, Not Controlled
- It was the Crickets
- Whimbrel by Pedro DeMovellan
- Alex Can Think
- Skepticism is Helpful
- Genetic Determinism and Human Nature
- Now, Dazzled
- Masquerade
- "My friend! Our country is a masquerade!" John Adams
- Under This Roof
- "May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof."
- Ever Tried, Ever Failed
- Finding the Words to Fit It
- Questions
- As My Breathing Evened Out
- Passing Time in Byzantium
- Our Three Brains
- The lizard brain breathes, eats, and sleeps; the dog brain forms dominance heirarchies and rears its young. ... The human brain gets added on top of the dog brain. So you have your lizard brain to breathe and sleep, your dog brain to form wolf packs, and your human brain to write books about it.
- Scarcity
- The SEEKING Circuit
- Waiting
- What a Deale
- Inflection Points
- "we flail around wondering why our life isn't as stable as we think our parents' was." Britt Blaser
- A Mere Bristle on the Hog
- What I've Learned
- Relive Your Traumas
- I Believe in Human Dignity
- Proficiency in Knowledge of the World
- Writing From the Inside Out
- "It takes a while - often years - for the writer to get to appreaciate his effect on others..."
- Roses
- Mix With the World
- Persistent and Ineradicable Instinct
- Over Fifty
- Politics and the English Language
- It's Time to Go Home
- Make No Little Plans
- Ask What Surprised Them
- This is Easy
- First Find What's Truly Significant