“And very slowly, the traveler realized that he missed what he had when he started: the feeling of being alone in the world.” — The Traveler and His Work
At The Art of Non-Conformity, Chris Guillebeau believes that he can show you “how to change the world by achieving significant, personal goals while helping others at the same time.” I know. Weird, right?
His latest post is a narrative, a parable of his life. It’s about a guy who found the way, lost it, realizes he’s lost it, and goes off to find it again. He’s no Ryan Bingham, but you definitely get that defined-by-airline-loyalty vibe in the beginning.
“The main thing we’re contributing back is the advancement of the idea of internet culture to more and more people … just the sheer growing acceptance of user submitted content and the fact that we can affect popular culture.”
“You laugh about this but we may be on the forefront of Internet culture becoming most dominant culture in the world … through the power of the internet and through the community.”
The Awl interviews Paul Ford, former editor of Harper’s. I can see where he’s coming from. I live for a good puzzle,
“[Paul:] I could have been a respected editor instead of a huge nerd. But all the editing in the world can’t compare to building little websites and mangling text and writing things and messing around in spreadsheets and figuring out what’s wrong with comments. I wake up thinking about how all the pieces fit together and I want to do more of it and with lots of people. I plan to be scared and exhausted most of the time. So far that’s working.”
Now, I haven’t got a clue what Alex Chilton or the Butthole Surfers has to do with Paul Ford resigning from Harper’s (typical Awl: off-topic yet entertaining), but don’t forget to read about the Butthole Surfers misbehaving in The Netherlands. If the Dutch can deal with alcohol-induced madness of that caliber — and ask for more — it proves beyond reasonable doubt that their culture is, in fact, more tolerant than most. That probably doesn’t come as a surprise to most of you, but it’s worth mentioning.
“It’s not about the hair, it’s not about the shoes, it’s about the music. The best way to experience the music is and has always been to listen to it, to watch the performance. We sometimes forget that as fans, we get sidetracked by the other crap.
I wanted to expose people to the depth of sound hiding in the cities they live in. After talking to friends, I realized that many of the bands I consider great and even popular are completely unheard of to most people. I’m not bitter towards mainstream music, but the Canadian music scene has so much to offer — minus the shoes and the hair.”
Straight from the mouth of the man himself. Check out Jeff’s project at Minus the Music to be enlightened, to be exposed, to hear the many flavors of indie music flowing out of Canada’s great cities. No decorative distractions, just the music.
The word depression is used as a “catch-all” term to describe a “spectrum of symptoms.” I am wary of the medical standard which of late seems to prefer to medicate first and diagnose later, especially in children. Jonah Lehrer helps us to see that depression should not be dismissed so quickly:
“If depression didn’t exist — if we didn’t react to stress and trauma with endless ruminations — then we would be less likely to solve our predicaments. Wisdom isn’t cheap, and we pay for it with pain.”
A hefty price. However, it’s not always that simple, either:
“To say that depression has a purpose or that sadness makes us smarter says nothing about its awfulness. A fever, after all, might have benefits, but we still take pills to make it go away. This is the paradox of evolution: even if our pain is useful, the urge to escape from the pain remains the most powerful instinct of all.”
“Cosmology is the theory and lore of how the world or universe is structured. A kind of map or picture of the cosmos, cosmology is a way of naming things and putting them in their proper places.” James D. Tabor
Note, in the smooth illustration above, that the realm of the dead is called Sheol by the ancient Hebrews, to be distinguished from the Christian version of Hell. The difference is to some extent a matter of semantics. Eternal punishment for sin and life after death are conflated with the word Hell, whereas the “idea of Sheol is negative in contrast to the world of life and light above, but there is no idea of judgment or of reward and punishment.” The fascinating Biblical distinctions are traced through history by James Tabor in the rest of this essay.
“Why do we look for recipes? Because we’re risk averse. If we fail, it’s because someone else gave us the wrong recipe. We get to skip on the blame, but can claim the success.”
I have always been vaguely disgusted by the multitude of how-to articles that roam around the blogging plains like empty-eyed, money-sniffing sheep. They are everywhere you look, yet they’re rarely worth the time it takes to read them. They revisit time and again the same tired topics. In a thousand words they will tell you nothing you don’t already know. One thing is sure, though: the sheep draw hungry stares.
“But, there’s money in recipes. If there’s a recipe, that means there’s a secret. And you can sell a silver bullet. The thing is, most people that are giving you a recipe are pandering to your fear. “What if things go wrong?” “
Fear sells, and reading more of those how-to articles won’t help you overcome it. Here’s a recipe that might be worth a penny: read Chimero’s no-nonsense truth, then put your head down and get your hands dirty.
You can read the first chapter of this book here at Scribd. To give you an idea:
As the conservative columnist George F. Will has written, today “we honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton’s country.”
This is no cause for celebration. In fact, the triumph of Hamiltonianism has been mostly a curse on America. The political legacy of Alexander Hamilton reads like a catalog of the ills of modern government: an out-of-control, unaccountable, monopolistic beaurocracy in Washington, D.C.; the demise of the Constitution as a restraint on the federal government’s powers; the end of the idea that the citizens of the states should be the masters, rather than the servants, of the government;
And on and on. An eye-opening book which I simply cannot put down and which you absolutely must read if you have any interest in history, economics, politics, or the past, present, or future of the United States.
This is a short story by Wells Tower about bloodthirsty vikings and, strangely, the cost of love. Below is a colorful excerpt, or, if you found the title as interesting as I did, you can skip straight to reading here at Macmillan.
The clouds were spilling out low across the sky when we shoved off. Thirty of us on board, Gnut rowing with me at the bow and behind us a lot of other men I’d been in some shit with before. Some of their families came down to watch us go. ØrlStender fucked up the cadence waving to his son, who stood on the beach waving back. He was a tiny one, not four or five, standing there with no pants on, holding a baby pig on a hide leash. Some of the others on board weren’t a whole lot older, rash and violent children, so innocent about the world they would just as soon stick a knife in you as shake your hand.
