Borges once commented that newspapers should be printed once in 100 years, and should only have articles about the "real" news like "Christopfer Columbus disovered America". I couldn't agree more, but still I read them every day and always with a feeling that I'm about to discover something new :).
Did You Hear We Got Osama?
161–170 of 212 posts
Re: Did You Hear We Got Osama?
#162Re: Did You Hear We Got Osama?
#163What helps me get off the news pipeline: No one is remembered for being well read. - some blog post I've lost, but the quote is still written on my chalkboard, luckily. when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create. _why EDIT: I know it's ironic that these came from online sources. I guess the point is about balance and focused…
Why do you think being remembered is such a big deal? After all, you won't be around to appreciate it.
It implies your life has meaning (if it affects those around you). After all, if we remove you from the universe and nothing changes, you really didn't exist or may as well not have existed in practice.
Re: Did You Hear We Got Osama?
#164well, what do you want to be? a narrow-minded, ignorant human or civilized man?
seriously.
the world, life, is much more than work, work, work. understanding broader contexts, understanding where we are going and why is important. even as a founder, to come back to this extremely narrow narrative within these halls.
how do you understand you market, your consumers, your customers? a contracting economy bears different potential than an expanding one. how will you know where we are if you do not inform yourself?
how about reading a book or two, not the daily babble? you mention you've read the news but didn't understand anything. if you do not inform yourself, you will repeat the mistakes of others.
you sound like one of those pretentious fucks that don't watch tv, don't listen to current music and are proud of it. it bears of ignorance, of disregard of the output of other human beings.
Re: Did You Hear We Got Osama?
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. I am 16. I stay home from school because learning civics and history and math and science are super boring, so in between sessions of wallhacking on legacy counter-strike servers I refresh a startup tech news site looking for intellectually stimulating articles. You're right. I do know everything. Everything except how best to use my time when I occasionally want to waste it broadening my horizon with unusual an…
Yes. I am 16. I stay home from school because learning civics and history and math and science are super boring, so in between sessions of wallhacking on legacy counter-strike servers I refresh a startup tech news site looking for intellectually stimulating articles. No, they are pretty interesting. The teachers are boring, may be. History? The civil war? The Isreali-Palestini conflict? The poverty in the world? Wate…
That was a sarcastic rebuttal, the author of that post is not really 16.
Re: Did You Hear We Got Osama?
#166This is a topic that I've thought some on in that my company is in the recommendations space, and some thoughts on what make news recommendations difficult: The function of news is to facilitate smalltalk. I am reasonably convinced of this. News, as such, is mostly just something that you're supposed to have read so that you can get by in usual social interactions. What we read (and are supposed to have read) is very…
I stopped reading the news at one point -- for a couple years -- because of its persistent lack of depth. I realized that reading 100 BBC articles on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would leave me knowing virtually nothing about it, other than some factoids, whereas the same time spent reading books would be worthwhile. Not to mention that you would have read 100 articles from a single source that is a government-co…
There's so much wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start. The BBC is pretty much the gold standard for un-biased reporting, regularly taking the government to task on issues of the day. As John Humphreys said to a minister once before interviewing him, "I'm not here to make you look like an idiot, but if you choose to, I won't stop you".
It even takes itself to task hugely, as shown recently when a BBC reporter was destroyed in an interview about how much better the Sky and iTV coverage was than the BBC during the capture of Tripoli, by another BBC journalist live on air.
Re: Did You Hear We Got Osama?
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It is really, really, really, really, really hard for me to find a good temporary distraction nowadays." You sound like a typical bored teenager, with too much time on their hands, wearing their boredom as a nihilistic badge of honor, expecting everyone to entertain them, while simultaneously acting as if they know everything, thereby supposedly being superior to the entertainers. If you can't find anything good to…
Yes. I am 16. I stay home from school because learning civics and history and math and science are super boring, so in between sessions of wallhacking on legacy counter-strike servers I refresh a startup tech news site looking for intellectually stimulating articles. You're right. I do know everything. Everything except how best to use my time when I occasionally want to waste it broadening my horizon with unusual an…
If you want real intellectual stimulation, go to a university. Seriously. There are some super interesting things going on at universities, but you have to take some initiative to find them.
Sit in on some classes, check out the university library, find some clubs that seem interesting and hang out at their meetings, talk to professors and students -- maybe even get involved in some of the projects happening there. You'll get a lot out of this, I guarantee it. I can recommend this to people who've already attended universities too. Many of them could use some intellectual stimulation.
Re: Did You Hear We Got Osama?
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great allegory except Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was not a neuroscientist, so there isn't actually any evidence to back up that theory.
I don't really think his qualifications have much of a bearing on that - you could easily think of knowledge as a function of time and effort, which are certainly limited and finite resources for everyone, so the analogy still holds.
Or you can look at it as an interconnected pathways, and that the more different stuff you learn the more efficient your brain is.
Re: Did You Hear We Got Osama?
#169Reminds me of the classic Sherlock Holmes quote: "His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composit…
It sounds pretty, but I'm not convinced this is a sound analogy. I think the walls are elastic to some extent. The real limitation on how much you can learn is not storage space, but time spent "moving furniture". You only have so much time to spend learning things, and you have to choose where to allocate it.
It is not sound analogy it is very wrong analogy. Our brains are not attics and neither they are computers.
Re: Did You Hear We Got Osama?
#170Reminds me of the classic Sherlock Holmes quote: "His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composit…
I love that excerpt. The Holmes books were among my favorites growing up, read all of them several times, and that was one of the most memorable exchanges. I'm a big believer that what is easy to produce (blog posts, daily news articles) is generally less valuable than what is hard to produce (books, journal articles, working code). If you want to fill your 'empty attic' with high-value information, focus on the latt…
I agree in principle. The link between the "hard-to-produce factor" and the medium (blog vs. paper) is not in my eyes so strong. There's a lot of overlap and I don't think the generalization is that valuable.